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libraryofloveletters · 3 years

Text

A June Wedding

Evan Buckley x Reader

Warnings: alcohol and the consumption of

Category: Fluff

Word Count: 2.8k

Author’s Note: idk what this is, I opened the doc and just started typing, so yeah // the flashbacks are set two years ago, when y/n meets Buck. The end is back to the present

----

From B: I was thinking about you.

From B: I miss you.

The phone sat in your hand, you stared down at the message on the screen. It had been months, maybe longer since you met him- 2 years to be precise.

The two of you had a weird friendship to say the least. One of those “will they, won’t they?” kind of things. Everyone seemed to notice how the two of you were in love except the two of you.

Your story starts in a hole in the wall coffee shop two years ago, when Buck comes in after his first shift at the station.

*Two Years Before*

Tired and hungry was a typical look you saw among the folks who came to your shop. It was downtown LA and there were a lot of businesses around including station 118.

Among your typical morning crowd, there were people in suits and ties, the few hippies/skater crowd and your favourite, the fire-fighters.

They were your favourite not because they always had larger orders but they usually left big tips and were super sweet.

It was around 9 in the evening when the bell on the door chimed as it was pushed open. You were closing up for the day but the ‘come in, we’re open’ sign still hung on the window that was ideally supposed to be taken down an hour ago.

Pulling a tray of cookies from the oven, you were startled by the door considering that you thought you locked the door. Peering from the doorway of the kitchen, there was a man by the counter, staring up at the menu board.

“Hi,” you smile, hesitantly stepping towards the counter from the kitchen. He glances down at you and smiles, mumbling a hello.

“Uh, we’re actually closed right now.” you inform him.

His brows furrow, glancing over his shoulder at the window. “But the sign-” “I forget to take it down.”

“Oh. I’m sorry, I’ll- okay, I'm gonna go.” he looked.. disappointed. He pulls a phone out his pocket and sighs. You take that moment to study him. A grey sweatshirt and a pair of jeans, there’s a hat sitting backwards on his head and a duffle bag tossed over his shoulder. As he turns to leave, you notice the 4 letters written on his hat in bright red - LAFD.

“Hey!” you call out, “You’re a firefighter ?”

The blonde smiles and nods, “yeah, I started today actually. The guys at the station were talking about the coffee shop down the street. I didn’t get a chance to come during the day so I thought I'd come now- but I can come back another time, you’re closed”

Waving off his statement, you pick up a cup from the counter. “Nonsense, I'd never turn away one of the city’s finest.” you smile, he chuckles. “The city’s finest is more of a cop thing.” he tells you.

“Is that so ?” asking, you begin looking through the fridge to see if there was any milk, he hums.

“I think you’re pretty fine yourself” you mumble, standing straight when you realize what you’ve said. Your back was to him, a blush burning up your face.

What you didn’t know was that Buck was blushing too, a pretty person like you calling him fine was surely going to make him blush and that it did.

Clearing your throat, you turn to face him again. He was looking anywhere but at you for the moment.

“What can I get you ?”

“What do you have right now ?”

“Just about everything, except for baked goods. I usually put those in the oven in the morning but I do have a tray of cookies if you’re interested.”

“That sounds good,” he smiles at you. “I’ll take a cookie and uh-” glancing up at the menu, “whatever is your favourite drink”

Humming, you turn and head to the kitchen to get two cookies for him and then begin mixing some coffee and creamer in a cup, along with ice and some caramel sauce. You ended up making two, one for him and one for you.

The man was sitting at one of the stools by the window. He was watching the cars drive past. “Here,” you slide the plate over to him and set the cup beside it.

He smiles, “thank you. How much do I owe you ?” he asks, reaching for what you assumed was his wallet. “Oh, don't worry about it. The register is locked and it’s your first time here, I wouldn’t have charged you anyways”

“You don’t charge first time customers ?”

“Only the firefighters, y’all hold a special place in my heart” you laugh, he smiles once more.

“Are you in a hurry to leave? I can take it with me if you are.”

“No, you're alright. The cookies are warm, I just took them out when you got here.” you sit beside him, taking a sip of your drink. He also takes a sip of his, you watch as his face twists and he smacks his tongue to try and figure out what it is.

“I call it the y/n special” filling him in, his brows furrow. “It’s basically just caramel ice coffee” a small laugh passes your lips as you take another sip.

“I’m y/n by the way.” “I’m Buck” he smiles.

From that day, Buck was a regular in your shop. You made him a regular coffee before his shifts, 2 cream and 3 sugars - you've come to realize he had a bit of a sweet tooth. After work, he’d stop by for an iced coffee and a cookie. You’d always keep some in the back for him.

This became a routine, you asked him for his number so he could let you know when he was on his way to work that way you’d have his coffee ready if he was running late.

Most mornings you’d just get an ‘coming’ or a little fire truck emoji letting you know he’s on his way to work.

Over the next year and a half, the two of you became close. All the guys that came in from the station always teased you about your “boyfriend Buck” although he wasn’t your boyfriend.

The two of you were close, you hung out all the time - when Buck had days off, he’d still stop by the shop for coffee or just to see you even though he lived in the opposite direction. He would also pick you up after work when you could walk home because you lived down the street.

You often stopped by the station when you knew they were on a 24 hour shift. Buck would text you hourly with whatever he was thinking about, especially during the nights when most of his team was asleep and he couldn’t. During those 24 hour shifts, the last few hours kicked their asses, everyone was tired and too lazy to move to do anything about it- those were the days that you headed into the shop early to get some stuff together to take over for them.

Over time, the affection between the two of you became clear to everyone but the two of you.

You only really noticed you liked him after his unfortunate run in with the fire truck and his promotion which you decide to celebrate with him.

There you were, a bottle of champagne in one hand and a bag of Thai takeout in the other - the perfect thing to celebrate his new- temporary as he kept reminding you- position.

He had invited you over to watch a movie but life was short as was recently reiterated after Buck’s “getting stuck under municipal equipment” phase as the two of you joke.

“Hey!” he smiles at you when he opens the door, immediately noticing the bottle of champagne in your hand.

“The nice stuff,” he hummed, stepping aside so you could come in. You set the bag on the counter with the bottle before venturing further into the kitchen to find glasses.

“What are we celebrating ?” he watches as you tumble through the cupboards.

“Y/n?” “What ?”

“What are we celebrating ?” he asks once more.

“Do you not own any champagne glasses ? All I can find are solo cups and those ugly ass mugs you have.” sighing, you grab the solo cups knowing his answer already.

“Y/n/n, I'm a 20-something year old guy living by himself-” “What makes you think I have such things?” finishing off the sentence for him which makes him laugh.

Setting the cups down on the counter, you push the bottle over to him. “Would you be so kind as to do the honours?” you hop onto the counter. Buck peels the casing from around the top and then shakes the bottle.

Your brows furrow, “that’s going to make a mess-” before you finish your sentence, the bottle pops.

The cork ends up somewhere in the apartment whilst the very expensive champagne is sprayed everywhere. Buck just so innocently titled the bottle your way, soaking you in the liquid.

Laughing, you pull the bottle away from him. He's standing in front of you when you grab his chin, pulling him towards you. Your left hand is cradling his jaw and leaning his head back to pour some of the champagne in his mouth. You over poured and split it on his shirt.

The two of you were a laughing, sticky mess and the bottle was already half way empty. He held the cups out for you, letting you pour some into each cup before handing you one.

“Okay, now will you tell me what prompted the champagne showers ?” he smiles, leaning against the counter next to you.

“Well, life is short. You’re a fire Marshall now so, I’m here to celebrate.”

Buck smiles at you, he wasn’t the biggest fan of his new job to be honest. Sure he liked it, but he’d do anything to be back out in the field.

Your arm stretched out, “So to you Mr. Evan Buckley, wait should I say Fire Marshall Buckley ? Anyways congratulations my love, you deserve the job but if the power goes to your head, I'm putting you in your place.” laughing, you bump your cup to his.

“To a speedy recovery and hoping for your return to the field soon because you’re driving everyone mad. Cheers!”

Both taking a sip before Buck hops up onto the counter beside you. He shifted slightly, making a gap between the two of you and pulling the bag of takeout to the spot. Dinner was had on the counter, eating straight out of the containers.

“Bobby would be so upset if he saw us right now.” Buck mumbles, his mouth full.

“Mhm but he’s not here. He doesn’t have to know.”

A few moments later, his phone began ringing. He pulls it out and his eyes widen. There’s a confused look on your face, waiting for him to give you some context or tell you who’s calling. Finally he shows you his phone.

Bobby is calling.

“You summoned him!” Buck shouted. You resisted the urge to laugh.

“Answer the phone!”

You watch as Buck answers the phone, holding back his laughter at the conversation moments ago. He looked happy, you loved seeing him like that. The way his eyes glimmered when he smiled that million dollar smile of his, how his curls showed when his hair was wet or if he hadn’t cut his hair in a while.

It was the little things that made you fall in love with him.

He was still on the phone when you decided you’d find something to change into.

He watched as you made your way to the bathroom, coming back out shirtless with a towel in your hand, drying off. He noticed the way you took a step every two steps like he does. He could hear you humming from upstairs, the way you went up in pitch when you saw something you liked or how you’d stop in-between to start whistling. He smiles to himself as he ends the call.

He too had fallen love with you somewhere along the line.

----

You watched as the little bubbles popped up on the screen on and off for the next few minutes.

Today was your wedding day.

You hadn’t spoken to him all day, things had been hectic. You promised to see him before you got married but truthfully, you had been so consumed with planning and making sure everything was ready that you didn’t get a chance to.

Your friend comes in, sticking their head in and smiling at you. “You ready ?” they ask, you hum before taking one more look at the phone.

“As ready as I'll ever be.”

It was a hot summer day in June, you and your fiancé had decided on an outdoor wedding considering you had always wanted a June wedding.

Standing at the end of the aisle, each side of the yard was filled with people you loved and cared about but your love was smiling at you on the verge of tears at the altar.

Resisting the urge to laugh at him, you smile as the music begins playing - your cue to make your way down the aisle. Making it to the end without tripping, you smile at him.

“Hey,” you smile, reaching for his hand.

“You look beautiful” he smiles, he leans forward to give you a kiss when a hand against his chest stops him.

Bobby gives him a disapproving look, “I’ll be fast but you gotta wait to the end to kiss them, Buck.” The statement earned him a laugh from the crowd.

The heat was getting to everyone including the two of you so Bobby skipped over the unnecessary parts, letting the two of you say your vows.

You started, your hand giving his a squeeze. “The day you walked into the shop, I thought ‘damn, I'm gonna die. Why do I always forget to lock the door?’ but little did I know, it was going to be the love of my life walking in. From the moment we sat down and started talking was the moment I knew you were the one- you made me smile, laugh, gave me butterflies but you also made me feel safe, like I could tell you anything and you’d always be there for me. I watched you walk out with the promise of coming back in the morning and I knew then, we were gonna have a June wedding.” you laughed.

“You taught me what love was, how to be happy, to never give up no matter what life throws my way because for the last 2 years, that’s what I've watched you do and I'm so incredibly proud to be marrying you. There’s no one else for me. It’ll always be you.” you smile, blinking back the tears.

“How am I supposed to compete with that ?” he hums, giving you a grin.

“Everything about you is.. perfectly imperfect, in every single sense of the term. You strive for perfection, but you come up with a slightly different version every time and I love that about you- like when you run out of breath while singing you start whistling so you don’t lose the melody, it’s the little things that make me love you. You hold the stars and the moon, you’re my whole world y/n, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. You make me a better man and I could never thank you enough for that.” Both of you are about to cry, looking at each other with the most love and adoration in your eyes.

Bobby cuts to the end, both of you now impatient and waiting for him to announce that you were officially a couple and the moment he does, Buck pulls you towards him, kissing you like it was the last time he was ever going to.

The sound of clapping and cheering filled your ears, making you both smile as your made you way back down the aisle officially as the Buckleys.

----

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seriouslysnape · 3 years

Text

Moonlight Dip

Neville Longbottom x Fem! Reader

Warnings: Fluff, Sexual content (super brief).

Word Count: 2,588

“We’re going swimming.”

Hogwarts was always desolate and quiet at this time of night. The only person who was supposed to be stirring was Filch, Mrs. Norris, and possibly Professor Snape keeping an eye out for any students who had grown bold enough to break curfew. Most students didn’t bother trying to sneak around the castle at night. Not because they were afraid of getting caught, but because if they DID get caught, they’d have to deal with Filch’s overly strict behavior. Honestly, that was a punishment in and of itself.

Which was why Neville just couldn’t seem to figure out why you were leading him through the dark corridors, moving like a woman on a mission. You had crept into his dorm around midnight or so, pouncing on his bed and shaking him from his gentle slumber. You barely waited for him to wake up before you were whisper-shouting at him that you had somewhere for the two of you to go. He never minded a surprise visit from you, but he also wasn’t very keen on attempting to slip out undetected. Still, his curiosity won out.

“Hey, uh, flower?” He whispered, not knowing where Filch might’ve been.

“Yes, Neville?” You whispered back, peering your head around the corner to check for anyone coming.

“Where are we going exactly? And why are you in your robes?” He questioned, feeling a bubble of nervousness in his chest.

Truth be told, Neville felt a little underdressed. He was clad in his pajamas bottoms and an old t-shirt that he only used to sleep in. You looked back at him with a smile, his heart leaping at how beautiful you looked under the illumination of the Lumos you had uttered from your wand. Neville had learned to be more spontaneous after he had begun dating you. You were as sweet and respectful as anyone, but you definitely had a wild side that sometimes shaved some years off of Neville’s life. He wasn’t sure what to think of it at first, but over time he found that he loved all of your silly shenanigans. Even the ones that had gotten you both in hot water before.

“I told you, Nev. It’s a surprise!” You answered, squeezing his hand that was interlaced in yours, “It won’t be a surprise anymore if I tell you.”

Neville made a puzzled, yet thoughtful look as he racked his brain of possible ideas. He thought that maybe that you were daring to venture to Hogsmeade for a late night snack. Every now and again, you’d convince Neville to help you with sneaking into Honeydukes after hours to snag a few treats (don’t worry, you always left the right amount of money on the counter to pay for it).

However, his theory was proven wrong when he realized that you were taking him past the courtyard and in the general direction of the Quidditch field. He was glad that it was well into spring now, and the nights were warm with the days. You didn’t play Quidditch though, and neither did he. So he couldn’t fathom why you were headed that way.

“The Quidditch fields are always dark this time of night. There’s no way we’ll be able to see.” Neville pointed out, mumbling under his breath when he almost tripped on a loose rock.

You turned to look at him again, another smile plastering on your face.

“Then it’s a good thing that we aren’t going there.” You replied.

Sure enough, you kept walking towards your desired locating, keeping your antsy boyfriend in tow. About the time that Neville had given up on trying to figure out where you were taking him, his question was answered. The lake was always so pretty at night, and tonight was no exception. The moon was only a phase away from being full, but still offering enough light to where the two of you could somewhat see. The reflection bounced beautifully off of the dark lake, creating glittering ripples in the water when it was agitated from it’s still position.

You let go of Neville’s hand once you were standing on the bank, crouching down to untie your shoelaces. Neville stood still, his arms at his side rather awkwardly. He wasn’t picking up on your plan just yet.

“I didn’t know that you like to fish.” Neville said aloud, not bothering to whisper anymore since there was no chance that anyone would be out here.

“I don’t.” You giggled, removing your shoes and socks.

Neville’s eyebrows raised, still oblivious even as your fingertips worked at untying the cord around your robes. Well, he WAS oblivious, until it was literally right in front of his face.

“Then why are we- oh my God, what are you doing?” He cut himself off when your robes fell to the grass, revealing your bra and knickers underneath.

Neville was glad that it was mainly dark outside, because his sudden deep blush would’ve been painfully obvious otherwise. You smirked at the bashful boy who was frozen in place, unsure of what he was supposed to do.

“We’re going swimming.” You announced, reaching for his hand again.

Except he didn’t take your hand. He wasn’t on board with this idea at all.

“Oh no. No, no, no. I draw the line at swimming naked!” He rattled off, taking a step away from you.

You weren’t offended in the slightest, and you were even rather amused at his skittish behavior. This was nothing new to you.

“I’m technically not naked.” You reminded him calmly.

“You’re in your knickers!” He hissed back, his eyes widening as he actually took a second to look at the lacy material.

“Exactly. Which equals not naked.” You returned, fighting the urge to burst into laughter.

“Nope!” He protested, sitting down on the grass instead, “I’ve defended us for getting caught sneaking off for Chocolate Frogs and breaking into the library at 3 o’clock in the morning. But I will not try to explain why we were in the lake naked.”

Neville seemed adamant about staying put where he was. He was tempted to get up and leave, but there was no shot in hell that he was going to leave you out here by yourself. He was perfectly fine with sitting off to the side and observing from a safe distance.

“You see me in my underwear all the time, Nevy,” You said, not really believing that the lack of clothes was what he was timid about, “Is it the ‘nakedness’ or the critters that sometimes live in the lake?”

Neville was frightened of a lot of things, and while he tended to love animals, aquatic animals were an exception. Fish and water-based bugs freaked him out for some reason that even you didn’t quite understand. The only animals that lived in and around water that he liked were frogs and toads. The only aspect of the lake that he might enjoy (aside from seeing you wet and half-naked) were the plants that were undoubtedly growing below the surface.

“Maybe both...” He murmured, resting his forearms on top of his knees that were pulled into his chest, “Regardless, I’m staying right here.”

You shrugged your shoulders, believing your intuition that said that he’d be in the water with you in less than fifteen minutes.

“Suit yourself.” You told him before making a graceful entrance splash into the water.

He watched as you plunged in, your entire frame disappearing under the water that looked black due to the inky color of the sky. Neville felt his nerves get fired up when you went under, a slight anxiety in his gut that you might not come back up. The lake wasn’t super deep by any means, only coming up to just below your hip. Neville knew that it was possible to drown in any depth of water, which was why he became a bit on edge.

Thankfully, though, you emerged from below the water before he could get too worked up. He watched with interest when your hands swept your wet hair backwards, slicking it on your head.

Neville had always found you pretty. He thought you were the most beautiful girl on the planet. While he always thought that you looked stunning, there were still times where it was much more clear to him. For instance, early in the morning when you’ve just woken up is one of his favorites. Or right before a Gryffindor party on Friday nights when you’ve taken extra time to get spiffied up. Seeing you always made his heart beat with a little more purpose. It reminded him of how much he cared for and loved you.

And this moment now really had him swooning.

His eyes studied as water droplets dripped from your frame, soaking into your underwear and gliding down your beautiful skin. It created a shiny gleam over you, bringing out all of his favorite parts of you. He must’ve fallen into a lusty daze, because he felt himself snap back into reality when you called to him.

“You sure you don’t want to get in?” You spoke, letting your fingertips trail over the surface of the lake.

Neville shook his head in response.

“I’m good here, tulip. Promise.” He said, still not sure if this was something he wanted to do.

You never pressured Neville into doing things he didn’t want to do. You never wanted him to be uncomfortable around you or associate discomfort with spending time with you. However, you knew that Neville was a worrier. He was an avid overthinker and sometimes just let his nerves get the best of him. You encouraged him to live a little more, without thinking about every single possible outcome of a situation. It’s great to be cautious and aware, but life without taking some risks could be...boring. You just didn’t want Neville to grow old with you and wish he hadn’t let his head get the best of him.

You swam out towards the middle of the lake, but not so far that you couldn’t see or hear Neville. You floated on your back and played with things that you found on the mushy, sandy floor of the lake. Neville maintained a conversation with you, but found himself feeling tempted to join you. It was just swimming. It wasn’t like the two of you were trying to blow up the lake or anything.

“How does...how does it feel?” Neville asked, stifling a giggle at how you were bouncing on your feet with your head lolled to the side to get water out of your ear.

“It’s nice. It’s not warm by any means, but it feels good.” You told him, wringing the excess water from your hair, “Changed your mind?”

Neville chewed the inside of his cheek, but he was warming up to the idea.

“I don’t even have a pair of swim trunks with me.” He argued.

You motioned towards your own body with a look of hilarity.

“Oh, and I’m wearing my swimsuit? It doesn’t matter, love. Just take off what you have on.” You instructed, getting hopeful that he was actually going to do it.

Neville stood from where he sat, stripping down to his boxers at a snail’s pace. He folded his clothes neatly, setting them next to your robes that he had also folded previously. He dipped his foot into the water, expecting it to be much colder than it actually was. It was a lukewarm temperature, something that would be refreshing on a hot summer day, but far too freezing for a frigid winter day. For his moderate spring night, it was perfect.

Neville didn’t love how the bottom of the lake felt on his feet. It was a mix of a squishy, gelatinous feeling. You reached for his hands excitedly, taking them as he waded out to where you were standing.

“So, what do you think?” You wondered, careful not to freak him out too much,

“It feels...nice. I don’t think I’ve ever been in this lake,” He admitted, “How did you even come up with this?”

“Well, you told me once that your Gran used to have a little pond behind her house that you liked to swim in during the summer. You said you enjoyed it and I thought maybe this would be something you’d like too,” You explained to him, suddenly feeling insecure about this whole thing, “I know it’s probably not the same or as fun.”

Now things really started to make sense. Neville felt the cage of butterflies flutter all into his belly whenever you did something sweet for him. Especially when it was something with sentimental value.

Neville had undeniably fallen in love with you. Not because of your witty personality or the random adventures you liked to take him on. Those things were plenty great, and he cherished those things with everything he had. But that wasn’t what made him decide that you were his future.

It was the pureness of your heart.

He fell for you more and more each time you did something for him. Whether it was as small as you combing your fingers through his hair when he was asleep on your chest in the common room, or as big as the time you devised a plan to throw a surprise birthday party for him at his Gran’s house. No matter what it was, you never hesitated to spend your energy, time, and love on making him happy.

“I did always like that pond, flower. But...you want to know something?” He said smoothly, with just the faintest hint of shakiness in his tone, “This is a lot better.”

He pulled you in close at the sight of your brightening eyes, bringing you down with him as he sank down to his knees under the top of the water.

“Oh, yeah? Why’s that?” You pressed on.

“Because you’re here.” He mewled, pressing a kiss to your forehead.

His descent of kisses trailed down to your nose, to your cheeks, to your lips. His kisses were never rushed in moments like this. They weren’t ever in a rush to get to the point or so rough that he didn’t have a chance to feel it. He liked to take his time with you. He liked to savor you.

“I love you, Nev. I really do.” You professed once he pulled away from you.

“I love you, petal,” He returned, going to kiss you again, but stopped when he took a big swash of lake water to the face.

He let out a startled gasp at how he was totally soaked now. It dripped from his hair, droplets rolling to the tip of his nose before falling off back into the lake. He caught your mischievous expression, your cheeks puffed out as you fought your laughter.

“Really funny, doll.” He sputtered, nonchalantly reaching around to your back and unclasping your bra with one hand. He managed to whip it off of you with ease, leaving you completely naked on top.

“Neville!” You squealed, “Give it back! That’s my favorite one!”

Neville teased you as he held your bra high in the air above his head, chuckling as you struggled (and failed) to get it back.

“Don’t worry, love bug. I’ll take good care of it. But if you want it...” Neville paused, shimmying past you and waddling further out into the lake with a sneaky, yet innocent sneer on his face;

“You’ve got to come and get it.”

*****

Tags: @lupinsslut @writingscape @msmimimerton @thefilmcity

#neville longbottom #neville longbottom x y/n #neville longbottom x you #neville longbottom x female reader #neville longbottom x fem! reader #neville longbottom fluff #neville longbottom imagine #neville longbottom oneshot #seriouslysnape

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starseed-twenty · 3 years

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Houses determining an 'age stage' 🔮

Okay, so this is a random long post, but.... do you ever think that perhaps the houses in our charts represent the stages in our life? From birth to death? Cause I do.

So basically... the first house (the ascendant) is our energy as soon as we leave the womb. But through life and its dynamic changes, our energy can change into the traits of the sign in the following house because circumstances drive us into having that sign's traits/vibe.

Personally, I'm starting to believe that each of the houses in a person's birth chart holds a stage or period of time in your life where your energy is more focused in that area/house. That's why you'll hear for example "if your 4H is in Sag, you most likely grew up in a carefree home"... cause at the time you were growing up, your energy was focusing on the 3rd and 4th house. And so you transcend into Sagittarius energy because it is in your 4th house.

For example, a person with a Capricorn Ascendant. At birth, they're calm, reserved little babies, who tend to get upset pretty easily. Until they get a little older (around 3 years old) and start developing these Aquarius traits/energy because of their 2nd house [unless Capricorn is in both 1st and 2nd house]. But once they get to an age where they're making sense of the world and developing a sense of being and being aware of the things they have, this is their 2nd house age stage activated.

Okay, so let me put it like this:

1st house age stage [birth to around 3 years]: Since the 1st house is the house of 'self' and revelation (or showing yourself) to the world, this is how it correlates to birth and being a newborn. 1H rules beginnings, the body, and approach to life. The sign you have in 1H is the sign you act as in your approach to life from the beginning to the end. [Side-note: This is because every house you enter that stage in is carried on with you until you're old and die. So you don't necessarily let go of the house because you're in a new age stage, but it merely becomes dim. It's there, but it's not ruling like the age stage you're currently in].

2nd house [around 3 to 6 years old]: This is the age or stage when you're making sense of the world and develop a sense of being and becoming aware of the things you have, as I mentioned. So you're basically becoming conscious about yourself, whilst adapting to the values, possessions, and skills you have. So the sign you have in 2nd house is how you handle that. For example, if you have Capricorn, you're more stern, careful, and calculative about all the possessions and skills you hold. You normally put those things at a high standard, and it can take a while for you to attain certain things because Saturn (Capricorn's ruler) encourages you to earn all that you have.

3rd house [7 to 10 years old]: At this point, you know who you are, what you have, and how you normally approach life. In trying to develop yourself a bit more, you look around you at who the people around you are. 3rd house is Gemini's house, and Geminis are very conscious beings; of people, things to learn, and their word (a bit too conscious, and that's where the 'two-faced' cliche comes in). So this age stage then comes with using the mind a lot. Learning stuff and getting ideas, speaking about them, knowing what friends are and being close with siblings, if any, and sharing stuff. The sign you have there is how you acted through all of this.

4th house [10 to 13 years old/puberty]: This is when you start grounding yourself and knowing where you come from, who your real family is, the foundations of your soul's intentions (life path), and where you feel secure.

This, I would say, is the basis or core of a person and who they eventually become at their peak or in the public eye. So if they grow up in a home that isn't too stable, they grow to oppose that to become more stable in order to bring balance [because 10th house is the 'aftermath' that's opposing of the 4th house]. So the sign you have in this stage is the sign you live out as [e.g, Sagittarius 4th house had a more free-spirited way of living in their pre-teen age].

5th house - [14 to 18 years old]: Now this is where a lot of us begin our adolescence age, and this is because the 5th house comes with this 'being a teenager' energy. 5th house is about creativity, hobbies, exploring, romance and love affairs, self-expression, and drama. A whole lot of drama. We dramatize the things we go through, our bodies and its changes, things that happen at school and at home, and sometimes the 'situationships' we're in. Everything's just such a story. And that is 5th house energy in act. The sign you have in 5th house is how you'd find yourself going about all of these things.

6th house - [19 to 24 years old]: At this stage, you've seen the world from your perspective and played around with your interests & hobbies, so you come to a point of either wanting to capitalize/profit from those hobbies or talents, or settle on simply trying to make money to become stable because now 'you're an adult'. So with that, you're more focused on working, routines, productivity, and self-improvement. For some, body changes also occur here because the 6th house is also about health and body.

Now the sign you have in your 6th house is most likely how you'll make that money or what your career will be like. For example, a person with Gemini in 6th could pass off as a Youtuber, Instagram Influencer, perhaps a Tiktok star, or anything in a field of communicating to people and spreading ideas or trends in a cool way.

7th house - [24 to 27 years old]: After developing yourself, your career, and your financial health, you then find yourself wanting to settle down romantically and start creating a home. So here come relationships becoming more serious, sharing stuff (your ideas & values going forth, your assets, and your whole life) with someone, and basically getting the real feel of marriage or long-term pairing. But the 7th house doesn't only rule love, it also rules partnerships, contracts, and alliances. So how you are one-on-one with people and merging with them is your 7th house influence at play. The sign in your 7th house is how you present yourself through all of this.

8th house - [27 to 30 years old]: The 8th house is a pretty complicated house, but nonetheless it's very good for growth [through changes]. At this age, many experience events that bring depth or deeply felt peak experiences. It's as if it's this rebirth of some kind where you rediscover yourself. From another standpoint, this is where there's more depth in a relationship/marriage, joint ventures or goals coming together, inheriting some money or assets, and also perhaps feeling really sexually liberated or just simply getting to the point of procreation (and this why most people have or picture having kids at this age). From any of these standpoints, the sign you have in the 8th house is what comes out the most as your energy.

9th house - [31 to 35 years old]: This is the age of you finding the true meaning of life and what your beliefs and values are contrary to what you've been taught, but really establishing your own and sharing them with your significant other or/and children.

This is when you're most philosophical, and have a bit of time for journeys, travel, expanding your knowledge, your taste/style, your beliefs, etc. This is why when you look at a lot of people at this age, they're a bit more settled down on who they've become and there's more of a visibility of what their life is about. The sign you have here manifests as the vibe you give out. For example, a Cancer 9th house more or less has nurturing and maternal energy at this age. They have this motherly or homey vibe towards their expanded mental state in a way where they feel like they have a lot to teach and it comes from a compassionate perspective.

10th house - [35 to 42 years old]: Once you're at this age stage, you're pretty much at the peak of your life because this is when all that you are, where you come from (your roots and home), who you've established yourself as and everything you've worked for reaches its final stage and becomes the real end phase of who you are. Anyone who starts knowing you at this stage can navigate the type of person you are (from your past) and not have a reason to think you'll still change into new characters. There's nothing much to come up with after this as you're practically done creating yourself. All you do now is mainly enjoy the fruits of your labour whilst simultaneously working on the career you been building, and also maintain the public image you've established. Your authority, your power, and your achievements are at their peak here. So the sign you have here is how you show all of this.

11th house - [42 to 50 years old]: This is when you're growing old and out of your peak. You're still a valuable part of the world and play a good role in people's lives, but you're basically leaving that zone of only focusing on yourself and you instead focus more on helping the community or leaving a legacy. The 11th house is about humanitarianism, social/global awareness, the community, social groups, end goals, and the future as a whole. So as you're more focused on these things because you're at the age where there's nothing much else to do but help out and be a great member of society for your final years. The sign you have here though can determine how you act out in all these instances. Cause if you have a Sagittarius 11th house for example, then you could be quite youthful and lowkey a rebel against societal norms. So in you helping out the community, you let people to see this vision that's a different version of norms. Like normalizing stretch marks or bringing a new genre or idea of music or wearing clothes that are weird at first but end up being quirky and cool.

12th house - [50 years old to death]: And at this final age stage of life, you're about to transcend out of your body and purely to your soul, so your soul innately/naturally starts feeling connected to its end stage where it's about to retreat from the world. This could be through last acts of service to humanity, deep connections with spirituality, healing, contentment, confinement, self-reflection, understanding karma, and dreaming. These all occur the most once you get to this age. Depending on the sign you have in this sign, you could experience a deep or light transcendence when you get to this age stage.

BUT - huge disclaimer:

The ages vary according to the maturity of a person's life. So for example, for one person, Cancer is in their 6H but they only start developing into their Cancer age stage at 21. At 19 or 20 they still present their Gemini age stage, because everyone differs, including the maturity of their age stages. So they feel more Cancer at an older age.

So... it depends on your life.

But this is most of the route or path of life many people go through.

Also, I'm starting to believe and see that wherever Cancer is in your house is where you feel pretty maternal/paternal, or you're just really loving and caring towards the people around you.

And wherever Leo is in your houses is most likely your shining point or prime of your life; things work out for the best for you at that Age Stage.

For example, Beyonce has her 10th house in Cancer and right now she's pretty much experiencing her 10th house age stage cause we can see how she's pretty maternal and motherly. Cancer is also pretty emotional so we've seen that after the whole cheating saga, she released all her emotions through an entire album. And Angelina Jolie has Cancer in her 1st house, and like I said 'the sign you have in 1H is the sign you act as in your approach to life from the beginning to the end', we can see how she's always felt pretty maternal, so that's why she's grown to have a lot of children (by even adopting some).

Another example, Rihanna having Leo in her 5th house, that's when she was practically discovered (16). And Kim K, she has Leo in her 9th house and that was when she was at the peak of her fame, from 2013 onwards, when she was beginning her 30's. And Ariana Grande has Leo in her 8th house, which I'd say is the age stage she's in currently, considering how she's the female pop singer that's topping charts the most lately.

So, conclusively, this is why I'd really think Age Stage in the houses is a thing.

And if you are trying to understand why your life is going hella sad and boring for the past 4 or 5 years, try and look at the sign in which your Age Stage is at in the houses. Cause it could be Pisces, Scorpio, or Capricorn. [Their rulers] Saturn, Pluto and Neptune can bring tense and deep energy that can make life pretty hectic. But, there are also profection years, so you can look at those too.

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13uswntimagines · 4 years

Text

If That Isn’t Love (Christen Press x Reader)

Request: Reader and Christen are dating- the team finds out when they go to a game and there’s a fight with the rival team.

You glared at the opposing team, your fists clenching and unclenching in unbridled anger. Soccer was a contact sport and that was fine, as was the intense rivalry between your school and North Carolina, but they were taking things way too far.

So far the first half of the college cup final had been plagued with fouls and no calls from the refs and it was starting to get under your skin (it didn’t help that your girlfriend and your teammates were in the stands watching).

“Better keep your eyes on the ball and not on the stands captain,” North Carolina’s captain spat in your direction. You rolled your eyes at the senior defender. The two of you had been locked in a battle for the past 4 years, a battle that went far beyond forward versus defender or Stanford versus North Carolina.

“Worry about your goal cause worrying about me isn’t really workin out for ya,” You rolled your eyes, gesturing towards the goal that you had found twice already. There was a reason you had been called up to the national team when you were 16 and had a full ride to play.

The defender growled, taking a dangerous step in your direction.“You're just upset because you’re being outclassed. At least I didn’t fuck my way to the top,”

Your eyes tightened dangerously. One of the reasons you and Christen hadn’t told the team about your relationship yet was because neither of you wanted anyone to assume you got where you were for anything other than your playing skill.

You growled, stepping up to the woman so your noses were almost touching. “Don’t talk about things you don’t know about,”

The defender smirked at you, cocking her head to the side“What I know is that your little girlfriend isn’t going to want you when you lose,”

You grit your teeth. “In your dreams,”

Her lips twitched, and you resisted the urge to smack the smirk off her face. You had no doubt you could kick her ass, but starting a riot during your final college game wasn’t really something you were interested in.

The defender opened her mouth to respond, only to be interrupted but the ref’s whistle. “Let’s break it up ladies,”

“Watch your back,” She huffed, shoulder checking you as she made her way back to her position. 70 minutes to go and the brutality was just getting started.

*****

Christen was on the edge of her seat, her fingers clenching painfully around Tobins hand. Her grip got progressively tighter every time you hit the turf. With every tackle, you were slower and slower to get up. Your flush was also getting progressively deeper (a telltale sign that you were nearing the end of your patience).

“Chris if you squeeze any tighter you're going to break my fingers. Baby Bear is going to be fine,” Tobin mumbled very close to the forwards ear, using the hand not currently being crushed to adjust Christen’s grip.

“You need your feet, not your hands,” The green eye woman growled back, her breath catching when the same defender took you off your feet yet again.

“Yeah cause the Rɘ- imagineers will totally understand that the next capsule is delayed because you broke my hand watching your secret girlfriend play soccer,” Tobin grumbled, biting her lip at the look on your face. A very dangerous look.

You were not known for being the most patient person on the women’s national team, hell most of the vets would venture to say that you had one of the most explosive tempers in the team. It took a lot to push you to that point, an insane amount of prodding, but once the explosion started, you were like a volcano, destroying everything on your path.

“She’s gonna explode if the ref doesn’t start carding that defender,” Kelley mumbled, shaking her head.

Alex scoffed at the notion. If you blew up, it wasn’t anyone’s fault but the stupid defender.“She’s been on her ass all night,”

The teams eyebrows furrowed as you went toe to toe with the defender yet again, spit flying in all directions as you yelled at each other. “Wonder what they’re saying,” Becky said, eyebrows furrowing as you took another step towards the defender. Sure you had a temper, but you usually avoided committing red-card offenses on the field.

“Whatever it is, North Carolina better stop because y/n looks like she’s going to beat her ass,” Emily snorted, throwing a handful of popcorn into her mouth. This show was just starting to get good (not that the onesided beat down of North Carolina wasn’t fun to watch…).

*****

Everything moved in slow motion. You saw the ball leave your cleats. You saw the defender come in, studs up, after the ball was zooming towards the net. You watched the world fall as you tumbled on the grass, popping up the second your back touched the ground.

Your fists clenched and your face turned red as you once again went toe to toe with the defender.

“What the fuck is your problem. You could have fucking ended my career,”

“Thought you’d be used to being under someone better than you,” She shrugged, stepping up so your noses were almost touching, an annoying smirk playing across her features.

“I thought I told you to leave her out of this,” You growled, clenching your fist.

“Can’t take the heat Bitch?” The defender chuckled, sending a wink to where the team was sitting in the stands and pushing her finger into your chest.

“You will remove your hand before I remove it for you,” You snarled. The defender laughed again before shoving you hard. “What are you gonna do about it pipsqueak?”

And like that, your patience had run out. You launched yourself at the woman, spit flying, fists swinging. You were going to end this woman.

****

“Don’t you ever scare me like that again,” Christen’s arms were around you the second she was in the trainer's room. You melted into her, wincing slightly with the pressure her hug put on your bruised ribs (likely from the defender’s knee when you tackled her).

“Sorry darling,” you mumbled, pressing your face into her shoulder, and breathing in her scent. It always had a calming effect. you groaned when her hand brushed over a particularly nasty bruise on the side of your face.

She sighed, pulling back and carefully using her fingers to pry you from your hiding spot in her neck. She held your face between her hands and examined the damage. Her eyes scrunched as she took in your broken nose, black eye and split lip.

Her thumb brushed lightly over the cut just above your eyebrow.“She got you good,” she mumbled.

You smirked, ignoring the pain it put on your split lip and winked at your girl “Hmm, you should see the other guy,”.

It was the truth. Sure you were a little banged up, but the defender had definitely gotten the worse end of the stick. While you had walked off the field by your own power, the defender had been carried off on a stretcher.

Her giggle made any discomfort you felt from your facial expressions entirely worth it. “Always the charmer,” she hummed, leaning in and placing a very light kiss on your lips, mindful of the now open cut. You smiled dopily at her.

“but no more getting involved in riots alright?”

You nodded solemnly at her. The pitch had turned into a mess, with your team coming to your aid after the defender punched you in the face, and the other team doing the same. “Promise” You mumbled, looking her in the eyes to show her your sincerity, and before kissing her again. She didn’t need to know that it was comments about her that had caused the fight (you would defend her willingly any day).

A hushed whisper broke you and Christen out of your moment “Did Christen just kiss baby bear?”, followed by what sounded like a slap on the back of a head.

You pulled away from your girlfriend, pouting when your team mom stepped between the two of you. “Well, we hate to break this sweet reunion up, but what the fuck is going on?” Alex asked sternly, and for the first time, you were glad your bruised cheeks hid your blush, still your brought your hands up to hide your face.

“We’re dating,” You grumbled, smiling when Christen intertwined your fingers with hers and pulled them from your face. She winked at you, god she thought you were adorable.

The team awed at the action. Well half the team did, Emily still stared at you with wide eyes. “What?”

“Seriously you guys are blind, they were obvious as fuck,” Tobin snorted, shaking out her aching hand. You and Chris weren’t subtle at all, and you had just started a riot on her behalf. If that wasn’t love, she didn’t know what was.

#uswnt x reader #uswnt imagines #uswnt imagine #christen press imagine #christen press x reader

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five-rivers · 3 years

Text

Danger First

Chapter 7

@pocketramblr

"Hey, Midoriya?" asked Uraraka, after Aizawa passed out a costume revision assignment and feigned passing out.

"Yes?" said Midoriya, knowing that his eyes were preturnaturally wide and fine tremors were running through his body. He was a wreck.

"Are you okay? Why did you come to class with Mr. Aizawa?"

"And what's that you're holding onto?" asked Kaminari.

"Um," said Izuku. "I was sort of... abducted by the support department? But in a nice way... And they gave me this grappling hook."

"Wow, cool! I didn't know we could get stuff like that from the support department."

"You should really read the student handbook, Kaminari," said Iida, pushing up his glasses.

"But it's so long!"

Iida tsked and adjusted his glasses more vigorously. "You're a student! You should at least be familiar with what is expected of you! Speaking of which, Midoriya, do you know how to use that?"

As much as he could learn from a ten-minute crash-course. "... yes," said Izuku, but it was clear from Iida's face that he had hesitated too long.

"Midoriya! You shouldn't have something like that in the classroom without knowing how to use it!" Iida half stood up, and Izuku clutched the grappling hook closer to his chest.

"No! Mine!" Maybe he was too attached to something he'd only had for a little over an hour, but the support department hadn't been able to give him any smoke bombs or flash grenades due to 'new school regulations regarding explosives' and he'd gone through a lot this morning.

Distress washed over Iida's face, and Izuku wondered if he'd accidentally smacked into some old trauma.

"I wasn't going to take it!" he said, earnestly waving his hands. "I just wanted to make sure you knew where the safety-"

The door to the classroom slammed open. "Is that my little brother I hear?" asked a beaming man in a track suit. Without waiting for an answer, he bounded over to where Iida was sitting and clapped him on the back. "I have come to embarrass you horribly!"

From the expression on Iida's face, this venture was doomed to failure. "I thought you were joking when you said you'd see me today!" exclaimed Iida, beaming.

"Why... why would I joke about that?"

"You joke about a lot of things. Like knowing vigila-"

"Okay! Yes, haha, funny jokester, that's me! Now why don't you introduce me to your classmates?"

"Of course! I have been remiss in my duties as vice president." He stood and executed a ninety-degree bow. "Forgive me! This is my brother, Iida Tensei! Also known as the pro hero Ingenium!"

Izuku could almost see his classmates start to put together the puzzle pieces of Chibiida and extremely tall older brother. He was more concerned about whether or not it would be rude to ask Ingenium for his autograph... and to check his analysis page on Ingenium...

"That's me! And I'll be your special guest TA today! Now, where's Aizawa? You're supposed to have him for homeroom, right?"

As one, the class pointed to the giant yellow caterpillar in the corner of the room.

"Oh my gosh, Shouta, I thought you were joking-"

Ingenium was, to put it in a single word, cool. To put it in two words, he was unbelievably cool. So cool Izuku was almost able to forget the impending field-trip-related DOOM they were all facing.

But not quite.

So Izuku slogged through his classes, still thrilled to be there and waning to do his best, but unable to truly focus past the crushing weight of what might happen. His classmates and maybe-friends hovered at the periphery of his suffering, clearly wanting to help, but just as clearly unsure how, or what lines they could or couldn't cross, leading them to resort to painfully awkward normal small talk.

Until they sat down for lunch, that is, by which time Monoma and Iida had gotten into a conversational spiral about how amazing UA was, how awesome Ingenium was, and how UA was truly superior for being able to have pro-heroes like Ingenium come in as TAs on such short notice.

"Midoriya," said Uraraka, startling him out of his fourth or fifth 'Kacchan sweep.'

(It was still possible that his bad feeling was related to Kacchan hunting him down and blowing him up. He'd be mortified about making such a big deal over it if that was the case, but it would be preferable to, say, a terrorist attack.)

(Why did he keep coming back to terrorist attacks?)

"Are you... okay? You've just seemed really down today, and-"

"Invisible hug!" shouted Hagakure before grabbing Izuku and lifting him over her head.

There was a beat of whispering near-silence. Then Uraraka stood up, slamming both hands on the table and inadvertently making it float. "You have got to tell me your work out routine!"

Izuku agreed.

("Strawberry," someone whispered.)

"I generally say what's on my mind," said Asui as the Iidas had radically different reactions to the bus seating arrangement.

"Aha," said Izuku. The swaying of the bus plus the strain of probably-Danger-Sense was making him nauseous. "What is it, Asui?'

"Call me Tsuyu."

The first time a person his age let him call them by name since kindergarten, and he couldn't properly appreciate it. Figured.

"I was watching the videos of the battle trials I missed last night," Tsuyu continued, "and I realized, I don't think any of us know what your quirk is."

Izuku's first impulse was to lie or redirect the conversation. Years of quirklessness had left their mark. But on second consideration... was there really a reason to lie? He wasn't going to talk about One for All, obviously, but the rest of it was harmless and bound to come out eventually anyway.

"Well," said Izuku, adjusting the fit of his air filter self-consciously. "That's a good question, actually."

"If you're keeping it a secret, I won't press."

"No, no, that isn't it!" Yes, it was. "It's just that, um, it's really subtle? As in, so subtle I thought I was quirkless until recently. Haha."

"Oh, wow," said Kirishima, "that must have been hard. I mean, I got teased for having a boring quirk, I can't even imagine-"

"Your quirk isn't boring! It's more than enough to be a pro!"

"But what is your quirk?" asked Monoma.

"Um," said Izuku, "well, we're not entirely sure, but... We think it lets me sense things that are dangerous? But I've also got anxiety, so..."

Monoma was frowning, but before he could speak, one of Hagakure's gloves waved frantically in front of his face.

"Is that how you knew I was there?" she asked. "In the battle trial and the entrance exam?"

"Maybe? I think so?"

"You were kind of anxious this morning," said Uraraka, concerned. "Did something bad happen to you?"

"Not- not yet," said Izuku, weakly. "It- We still don't really know how it works, so it could just be the anxiety..." He trailed off. Everyone was kind of staring at him. He pressed back against his seat, wishing there was somewhere to hide.

"Well!" said Uraraka, suddenly pumped up. "We'll just have to keep an eye out! We're hero students, aren't we?"

There was a general cheer of consensus and Izuku managed a shaky smile. So, this was what it was like to have friends.

Eventually, Mr. Aizawa told them to calm down, but there was no heat in the scolding. Maybe, Izuku thought, past the ever-increasing buzzing in his head, today would be okay after all.

"Yeah," said Hikage, "there's really no chance of that."

The Unforeseen Simulation Joint was an incredible space!

Space Hero Thirteen was about a thousand times cooler in person than on TV!

All Might, in his golden age rescue-specialized costume, looked like he'd just stepped off the pages of a comic book!

But just like Tsuyu's name, Izuku didn't have the ability to appreciate it.

As the other students marveled over the USJ, Izuku watched the adults quietly talk to one another. It seemed to be something serious.

"Did you find anything else with the safety checks?" asked Shouta.

"A few of the areas had the difficulty set too high- apparently some of the third-years decided to get some practice in and their supervisor didn't reset everything. Other than that? Nothing." Thirteen shook their head. "No signs of structural failure, no security gaps. Everything seems, well, normal."

"Well," said All Might, "whatever happens, we're prepared!"

Aizawa seriously doubted they were prepared for anything, but the most obvious, most likely things? Yeah.

"What do you think, Ingenium?" he asked.

"Everything looks fine to me," said Tensei, shrugging. "But if it was something obvious, then it wouldn't be so much of a threat, right?"

"We're still not sure how Midoriya's quirk really works," said Shouta. "It could be a threat just to him." He sighed heavily.

Tensei smiled in a way that just about guaranteed Shouta would be teased about this later.

"Well, I'm going to start my speech now!" said Thirteen giving the others a thumbs up. "Wish me luck!"

As soon as Thirteen finished their (surprisingly moving) speech, all of Izuku's attention zeroed in on the air next to the fountain. A swirl of dark mist appeared next to it.

Izuku felt like he couldn't breathe.

"Mr. Aizawa-!" But he was already looking in that direction, already watching the man made covered in emerge from the dark hole, followed by a veritable horde of villains.

And Izuku didn't use the term villain idly here. Several of the people he saw were on wanted lists.

Ironically, now that he was faced with real danger, the panicked siren in his head eased off slightly. Evidently, at least some of the strain had been fear of the unknown, and now the threat was very, very known in the worst way, that particular stressor was gone.

"There he is!" cried the man covered in hands. "All Might! The one we've all come for! Nomu! Get him!"

A large villain with an exposed brain who practically sang with danger charged All Might, who grabbed him by the wrist and flung him away, towards the landslide zone. "Ha! That's not much of a challenge! You'll have to do better than that, villains!"

"Maybe," said a villain made of the same mist as the portal that had brought the others. The large villain came charging out of the landslide zone, none the worse for wear. "Maybe not."

"You might be an elite player, but can you fight the boss and protect the noobs you're powerleveling?"

The other villains surged forwards.

This is when Mr. Aizawa and Ingenium jumped into the fray, and everything immediately got more chaotic. Izuku rapidly lost track of the multiple battles occurring around him - except, wow, Mr. Aizawa was really mowing through villains, wasn't he - that Nomu guy had to have a regeneration quirk, there was just no way - he'd have to write down that villain's monolog as soon as they got out, it might have clues - Izuku had no idea that Ingenium could fly and wow that gave him some ideas for Iida-

Speaking of Iida-

"This is no time for analysis! Hurry up and evacuate!"

Right.

"I won't allow that."

Yeah the misty villain definitely had some kind of teleportation quirk, which made this whole thing even more gutsy. Quirks like that were always monitored by the government. These guys must not care about their identities.

"Greetings," he said, a metal colar slipping into place around his neck. "We are the League of Villains. Forgive our audacity, but... today we've come to-"

A gust of air from All Might's fight pushed the mist villain back. But the move had left him partially unguarded, and Izuku watched helplessly as Nomu pounded a fist into his exposed side-

Nomu knew about All Might's injury.

Oh, no.

Izuku didn't have time to process that, however, as Kirishima and Monoma jumped forward, attacking the mist villain.

The feeling of danger spiked, and Izuku barely registered Monoma's bewildered expression.

"Only students... but the best of the best... yes he was right to say you'd be a threat." Darkness spread like an ink stain from the villain's body. Darkness... and portals.

Izuku slammed into Tsuyu and Kaminari, pushing them out of the way of forming portals. He wasn't able to do the same for himself.

"Begone," intoned the mist villain, his voice echoing all around Izuku. "Writhe in torment until you breathe your last."

The next thing Izuku knew, he was in clear light and falling. From at least two stories up, over the flood zone.

And then he stopped.

The ghosts whipped their heads around to stare at Nana. She was sitting on a stool, hiding her face in her hands, though whether it was out of embarrassment or fear for Izuku was unclear.

"Nana..." said Yoichi, softly.

"I know, I know, I'm sorry I saw him falling and pani-"

"What did you do that for!" exclaimed Banjo. "He was only fifteen, twenty meters up! Into water!"

"That's twice as high as Olympic divers go! And they screw up their bodies all the time if they hit wrong!" shot back Nana, other emotions abandoned in favor of rage.

"Uh, guys...?" said Yoichi, weakly.

"Who still watches the Olympics?" muttered En.

"If we had to give him a new quirk, it should have been a combat one!"

"You're just jealous that he has Float and not Blackwhip!"

"So what if I am?" demanded Banjo. "If he had Blackwhip, he wouldn't need that stupid grappling hook gun!"

"So, you admit Blackwhip is just a glorified grappling hook?"

"Better than a glorified- glorified-" He puffed out his cheeks. "I'm going to give him Blackwhip right now!"

"NO!" shouted the other ghosts.

"Banjo," said En, "what do you remember about people who All for One gave three quirks to?"

Banjo went pale.

"Oh, hell," said Banjo. "I'm sorry, I got carried away."

"You can say that again," grumbled Nana.

"But," continued Banjo, "doesn't this mean we can't give him the stockpile?"

They turned to Yoichi, who was far and away the expert on the stockpile quirk. He held up his hands and offered a sick, shaky smile. "We've already started the process of giving him stockpile access. There's... there's really no way to stop it."

Nana started swearing, and even Second and Third looked tense.

"But that's borrowing trouble! Maybe he'll be compatable?"

"With three quirks?"

"It's possible!" protested Yoichi. "I mean, he's- um, he's got One for All? Maybe it's more like All for One than we thought?"

"Disgusting."

"No."

"Absolutely not."

"Never say that again."

"But, again, that's a future problem, unlike the villain attack, which is a now problem."

"I see what you're saying," said En, "but we can't do anything about the villain attack, but we could theoretically do something about quirk troubles. Unless you'd rather watch helplessly while our latest-possibly-last holder is murdered?"

Yoichi sighed. "Okay, yeah, let's take a look."

Izuku's first thought was that Uraraka must have tagged him, but he had been way too far away from her for her to do that. Unless she had run at him when he dove for Tsuyu? Tsuyu had maybe sort of been between them...

But, no, this didn't feel like Uraraka's quirk. He'd only experienced it a couple of times, but it felt like falling. This felt more like floating on the surface of a pool.

This was, he realized as he drifted helplessly upwards and slightly sideways, Shimura Nana's quirk.

It would be really, really cool if the circumstances were different or if he had any control over the quirk whatsoever. As it was, he didn't appreciate the way he was getting progressively higher. Hitting the water at his previous height would have sucked, but he probably would have survived. Now? Not so much. So, if the quirk decided to stop as suddenly as it had started, he was doomed.

Beyond doomed.

He'd be dead.

Wait! The grappling hook!

He pulled it carefully out of its holster, making sure to wrap the loop around his wrist. He could get back to the ground with the grappling hook, anchor himself at a decent height and make use of this, or even attack, but if he dropped it...

Well. Doom and all that.

His best bet was the top of the downpour zone. It was the closest structure by far. He lined up his sights, fired, and watched as the hook fell several meters short.

That was less than ideal.

He rolled over and looked up. He wasn't that far from the ceiling-

Danger Sense screamed at him, and he was falling, just in time to miss getting hit by a jet of water from below. Izuku, naturally, started screaming as well and fired the grappling hook blindly. He rejoiced as a metallic thunk told him it had hit something and immediately hit the stop button, almost wrenching his shoulders out of their sockets. However, his joy quickly turned to horror as he realized he was now headed toward the hard, unforgiving side of the downpour zone at a dangerously high speed. He squeezed his eyes shut.

Float turned back on.

Izuku let out a somewhat pathetic whine in relief, and hit the retract button on the grappling hook gun, letting it pull him up to the roof.

From here, he had an acceptable view of the rest of the USJ. He shaded his eyes to look back at the main plaza and entrance. He could see Eraserhead and Ingenium fighting back to back in the central plaza. All Might and Nomu were tearing up trees in one of the forested areas, and near the entrance he could see Thirteen, Iida, Uraraka, Shouji, Sato, Sero, and Ashido facing down the mist villain. Hopefully, with those numbers, they'd be able to get past him.

Looking elsewhere, Izuku had to assume Todoroki was in the landslide zone, with the spiky ring of ice in the middle of it. He must be holding back. He could make out a fight happening in the mountain zone, but couldn't tell who was involved.

That was more than half the class unaccounted for, including Tsuyu and Kaminari, who he'd thought he'd pushed away from portals. They were probably in the other zones, but...

He took a deep breath. Focus. Where would he do the most good? Danger Sense couldn't tell him that right now, with all these bright threats all around him. He had to decide on his own.

The fight in the mountain area wasn't going well. The number of visible villains was only increasing.

Could Izuku get there? He bit his lip as he contemplated the distance, then jogged back to the opposite side of the downpour zone roof.

Then he ran.

Then he-

-jumped-

-off the roof.

Float activated at the top of the arc of his jump, and his momentum sent him tumbling forward towards the mountain zone. As he approached and began to slow (air resistance still being a thing, apparently), he was able to see Yaoyorozu and Jiro fighting for their lives. Yaoyorozu did not look good.

This wasn't a great way to be proven right about her quirk having drawbacks.

He aimed the grappling hook at one of the larger, closer villains, not really caring about how much damage it would do, and fired.

"Wow," said En. "Kid definitely has a bit of a ruthless streak."

"Imagine how much better he'd do with Blackwhip."

"He wouldn't have been able to get there in the first place without Float."

"Honestly," continued En, "I don't get why Second and Third don't like him. They never shut up about Nana and Eighth being too soft, after all."

"What? They said that stuff about me, too?"

"Yeah, I think they're just unsatsifiable at this point. It's annoying."

"I was much more violent and ruthless than Toshi, though."

"I know."

"Yoichi," said Hikage. "I'm not seeing any sign of additional stress on Ninth's body."

"That's because Izuku is the best."

"Or," said En, "it's because he's only had Nana's quirk for, like, five, ten minutes, tops."

"Or because he's the best. Just look at how he's helped his friends defeat all those villains!"

"Compelling argument," said Hikage.

"What- what now?" asked Yaoyorozu, holding herself up with one of her staffs. The mountain zone was littered with various weapons and shrapnel from Yaoyorozu's quirk use. This included a canon. Which was really cool, but seemed a bit over the top... and maybe not the most efficient thing to make, considering Yaoyorozu's limitations.

"I don't know," admitted Izuku. He'd been flung around the field as a makeshift flail/bola by the girls a few times, and was a little dizzy.

He looked back out at the battles still taking place in the plaza. "I think... Maybe we should go down, and make our way around the edge to the entrance. We could pick up Todoroki and see if there's anyone in the ruins zone who needs help-"

Then he saw the hand villain step forward, facing down Eraserhead as Ingenium was lured away in defense of Tsuyu and Kaminari, who had just run out of the wooded area, trailing villains. Danger flared in his mind's eye, and, for the second time in his life, his body moved by itself.

#bnha #boku no hero academia #danger first #danger first au #fic #fanfic

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dancingthesambaa · 3 years

Text

The Smell of Plum Blossom Tea Ch 14

Summary: Just like a butterfly wing, a single act of kindness can change the course of the future, it certainly did for MK as a black furred monkey put out a hand towards him.

Rating: Teen and up

Also as a heads up, since college started back up for me I decided to change my posting to every Thursday night rather than Friday Mornings. There also might be times where I won't be able to post that week or be late due to schooling, so this is an apology in advance!!!

Chapter 14: Memories Intertwined

A clear cut path was set for the public eye as it stood between rows upon rows of Plum Blossom trees and flowers spread all around. There were quite an abundance of people along these paths as families came together for a picnic, couples went for a stroll together as they held hands, or the occasional jogger or artist that ran or drew as they wandered in. Many don’t try to venture off the path, not because of its danger, but rather in fear of getting lost in the woods.

Well except for two people, a human and a Monkey, as they stood on the outskirts of the forest.

“Well this is it, welcome to the Plum Blossom Forest,” MK said as with his arms raised high. “The most awesomest place to be.”

It took a few minutes for Wukong to respond as he took in the beautiful view, but also felt that there was something else rooted in the leaves, along the branches, and deep into the ground within the forest. It wasn’t bad, just something different. Normal trees don't usually have any types of aura on them unless they are spiritual in nature, these aren’t those types of trees. At the same time though it does, he can’t quite put his fingers on it, but it just feels like…like safety. “Yeah, it is.”

“Monkey King?”

“O-oh yeah,” he snapped out of it, “this place looks absolutely amazing.”

“It sure is, now follow me,” MK went into the forest as the Monkey King followed.

“It would probably be faster if I used my cloud instead of going through the forest, you know,” he pointed out.

“Sure, but this is your first time, so you have to experience it on foot at least for your very first experience!” He countered.

“You got me there,” he grinned, “on foot it is. So, tell me more about this place, anything interesting about it besides the abundance of trees?”

“Tons! Like this forest doesn’t just have regular animals, but it also has so many mythical creatures living here!”

“Really? What kind?”

“Well we have a few Qilins that like to roam around here.”

“Qilin, haven’t seen one of those in a hot second,” he muttered.

“They sometimes come and go, but some even make a den here,” MK continued.

The further they went in the clearer it was that MK really knew the forest as he began to excitedly tell all sorts of things to his mentor.

“So the faeries tribe get along with the Xianglu? Now that is something I didn’t think was possible, the faeries are especially a…crafty bunch,” which was Wukong's way of saying manipulative sons of bitches. He got lost in a forest for a month because of those little bastards.

“Not really surprisingly, they both like to collect shiny things so they usually like to show the other what they have found, bargained, and/or stolen,” he shrugged. “And-oh hey BaBa!” He cheerily waved to his long time friend.

Wukong just blinked as he looked at her and just nodded, “Okay, not even gonna ask how or why he managed to get a Bashe here.”

“Dad says that apparently she just came here one day and decided to stay.”

The monkey opened his mouth and promptly closed it instead to bow to her, “It’s nice to meet you.”

BaBa gave a shallow nod to him and laid her giant head back down and curled up in the sun rays.

“Come on! We’re almost there,” he grabbed the Monkey King's hand and dragged him back on track, or at least they tried to get back on track as not even twenty minutes later, MK was ambushed by a couple of macaque monkeys.

“Guys! Guys! I’ll play with you all later,” he tried to push them away, but they held a tight grip on him. “Guys! Why are-don’t you even think about it,” he snatched one by the tail, who was sneakily digging into his pockets and hanged him upside down. “Really?”

They all just grinned at him as the infants attempted once more.

“That’s-okay, no! You can’t just steal from me like that unless you have a distraction in place,” he managed to gather all four of them in his arms and put them down. “A distraction helps a lot, it will steer your target attention away from the pickpocketer and towards something else.”

The monkeys were paying very much attention to his impromptu lecture as they stared wide eyed.

Wukong, on the other hand, was holding back his laugh as he looked on in the scene with fondness and amusement as he was drawn into a familiar memory.

“I can easily steal from those people no problem, why do I have to disguise myself and sneak in?” Wukong groaned out as they made their way to the edge of the market.

“Just because they look weak doesn’t mean they are, haven’t you heard the phrase ‘Don’t judge things on how they look.’” Macaque argued back.

“No.”

“Of course you haven’t,” he rolled his eyes, “well how about this, you distract them, I’ll grab the food from the assholes.”

“Works for me!” He happily threw away his brown cloak and gave a loud screech as he dashed through the market causing a huge commotion when he ran into people.

“I didn’t mean now,” he hissed to himself as he quickly grabbed the fallen cloak, but nonetheless got to work as he stole from the fruit vendor, who cussed them both out yesterday, grabbed a few loaves of bread from the bitch who decided to stomp on Wukong tail, and took a few things here and there from customers who he recognized from other days that always sneered in disgust when they saw him.

He was just about done wrapping up, and with such a nice haul, all that was left now was to sneak around and look for Wukong, quickly tug on his shadow to bail out and make way to the forest.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work out quite like that as not even twenty paces in he heard sounds of a fight occurring as many scruffed up looking people were all going at it at each other, and guess which reckless monkey is in the middle of it all.

“Damn it Wukong,” his eye twitched as he once again contemplated about leaving his reckless ass, but begrudgingly moved his way to the front. The first, and last, time he had tried that, he got side tackled hard by the monkey and he swears the bruises haven’t left him since.

When he reached the point where he was not entirely in the front, but still had a good angle on the fight, he saw that it wasn’t just humans that were drunkenly fighting each other, but also demons��who were wielding weapons.

“Shit!” The monkey shrieked as he dodged a flaming spear to the back of the head.

Weapons that happened to be enchanted…great.

“How does he even get himself into these messes,” Macaque lowly growled as he made sure everyone's attention was focused on the fight before slipping into the shadows, something he has recently been learning when he saw something on the rooftop. There was a figure standing there and in his hands was a bow and arrow that was aimed right towards the fighting monkey.

Now this wouldn’t usually worry him, he has seen him tussle with deities for fun, but then he noticed that the arrow too was also enchanted as he heard a soft crackle and saw a shimmering blue glow as he soon released it.

“Shit!” He quickly, and he will admit a bit recklessly, dived into the shadows and straight in the middle of the brawl.

Good news, he made it to the middle of the brawl and tackled his friend out of the way. Bad news, he currently has an arrow stuck in his right shoulder that hurt worse than the time he got stabbed by the selkie.

“Fuck!” He grunted as he laid on top of Wukong and promptly winced when everyone started screaming at the arrow that came out of nowhere.

“Mac! What do you do that for-your shoulder!” He screeched as he got the monkey off of him and sat him up and saw his shoulder was currently smoking. He didn’t even look back to use his tail to throw the man about to attack them from behind as he was focused on the arrow. “What happened?!”

“We can worry about this later,” he gritted as he tried to stand up, only for his head to feel dizzy and he stumbled.

Wukong quickly grabbed him before he could fall and set him back down. He knew that he had to get the arrow out of him soon, but now was not the best time to do that as he gazed upon the people looming over them. He looked to see his friend trying to stand back up despite his injuries and was fully ready to fight back with him.

It was time to go.

The monkey stopped his black furred companion from moving, “Shall we bail?”

Macaque gave a nod as he grabbed his friend and sank him down into the shadows once more and managed to travel all the way to the outskirts of the fight. They didn’t stop there though as Macaque quickly gave Wukong his cloak back and the two began to make their way through the town, past the entrance, and back into the field with a large tree stood, which is where they agreed to meet up in case things went south, like a lot of times before.

“Well,” the injured monkey grunted as he sat down, “that could have gone a lot worse.”

“You're telling me,” the bruised simian agreed as he began to look over the arrow that was still embedded in his friend's back. “Sit still, I’m about to take this out.”

“Yeahhh, it hurts like hell,” he grumbled as he sat in place as Wukong got the arrow out and only flinched when he began to lick the wound shut. The first time he found out that this was a thing was when he pricked his hand against a thorny bush and the impulsive simian decided to put his finger in his mouth without warning. He had almost chucked the monkey for that. Soon enough it was over as the bleeding stopped and the tongue left his back.

“That should be good, though you were an idiot for getting struck in the first place,” he said.

“Me?! I was only doing that to save your stupid ass,” he indignantly said.

“I would have been fine!”

“Maybe, but I wasn’t about to take that chance with an enchanted weapon,” he shot back.

“That does explain the weird marking, wait there was another one?” He was already interested in that flaming stick that the demon used, but now there was another weapon he didn’t even see…that had struck his friend…he really wants a round two with those fuckers. “Who even were they?”

“Hopefully people we don’t have to meet anytime soon,” Mac grunted as he took the sack that he managed to quickly snag on their way back and grabbed himself a nice looking mango. “Come to papa,” he said and took a big bite.

“Bring it here,” he said and he caught the bag thrown at him and rummaged through it a bit before he found some nice looking loquat.

After that, they filled the two rested up in the tree, and dozed off in a peaceful slumber. Though the same couldn’t be said for a certain group of people as in the middle of the night they were ambushed by a cloaked figure and proceeded to get thoroughly pummeled into unconsciousness, the archer especially as his hands were broken beyond use and his bow shattered. Then the figure slipped off into the night with his hoard of coins and trinket stashed into his pocket and bounded his back to the tree where his friend laid.

No one was allowed to mess with anything that was claimed by the great Monkey King after all.

“Bye! Now use that to mess with everyone else!” He was snapped back to reality as he saw the monkeys leaving and MK waving to them. “But don’t use it on the faeries please, they tend to hold grudges!”

They got screeches of confirmation as they eventually vanished from sight and were ready to commence their new found knowledge amongst the wildlife.

“Alrighty,” his protege clapped his hands, “let’s back on track.”

“I’m just gonna assume that means we’re heading to that big tree over there,” he pointed to the enormous tree they were heading towards.

“Yup! It’s the very first Plum Blossom Tree that was grown here!” He stated as they continued onward, “and it’s where our home is.”

“You guys live in a treehouse,” Monkey King amusedly said.

“Yup!” He exclaimed as he began to climb up the tree and leap towards the house, “race ya there!”

“You're trying to challenge a monkey?” He grinned as he easily began to catch up to him. “You don’t stand a chance!”

“Home Field advantage!”

“Dream on!”

“First!” Wukong cheered as he landed on the wooden porch.

“Damnit!” MK said not even a second after, “you cheated! You pulled me down!”

“All is fair in love and races,” he cockily grins then he stilled as he felt a killer intent behind him. He swiveled around only to stop and see a smiling child behind him. “Hel-”

“MK, it’s about time you got here,” the girl playfully rolled her eyes as she wrapped her arm around him. “It took you long enough.”

“Says the one who was lazing about here waiting for us, speaking of us,” he wiggled out of his sister's arm and pointed to the monkey. “Mei meet the Monkey King!”

It could have just been Wukong, but he swore that her grin seemed to grow a little wider when their eyes met. “It’s nice to meet you Mei,” he tried to play off that weird feeling.

“Same,” she said as she stepped forward and pushed MK towards the kitchen, “it’s your turn to help pops in the kitchen.”

“Why? Can’t you do it?” He whined, he literally just finished walking here.

“I already did my part, now wash those nasty hands of yours,” she fully pushed him out the room.

“But-”

“Bye~”

“Ugh fine!,” he huffed and turned to his mentor, “You can wait in the living room with Mei! I’m pretty sure there are still some plums if you want, we have plenty of those.”

“You're telling me,” Wukong chuckled as he saw his student leave the room, so he turned back to Mei. “So how long have you-” he paused as he saw the pigtailed girl hold up a small piece of paper in front of him with words saying.

I don’t like you

“Umm,” he paused as Mei continued to smile.

“Well let me show you the living room,” she said as she went to the next card.

You may be MK mentor, the great and powerful Monkey King, and Dad old friend, and they may have both forgiven you, but I will not

“Thank you,” he managed to wrangle out as he followed Mei who began to walk forward.

“It’s no problem,” she said as they made it to the living room and held out the last card. “Just promise me to remember where it is next time monkey man.”

I know what happened and I’m keeping an eye on you, cause if you fuck up again then it won’t be pretty

Her eyes glowed a dark green as she stared down with wary golden eyes.

“I promise,” he nodded his head.

She looked at him for a few moments before walking away, passing by a trash can filled with torn up letters, and to the kitchen, but not before calling out, “I do hope you keep that in mind.”

It was only after she had left that Wukong sank down into his seat and breathed. ‘Well that wasn’t frightening at all,’ he sarcastically said to himself as he picked up a plum from the middle of the table and began to eat it. ‘I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I expected it to be from the awkwardness, not the girl who looked like she would gladly see me twenty feet under.’

He would continue his train of thought, but then he smelled something delicious making his way to him and saw Mac walk towards him with a plate in hand.

“Hope you still like dumplings,” he said as he plopped a huge tray of dumplings, filled with various fillings, in the middle of the table.

“Hell yeah…So you learned how to cook?” He was about to reach for the chopstick but paused and waited until the other monkey sat down first.

“Kinda had to with everything and all,” he didn’t specify as he sat down on a chair adjacent to the couch Wukong was on.

“Do you know how to cook?” Wukong was momentarily surprised at MK's voice as he and Mei were actually following behind the monkey and carrying plates, cups, and a pot.

“In a way yes, thank you,” he nodded his head to Mei as she gave him a wide grin.

“Hair food does not count,” Mac deadpanned.

“Hair food?” Both teenagers looked in confusion.

“He uses his hair to make food.”

“It’s not that bad,” he tried to defend himself.

“It’s fast I’ll admit, but it’s bland as hell,” he stated.

“It’s still not that bad.”

“I’ll take your word for that,” MK said as he sat down next to his mentor and happily began to eat the dumpling.

Wukong, after seeing everyone starting to eat, began to follow suit and his eyes widened as he quickly grabbed another dumpling. “This is delicious!”

“More than your hair food,” the black simian smirk.

Wukong stuffed another dumpling in his mouth in place of answering and drank some Plum tea, only to blink in surprise. “What kind of tea is spicy?”

“Pffft,” Mac couldn’t help himself as he barked out a laugh that was quickly followed by MK giggles.

And that’s how it was for the rest of the lunch, small chatter here and there, mostly from MK as he talked about his week or Wukong in his small questions from ‘What he likes to grow in his garden?’ to ‘How long did he take to build his home?’ It was nothing too invasive, just simple questions here and there and they finished up the plate, though there was a small fight between both humans and the sage monkey over who would get the last beef dumpling. It was a tense match, but it was MK who won in the end after a serious battle of Jan Ken Po.

“Victory tastes so good,” he smirked as he devoured the dumpling.

“I will remember this,” Mei hissed as she messed with her pigtails.

“Maybe it’s time we review the basics again,” Wukong huffed and he slurped down the tea.

“You're just mad that I won.”

“Children all of you,” Mac said as he got his clone to put the plates in the sink.

“You're not wrong,” she said as she leaned back against him.

The simian hands then began to unconsciously undo her messed up pigtails and groom her hair. Both parties didn’t really take note of the change as this was a daily routine for anyone who has known them long enough.

Wukong just eyed the scene with mirth and a small bit of jealousy, that he will forever deny, as he watched his friend groom his child.

“Can I groom your fur,” he was startled by MK’s question.

“Wha-I mean, sure,” he quickly agreed after getting caught off by the question.

He smiled widely as he pushed the great sage Monkey King to the floor and began to gently groom his hair as well. He couldn’t help himself slowly become relaxed as the fingers gently caressed his fur. He has done this multiple times with his tribe, but this feeling will never get old.

“What is up with your fur being so soft?” The boy commented, “Dad’s fur is super soft and now yours? Is there a rule that demon monkey fur has to be soft?”

“Technically not a demon, but that is just the side effect of quality grooming,” he had to stop himself from letting a purr out as the kid continued. “Makes the fur nice and silky.”

He didn’t really pay attention to what his student said next as he closed his eyes and let the soft hands thread through his fur then when he opened his eyes once more it was dark and the hands had stopped.

He took a quick glance around and saw that he must have dozed off during their impromptu grooming session as he saw MK was now leaning against him in deep sleep and Mei curled up like a small cat on the couch with a pillow under her head. Yet there was no Macaque insight, his eyes flashed a bright golden as he scanned the area and saw the familiar outline of violet aura sitting on the railing outside.

So, he carefully dislodged himself from his student grip, laid him down gently with a blanket, and softly padded his way outside the warm home and into the cool night air.

“Could have sworn you were passed out,” Mac said as Wukong sat down next to him.

“What can I say, grooming plus silence equals sleepy time,” he shrugged, kicking his feet as he looked around, “you do have a nice home.”

“Thanks,” he awkwardly answered.

“Must have taken quite some time to build.”

“A few years.”

“Oh,” he said, then an awkward silence filled the air as neither side knew what to do without the kids acting as some sort of buffer between the two. Neither monkeys knew how to go from here despite one inviting the other over, they didn't know where exactly how to start nor, which is both their biggest worry, how it might end. But the inevitable conversation did need to start, so Wukong turned to his friend.

“Look, about the whole fight the other day and me saying you were just trying to use MK, I’m sorry,” he really knew he did a major fuck up then. “You really do care for the both of them and I can tell that they really love you as well.”

“…thanks, I got really lucky having them in my life,” he smiled then he winced, “Sorry about almost killing your friends back then, that was stupid of me.”

“Yeahhh, about that,” he turned his whole body to face him, “that has been nagging me for the longest of times. Why did you attack them?” He surprisingly watched the black furred monkey groan and put his face in his hands.

“It was both parts stupidly and sheer impulsiveness. I came to find you after Guanyin freed you and I heard you screaming and I saw you in pain, I thought you were being tortured,” he quietly replied.

Wukong's eyes were shot wide open as the truth of this finally came to light. This whole time he thought rage towards humans finally erupted in one huge explosion and attacked them, but it wasn’t. That wasn’t it. Macaque attacked them because he thought they were hurting him, he attacked his friends because he thought he was in pain because of them. Everything that happened, from the fight to their long separation was due to a fucking screwed-up misunderstanding!

“Oh,” yet he didn’t know how to voice any of that out, which is ironic considering he is known for being a loudmouth after his impulsiveness.

“I am sorry,” he reiterated as he barely got a reaction out of his friend. “I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions, but I just heard screams and I saw you lying there, that I couldn’t stop myself from listening to the voices,” he admitted. Wukong is one of the few people he has ever told about the voices that like to whisper in his ears all their malicious intent and their cruel lust.

“…we both are truly hot messes huh,” he finally said as he looked back to the moon and gave him a small nudge. “Just look at the two of us, you somehow became the recluse medicine man that lives in the forest alone, but still somehow ends up with two kids, and me, who lives up in the tallest of mountains and became the Great Sage Equal to Heaven.”

“You forgot to add reckless idiot, somewhere there,” Mac lightly jokes.

“Heh yeah…I forgive you,” he quietly stated.

Macaque whipped his head to him, “Just like that? I almost killed you and your friends back then and that whole fight, and the words-” they both winced at the reminder of those damned words they spoke to the other. “What I did was horrible.”

“And we fought and I made you fucking blind!” He hissed out as he tried to see past the glamor in place to look at his hazy eye.

“I’m pretty sure I left you with a few scars yourself,” he shot back.

“A few scars are nothing compared to being blind!”

“That is just one injury compared to the multitude!”

“It doesn’t work like that, you are literally a physician?!” He threw his hands up.

“And I do declare myself completely capable despite my disability!” He barked back.

“I never said you weren’t capable, I know better than to underestimate you. Remember back with the fire spirits.”

“Which ones?”

“The arrogant bastard ones.”

“Which ones? There are numerous of them,” he deadpanned.

“The ones centered by the river, you know the spirits who thought they were powerful enough-”

“To take on the deity that commanded that puddle of water,” he said with him and continued. “I still can’t believe that those words came out of his mouth,” he snorted.

“And after we kicked their asses,” Wukong reminded him with a wide grin, “remember the look on their faces when the river goddess heard what they said.”

“I have never seen a fire spirit look like they want to piss themselves that fast before,” he barked out his laughter.

“Right!”

The two shared a laugh at the memory of the deity whooping their asses once more as the arrogant spirits either ran away screaming or died beneath her thundering waves. Both of them were completely safe as they watched the entire thing from on top of a tree and made bets over which idiots would survive. Their laughter eventually died down as the night silence took over once more, but it wasn’t the awkward silence that greeted them but a kindling of familiar comfort they shared before.

“We really are idiots,” the medicine monkey faintly commented.

“Glad to hear you finally admit it,” the sage monkey replied then he paused as he thought for a moment, but pushed forward. “After our many years of friendship, I would have never thought I would ever hear the day.”

Mac's eyes widened at his admission, “Friends?”

“Yep,” he boldly looked him in the eyes, “I mean I have spent centuries with you, so I think we are way past that level you know.”

“Despite not seeing each other in between those centuries,” the simian retorted.

“Well friends do have stupid fights with each other sometimes, it’s just not specifically for mortals you know,” the monkey slightly grinned.

“You're not wrong,” he swung his feet, “do…do you want to start over? Maybe try anew?” Thinking that maybe they couldn’t go back to how things were before, how the easy smiles and laughter that they used to share between the two of them and thoroughly dissipated. That maybe, if they begin right here and right now, there can be some resemblance of that bond that was once shattered.

Wukong let that answer sink in and ponder it only for a few moments before shuddering. “I…no I really don’t,” he said with a surprising harshness in his tone. “You were the one person who has known me longer than anyone other than the ones that still reside on the mountain, you are the only one who knows me the best out of anyone, and call me selfish, but I don’t want to start over with the only person who knew me from the inside out and still give a damn about me.” He can’t even imagine just throwing away all those years that he spent with moonshine, it would be easier if they ripped his head out instead, at least then the pain won’t be so bad. “So how about we both agree we made and did stupid ass decisions and continue on, cause if I’m being honest here, I really missed your grooming,” he teased.

“You just want me for my hands,” he couldn’t help but say.

“You do have very lovely hands,” he didn’t deny.

Macaque snorted before nodding, “Yeah, I like that peaches.”

“It’s been a while, mango,” Wukong grinned as he took in his friend form once more. He really had changed a lot since the last time he saw him, who he was is still the same, but he has opened up his soul a little wider and has beautifully flourished. Just how, well he just has to see more for himself. But not just his soul, but his whole outer appearance and he’s not talking about his ‘feminine’ clothing, both of them aren’t ones who care for gender roles or whatever the humans have decided their identity is based around. Rather his long fur that is swaying gently in the breeze under the moonlight night.

He couldn’t stop himself from taking glances at that fur each time he looked at the black furred simian. From just the sheer size to the fluffiness, as his student had proclaimed (though he can’t help but agree) he really just wants to thread his fingers through his fur. Maybe it’s just the absence of not grooming his friend fur in a long ass time, but he wants to remember how soft his fur is, to gently smooth out any tangles, to let him sit in between his legs as Mac sinks into his ministration and purr once more, to hold him as long as he can as they gently relax in each other arms to have his hands move down from his gorgeous fur and to his beautiful face and tilt his head up so that his golden eyes meet his own and ben his head down to meet-…oh.

And it was at this moment as he stared at Liu Er face did the thought occur to him as their tails unconsciously had entwined for the first time in over five hundred years and sat together beneath the stars.

‘I still love him,’ he faintly thought and his own heart pounded in confirmation. Not even when they have been separated for five hundred years did he stop loving his moonlight. ‘I really won’t stop loving him…and for some reason, I don’t mind.’

But instead of saying anything, he instead put his face on top of Macque's head and playfully nuzzled him. He can see his moon fondly rolling his eyes at his antics, but lean in as he feels his smaller friend rest his head on his shoulder.

‘This is enough,’ both simians privately thought as they cuddled close together.

Though they weren’t quite alone as two pairs of eyes were trained on them from the living room and they haven’t moved an inch since they heard Monkey King walk outside for the first time.

Mei and MK looked at each other in complete shock as they took in the scene. The surprise wasn’t from their conversation nor from the harmonious aura that surrounded them, but rather from the black and brown tails that were intertwined with each other. Now they may not know how romantic love feels and looks except from t.v, movies, couples strolling, and the scarce amount of times Mei parents come around, but they can tell there is something definitely there as it was hanging around the two monkeys and seeing them like this, it clicked.

‘Holy shit, Monkey King is the old flame!’ MK exclaimed with his eyes as he looked toward Mei.

‘It would seem so,’ her eyes flickered.

‘And he likes Dad back!’ His eyes widened.

‘Indeed he does,’ she narrowed her viridian eyes.

‘What do we do?’ He blinked three times as he was happy that they reconciled, but was unsure of what’s to come.

‘Watch for now and see what happens,’ she breathed as they both turned to look at the two silent monkeys basking together in the night.

Slow burn? Slow Burn?! They have been slow burning for countless centuries that even the polar bears are starting to feel the heat

HAHAHAHA I’m turning up the fucking heat for these damn monkeys

#lego monkie kid #monkie kid #mk #macaque #six eared macaque #monkey king #PlumTeaAU

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wefoundloveunderthelight · 3 years

Text

Mystery Of Pixie Hollow by GleefullyCaptainSwan Chapter 2/11

Read on AO3: | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

Or on FF

Stacy's Tortured Crew: @teamhook @kmomof4 @stahlop @lfh1226-linda @ilovemesomekillianjones @itsfabianadocarmo @mariakov81 @qualitycoffeethings @zaharadessert @jrob64 @jonesfandomfanatic @natascha-ronin @tiganasummertree @xarandomdreamx @therooksshiningknight @batana54 @superchocovian @onceratheart18 @ultraluckycatnd @snowbellewells @karlyfr13s @the-darkdragonfly @xsajx @deckerstarblanche @jonesfandomfanatic

Chapter 2: Shared Experience

“Mom.”

Emma ran through the halls, slamming her fists against the glass, breaking each mirror in front of her as she searched frantically.

“Mom.”

Her heart was pounding, each space behind the mirror was a deep black void.

“Mom.”

Arms were grabbing her, pulling her into the void, dragging her deep into the blackness.

“Emma.” She jerked awake, her eyes squinting against the light shining through the window. “Bloody hell, what are you doing sitting in front of an open window? Where’s Henry?”

Emma jumped up from her chair. “Henry.” She said frantically, staring out the window toward Pixie Hollow. Her mouth went dry at the empty lot staring back at her. It was all gone. Everything. He was gone.

“I got your texts this morning, my damn phone must have died while I was working, but they didn’t make any sense.”

“Henry, we were at the park, I couldn’t find him.”

“What do you mean, you couldn’t find him? Where’s he at?”

She sunk down on the floor below the window, sobbing. “Gone.” She cried, wrapping her arms around her knees, and rocking softly back and forth as her head made contact with the wall behind her.

“Gone where? Emma you aren’t making a lot of sense here.”

“We were in one of those fun houses, you know the kind with the mirrors. Henry loves those.” She started rambling. “He was playing, he always thinks its funny when I can’t find him. But then he was gone. I couldn’t find him anywhere. I heard him call for me, but he vanished, Will.”

“Vanished. Well surely they had a lost and found, or…”

“No, they didn’t care, they acted like he fucking ran away.” She shouted. “The police told me to come back in 24 hours, but they’re gone, the whole thing is fucking gone.” She screamed, pointing toward the parking lot where the fair used to be.

“Get up, we’re going to talk to the cops. This is bloody ridiculous. Henry isn’t a runaway. No one could believe that for a second. This doesn’t make any sense.”

Will was pacing the floor in front of her before he turned and grabbed her by the hand, pulling her to her feet. “Come on, let’s go find our boy.” He said softly, guiding her to the car as he drove them to the police station.

When they arrived at the busy precinct, the man at the front desk barely acknowledged them, waving them off to wait in the seats by the door. After twenty minutes, Will was tired of waiting, pushing past the front desk and demanding to talk to anyone who would listen to him.

“I want to talk to whoever is in charge, my boy is missing and I’m not going to stop until someone bloody listens to me.”

“Please have a seat.”

“How about you have a seat, Mate.” He said, squaring up to the officer who approached him. Emma stood from her chair, rushing to his side to stop him from doing something stupid.

“Will…”

“Ma’am, I’m going to need you both to step back behind the desk.” The man warned.

“Look mister, my little boy is missing.” She held up the photo of Henry to his face, “He’s all alone, and if you don’t find someone who gives a damn about that, I’m going to stand outside this station, talking to every news outlet that will hear me, until someone pays attention to me.”

“Emma Swan.”

She spun around to see the officer she had spoken to last night and she tugged on Will’s arm to follow her in the direction of the man. “Henry’s still missing. You told me to wait 24 hours, and I know it hasn’t been that long, but the carnival is gone. And he didn’t run away.”

“Someone better tell me they are looking for Henry, or I’m marching out of here to meet with Channel 3 and tell them the Storybrooke police department doesn’t care about the safety of our young citizens.” Will barked and the officer gestured the two of them toward a corner office.

“Wait in here, I’ll be there in a minute.”

“If one more person tells me I need to wait…” Will threatened.

“Sir, I promise you, I will be right there. I just want to get my partner.” Officer Nolan stated calmly.

“Fine.” Will relented, stepping into the office as Emma followed him.

Will sat at the steel table while Emma paced the back wall. “I can’t believe this is happening.” She said anxiously. “He’s never been away from me for this long. He must be terrified.”

“I had a bad feeling about this.” Will mumbled. “I told you not to go without me last night.”

“Don’t you blame me for this. You’re the one who bailed on Henry’s birthday last night.” She yelled angrily.

“Emma, I had to work.”

“You abandoned us. And now Henry is gone.” She screamed, and Will shrank against the table, hanging his head into the palms of his hands. She knew she had gone too far. This wasn’t Will’s fault, but she had to blame someone, Henry was gone. But she knew blaming Will was wrong. This was her fault. “Will, I’m…”

The two men walked into the room, interrupting their discussion. “Miss Swan?” Officer Locksley asked as he entered.

“Yes, that’s me.” She replied anxiously.

“Have you heard from Henry since last night.”

“Would I be here if I knew where my son was?” She quipped sarcastically.

“Ma’am, we’re just trying to help.”

“Sod that, if you were trying to help you would have done so last night.” Will stated emphatically. “From where I’m sitting, it appears you’ve done bloody nothing at all.”

“You must be the boy’s father.”

“Not in the biblical sense, but yes.”

“I’m sorry?” Officer Nolan asked in a confused tone.

“The boy isn’t biologically mine, but in the ways that matter, he’s my kid.” Will said almost proudly and Emma felt a pang of guilt for attacking him earlier.

“Have you been in touch with the boy’s actual father? Perhaps he’s with him.”

Will laughed ominously. “You think he ran off with Neal? Bloody idiot of the year! Not fucking likely.”

“Sir, I can sense some tension regarding the boys father. Do you talk that way in front of the boy about his father?”

Will stood angrily. “Are you serious right now?”

“Perhaps the boy took offense, we’ve seen it happen, home life isn’t always the greatest, kids venture out to find out about the other parent that their live-in parent admonishes.”

“This is ridiculous.” Emma suddenly spoke, she was tired of hearing this crap. They apparently had no interest in helping them find Henry. They were wasting valuable time.

“Does he have contact with his father?”

“I can assure you; it would be a cold day in hell for Henry to be anywhere near Neal Cassidy. He wants nothing to do with Henry.”

“Do you know where we can find him? Perhaps you’d let us do our job and confirm he doesn’t have the boy.”

“I haven’t a clue where he’s at. Why don’t you take care of that, you’re the police. In fact, if you find him, let him know he owes me about five years of back child support.”

Emma grabbed Will by the arm and yanked him out of the station, she wasn’t going to waste a single second more on people that were doing nothing more than judging her. She needed to find Henry.

~*~

“Who’s that?” Henry asked his new friend, Alice. The short haired woman who brought them lunch always seemed nice, if not a bit anxious. Something seemed off about her, but he wasn’t sure what it was.

“That’s Tinkerbell.” Alice said and Henry burst into laughter.

“Like the fairy from Neverland?”

“Yes. She helps Pan. She’s the one who brought you here. But I’m sure you don’t remember any of that. They always make sure the kids don’t remember.”

“You’re serious about all of this. Tinkerbell, Peter Pan. I must be dreaming.”

“I wish you were. I wish we all were.” She said sadly.

“How long have you been here?”

“I lost count years ago.”

“Years?” He said wide eyed. “You’ve been here years?”

“Has to be four or five years now. But I’m not really sure. It’s hard to keep track of the days when you don’t see the light all the time.”

Henry couldn’t imagine not seeing his mom in the next day, much less years. Suddenly he felt the tears start to fall as he thought about the possibility of never seeing her again.

“Please don’t cry, Henry.” She wrapped her arm around his back, pulling him into her side.

“I miss my mom.” He cried softly.

“I know. I miss my papa, but I know one day I’ll see him again, just like I know one day you’ll see your mom again.”

“You really think so?” He sniffled, wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt.

“All I have is hope, you can’t let go of that Henry. The moment you give up hope, Pan wins.”

He sighed, resigning himself to that fact that he was stuck here. But, he knew his mom would find him, he remembered the story his mother told him of when he was two years old and wandered off in the department store, his mother searched everywhere until she found him, crying in the middle of a clothes rack. If anyone could find him, it was his mom. She would never give up looking for him.

~*~

Emma sat in a darkened room, the only light coming from the screen of her laptop. She had spent the last few weeks researching the Pixie Hollow Amusement Park and the information she had found was creating even more of a mystery than she could have imagined. Since the inception of Pixie Hollow seven years ago, more than thirty children had gone missing during their stay in the towns they visited.

Based on the news articles, the children were usually from families of single parents, or children on field trips to the park. Most were chalked up to runaways, and the ones that were investigated were still open cases. A few showed that the parent was under investigation for the disappearance, but so far no one had been arrested in connection to any of the missing children.

Emma had collected names of various families she had found and was spending countless hours trying to track down the parents of the missing children. First she began calling the ones she was lucky enough to get information on, but she was always met by an angry voice on the other end of the line that told her to stay out of it and hung up on her.

Emma knew she needed to face these people, plead with them to talk to her about anything they knew. Maybe if they shared their stories, details would start to add up, it might give them a chance to solve the mystery if only she could get someone to listen to her.

The next morning, she woke up with a new determination, today she was going to get something, anything that she could to find her son. He had been missing for three weeks now, and Emma was going crazy.

The only thing the police had come up with was that they had located Neal Cassidy in Tallahassee Florida, but he had no interest in discussing Henry, nor did he seem to have any information on his whereabouts.

No shit Sherlock, she had basically relayed to the officers before hanging up on them.

She looked down at the paper in front of her. Three names were written from the night before. The family members who’s addresses she was able to find through a Google search. Parents with shared experience.

Ashley Boyd – Portland, Maine

Leroy Little – Portsmouth, New Hampshire

Killian Jones – Boston, Massachusetts

“Emma, you can’t just drive all over the coast grilling grieving parents about their missing kids.”

“Tell me something better I should be doing, William!” She yelled into the phone as she slammed the door of her yellow bug shut.

“All of this started because you went off on your own, nothing good will come of this.”

“Don’t you dare blame me for this.”

He sighed, “I’m not blaming you, Emma. I just…” He paused. “There’s nothing I’m going to say that’s going to stop you, is there?”

“No, I don’t need your advice Will, I just need you to support me until I find him.”

“Emma…I will always support you, no matter what you do. Just…” He sighed again and Emma could just see him now, running a hand through his hair. “Be careful and keep me updated today. Dammit, I wish you would have waited for me to come with you.”

“I’ll be fine, I’ll text you all day. I should be home tomorrow unless I find something.”

“Please be safe, we don’t know what’s going on here. Just…just be careful with how you approach these people.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

She hung up the phone and looked at her GPS, her first stop was nearby in the town of Portland. She set the GPS and began her drive to Ashley Boyd.

It was a long drive from her home, a few towns over and she reached the small white home of Ashley Boyd. She had read about her daughter Ella, disappearing from Pixie Hollow two years ago, the police determined that Ashley’s ex husband had taken the child and left the country. The man vehemently denied any involvement in the disappearance but refused to return to the United States for fear of being arrested.

Emma climbed the short stairs to the front door and knocked on the white wooden frame. She waited until she heard yelling on the other side of the door and a small child peered through a crack.

“Hewwo, who are you?”

Emma bent down to introduce herself when a woman appeared, yanking her child up from the ground and shielding her protectively.

“Chelsey, I told you never to talk to strangers.” She looked at Emma, “Who are you, what do you want?”

“Hi Ashley, my name’s Emma Swan.”

“How do you know my name?” She asked nervously.

“I wanted to talk to you about Ella.”

“Who sent you?” She responded anxiously. “Get out of here.”

“Wait, look my son, Henry…” She held up a photo of her son. “He went missing from Pixie Hollow a month ago.”

The girl’s face crumpled before she quickly returned the mask to her face. “I’m sorry for your loss, the sooner you get over it the better. He’s never coming back.”

The woman turned and slammed the door in her face. Emma sighed, writing her number on a piece of paper, and sticking it into the door before she returned to her car.

Emma looked at her GPS on her phone. It would take her an hour to get to Portsmouth. Her next stop on her trip. Her contact was the father, Leroy. His son Stewie had gone missing four years prior during a trip to the carnival. He had been under investigation for years until he was cleared six months ago.

The entire drive she thought about Ashely’s reaction to her. Seeing her with a young child, she could tell that the woman was overprotective, nervous around strangers, distrustful almost. She had given up hope of finding her daughter. Emma never wanted to get to the point that she gave up trying to find Henry. She couldn’t imagine the dark hole that would swallow her up if she allowed herself to get to that place.

She looked up at the tiny shack on the edge of the water that belonged to Leroy Little. It was run down, almost unsafe to live in. Definitely not the place you would ever have a child.

She walked across the uneven planks that lead to the front door, the porch creaked when she stepped foot on it. She heard a noise on the other side of the door.

“Don’t know who you are, lady, but I’ve got a shot gun pointed at you, so get out o’ here before I shoot.”

Emma froze, “My name is Emma Swan, I just want to talk to you about Pixie Hollow.” She put her hands in the air.

The door creaked to a crack. “You a cop?”

“No, I’m just a mom. My son went missing too.” She said pleading with him. “I just want to talk to you.”

He opened the door, the rifle in his hands. “Ain’t nothin to talk about, sister. The kid’s gone. You can stop looking, the more you look, the harder it’s gonna be for you in a few years.”

“You can’t really believe that.”

“Ain’t got no other choice, less I want to go back to jail.”

“Where do you think Stewie is?”

He looked to the ground, then back at her face. “Don’t matter what I think. Now get outta here, I got nothing to say to you.”

He slammed the door in her face, the second time in a few hours. Emma left her number, feeling disheartened and sat in her car and cried.

She was half tempted to just go home, but she needed to finish what she started out to do today. It would take her about an hour and a half to get to Boston, perhaps this Killian Jones would talk to her.

It was harder for her to get information on his case, his daughter was one of the ones who had been missing the longest. Alice Jones had disappeared five years ago. The information she had found only said that he was a single dad, he had taken his daughter to the carnival because of her love for fairytales. She had gone missing that night and Killian was the first person of interest on the case. He spent months in prison while they investigated the girl’s disappearance, only releasing him when they found no evidence that he had anything to do with his daughters’ case. The trail went cold after that. There had been no news at all about his daughter since.

When she got to the address, she looked up at the harbor, she must have typed the wrong information. There were no houses at this location, she was at a boat yard. She got out of her car and wandered to the pier, trying to figure out why her GPS took her here.

A man was standing at the end of the pier, tying a rope to a boat that was docked there. “Excuse me.” She flagged the man down and sped up her steps to get closer to him before he disappeared into the boat. “Sir, I just need to ask you a question.”

The man noticed her, and he tensed, standing still at the end of the pier. “How can I help you, lass?”

“I’m looking for an address, but I think I wrote it down wrong because there’s no house here.”

He laughed, “You are very perceptive, love.”

She handed the paper to him, and he scratched the back of his ear. “’Fraid you aren’t looking for a house, Ma’am. But you did find what you’re looking for.” He paused and stared her down, “Care to share why you were looking for this boat?”

“A boat? I don’t understand. I’m trying to find the man at this address, Killian Jones.”

His jaw tensed. “Is that so? And what business do you have with Mr. Jones.”

“I need to talk to him about his daughter, Alice.” Before she could react the man turned feral, reaching into his back pocket and with a flick of his wrist, brandishing a knife in one hand as he took a step forward and pressed it into her side, twisting her around until her back was to his chest.

“Who sent you? Was it Mills? Just who the bloody hell are you?”

#mystery of pixie hollow #stacy's fics #emma swan #killian jones #captain swan fics #captain swan au #captain swan #captain swan modern au

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 4 years

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Eccentricity [Chapter 14: Love Keeps The Monsters From Our Door] [Series Finale]

A/N: Thank you for your encouragement, enthusiasm, laughter, rants, screeches of anguish, and unapologetic thirsting for “sexy undead Italian man” Joseph Francis Mazzello. I hope you love this conclusion more than Baby Swan loves pineapple pizza. 💜

Series Summary: Potentially a better love story than Twilight?

Chapter Title Is A Lyric From: “Til I Die” by Parsonsfield. (The #1 song I associate with this fic!)

Chapter Warnings: Language.

Word Count: 7.7k.

Other Chapters (And All My Writing) Available: HERE

Taglist: @queen-turtle-boiii @bramblesforbreakfast @maggieroseevans @culturefiendtrashqueen @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark @escabell @im-an-adult-ish @queenlover05 @someforeigntragedy @imtheinvisiblequeen @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhyee @deacyblues @tensecondvacation @brianssixpence @some-major-ishues @haileymorelikestupid @youngpastafanmug @simonedk @rhapsodyrecs

Mercy

We have to stay in the Vladivostok palace until her transformation is complete, and I hate it.

The floors are cold and sterile and every clang of noise ricochets off them like a bullet. The earth outside is stripped bare and hibernal. There is no green to interrupt the bleakness of the sky, the cruel absence of color: no spruces or hemlocks or bigleaf maples, no evergreen forests, no verdant fields, only a grey that bleeds from the sky in sheets of hail and driving rain. This land is a stranger. So many of the faces, too, are strangers, although they try. Honora sits with me—her large dark eyes, like mirrors of mine, polished and wet with aching pity—and braids my hair. Morana invites me to bake homemade bread with her. Austin tries to make me smile. Cato visits me as much as he can, because he feels responsible; or maybe he would do it anyway, maybe lessening suffering is as instinctual to him as bloodshed is to so many of our kind. And when Cato is with me, I do feel a little better, like my story might belong to somebody else, like it’s a name I can’t quite remember, like it’s a transitory moment of déjà vu I can catch glimpses of but never touch. And yet, still, I send him away.

I don’t want to be with Cato. It’s painful for him to be around me, I can see that. It’s painful for Rami, and for Ben, and for Joe, and for Lucy and Scarlett. It’s even painful for the Irish Wolfhounds that Cato found locked up for safekeeping in Larkin’s study; they skulk around the palace vigilantly but leave great swaths of uninterrupted space around me like open water. So I conjure up a mask of brave, hopeful acceptance and wear it everywhere I go.

Joe says very little, never leaves the girl he calls Baby Swan’s side, dabs her scorching skin with washcloths soaked in ice water and murmurs in sympathy when she screams through the unconsciousness, from beneath the ocean of fire we all know so well. He nods off sometimes, snatching minutes of sleep like fireflies in a jar, before jolting awake to make sure her heart is still beating. When Ben isn’t checking on them, he’s with Cato, helping to draw up plans for the future, reminiscing about the past with slick eyes and clinking midnight glasses of whiskey. Scarlett sprawls across the desk in what was once Larkin’s study and spends hours on the phone with Archer as she gazes up at the ceiling, telling him how to care for the farm animals and the garden, reassuring him that we’ll be home soon, whispering things to him that I try not to hear; and I know she wouldn’t want me to anyway. Lucy weeps delicate, ceaseless tears as she perches on the staircase landing and Rami entombs her in his arms, never having to ask what she needs from him. And I wander meaninglessly through the echoing, unfamiliar hallways like a moon without a planet.

I know what they all think about me, perhaps even Rami, for I keep it buried as deep as all skeletons should be: that I’m irrevocably kind, effortlessly forgiving. That I’m as incapable of bitterness as I am of aging. But they’re wrong. It’s a choice, and it always has been, ever since a late-November dusk in 1864 when madness eclipsed mercy. Every day I choose whether to surrender to the beckoning, malignant hatred that lurks in the back of my bedroom closet, in the dusty and ill-lit loft of the barn roped with cobwebs, in the twilight tree line of the western hemlocks crawling with shadows that whisper through fanged teeth. Every day I decide whether to become a monster. And it has never been harder to remember why I don’t.

My future is unimaginable. The nights are endless. I feel black, razored seeds of what I am horrified must be bitterness burrowing beneath my skin and taking root there. I am consumed by infected, fruitless questions that I can’t silence: Why Gwilym? Why Arthur? Why Eliza and Charlotte? Why is it always fire?

The first words that Gwilym ever spoke to me, as I unraveled from unconsciousness under a grove of sycamore trees with smoke still clinging to my unscarred skin, rattle around in my skull like windchimes beneath thunderous skies. His voice was colored with an accent I couldn’t place, and yet it sounded like home: You’re in a dark place right now. But you don’t have to stay there.

That might have been true once. That might have been true in the ruinous autumn of 1864. But now I can’t find my way out.

Seventy-three hours after our arrival in this barren corner of the world, Charlie Swan’s daughter wakes up as a vampire. Her heart is perfectly still, her skin faultless, her senses sharp, her mind as impenetrable as ever; at least, that’s what Lucy says when she finds me. And Lucy tugs at my hand, wearing her first smile in days, insisting that I have to come meet the newest member of our coven, to welcome her. I don’t know how to tell Lucy that I’m afraid I don’t have it in me to love this girl, that I don’t have it in me to love anyone but ghosts. And yet—compliantly, yieldingly, expecting nothing but disappointment in the monster I have become—I follow her.

The door is already open to the Swan girl’s room; chattering, beaming vampires flood in and out like the tides. I step inside. And I see the way that Joe looks at her, the way that Ben does; and all those seeds that I had feared might be bitterness blossom into nothing but open air.

It’s Not A Fucking Wedding (A.K.A. 13.5 Months Later)

The ocean is a universe. Its arms are not ever-expanding, spiraling galaxies of suns and planets and nebulae and black holes, this is true; its belly is not a vacuum of inhospitable oblivion, its bones are not invisible strings of gravity, its language is not a silence older than starlight, older than eternity. But the ocean is a universe nonetheless, its borders tucked neatly around the seven continents, slumbering there until the next hurricane or tsunami or ice age comes conquering; and inevitably equilibrium is restored—like defibrillator paddles to a heart, like naloxone to an addict’s blood—and our two worlds can coexist side by side once again.

The ocean’s arms are sighing waves, bubbling and brisk, grasping and retreating in the same breath. Its belly is swollen with life from immense blue whales down to swarming clouds of single-celled, sun-hungry phytoplankton. Its language is ancient whispers; not parched and blistering and brittle sounds like the desert’s but cool, serene, supple, engulfing. And I can hear them all, if I listen closely enough. I can hear the sentient whistling of orcas, the breaking of waves against rocks, the scrabbling of sand crabs beneath the earth, the gruff distant barks of sea lions, the rustling of evergreen pine needles in the breeze. And I understand now why it was always so easy for vampires to be introspective, to lapse into thoughtful, unhurried silences. I could imagine spending decades just sitting here with my knees tucked to my chest and my hair whipping in the brackish wind, watching the seasons roll by like a wheel.

Joe was coming back from the gravel parking lot. I turned to watch him: red U Chicago hoodie, messy dark auburn-ish hair, a pizza box clasped in his hands. The GrubHub delivery driver was returning to his car with the toothiest of grins.

“Buon appetito!” Joe announced, dramatically presenting me with the pizza box. It had become our post-finals tradition each semester: pizza at La Push beach, half-pepperoni, half-pineapple.

“Grazie, sexy undead Italian man. Your accent is getting so good!”

“I know, right?! I’m on a twelve-day Duolingo streak. I can’t let that little green owl dude down.”

“I’m impressed, I’ll admit it. I gotta brush up on my Welsh. Why’s the GrubHub driver so cheery?”

“I tipped him $500.”

I smiled, opening the box and lifting out a semi-warm slice of pineapple pizza. Elastic strands of mozzarella cheese stretched like rubber bands until they snapped. “Aww, really?”

Joe plopped down onto the cool, damp sand beside me. “No. I lied. We’re actually having a torrid love affair.”

I laughed, shaking my head. “How could you possibly have time for all that?” Between school, business ventures, family activities, and me, Joe was very rarely unoccupied. And he preferred it that way.

“I’m so glad you asked. I’m very speedy, if you recall. And that’s just one of the exclusive services I offer. I am a man of many talents. I make people’s wildest dreams come true. Who am I to deny the GrubHub delivery man the wonderland that is my spindly, annoying body?”

“You are the fastest,” I said, winking.

“Oh shut up! I mean, uh, uhhh, silenzio!” He pointed his slice of pepperoni pizza at me reproachfully. “That’s not what I meant. I’m not the fastest at everything.”

“Whatever you say, mob guy.”

He lunged for me, pinned me down in the crumbling sand, both of us laughing wildly as the crusts of our pizza slices bounded off and were snatched up by diving, screeching seagulls. He growled with mock savagery, braced his hips against mine, kissed his way from the corner of my jaw to my lips. That oh-so-familiar commanding, craving ache for him came roaring to the surface; and now there was no bittersweet edge to it, no inescapable backdrop of lambent numbers ticking down from five or ten or fifteen years to zero. Now there was only the calm, unurgent promise of forever.

“Joe—!”

“You have besmirched my honor, Baby Swan. I am left with no recourse but to refresh your clearly flawed memory and prove you wrong.”

“Public indecency? That’s illegal, sir.”

“Okay, you gotta stop stealing my catchphrases. It’s extremely difficult for me to come up with new ones. I’m almost a hundred years old, you know.”

“Alright, I guess you’re not bad in bed for a basically-centenarian.”

He smiled down at me, his dark eyes alight, the wind tearing through his hair, one palm resting on my forehead, uncharacteristically quiet.

“What?” I asked, worried.

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m just really glad we’re a thing.”

“You better be. You’re kind of stuck with me now. You’ve stolen my virtue, you’ve made me fall in love with your entire demented family, you’ve forced your torturous immortality upon me. I’m not going anywhere. Unless you ever stop funding my pineapple pizza addiction, of course.”

Joe chuckled as he climbed off me and took my hand in his, pulling me upright. “It’s absolutely ridiculous, by the way. Your insistence on being a sort-of vegetarian. It’s embarrassing. You’re the wimpiest vampire ever. You’re a disgrace to the coven.”

“I eat animals!” I objected.

“Yeah, when you have to.” And Joe was right: I steered clear of flesh outside of the two or three times a week when I hunted. For environmental sustainability reasons, I mostly consumed deer or rabbits; although the very occasional shark was my guilty pleasure. Joe gnawed on his second slice of pizza and peered out into the overcast, dusky horizon, wiping crumbs from his stubbled chin with the back of his hand. “We only have one more of these left,” he said at last, a little sadly. “One more finals season at Calawah University. One more celebratory dinner at La Push.”

“We’ll just have to get used to a new view. Pizza by the Chicago River, maybe.”

Joe looked over at me, thoughtful again, smiling. He had received his acceptance letter to the University of Chicago three weeks ago. I got mine eight days later. “It won’t be hard for you to leave Forks?”

“It will be. Once upon a time I didn’t think that was possible, but I will miss Forks. And not just because of Charlie and Archer and Jessica and Angela and all the Lees. But it was hard to leave Phoenix, and I’m sure one day it will be hard to leave Chicago. Just because change is hard doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do.”

Joe nodded introspectively. “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

“Don’t quote classic rock songs at me, mixtapes boy.”

“You love my mixtapes,” he teased, circling his left arm around my waist, pulling me in closer, touching his lips to my forehead. Mint and pine and starlight sank into my lungs like an anchor through the surf. “And that saying actually goes all the way back to Seneca, my dear.”

“Don’t tell me he’s still philosophizing in some cloudy corner of the world somewhere.”

“Not to my knowledge. Although that’s an intriguing thought. We need more famous vampires. Caligula would have made for very interesting conversation. Lincoln, Napoleon, Cleopatra, Shakespeare, Dante...I guess it’s possible that anyone is still around. Maybe we should turn Meat Loaf. You know, for the good of posterity.”

“Is it not enough that they’re already cursed with student debt and global warming?”

Joe cackled, took my face in his palms, kissed each of my cheeks one after the other, then nudged my nose with his. “You ready to go, Baby Swan? I suspect we’re expected to participate in some holiday festivities tonight.”

“I’m ready,” I agreed. We threw our leftover pizza to the seagulls, disposed of the grease-spotted cardboard box, and walked back to my 1999 Honda Accord with our pulseless hands intertwined.

The evergreen trees along Routh 110 fled by beneath a sky freckling with stars. Sharp winter air poured in through the open windows. And I could feel that it was cold, in the same way that I could feel the warmth on Forks’ rare sweltering days; but there was no discomfort that accompanied that knowledge. Pain only came when the sky was unincumbered by thick clouds churning in off the Pacific, and then it felt something like staring into the sun had as a human. Sunglasses helped, but the surest remedy was avoidance, was surrender. And what an inconsequential price to pay for forever.

“Wait,” I said, spying the mailbox that marked the start of the Lees’ driveway. “They still deliver mail on Christmas Eve, right?”

“Uh, I think so, why...?” And then he remembered. “Oh, yeah, let’s check!”

I pulled up beside the mailbox and Joe leaned out, returning to his seat with a mountain of Christmas cards and business correspondence and advertisements from Costco and Sephora. He sifted through them until he found a single white envelope from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. It was addressed to a Mr. Benjamin August Hardy. Joe held it up to show me as we drove down the driveway, the Lee house coming into view and ornamented with a frankly excessive amount of multicolored string lights and inflatable reindeer.

“Oh my god!” I squealed, drumming the steering wheel.

“You want to be the one to give it to him?”

“Are you serious?! Yeah, can I?”

Joe passed the envelope to me as I parked my geriatric Honda, which Archer had pledged to keep alive as long as physically possible. In return, Ben let him and Scarlett borrow the Aston Martin Vantage no less than once a week. I dashed out of the car, up the steps of the front porch, and into the house that bubbled over with the sounds of metallic kitchen clashes and frenetic voices and Wham!’s Last Christmas.

“Ben?!” I shouted.

“Hi, honey!” Mercy called from the living room, where she and Lucy were putting the final touches on Scarlett’s gown. Scarlett was playing the part of semi-willing victim, wearing gold heels and an impatient smirk and her hair out of the way in a milkmaid braid; her train of vivid red lace billowed across the hardwood floor. From the couch, Archer and Rami were playing Mario Kart on the big-screen tv and nibbling their way through a tray of homemade gingerbread cookies.

“Oh wow,” I said, clutching the envelope to my chest, mesmerized. I kept waiting for Scarlett to start looking like a normal person to me, and it never happened. Tonight, in the glow of the flameless candles and kaleidoscopic Christmas lights and draped in lace the color of pomegranate seeds, she was Persephone: a goddess of resurrection, a face that death himself could not pass by unscathed. “You’ve outdone yourself, Lucy. Seriously.”

“One day I’m going to get you out of those thrift shop sweaters,” Lucy threatened me, placing a pin in the fabric at Scarlett’s waist.

“Yeah, okay. Let me know when that shows up in one of your visions.”

“Bitch,” Lucy flung back, snickering, knowing how improbable that was. I still appeared in her visions extremely infrequently, and then only when I happened to be standing next to whoever the premonition was actually about.

“Language, dear,” Mercy tutted, inspecting the hem of Scarlett’s gown.

Joe arrived beside me, his arms still full of mail. “ScarJo, I almost didn’t recognize you! Why do you have, like, no cleavage or fishnets or thigh slits?”

“Why do you have like no eyelashes?” Scarlett replied. “See, I can ask unnecessary and invasive questions too.”

Joe frowned, wounded. “What’s wrong with my eyelashes?”

“Lucy, darling, I think it’s just a tad uneven on this side,” Mercy said, showing her. “Maybe by half an inch...?”

“No, seriously, what’s wrong with my eyelashes?!”

Mercy replied distractedly: “Nothing, honey, you’re perfect just the way you are.”

“Mom!” Joe groaned.

“It really is gorgeous,” Mercy marveled as Lucy flitted around her to investigate the hem situation. “And so Christmasy. So perfect for the season. Scarlett, dear, you were right after all, and I’m so sorry for doubting you. I’d just never heard of a red wedding dress before.”

“Mom, it’s not a fucking wedding!” Scarlett exclaimed, for probably the thirtieth time since Thanksgiving. “It’s a nonbinding, informal celebration of an egalitarian romantic partnership. Will somebody please inform this woman that it’s not a wedding?!”

“Yes, yes, of course, whatever you want, sweetheart,” Mercy conceded dreamily.

Joe pointed to Archer. “Isn’t he supposed to not see the dress until the day of or something?”

“What a great question!” Archer replied, still deeply invested in Mario Kart. “You see, that would be the case if this was a wedding. However, I’ve been informed in no uncertain terms that it is most definitely not.”

Scarlett grinned triumphantly at Joe. “There you have it.”

She might snap petulantly, and she might complain, but Scarlett wouldn’t be doing this if she didn’t want to; we were all intimately familiar with the futility of trying to force Scarlett into anything. The not-wedding, as improbable as it seemed, had been her idea from the start. And she wasn’t doing it for herself. She wasn’t even doing it for Archer. Scarlett was doing it for her mother.

The first six months had been hell for Mercy. She didn’t resent me, as I had feared she might; Mercy made that clear, and Rami confirmed it. But she was gutted. She wouldn’t speak of Gwil, wouldn’t listen to us talk about him, locked every photograph of him away in dark drawers, wandered around with a remote, uncanny, unseeing smile until she walked straight into walls; and then she would blink inanely up at them, as if they had dropped out of the sky rather than been built by her own hands. She baked hundreds of cakes and almost never slept. She told us she was fine every time we asked, which was more or less constantly. But on the very rare occasions when she was left alone, Mercy would unfailingly end up in the field behind the Lee house, gazing out into the forest of western hemlock trees with tears snaking silently down her cheeks, the muted light of the cloud-covered setting sun flickering red and furious on her face like wildfire.

And then one afternoon, a package had arrived from Arviat, Canada, where Cato and the rest of the surviving Draghi had relocated shortly after the rebellion at Vladivostok. It was five feet tall and another three wide, and what we found after carefully peeling away all those layers of foam padding and packing tape was a portrait of Gwilym so skillfully painted that it could have been mistaken for a photograph. Mercy had stared at it for a long time—ignoring Lucy’s attempts to guide her away, deaf to any of our concerns—until she at last picked up the portrait herself and said, quite evenly: “I think we should hang it in the living room, don’t you?”

Things had been better since then—very, very gradually, and yet unmistakably—and Gwil’s portrait remained mounted above the living room couch like a watchman, his eyes sparkling and blue, his faint smile stoic and fond and omniscient. But even in the wake of Mercy’s continued improvement, none of us kids were about to risk another agonizingly despondent Christmas. So the solution was obvious. We would keep Mercy preoccupied with what thrilled her more than absolutely anything else: the pseudo-weddings of her children. Rami and Lucy had already secretly volunteered to go next year...and after that, who knew? And there was one other thing that was making Mercy’s burden a little lighter these days.

Charlie sauntered into the living room, wearing an apron covered in cartwheeling Santas and wiping white dust like snow—powdered sugar? flour? baking soda?—from his ungainly hands. He was palpably proud. “The sugar cookies are officially in the oven. And I managed to fit them all on one baking sheet, isn’t that great?! Cuts down on dishes!”

“Why, yes, I suppose it does!” Mercy said, alarm dawning in her eyes. Had my beloved father placed the globs of dough too close together? Would we end up with one hideous, giant monster-cookie? Only time would tell. Providentially, Archer and Joe could be counted on to eat just about anything.

Joe sniffed the air, his forehead crinkling. “What’s burning?”

“Nothing should be burning,” Mercy replied, almost defensive, forever protective of Charlie and all of his profound, incurably human imperfections. Sometimes I thought that she preferred him that way, that he was a link to a simpler world in the same way I had once been, that he was a puddle of memory she could drop into, that maybe he wasn’t so unlike her first husband Arthur. “Not yet, anyway. The cookies need at least ten to twelve minutes at 350.”

“Wait, 350?!” Charlie exclaimed, horrorstruck. “I thought you said 450!”

“Oh, this is tragic,” Scarlett said.

“I can fix it!” Mercy trilled buoyantly, breezing off to the kitchen as Charlie followed after her with a fountain of apologies. She shushed them away affectionately, patting his chest with her soft plump hands, chuckling about how luckily they had fire extinguishers stowed away in almost every closet just in case. And there were other reasons for that besides Charlie’s perilous baking attempts, but he didn’t know them. Now the record player was belting out Queen’s Thank God It’s Christmas.

Archer lost another round in Mario Kart and exhaled a great, mournful sigh. “Hey, Baby Swanpire, can you do something about this guy?” He nodded to Rami. “This is criminal. It’s nowhere near a fair fight. He knows every freaking time I’m about to toss a banana peel.”

Rami smirked guiltily up at me from the couch, not bothering to deny it.

“Do you mind?” I asked him.

“Not at all,” Rami replied. “I want to show this loser I can beat him even without the benefit of mega-cool extrasensory superpowers.”

“Rude!” Archer cried.

“So rude,” Scarlett agreed, smiling.

“Okay, here we go.” I sat down beside Rami, still holding Ben’s envelope in my right hand, and laid my left against Rami’s cheek. And I felt a fistful of numbness—like instant peace, like milk-white Novocain—pass from my skin into his, rolling into his skull, deadening whatever telepathic livewires had been ignited there in the August of 1916. The effect would last anywhere from thirty minutes to a few hours; and it worked on every vampire I’d met so far.

“Whoa, trippy,” Rami murmured. “It’s still weird, every single time.” He peered drowsily around the room. “It’s...so...quiet?! You guys really live like this? No one is constantly bombarding you with sexual fantasies or romantic pining or depressive inner monologues? How do you function?! Now I’m alone with my own thoughts, that’s actually worse!”

“Hurry up and beat him while he’s all freaked out and vulnerable,” Scarlett told Archer.

Archer laughed, picking up his Nintendo 64 controller, radiant with the promise of vengeance. “Yes ma’am.”

“Any good mail?” Lucy asked Joe.

“Yeah. Coupons and a ton of Christmas cards from random people. The vet sent us one with alpacas on it, so that’s cute. Oh, and here’s one from our favorite Canadians.”

Joe held up the card so we could all see. The picture on the front showed Cato and Honora sitting on a large velvet, forest green couch with a hulking Christmas tree illuminated in the background. The others were arranged around them: Austin, Max, Ksenia, Charity, Araminta, Akari, Morana, Phelan, Aruna, Adair, Zora, Sahel, and a few new faces I couldn’t name yet. They were all wearing matching turtleneck sweaters. And every single one of them was smiling.

Joe cleared his throat theatrically and read the text on the inside of the card:

“Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

(Oh, and Scarlett, congratulations on your not-marriage.)

- Cato Douglass Freeman”

“That bastard,” Scarlett muttered.

Rami offered me his controller. He had just slipped on a banana peel and rocketed off a cliff. “You want a turn?”

“No, thanks though. I have to talk to Ben. Is he around?”

Rami shrugged ruefully. “I would help, but my brain is temporarily broken.”

Scarlett rolled her eyes, taking a gingerbread cookie from the tray and biting into it as Lucy batted crumbs from the red lace dress, exasperated. “I think he’s out in the hot tub.”

“Cool. I shall return.”

Joe took my spot on the couch as I departed, shoveling cookies into his mouth, seizing Rami’s controller and kicking his feet up on the coffee table.

I opened the door to the back porch, and frigid December air rushed in like an uninvited guest. The field was coated with a thin layer of snow, the animals safe and warm in the barn, the garden slumbering. And in the spring and summer, when blossoms of a dozen different varieties came open beneath the drizzling grey skies, Mercy’s calla lilies didn’t bother my allergies at all. Nothing did anymore. Ben was indeed in the hot tub, puffing on his vape pen, wearing only a beanie hat and swim trunks.

“What flavor is that cartridge?” I asked as I approached. “Gummy bear?”

“Close. Strawberry doughnut.”

“Ohhhh, yum!” Ben passed me the vape pen, and I took a drag as I kicked off my boots and sat near him on the rim of the hot tub, slipping my bare feet beneath the steaming, roiling water. Then I handed his vape pen back. “So. Guess what I have for you.”

“Uh.” He glanced at the envelope. “Jury duty.”

“Better.”

“Someone I hate has jury duty.”

I flipped the envelope around so he could see the University of Chicago logo on the front.

“Oh god,” Ben moaned.

“Don’t you want to see what it says?”

“Not really,” he admitted, grimacing.

“Come on, Ben. Open it.”

“Nah.”

“Why not?!”

Ben sighed. “Look, if I open it and it’s bad news, it’s gonna make Christmas weird. Rami will know. They’ll all know. They’ll all feel bad for me and it’ll be pathetic and depressing and awkward. You can look if you want to, just don’t tell anyone else yet.”

“It’s not going to be bad news,” I said, tugging at the floppy top of his beanie hat. He swatted my hand away, but he was smiling grudgingly.

“You have positively no way of knowing that. Unless Lucy’s had a vision I’m unaware of.”

“She hasn’t. You know she never sees anything important.”

“She saw you coming,” Ben countered.

“She saw human-me and Joe in love and gobbling down pretzels at a Cubs game. So I’d say there were at least a few minor details missing.”

“There’s no way I got in,” Ben said, his green eyes slick and fearful and now fixed on the envelope. “We can’t all be geniuses like you.”

“That’s an unfair accusation. I’m far from genius. I’m just obsessed with the ocean.” I’d written my senior thesis on the feeding habits of Pacific angelsharks, and my advisor was still trying to figure out how I, an amateur scuba diver at best, had managed to get so many quality photographs with my underwater camera. The secret, of course, was superhuman agility and not needing to breathe.

“I fucking hate calculus. The MCAT wrecked me. I got a 517.”

“And their median score is a 519, so I’d say you still have a fighting chance. Plus you have like eight million volunteer hours.” Ben had spent the vast majority of the past year either in class or at the hospital. The psychiatrist-in-chief, Dr. Siegel, had been more than happy to take one of Gwil’s foster children under her wing. Every human in Forks except Archer believed that Dr. Gwilym Lee had drowned in a tragic boating accident while he and Mercy were on vacation in Southern California, and that his body had never been recovered. The town had held a wonderful remembrance ceremony and dedicated a free clinic at the hospital in his honor. “Now open it.”

“You do it,” Ben relented finally. “My hands are wet. Go ahead, open it up and tell me what it says. And then kindly euthanize me to end my immortal shame.”

“That wouldn’t work,” I pointed out, tearing open the envelope. I pulled out the tri-folded piece of paper inside, flattened it against my thighs, and read the typed black text.

“...Well?” Ben pressed, vaping frantically.

I looked up and smiled at him.

“No way,” he whispered.

“I hope you like pretzels and bear-themed baseball teams, grandpa.”

And for a second, I thought he might bolt up out of the hot tub, hooting victoriously, splashing water all over the back porch as he danced around bellowing that he’d gotten into one of the best medical schools in the world, that he would be following me and Joe to Chicago. But that wasn’t Ben. Instead, a slow smile rippled across his face: it was small, but perfectly genuine. Pure, even.

“Goddamn,” he said, watching me. Venom doesn’t just resurrect or ruin; it forms a bond that is simultaneously intangible and yet immense. It’s an evolutionary adaptation, a way to facilitate stability and the building of covens in an often violent and ruleless world. And now that he had turned me, Ben had family here in Forks in more ways than one.

“Gwil would be so proud of you, Ben.”

“I hope so. I really do.”

The back door of the house opened, and Joe stepped outside. He studied Ben for a moment, and that was all it took for him to know. “Benny!” he shouted, elated.

“I know, I know. Fortunately, I look amazing in red. Thanks, supermodel genes.”

“This is going to be so fun!” Joe said, sprinting over to wrap Ben—who was characteristically lukewarm on this whole physical displays of affection business—in a hug from just outside the hot tub. “We’re going to go furniture shopping, and eat deep-dish pizza, and find apartments right next to each other, and mail home Chicago-themed care packages, and get you hooked up with some gorgeous Italian woman...or whatever you like, I guess I shouldn’t assume. Women. Men. Gang members. Marine mammals. Jessicas. Whatever. There are options.”

Ben laughed as he playfully shoved Joe away. “Sounds like a plan, pagliaccio.”

“Oh my god, stop learning Italian without me! You realize you have to tell Mom now.”

“I will,” Ben agreed, with some trepidation. “I’ll wait until after Christmas.”

“It’ll be hard for her,” I said. “But she knows it’s what you want. She knows it’s what’s best for you. So she’ll get through it. I think it would be worse for her if you didn’t get in, if she had to see you unhappy.”

Ben nodded, exhaling strawberry-doughnut-flavored vapor, gazing up at the stars, Orion and Auriga and Lynx and Perseus reflected in his thoughtful jade eyes. “She’ll still have Rami and Lucy and Scarlett here with her. And Archer. And Charlie.”

“Especially Charlie,” Joe said, grinning.

Mercy would have to leave Forks eventually, of course. The Lees had already been here for nearly four years; they could stay another ten, perhaps fifteen at the absolute maximum. And there had been a time when ten or fifteen years seemed like quite a while to me, but now it felt like I could doze off one afternoon and wake up on the other side of it, like swimming a lap in the sun-drenched public pool back in Phoenix. We would find a new home somewhere after Joe and I finished our PhDs, after Ben finished medical school, maybe Vancouver or Buffalo or Amsterdam or Edinburgh or Dublin or Reykjavik. Wherever we went, I hoped it wouldn’t be far from the sea. But Mercy couldn’t bear to leave Forks yet. It was the last home she had shared with Gwil, the last house they would ever build together, and leaving it would make his loss all the more irrevocable. She would be ready to leave someday, but not today.

In the meantime, there would still be visits for breaks and holidays. Scarlett and Archer had the shop to keep them busy, a brand new eight-car garage that held a virtual monopoly on both the Forks and Quileute communities. Lucy had opened a bohemian-style clothing boutique downtown, which confounded most of the locals but attracted more adventurous customers from as far away as Seattle. Rami was interning for a local immigration lawyer and entertaining the possibility of applying to U Chicago’s law school in another few years. And Mercy had the farm; and she had Charlie. He had asked her for cooking lessons to try to help rouse her a few months after Gwil’s death, and it had grown from there. If it wasn’t romantic just yet, I believed it would be soon. And there were moments when I thought my father might have figured something out, when his eyes narrowed and lingered on me just a little too long, when his brow knitted into suspicious, searching lines, when the hairs rose on the back of his neck and some innate insight whispered that we weren’t like him and never could be again. But then he would chuckle, shake his head, and say: “You’ve gotten weird, my gorgeous, brilliant progeny. But Forks looks pretty good on you.”

“Can I talk to you upstairs?” Joe asked me suddenly; and did I see restless nerves flicker in his dark eyes? I thought I did.

“Sure,” I replied, climbing down from the hot tub. “Ben, are you coming inside? My dad is trying to bake Christmas cookies and failing miserably. It’s pretty hilarious. Not that you should be the one to critique other people’s kitchen-related accidents.”

“I do enjoy your company a lot more now that I don’t want to murder you and slurp you down like a Chick-fil-A milkshake,” Ben said. “Yeah, give me a few minutes and I’ll be there.” And as Joe and I headed into the house, I saw Ben pick up the acceptance letter that I’d left on the rim of the hot tub and read it for himself with incredulous eyes, grappling with the irrefutable fact that it was his name on the opening line, that he had somewhere along the way become the sort of man who dedicated his immortality to saving lives rather than ending them.

In the living room, Scarlett was back in her yoga pants and absolutely brutalizing Archer in Mario Kart. Rami and Lucy were entwined together on the loveseat, murmuring, giggling, feeding each other pieces of gingerbread cookies. In the kitchen, Charlie was leading Mercy in a clumsy waltz to Meat Loaf’s I’d Do Anything For Love, and each time he fumbled his steps or mortifyingly trod on her feet she would cry out in a peal of laughter brighter than the sun she had learned to live without. Joe spirited me up the staircase, into his bedroom—which, honestly, was more like our bedroom now, in the same way that my room in Charlie’s house had become Joe’s as well—and closed the door.

“You’re in luck,” he said. “Your dad totally ruined our song. Now I can’t hear it without thinking about some moustached guy in plaid trying to seduce my mom.”

“It’s the best Christmas gift I could ever ask for. Meat Loaf is vanquished. Oh, just so you’re aware, Renee and Paul are getting an Airbnb and coming up for New Years.”

“Cool. Do they still think I have a super embarrassing sunlight allergy and will break into hives and asphyxiate and that’s why we can’t visit them in Florida?”

“Yup.”

“Spectacular. Also, can you please tell me what’s wrong with my eyelashes?”

“They’re just a little sparse, amore. But I still like you.”

“Well, I am only moderately attractive, you know.” Then Joe steeled himself, taking a deep breath. Uh oh. He was definitely nervous. I still couldn’t believe I had the power to make him that way, but here we were. “So I get that we’re doing presents with the whole family tomorrow morning, and you do have some under the tree, so don’t worry about that. But there’s one I wanted to give to you alone. You know. With just us. Without an audience. Or whatever.”

“...Okay...?” A secret gift? A naughty gift? “I hope it’s a new vibrator.”

“Shut up,” Joe begged, laughing. “Here.” He reached into the drawer of his nightstand—our nightstand—and produced a small blue box topped with a turquoise bow. It wasn’t a ring, I was sure of that; I didn’t feel especially attached to the idea of marriage, and neither did Joe to my knowledge. How could rings or papers seal commitment when you already had eternity? I was right: the mysterious present was not a ring. When I removed the lid and emptied the box into my palm, what appeared there was a small plastic airplane.

“What is this?” I asked, amused but puzzled.

“Are you not college educated? It’s a plane.”

“Well, yeah, I can see that. But it’s also like two inches long.” I scrutinized the plane. “Are you magically transforming me into a tiny, tiny, little plastic person? Is that my gift? Because I actually got you something good.” And I really did: there was a collection of vintage Chicago Cubs photographs from the 1910s and 20s downstairs under the Christmas tree, packaged in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer wrapping paper.

“We’re going on a trip,” Joe said, grinning. “The day after Christmas. It’s just a short trip, nothing huge, don’t get too excited, we’re not going to Mt. Everest or Antarctica or anything. I think you’ll still like it. But I don’t want you to know where we’re going until we’re there.”

“How will that work? Considering the tickets and signage and pilot announcements and obnoxiously noisy other passengers and all.”

“ScarJo’s going to fly us.”

“Really?!” We were taking the jet. We almost never used the jet. “What’s in it for Scarlett?”

“She found out that Archer’s never had In-N-Out Burger before and is very much looking forward to initiating him into the cult of deliciousness.”

“Oh nice. I could go for a vanilla milkshake myself, now that Ben mentioned them.”

“Obviously I’m gonna buy you all the milkshakes and animal-style fries you want. Bankrupt me, bitch. But we have to get one other thing taken care of first.”

“So it’s somewhere they have In-N-Out Burger...” I pondered aloud. California? Texas? Las Vegas? I felt a brief but unambiguous pang of homesickness for Phoenix. But there was nothing there for me anymore.

“Stop,” Joe pleaded. “I’m sorry. I’ve already said too much. Please forget that. Get a traumatic brain injury or oxygen deprivation or something.”

“I hate to disappoint you, but I’m rather indestructible at the moment.”

He smiled wistfully. “I wouldn’t want you to be any other way.”

There was laughter downstairs in the living room. I could detect the aroma of a fresh batch of sugar cookies baking in the kitchen, mingling with the cold night air and pine trees and peppermint candy canes. I loved Christmas. The entire world smelled like Joe. The U Chicago décor, classic rock posters, and Italian flag were now interspersed with National Geographic pages and photos of the two of us together. The Official Whatever You Want Pass hung in a small, square picture frame on the wall above Joe’s bed. Our bed.

“How real is it, Joe?” I asked quietly. I climbed onto my tiptoes, linking my hands around the back of his neck with the tiny plane still tucked between my fingers. “Seriously. The wishes thing.”

“The world may never know. Akari never met me as a human, so she wouldn’t be able to say. But if I had to place a bet...” He shrugged, grinning craftily. “Kinda real. Kinda not real. Just like vampires, I guess.”

“I am alarmingly glad that you’re real, mob guy,” I said, abruptly somber. “I never thought I’d meet someone who saw me as remarkable, who could make me see myself that way. And it’s miraculous. And it’s terrifying too, honestly. Being a thing with you. Falling for someone you could have for centuries and lose in a second.”

“It’s the scariest thing there is,” Joe concurred, taking my hand to lead me back downstairs.

Joseph

Scarlett looks like a goddess, and she knows it. But she’s not one of those magnanimous, fragile, harp-plucking, pastel-colored goddesses. She’s ferocity and wildness and crimson like blood, and that’s exactly why Archer loves her. And as they stand in front of the Christmas tree with their hands clasped together—ivory on bronze, snow on sun—with matching sprigs of holly in Scarlett’s hair and pinned to the jacket of Archer’s suit, reciting truths but no promises, I can’t help but watch the other faces in the room: Rami, Lucy, Ben, Charlie, Mom with her beaming smile and shining eyes, the woman I met sixteen months ago and now can’t fathom life without. And it occurs to me for the first time that love, in its cleanest form, isn’t something that changes people as much as it allows them to become who they truly are.

On the evening of December 26th, as soon as the sun dips beneath the western horizon, we board the jet in the Forks Airport hangar. It’s much easier for Scarlett to fly at night; otherwise she has to wear two or three pairs of sunglasses on top of each other, and even then it’s still painful, it still feels like blinding needles burrowing into the jelly of her retinas. That’s not a wrench in my plans or anything. It needs to be night where we’re going, too.

Vampire hyper-acuity notwithstanding, FAA regulations require Scarlett to have a copilot, so Archer joins her in the flight deck with his newly-minted license and spends most of the journey flipping through the latest issue of Motor Trend. As we begin our descent, he peeks back at us and teases: “It’ll be your turn eventually, guys. Scarlett and I did our time. Rami and Lucy can go next year. And after that...unless Ben happens to find someone worthy of a not-wedding...” He wiggles his black eyebrows.

“Bring it on,” I reply casually. “Fake wedding are my jam. It’ll be ocean themed. Or Roaring ‘20s themed. And we’ll all do the Cha-Cha Slide in the living room and shame Ben as a bonding activity.”

“Mercy can set up a mashed potatoes bar,” Baby Swan adds.

“Yeah. With pineapple.”

“No. Not on potatoes.”

“Yes on potatoes.”

“Over my dead body.”

“Too late,” I tell her, touching my lips to the knuckles of her cool, steady hand.

We touch down at a small noncommercial airport just outside the city, and Scarlett and Archer stay back to secure the plane as Baby Swan follows me outside. And she realizes where we are as soon as the wind hits her, as soon as her eyes soak up the sand and cacti and cloudless night sky like rain swallowed up by parched earth.

“Phoenix,” she whispers, smiling like a child.

“But wait, there’s more!” I announce in my best Billy Mays voice. I take the little glass bottle from my pocket, walk across the runway to the naked desert, crouch down when I find a suitable spot, and fill the bottle with dry, sandy earth that crumbles in my palms. Then I seal the bottle with a tiny cork and bring it back to give it to her.

“I know what it’s like to have to leave home,” I say. “You’ve had to say goodbye to Phoenix, and soon you’ll have to say goodbye to Forks, and next will be Chicago, on and on forever. You’ll always be leaving the places you learn to call home. Every five or ten or fifteen years, we start over again. Like a snake shedding its skin, like a hermit crab swapping shells. Like the water that travels from rain to seawater to mist and then back again. But now you can always have a little piece of home with you, and maybe that will make it easier.”

She takes the glass bottle and shakes her head in disbelief, in wonder. Because this is exactly what she wanted, what she needed, even if she didn’t know it yet. “Joe...how did you...?”

“What’d I tell ya? I’m a talented guy. Now you have to dance with me.”

She laughs. “Oh no. Hard pass. I don’t dance.”

“When we’re alone in my bedroom you do. So just pretend we’re alone now. In, like, a really really spacious, sandy bedroom. With probably some lizards.”

“Fine. But only because I’m willing to degrade myself for milkshakes.”

She slides the glass bottle of Arizona earth into her pocket and takes my hands. She’s still a pretty terrible dancer, honestly. She hasn’t lost that. And I love that about her. I love damn near everything about her. And it took me a long time to figure out what exactly her subtle yet peerless cocktail of fragrance is, because it wasn’t somewhere I’d ever been. The scent that drifts from her pores—the scent that now lives in my bedsheets like a shadow or a ghost—is sunlight and heat and clarity and resilience and wisdom older than the pyramids. Her scent is the desert.

Now she’s mischievous, her eyes gleaming with the reflections of the Milky Way and the full moon and the stars that are dead and yet eternal, just like us. “So what, you think you’re Vampire Boyfriend Of The Year material now or what? Some dirt and In-N-Out Burger? That’s the height of your game? Is this what I have to look forward to for the rest of my perpetual existence? I totally should have pursued that polyamorous triad with Scarlett and Archer when I had the chance—”

“Yeah,” I say, very softly, smiling, tilting up her chin to kiss her beneath the universe and all its eccentricities. “I love you too.”

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lettersnorth · 3 years

Text

Prompt #1: Foster

“Go again.”

The youth looked down at the paltry pile of pebbles on his side of the dusty cavern floor and furrowed his brow in consideration.

His opponent, also stuck straddling that awkward line between boy and man, held out something enclosed in the shell of his cupped hands and waited. And waited. This far beneath Ala Mhigo the tunnels were deathly silent. Deeper in there lay a trail of torches to light the way but here there was only the flickering lantern light between them. The shadows along the walls jumped every time the candle flame spit.

“Gods’ blood, Connor! Go!” Rundulf finally exploded. The sound of his exasperation bounced off the walls of the catacombs that ran like a rabbit’s warren beneath the city.

When the Garlean Empire had finally moved in over the tattered remnants of the beleaguered city-state, the Imperial army had sealed the tombs, the last resting place of Ala Mhigan dead. To keep out the ‘rabble rousers’. It might have worked if the Empire had found and sealed all the entrances. But they had failed to understand what a labyrinth they had on their hands. Miles of tunnels going back hundreds of years. It was all too easy for an intrepid Resistance to make camp within a few long forgotten spaces. A secure place for seditious talk.

“Don’t rush me.”

Or, an idle argument between two bored adolescents attempting to stay alert with nothing but stone and dust around them.

“Pick a bleedin’ number or I swear to Rhalgr I’ll --”

“Three high.”

Rundulf grunted and opened his hands, sending a cascade of flat stones clattering to the dirt. The boys leaned over the stones, peering in the dim lantern light to see which ones had landed with their white painted faces up, if any.

Alas, only two displayed their pale faces.

“Ha! That’s another for me!” Rundulf crowed, a fist punching up into the darkness.

Shaking his head, Connor flicked a pebble from his ever-dwindling pile towards Rundulf’s own. “Gods, I hate this game. Can’t we do somethin’ else?”

Just then, beyond the lantern’s reach came the soft sound of a throat being intentionally cleared. And the game was suddenly and hastily forgotten. With eyes wide with surprise, Connor grabbed the lantern and swung it in the direction of the noise as Rundulf surged to his feet, ready for a fight.

The swinging lantern light fell on one slight and slender girl and both boys visibly relaxed. Aislinn was nearly half their size, a spindly collection of knees and elbows destined to forever be the runt among them. The antithesis of a threat.

“What’re you doin’ down here, North?” Connor sighed, lowering the light.

“Lookin’ for da.” she said simply as she made to pass them, only to have Rundulf block the way.

“You know he’s with the others. Plannin’ out next steps. He’ll be up when they’re done.”

“I didn’t know that.”

Connor laughed as he knelt down and collected the stones again in preparation for another round. ��Not sure you were supposed to either. Good job, Rundulf.”

The larger boy, realizing his mistake, merely folded his arms across his chest and grunted. The less he said, the better.

“Sit and play a few rounds, Aislinn. They should be heading up soon.” Connor said, clattering the stones in his hands.

She studied him for a long moment and then wordlessly shook her head. The catacombs were as dark and foreboding as she remembered. It was bad enough that she had ventured this far on her own. When they were children she had been forced to spend a night down in this place, sharing a sarcophagus with a moldering skeleton. A fact he should have remembered just as well as her. She had no intention of staying and ending up the subject of another cruel child’s prank.

“What’re they discussing?” she asked instead.

Rundulf sullenly shrugged and broke his silence. “Probably tryin’ to figure out a abetter way to get information out to the other cells. Last two runs didn’t go so well.”

Aislinn peered down the tunnel. “They aren’t choosin’ the right people.”

“Says you.” Connor snorted.

“I do.” she replied, turning that unerring gaze back on him. It was unsettling. The way she spoke so flat. She was too serious by half. It was too old an expression set in too young a face and it crawled under his skin. A part of him was almost certain she knew it too.

“Suppose you know who they should send.”

She jutted her chin up. “I could do it.”

Rundulf’s guffaw echoed off the stone. “Don’t think they’re that desperate yet.”

“I just caught you two unaware. And you’re supposed to be on watch. I coulda snuck right past and you’d have kept playin’ your game.” she countered.

Rundulf opened his mouth to reply but Connor held up a quelling hand. “We’re flattered, Aislinn but we ain’t exactly Imperial patrols now, are we? Those runs are serious. You need your wits about you the entire time.”

“Are you explainin’ a run to me like I haven’t been here just as long as you?” Aislinn asked, her question more of a barbed statement than anything.

Her tone must have gotten through, for in the lantern light she could see the tips of Connor’s ears go red with embarrassment.

“Clearly someone needs to. Your da is never goin’ to let you go. No matter how much you keep harpin’ on him. It’s gettin’ pathetic.”

Aislinn blinked at him. The only sign that his words had struck true. He regretted them the moment they were out of his mouth. He was forever doing the wrong thing when it came to her. Forever the arse.

Wordlessly, she turned and retreated out of reach of the lantern light, back the way she had come. He groaned under his breath and hung his head.

“Look, maybe it needed to be said.” Rundulf said, returning to his side of the makeshift playing field.

“Shut up.”

“Coulda let someone else do it though.”

“Shut up.”

“Fine. Go again.”

With an air of resignation Connor held the stones out over the floor when there came the sudden sound of swift steps hitting the dirt. Once again Connor and Rundulf sprung up but Aislinn was quicker. One stride, two, a dodge to the left, a duck under Rundulf’s swinging arm and she breezed past them, down the corridor towards the meeting of generals.

“Gods damn it!”

She heard them giving chase and almost laughed. In a world where it seemed everyone was bigger and stronger, Aislinn had learned to be faster. They would never win in a race against her. She sailed down the torchlit passage with an elated sort of satisfaction.

The three careened around the bend, Aislinn remaining just frustratingly out of reach until they burst into the large burial chamber at the end of the tunnel. The men and women gathered within turned in haste towards the interruption. The slithering sound of several swords leaving their scabbards drew Aislinn up short with Rundulf and Connor stumbling behind her in their effort not to bowl her over.

“Hold.”

“It’s just a couple of young ones.”

“Bloody hells, aren’t those th’ ones you put on watch, Jorund? Fat lot o’ good it did.”

Winded, her wide eyes took in the gathering amidst the flickering torchlight and for a sparse moment she regretted the impulse that had driven her here. No. A small voice inside refused to let her back down. She was tired of sitting on the side lines. Tired of watching the others do their part while hers seemed to always be to sit at home and anxiously wait for their return. Passed over time and again. She could do something. She could be useful. Why couldn’t anyone see that?

“I can do it.” she said, hating the way her voice sounded so small in the cavernous chamber. She shook her head and tried again. “I can do it. I can make the run.”

“Aislinn?” her father’s voice rumbled the way it always did but in this space it seemed to reverberate. He was a wall of a man and he didn’t so much push through the others as much as they parted for him. Thick arms folded across the barrel of his chest as he stared down at her. Looking into his storming eyes she knew there would be a talk about this later.

“You’re looking for people to make the run, aren’t you?” she pressed. “To pass information to the cells outside? I can do it.”

“No.” Jorund ground out.

“Yes, I can. I made it past those two. Probably could’ve snuck right by without them lifting their heads.” she waved an arm back towards Rundulf and Connor who stood catching their breath. They passed each other a dark look. “I’m quick. I’m nearly invisible. No one pays me any mind. And those patrols aren’t going to be looking for someone like me. They’re not going to suspect me of carrying Resistance intel.”

There was the briefest pause of silence and then, “She makes a good point, Jorund.” one of the other men spoke up.

“I said no.” Jorund snapped his head towards the man, glaring in his direction.

“We’ve been sending our boys who could fight if it came down to it but maybe that’s the problem. They look like they could fight. Empire ain’t gonna look twice at this wisp of a girl.” he continued on, undeterred.

“And if she runs into trouble?” a woman next to him countered.

“You heard her, she can run.”

“She can outrun two boys, not a imperial patrol, Bernier. I don’t know about you but I’m not comfortable sending a girl headlong into the waiting arms of Garleans.”

Behind her, Aislinn heard Connor make a low noise in the back of his throat that sounded distinctly like an ‘I told you so’ to her.

“Oh, but sending our boys is alright?”

“Don’t pull that shite. I know as well as anyone here what a patrol will do to the girl if they get their hands on her.”

“I’m tellin’ you, they ain’t gonna be looking twice.”

“Quiet.” Jorund’s voice, instead of rising to meet the others, had grown soft and still. It brought an immediate halt to any conversation. He stared down at Aislinn with a dark sort of anger but she saw something behind that. Something raw and broken. Something that told her he would forever see her as the child she had been, the little girl he had bounced on his knee. And any hope she had fostered of taking a meaningful part in this Resistance faded to nothing. She knew his answer before he even opened his mouth.

“She’ll get caught. And do you think she’ll hold up under questioning? Or do you think she’ll spill every little detail she knows and bring the Empire down on us? We’re the only ones feedin’ th’ others intel from the inside. We can’t let something like tha’ happen.” he growled and though he spoke to the others, he kept his flinty gaze trained on her, hammering the words home. Willing her to understand once and for all. “She’s too much of a risk. Send Connor.”

------

(The result of Connor’s run can be found here.)

#ffxiv writing #ffxivwrite2021 #Prompt 1 #Foster #Aislinn North #her da #always making the wrong decisions

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everlarkbirthdaygifts · 4 years

Text

Happy Birthday, alepaolvi!

Apologies for the delay on your birthday gift, @alepaolvi! We hope you had a wonderful day on October 2, and got exactly the presents you were hoping for! To bring your party back around, the lovely @norbertsmom has written a story just for you!

Author’s Note: Happy belated birthday, @alepaolvi. Sorry for the delay. I hope you enjoy your arranged marriage fic with a jealous Gale. This is set in Panem au. The revolution happened a few years before it did in canon. You may notice several lines are taken directly from the book, and tweaked to fit this new timeline. Special thanks to my bestie, @mega-aulover for her help. Rated T.

A Different Kind of Reaping

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When I wake up, I reach out for Prim but find the other side of the bed is empty. Prim has her own bed now, but sometimes I forget we’re no longer in the Seam. I prop myself up on one elbow. There’s enough light in the room to see that she’s not in her bed. Of course not. She’s been so excited to help me get ready for today. I’m sure she and mother are up prepping my clothes and making breakfast.

The two of them are so alike, with their blond hair and blue eyes and perky attitude. At fourteen, Prim is fresh faced and as lovely as the primrose for which she was named. My mother is still beautiful, if not a little weary in her grief at the loss of my father. Even seven years later, his absence is still felt, especially today.

I get out of bed and pull on trousers, a shirt, and tuck my long dark braid up under a cap. I slide my stocking feet into my leather hunting boots and grab my bow and sheath of arrows along with my foraging bag.

On the table is a feast fit for celebration: eggs, bacon, toast, and orange juice. All luxury items just a few years ago, before the war. Now a gift to me on my reaping day.

Reaping day is so different now. Before the revolution, reaping day was the day all district children between the ages of twelve and eighteen had their names put into a drawing. In punishment for the failed first uprising, each of the twelve districts had to provide one boy and one girl, called tributes to participate in the Hunger Games. The twenty-four tributes would be imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena to fight to the death. The last standing tribute won.

“Sit down for breakfast, Katniss,” my mother says. “You’ll need your energy today.”

I set my hunting gear down and sit, loading up my plate and tuck into the meal. I want to go out into the woods one last time before the ceremony. Who knows if I’ll be able to go back out after today?

Prim plops down in the chair beside me. “Are you excited, Katniss?” she asks as she loads up her own plate.

“Um,” I hum around a mouthful of food because I really don’t know how I feel. “A little scared, I guess.”

When the revolution was won by the districts, the Hunger Games were abolished. But soon after it was discovered that the population was critically low, and at risk of extinction after all the loss during the war. The new senate that ruled the country with one representative from each district, came up with a plan to help repopulate the nation: arranged marriages.

They decided to reclaim the reaping day as a day to bring new families together. That first reaping day after the war, men and women eighteen and older were matched to form new families. I wasn’t old enough then, but I am now. I don’t know how I feel about having my future decided for me.

I think back on all of the questionnaires we had to complete in our last month of school. We also had to list the names of those we would be happy to be matched with. We weren’t allowed to leave it blank, so I wrote down the one name I secretly wish for, but I’m sure I won’t get.

I may not even be matched this year. Not everyone is matched in their first year, so they have to go through it again the next year. Special deferment was granted for those who fought in the war to put off their reaping a year or two.

“Leave your sister alone, Primrose. She has a big day ahead of her,” mother says as she joins us at the table. She pours herself a large mug of coffee and cups it with both hands, holding it under her nose to breathe it in. She closes her eyes before taking a sip.

I’m the first to finish and get up to leave. “Thanks for breakfast,” I tell them as I grab my gear and head toward the door. I’m in a hurry. My old hunting partner, Gale Hawthorne is back in the district today. I haven’t seen him since he went away to fight in the rebellion. After the fighting was over, he stayed in the military and moved to district three so he could study under the victor Beetee Latier.

“Don’t forget your cheese,” Prim says as she gets up from the table and hands me a perfect little goat cheese wrapped in basil leaves. It’s been a tradition since she started making goat cheese to give them as gifts on special occasions.

“Thank you,” I tell her with a hug as I pocket the cheese.

“Don’t stay out too long, Katniss,” mother says. “You need to report to the Justice Building by one thirty. We need time to get you ready.”

“I won’t,” I tell her as I slip outside.

Our part of District 12 is the merchant quarter. My mother and Prim run the apothecary, but we didn’t always live here. I grew up in the part of the district nicknamed the Seam, where the miners live. The apothecary had been vacant since my grandparents died when the mayor’s mansion was bombed at the start of the revolution. After the war, my mother applied for and was granted permission to take it over.

As I’m skipping down the back steps, I look over to the bakery next door. Peeta Mellark is walking toward the trash bin with a bag in his hand. He looks up at the sound of our door closing. “Hey Katniss,” he says with that contagious smile of his. “Heading out to the woods, I see.” He nods to my hunting gear after placing the bag in the bin.

“Yep,” I tell him with a smile of my own. “Gotta catch dinner for tonight.”

“Ooh. Wild game, that’s one advantage you have over the other girls in the reaping today,” he says, crossing his arms as he leans against the small fence that divides his yard from mine.

“Whatever you say, Mellark,” I tell him, shaking my head. He’s always teasing me about how different I am from the other girls who live in town. Not because I’m from the Seam, but like I’m some unique creature he’d never encountered before.

As I walk down the path I wonder who Peeta will be matched with. He’s such a kind person. He was the only person to help me and my family after my father died. He gave me bread that helped us survive and gave me hope to go on. I’m sure he’ll have no problems finding a match today. Lots of girls will be hoping to be the next baker’s wife. Peeta lost his mom at the start of the war. She was one of those lost in the bombing of the mayor’s mansion.

Even though there’s an entrance to the wood close to home, I make my way through town toward the Seam to the entrance by my old house. It makes me feel closer to my father. That’s where he would take me into the woods when I was a child.

The streets of the Seam are empty today. Usually, the workers would be out heading to their morning shift at the mines or the medicine factory, but the ceremony isn’t until two. Might as well sleep in if you can.

Our old house was almost at the edge of the Seam. I only have to pass a few gates past it to reach the scruffy field we call the Meadow. The barbed wire loops that used to top the high chain-linked fence that separates the Meadow from the woods are gone. The fence remains to keep the wild animals out of the district, but gates have been installed at several locations around the perimeter to allow citizens access to the woods.

As soon as I’m in the trees, I look around for signs of a threat, like packs of wild dogs, bears, venomous snakes, or rabid animals. Inside the woods they roam freely, but there’s also food if you know how to find it. My father knew and he taught me some before he was blown to bits in a mine explosion. There was nothing even to bury. I was eleven then. Seven years later I sometimes still wake up screaming for him. But since Dr. Sidney, the head doctor, came to the district after the war, I’ve learned how to deal with my grief. My nightmares aren’t as frequent. Dr. Sidney helped my mother as well. She no longer lies in bed staring at the walls.

Before the war, trespassing in the woods was illegal, and poaching carried the severest of penalties, but the woods belong to us now, the citizens of District 12. Still, most people aren’t bold enough to venture out unarmed. My bow is a rarity, crafted by my father along with a few others that I keep well hidden in the woods, carefully wrapped in waterproof covers. If my father was still alive, he could have made good money selling them, but before the rebellion, if the officials found him selling weapons, he would have been publicly executed for sedition. Which is kind of ironic since the mine explosion that killed him was one of the catalysts for the rebellion.

We were never prosecuted for poaching back then because most of the Peacekeepers had turned a blind eye to the few of us who hunted. They were as hungry for fresh meat as anybody. Now we get food shipped in from other districts regularly, and I can sell my game openly to the other merchants at their back doors, and at my booth in the open-air market called the Hob.

In the woods waits my hunting partner Gale. I feel myself relaxing and quicken my pace when I think about seeing him again. I only got a quick chat with him yesterday when he arrived, mobbed by his family. He asked if we could meet up to hunt this morning like old times. I climb the hills to our rock ledge overlooking the valley. A thicket of berry bushes keeps it hidden. The sight of him brings on a smile. We used to be the best of friends before he went away.

He looks different than I remember. Not just older; he stands different, ridged and yet alert as if he is waiting for an attack from a wild lone wolf. He’s wearing gray uniform pants, and a faded black shirt. His eyes are sharper; they scan the area, before settling on mine.

“Hey Catnip,” says Gale. He knows my real name, but I had whispered it when we first met so he thought I said catnip. It stuck as a nickname even after all this time.

“Look what I shot,” Gale says as he holds up a loaf of bread with an arrow stuck in it. I let out an uncomfortable laugh. It’s fine bakery bread, the kind used during a toasting ceremony.

I’m not sure if he’s trying to impress me with what he can buy with his fancy new job, so I take the bread in my hands. I pull the arrow out and hold the puncture in the crust to my nose, inhaling the fragrance that reminds me of the blond haired, blue eyed son of the baker.

“Mm, still warm.” He must have been at the bakery at the crack of dawn to buy it. “Prim gave us cheese,” I tell him quickly as I pull it out of my pocket.

“Thank you, Prim,” Gale says as he pulls out a shiny knife from a sheath on his hip. I watch as he slices the bread. He could be my brother, same straight black hair, although his is cut short in a military style, same olive complexion, we even have the same gray eyes. We’re not related, at least not closely. Most of the families in the Seam resemble one another this way.

That’s why my mother and Prim, with their light hair and blue eyes used to look out of place when we lived in the Seam. They were. My mother’s parents were merchants. They ran the apothecary. That’s why she got it after the war. Now I’m the one out of place. I have the look of the Seam, but I live in town.

My father got to know my mother because he would collect medicinal herbs and sell them to her shop. She really loved him to leave her home for the Seam. Back then, the homes in the Seam were nothing more than shacks really. We had to boil water from the spigot in the yard if we wanted it hot. After the war, all of the squat gray houses in the Seam were replaced with new homes that are well insulated with running hot and cold water and reliable electricity.

Gale spreads the bread slices with the soft goat cheese, carefully placing a basil leaf on each slice while I strip the bushes of their berries. We settle back in the nook in our rock. I don’t eat much, since I already had breakfast, but it’s a nice treat. Everything would be perfect if all this day off meant was roaming the woods with Gale for a casual family dinner tonight, catching up on how our lives have changed since the war ended, but instead it feels awkward, like I’m here with a stranger instead of my old friend Gale.

“What’s it like in District 3?” I ask quietly to break the awkward silence between us. It was never like this before. He would rant about the unfair treatment the citizens endured, and how we should rise up against them. But now that the revolution is over and won, we don’t really have much to say.

“It’s alright, but I’ll be moving to District 2 after the ceremony. You’ll love it there. Mountains bigger than these. Lots of woods to hunt in.”

“Why would I want to go to District 2?” I ask. The idea is preposterous. I can’t leave my sister. Before the war, the fantasy was to run off, and live in the woods, but this conversation feels all wrong now. There’s never been anything romantic between Gale and me. When we met, I was a skinny twelve-year-old, and although he was only two years older, he already looked like a man. It took a long time for us to even become friends, to stop haggling over every trade. Then he went off to war and moved to District 3 as a hero. His hero status gave him the option to postpone his reaping until this year.

Gale’s good looking, strong from his time as a soldier, and he has a good job in another district. He will be a desirable match at the reaping today. I don’t know why he would want me.

“Forget it,” he snaps.

I let out a breath and ask, “What do you want to do, hunt, fish, or gather?”

“Let’s fish at the lake,” he says. “We can leave our poles and gather in the woods. Get something nice for tonight’s betrothal meal.”

Tonight, after the reaping, everyone is supposed to celebrate, but I’ll be betrothed. I’ll be spending time with my intended. He and his family will come to my house so we can get to know one another. Does Gale hope it will be him?

We fall into the comfortable silence I remember from hunting with him before he left. By late morning, we have a dozen fish, a bag of greens, and best of all, a gallon of strawberries.

On the way home, we swing by the Hob and trade half the fish and greens for fresh vegetables. Greasy Sae gives us a nod as we walk by. Even with the beef and chicken coming in from other districts, her wild game soup that she calls beef is always a hit. The customers around her booth are talking away about today’s reaping.

When we finish at the Hob, we go to the back of the mayor’s home to sell half of the strawberries. The mayor lives in a modest house not unlike the others in the district. After the war, the residents of the district realized that the old mayor’s mansion was just another tool the Capitol used to keep us in the district divided. The poor people of the Seam resented the wealth the mayor and the merchants had. So when the mayor’s home was rebuilt, he had it built the same as all the others.

The mayor’s daughter Madge answers the door. She was in my year at school, and my closest friend since Gale left. Her everyday outfit has been replaced by an expensive white dress, and her blonde hair is done up with a pink ribbon. Clothes fitting for the betrothal reaping.

“Pretty dress,” says Gale.

Madge shoots him a look, trying to see if it’s a genuine compliment. He used to antagonize her when we were younger, but now that he’s been gone for a few years it’s hard to tell. She presses her lips together and smiles. “Well I have to look nice for my reaping today, don’t I?”

“I’m sure you’ll have the match you want,” Gale says with a scoff.

Madge’s face has become closed off. She puts the money for the strawberries in my hand. “Good luck, Katniss.”

“You too,” I say, and the door closes.

I turn to Gale, “What did you mean by that?”

“Her father’s the mayor. People in power can influence the outcome of the reaping,” Gale says.

Madge’s father isn’t just the mayor. He was quite influential during the war. He was able to convince the residents of District 12 to join the revolution by bringing in Annie Cresta. Then he became our district’s liaison with the rest of the rebels.

Annie Cresta was the last Victor of the Hunger Games,and the spark that started the rebellion. She won the summer after my father died in the mining explosion. During her interview, after winning her games, she started screaming about her father and brother who were lost at sea with a whole ship full of fishermen just before her games. The Capitol played it off as her going mad. But during her victory tour she was more subdued, she would compare her district’s loss to the loss each district had suffered from a tragedy that same year.

The rumors started that perhaps the mine explosion that killed my father wasn’t an accident, but a sabotage to take out the rebel miners who had been planning an uprising. While in District 11, she talked about the silo collapse, in District 10 the stampede, and so on until she had rallied half the country behind her. Before her tour reached the Capitol, District 13 re-emerged from the ashes to sweep her off to be the face of the rebellion.

District 12 was one of the last districts still neutral to the rebellion even though the mayor tried to get our residents involved. He asked Annie Cresta to come back, to rally us to join the cause. Most of our Peacekeepers were recalled to the Capitol to fight off the uprisings in other districts. Those who stayed behind were sympathetic to the districts’ plight. The residents of District 12 wanted to wait out the war. If we didn’t join in, nothing would happen to us.

After the rally, while most of the residents of the district were at home debating why we should join the rebellion, the mayor hosted a dinner for Annie with the most influential Merchants and Seam residents. After the dinner was over, the mayor, his daughter Madge and a few others were seeing Annie off to her hovercraft back to District 13 when the mayor’s mansion was bombed by the Capitol. All those still inside were killed, including the mayor’s wife, his staff, my grandparents and many others.

The rally that day, along with the bombing that took out the mayor’s mansion, is what finally convinced the residents of District 12 to join the rebellion. We couldn’t stay neutral. The war came to us. Gale, among others old enough, went off to fight in the war. Not everyone came home. The baker’s oldest son died. Gale stayed in the military.

As we walk back toward my house, I glance over at Gale, still wondering why he came home this year. He could have participated in the reaping in his new district. I hope he didn’t come back here for me.

Gale and I arrive at the divide between the Seam and town and split up our spoils.

“See you in the square,” I say.

“Wear something pretty,” he says flatly as he walks towards his mother’s house in the Seam.

When I get home, Peeta is in the yard next door, feeding the pigs. “Hey, Katniss,” he says. “Good day hunting?”

“Yep, got some fish and greens for tonight,” I tell him.

“I’ve got a few recipes you can try out on your new family if you want?”

“Sure, that last one with the nuts was nice.” Curious I get closer. “So are you ready?”

He stops feeding the pigs. “I’m nervous,” he confesses.

“Nervous?” Peeta has nothing to be nervous about. He’s good like my sister Prim. Any of the women today would be lucky to have him.

“Well, what if the girl they pick for me doesn’t erm,” his face turned pink. “Well, like me.”

What he is saying is impossible.

“My parents didn’t have the best marriage, you know.”

I nod. I can see why he would be anxious. His parents did not get along; they hated each other but miraculously, had three boys.

I wish I had the words to be able to tell him that he had nothing to worry about. But nothing comes.

"Listen, I'll see you at the reaping. I've got to get ready. Don't want to scare my bride away by smelling like a pig pen."

I shake my head and laugh. When I go inside my mother sets aside her knitting and jumps up from her chair. “There you are,” she says as she helps me remove my hunting gear. She hands my bag to Prim and ushers me into the bathroom. “Get yourself a shower. You need to start getting ready.”

I scrub off the dirt and sweat from the woods and wash my hair. When I’m done I find my favorite dress from my mother’s collection laid out on my bed. A soft orange, with white lace insets near the collar, and a tie at the waist. “Are you sure?” I ask.

“Of course. I’ll fix your hair,” she says.

After I’m dressed, I sit at the vanity as she towel dries my hair and I watch as she braids it up into a crown on top of my head. I hardly recognize myself in the mirror.

“You look beautiful,” says Prim in a hushed voice.

“And nothing like myself,” I say as I hug her. Things are going to be so different after the reaping today.

Prim and mother get dressed. We have a quick lunch and then it’s time to go to the Justice Building to check in.

As we head toward the square, we are joined by others headed that way. Attendance is not mandatory like it was for the Hunger Games reapings, but most people show up anyway.

Mother and Prim hug me goodbye when I go into the Justice Building. After checking in, I’m ushered into the women’s waiting room. I find Madge and join her at the refreshment table.

At precisely 1:45, our escort, Effie Trinket, comes into the room. Miss Trinket was on track to be an escort for the Hunger Games, but she was actually a rebel working inside the system to help bring it down. After the revolution she became our escort for the betrothal reaping. Her bright pink clothes and makeup, while much more flamboyant than what those of us in the district would wear, is nowhere near as garish as the makeup and outfits worn by our last Hunger Games escort.

“Ladies, it’s time to follow me out onto the stage,” Effie says and we all line up to follow her out.

As we go out onto the stage, a cheer begins to rise from the crowd gathered in front of the Justice Building. Effie escorts us to the several rows of seats arranged on the left side of the stage. Madge and I sit next to each other.

Once we are all seated, Effie goes back into the building, but comes out a few minutes later followed by the group of men for the reaping. She escorts them to the seats on the right side of the stage. They are all wearing their best suits. Peeta gives me a wave before he sits in the second row. Gale sits in the front row in his military uniform.

At precisely 2 o’clock, Mayor Undersee steps up to the podium and begins his speech. He talks about the history of Panem: the dark days, the first failed rebellion, the 70 years of the Hunger Games, and then the revolution that freed Panem. He talks about how we have to rebuild Panem, the population lost from the Games and the war. Which brings us to today, the Betrothal Reaping. He then introduces Effie Trinket.

“Welcome, welcome,” Effie says. “It’s such an honor to be here, to help bring together the families who will be the future of our country.” She goes on to explain how the selections are not random. The answers we gave in the surveys taken during school, as well as our DNA were used to determine the matches. “Now, onto the pairings!” she says, and with a flair of her hand pulled out a stack of envelopes.

She plucks the first envelope from the stack and calls out, “Delly Cartwright!”

Delly jumps up from her seat, and quickly walks up to stand next to Effie. Delly is practically vibrating in anticipation. I wish I could be that excited. I just hope I get someone I can stand.

“And your match is,” Effie pauses dramatically, “Thom Davison!”

Thom, one of Gale’s old classmates who didn’t get matched in his previous two reapings, looks around bewildered. He gets a nudge from the person sitting next to him before he gets up and walks up to the podium to formally meet Delly.

Delly and Thom are ushered to the back of the stage where they stand next to each other whispering, with big smiles on their faces. I guess that means they are happy with that match.

“Very good,” says Effie. “Our next match is the mayor’s daughter, Madge Undersee.”

I squeeze Madge’s hand and she stands and gracefully walks up to stand next to Effie Trinket.

“And your match is… the local hero, Gale Hawthorne!” Effie exclaims. A quiet murmur goes through the crowd. That pairing was unexpected. I think everyone expected me to be paired with Gale, but I know it would have never worked out, we’re too alike.

Gale doesn’t look very happy at his selection, but stands and walks up to meet Madge. They stiffly shake hands, then walk back to stand next to Delly and Thom. It’s quite the contrast between the two pairs.

“Wonderful!” Effie says with a little too much enthusiasm. “Next up we have, Katniss Everdeen.”

I stand up slowly, then stiffly walk to stand next to the podium.

“And your partner is… Peeta Mellark,” Effie calls out.

My eyes go wide as I think, Oh, it’s him, my neighbor, my friend. The boy, no man, I correct myself, who saved my life and gave me hope. The man who reminded me that I was not doomed. The man who’s name I wrote on my questionnaire. I feel a smile come across my face as I watch Peeta get up and walk toward me. The smile on his face matches mine.

When he reaches me we stand and stare at each other for a moment before Effie Trinket clears her throat. “Go ahead, shake hands,” she urges. Peeta's large warm hand engulfs mine, and he gives me a reassuring squeeze. “Go ahead,” she tells us, nudging us toward the back of the stage.

When I drop Peeta’s hand, I feel the loss of warmth immediately, but I feel his hand at the small of my back as he escorts me to join the others. “Told ya I’d see you at the reaping,” Peeta whispers in my ear, and I can’t help but laugh. After that, I’m in a bit of a daze and miss most of the remaining matches.

At the conclusion of the ceremony, Effie dismisses the few remaining people who didn’t get paired up and calls the matched pairs to the front of the stage. Delly and Thom lead the way, arm in arm. Madge and Gale walk stiffly side by side. Peeta takes my hand and leads me toward the front of the stage, and the couples behind us follow suit. When we are all lined up, Effie calls out, “District 12, I give you your new couples. Please join us in the reception hall for family introductions.”

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

That’s the end of part 1. This will continue as a work in progress.

A few notes: Dr. Sidney is named after Dr. Sidney Freedman from the final episode of the TV show M*A*S*H. He helped the main character work through his PTSD. Thom Davison is named for Dave Thomas of Wendy’s fame, who seemed like such a sweet man. The character Thom in canon is only mentioned a few times, but he is such a great guy. Gale’s friend who helps carry him back after the reaping, and then after the war Thom comes back and takes on the task of clearing away the debris so the district can rebuild.

#everlark #everlark fanfiction #everlarkbirthdaydrabbles #everlarkbirthdaygifts #fan fic #by norbertsmom

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weekendwarriorblog · 3 years

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SPIDER-MAN NO WAY HOME Has Some Great Moments but Is Also Pretty Uneven

When last we left Tom Holland’s Peter Parker aka Spider-man in Spider-Man: Far from Home, his identity had been revealed to the world by Jake Gyllenhaal’s Mysterio, and The Daily Bugle editor J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons) is having a field day with it. Unfortunately, it’s about to completely screw up Peter’s life and that of those around him.

In fact, Spider-Man: No Way Home picks up exactly where Far from Home leaves off – which is quite an achievement in itself – and we see the repercussions of Mysterio’s dying announcement. Peter is just trying to enjoy his budding romance with Zendaya’s MJ, and the two of them and Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon) are trying to get into M.I.T. Being connected to the menace that is Spider-Man is not helping any of them, so Peter turns to Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange to cast a spell to make the world forget he is Spider-Man. That doesn’t go as planned.

Thus begins a fairly simple plot – right out of the comics in fact – that allows director Jon Watts, making his third venture into the extended MCU, to conclude his bonafide trilogy. This time, he gets to play with a lot of the toys from the two previous incarnations of the character, as directed by Sam Raimi and Mark Webb, which oddly, is why people seem more excited about this movie than other Marvel movies.

It’s so tough to talk about the plot otherwise, but if you’ve seen the trailer, then you generally know that a lot of the villains from earlier “Spider-man” movies have been brought back, except that under Watts’ guidance, all the former Spider-villains are far more menacing than their earlier incarnations, particularly Doctor Octopus and Jamie Foxx’s Electro.

If you enjoyed the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse – still one of the best movies with the character, albeit not Peter Parker – then you’ll enjoy the way No Way Home plays with the much larger Marvel Multiverse and what sorts of possibilities that could produce. Actually, where the movie does go is something you could definitely see happening in the comics where one doesn’t have to worry about things like actor’s contracts, budgets and such.

Still, it does feel like there’s something lacking from the previous two movies. Maybe it’s the fact that Spider-Man is fully back in New York City, whereas Watts’ last two movies allowed Peter to explore other places like Washington, DC and Europe. Maybe it’s just Cumberbatch can be a bit of a dud as Doctor Strange in terms of his delivery. (It’s kind of shocking this is the same actor that’s likely to win an Oscar for his performance in The Power of the Dog.)

I also wish they did more with J.K. Simmons, who literally was just sitting in a studio ranting about Spider-Man, which was cut to throughout the movie. Part of what I liked about Simmons’ J. Jonah in the first three movies was his interaction with Peter and colleagues at The Daily Bugle. That’s definitely one of the aspects of No Way Home that’s lacking, as much as I loved seeing Simmons back as the character. On the other hand, Alfred Molina and Willem Dafoe prove quite definitely there was a good reason why their villains were so well-loved in Sam Raimi’s movie – and it’s just so odd to think that Raimi is directing the actual sequel to this movie i.e next year’s Doctor Strange sequel.

With the last movie, Holland proved himself more than capable of handling himself as a lead, which is why it’s a shame that we’re still getting MCU Team-Up with Doctor Strange playing such a large role in this stage of Peter’s journey. Granted, there’s some great moments in this one between Spider-Man and Strange, some involving the “mirrorverse,” which allows for lots of visual FX-laden set pieces, but it still doesn’t feel quite as original as what Watts did in his previous two films. Those excelled by creating movie versions of some characters in the comics we hadn’t seen yet, and while No Way Home does offer a great deal of penance for past Spider-movie infractions – and also some fun Meta humor – it still feels that this is the closest we’ll ever get to see Spider-Man fighting the Sinister Six in the movies. As much as some of the villain’s powers have been improved with Marvel’s superior VFX work, there just doesn’t seem to be as good action choreography as in the last few movies. (Spider-Man actually seems to throw a few wrestling moves on one of his arch-villains, which seems very out of character.)

Another thing somewhat lacking overall was the music. We just don’t get as much of the fun montage music that helped with the energy of the last two films. Sure, it does start with Talking Heads’ “I Zimbra” (having a comeback between this and David Byrne’s Broadway show) and ends on a great De La Soul song, but in between, we’re mostly dealing with some of Michael Giacchino’s more saccharine and deliberately heart-tugging score. It’s hard to imagine, but this film’s drastic change in tone really does detract from the fun delivered by the previous two films.

While Spider-Man: No Way Home certainly delivers some great “Wow!” moments that fans will appreciate, it’s a far weepier and overwrought affair than the last two movies, which also makes it feel more uneven.

Rating: 7.5/10

#Movies #Reviews #Tom Holland #Spider-Man #Spider-Man: No Way Home #Zendaya #Doctor Strange #Marvel #MCU

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rosarenn · 3 years

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All things are ephemeral

I've been thinking a lot about the illusion of certainty and the way it holds us back from achieving great things.

There's this idea that if something is temporary, transient, that it isn't worth putting any effort into. That something is only worth your time if it endures, if it's permanent. That the investment must be followed by a payoff or why bother.

I am very much talking out of my own experience here, as a white settler/colonizer raised in a more or less middle class family. I know my experience is not universal, and I am still going to talk about "we" and "us" because I want to include myself in this group, and I'm noticing a pattern that I want to talk about. If you have never experienced certainty, or are in a stable position for the first time in your life, this is probably not about you, for example. Take what you need and compost the rest.

I'm reading Nine-Tenths of the Law: Property and Resistance in the United States by Hannah Dobbz, which discusses squatting in the US. One of the themes that comes up over an over again is the idea that because a squat is temporary, because the police could kick you out at any moment, because you don't have ownership or equity or any kind of title on your side and you could lose everything in a moment's notice, that it doesn't make any sense to improve the home you're living in. That the work would be wasted, and who wants to work their ass off and not reap the benefits? Why would you bother?

And this, to me, is so incredibly short-sighted, and represents an internalization of the logic of capitalism. Why would you bother? Because you are fucking living there. You're living there, you're passing your limited time on this planet in this space, and why would you live in a dump if you don't have to, if you don't like living in a dump, if you would feel better, be happier, enjoy your time there just a little bit more than if you didn't clean it up. It's the same reason I've painted countless rental apartments - even though I don't know how long I'll be there, while I'm there I eventually get sick at looking at plain white walls. It's why I'm planning to paint a mural in my rental apartment - it will bring me daily joy for as long as I am here. It's why I decorated my office when I still had an office. Because if this is where I am passing my time, I want it to be a little more pleasant.

We've so internalized the logic of the state and the market that we have this illusion that home-owning provides certainty, that it makes sense to invest in a home you own because it can't be taken away at a moment's notice. But it's a lie. The bank could repossess your home. The sewer could back up. A flood or a wildfire could make your home vanish in a moment. With climate change these events are only going to increase in frequency, as will the unrest and failed states and all the other forms of violent dispossession that that entails. The entire stock market could blow itself to pieces tomorrow, the currency we've all agreed to use could become worthless pieces of paper, anything can happen. I could die tomorrow. I could die today. There is no certainty, any where, ever. Anything I work for could be for nothing - nothing except for what I make of it here and now. I want to live before I die.

I think about the way I've been indoctrinated to delay gratification to the extreme. That's what the promise of capitalism to the middle class is, after all. Work tirelessly for all of your productive years, save your coins prudently, invest them in the stock market for the future and never take out your principle because compound interest is magic and you'd be a fool to forego that sweet, sweet "free" interest income. And then, and only then, you can retire for a few years and live a tiny sliver of your life free from the constant grind of daily waged labour. If someone is not able to make ends meet, I was taught, it's because they are too loose with their spending, they aren't able to delay gratification long enough for the real payout, the poor dears. Scrupulously saving, denying ourselves the momentary joys of right now in order to chase a possible future prosperity, is positioned as a moral good.

Of course this is a lie, and a terrible way to live (even as it is incredibly privileged). I lived this way for years and I'm only now beginning to come to terms with it. There's so much grief there. How much did I miss out on? Think of all the joy, vitality, and the things that make life worth living that I denied myself - and for what? To chase certainty in the future, because I couldn't accept the ephemerality of today.

There's a delicate balance needed here, of course. There's an argument to be made that what we need is more delayed gratification, not less. The constant churning consumption, the endless extraction from the earth and our bodies, putting today's profits ahead of tomorrow's, or even above the survival of our own children - these are features of capitalism and they are destroying us.

But they need to sell us this lie, that if we work hard today we can be happy tomorrow, to keep us working. Because if we truly looked at horrors of this reality, if we truly knew in our bones that everything we have today could be gone tomorrow, that everything in life is fleeting - would you still go to work, day after day after day? I know I sure wouldn't. Even though I don't know what I would do to survive instead. Even though stepping into that unknown is terrifying. Even though I have no answers, I would have to take that leap.

I think, too, about the way I sometimes see people talk about revolution - and I include myself in this group. That until we are ready to make a global revolution, until we are all but guaranteed success, until the moment we reach critical mass, all we can do is wait. Maybe we agitate, maybe we form unions and organizations and try to spread the word, but until success is certain we can't act, not truly. I see this more in communist circles than in anarchist ones, and it was especially present in the critiques of the temporary autonomous zones that popped up in the midst of last summer's uprisings - they would never succeed, they would be quickly dismantled, and thus were doomed to failure and shouldn't even be attempted. As if there was no value in the experiences, however fleeting. As if the way we live our lives is irrelevant. As if a thing bringing you joy is not enough justification in itself.

Even though I skew more towards anarchism, I can still feel this attitude infecting my own thinking. I don't want to try to unionize my workplace because it will fail and I'll get fired and it won't matter, really, anyways. I don't want to talk openly about my politics when I know people don't agree with me, because what's the point when I already know I can't change their minds. What's the point of guerrilla gardening when the city can just come by with a weed whacker and destroy our labour. So on and so on ad nauseum, every endeavour doomed to be temporary and thus, automatically, a failure.

I think of my friend who spent the past two summers building up an incredible garden, who now has to move, suddenly, before the end of the growing season. My first reaction was that it was such a waste, that she had put in so much effort and time and money and now wouldn't even be there to collect the final harvest, that it would be better if she hadn't done the planting, somehow. As if she hasn't taken immense pleasure and pride in her garden for the past two years. As if she hasn't harvested throughout the whole summer. As if the harvest she planted suddenly winks out of existence if the benefits go to someone other than her. As if this somehow invalidates everything that came before. But this line of thinking is horseshit. Someone will still eat those vegetables. If nothing else, the birds and the beasties will love eating what she has grown. She learned so much and will be able to carry that knowledge forward with her. On and on, there was great value in this venture even if she will not be there to reap every last piece of the harvest. And if it wasn't a sudden move, it could have been a drought, or a violent storm, or an infestation, or theft. Or or or. The possibilities are endless, results are never guaranteed, and if we are only working to achieve an ends, we might need to take a good long look at what we're up to.

I wonder if the roots of this ideology stretch all the way back to the agricultural revolution. Ephemerality would have been the day to day lived experience of hunter-gatherers. Here today, gone tomorrow, pick the berries now, while they're ripe and before the birds get them. But agriculture? Prepare the field, plant the seeds, water, tend, wait. wait. wait. then finally harvest. Finally finally your labour has paid off and you can eat. Careful though because there won't be another harvest until next year, so be careful, ration, wait. Would you plant the field if you didn't know if you'd be around to harvest it? That's a tough sell, for sure.

I think of flatwormposting, on instagram, who announced suddenly that they would delete their account today. That they felt like they had accomplished what they wanted to accomplish, that they were complete, and ready to move on. The immediate response, of course, was no, don't go, or if you must go, please don't delete the account. Leave it up, to sit in perpetuity, an archive of your work and legacy. Please, you did good work, please let us keep it. As if deleting their account deletes their work. As if they won't carry it forward with them. As if people who interacted with the account while it was up weren't changed in some small way. As if a thing that is temporary - which is all things - is somehow less important than a permanent thing.

And their response was simply, all things are ephemeral. All things are ephemeral, everything could be gone tomorrow. If they didn't delete this account, instagram could. A hacker could take it. Nothing is certain, everything is a constant renegotiation. Given that, what now?

What now? How do we want to live before we die? What choices might we make if nothing was certain? What risks would we take? How would we live our lives if we knew, deeply, truly, in an embodied way, that another world is possible, as the Nap Bishop constantly reminds us? That the continuation of this one as it is, that the status quo is not and has never been certain? That each day we wake up we make this world again, and we could simply chose to make it differently, to paraphrase David Graeber. If we no longer privileged that which is over that which could be. If we no longer held onto the illusion of certainty and control and permanence.

All things are ephemeral. What now?

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aenramsden · 3 years

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Okay then.

Let’s break this down.

(Spoilers and predictions ahead, obviously.)

So, we know the first five titles in Owl House Season 2 and their short summaries. Amusingly, before seeing these I had already put some of this together from the trailer. Behold!

Episode 1: Separate Tides - “Luz feels guilty about Eda losing her powers, so she sets sail in search of a lucrative bounty to help the Owl House.”

[Image descriptions: Pic 1: Lilith and Eda sitting at school desks outside the Owl House. Pic 2: Luz in an adorable sailor outfit (complete with fish-bandana) firing an ice blast in front of some steam chimneys. Pic 3: Luz in the same outfit in front of the same chimneys casting her plant spell.]

Here we have SAILOR LUZ, in an adorable new outfit, and it seems likely that Luz’s Lessons In Glyph Magic For Cursed Witches will be prompting this quest. But I think there’s a high chance this won’t be the only boat trip we take this season, because...

[Image description: Pic 1: Luz in a different outfit, tied up on another ship with a hemispherical canopy in the background, casting an ice glyph with her feet. Pic 2: An incredibly creepy dragon with a face like two hands clasped in prayer and thumbs and fingers all over its wings and body sitting on what looks like that same canopy atop a balloon envelope, looking down with narrowed eyes.]

Here, we seem to see something that may (oh please oh please oh please) be Luz on a skyship, in snazzy cool new pants that do not match her sailor get-up. The balloon canopy the hand-dragon is perched on looks an awful lot like the one above Luz’s head in the first shot, so this is likely either a monster they encounter in whatever aircraft this is, or the possibly the thing lifting it in the first place. They might also be on a roof, but I’m getting strong balloon vibes from what it’s perched on there, so here’s hoping.

Moving on to Luz’s dangerous deal with Amity’s parents, this isn’t hard to match pictures to.

Episode 2: Escaping Expulsion - “When Amity's parents get Luz, Willow and Gus expelled from Hexside, Luz strikes a dangerous deal with them to get back into school.”

[Image descriptions: Pic 1: A giant Abomination cyborg standing in front of a sign that says “??? Industries” with an Abomination-track logo. Pic 2: A green-haired woman firing a jet of green fire from an Abomination-gun on-stage in front of a backdrop reading “Blight Industries” in the same style as the sign. Pic 3: Luz looking battered in her school uniform, running away across overhead pipework as the Abomination-cyborg chases her with a morningstar-hand.]

So yeah, fascinating stuff here. An Abomination-based company, Blight Industries, Abomination-tech. Looks like the Abomination track is the engineering/STEM field and the Blights own one of the biggest companies in the field, which is probably what Amity is being raised for (so why are the older twins in Illusions, I wonder?). This is probably going to be Luz agreeing to fight the Cy-bomination as a test run or something in order to get back into school. May or may not be an Amity-heavy episode, highly likely to have A++ Blight Parenting, child abuse and trauma either way. Be warned.

Episode 3: Echoes of the Past - “King's delusions of grandeur lead Luz, Lilith and Hooty to a dangerous new island.”

Now, this one is going to be both cool and creepy, because...

[Image descriptions: Pic 1: Hooty in a doll house in front of the Owl House door, which seems to have organs protruding from the circular hole left in his absence. Pic 2: King and Luz flying on Owlbert in front of Lilith and a Hooty-house backpack on her staff. Pic 3: Luz venturing through an old ruin with crescent-headed statues in the walls. Pic 4: One of said crescent-headed statues revealing some rather nasty claws in front of Luz and King, with a backdrop of the same ruins. Pic 5: Lilith, also in the same ruins, showing some fair aptitude with a trio of ice-glyph spells, staff in hand.]

Yeah, this one’s going to have Hooty removed from the Owl House for the episode, which might well net us some lore on what the hell he is. These might be ancient Witch ruins, which would be cool, and I’d say there’s a strong possibility it’ll also be a “Luz coming round to forgiving Lilith for what she did to Eda” subplot, depending on whether or not Luz is holding even more of a grudge over than than Eda is (which I hope she is, because it would be a good character point). Also, can I just say that I adore Lilith’s “low battery icon” t-shirt? Hilarious character point. Much love. We may also see some of her Palisman, which would be nice; it never showed any independence from her staff in S1.

Episode 4: Keeping Up A-fear-ances - “Eda gets an unwelcome visit from a family member who puts strain on everyone in the Owl House.”

[Image descriptions: Pic 1: An old witch with grey hair and a giant eagle Palisman on her staff lands(?) in front of the Owl House. Pic 2: Present Eda fade-transitions into Past Eda in a clear flashback. Pic 3: Young Eda hides behind a door looking scared as a shadow on the wall very similar to her own silhouette shouts angrily on the other side. Pic 4: An older Eda, with a cloak, Owlbert and a streak of grey in her hair, turns around as something lunges toward her in a strange spherical room with a giant keyhole-shaped opening behind her.]

Mom? Mom. That unwelcome visitor in the first picture is almost certainly Eda and Lilith’s mother, which means we are going to be getting family dynamics and possibly flashbacks. This may or may not be a full flashback episode, but I’d say it’s at least likely that this will dig into Eda’s life - we’re certainly going to be getting a flashback of Eda’s life at some point. It looks like things weren’t happy at home - that third picture may be shortly after she was cursed, or possibly a reaction to her mischief-making, and the fourth may (given that keyhole opening) be where she got the portal door. Very excited for this; I love flashback episodes.

Episode 5: Through the Looking Glass Ruins - “Gus tries to impress a group of cool kids from Glandus High, while Luz and Amity journey into the most dangerous section of the library.”

I just wanna say I absolutely called both of these points from the trailer before looking at the episode summaries. Observe!

[Image descriptions: Pic 1: Amity ties her hair back in front of a bookshelf, wearing a lanyard that says “Amity Blight: Staff”. Pic 2: Amity and Luz stand in the Library, flanked by bookshelves, in front of an enormous set of doors. Pic 3: Luz and Amity hold hands against a backdrop of blue and purple. Pic 4: Flying books/roof tiles with wings and eyes flap around amidst the rooftops. Pic 5: Gus fires a fireball through a blue magic circle in a forest, with giant thorny vines in the background. Pic 6: Gus’s fireball EXPLODES, scorching a path through more vines as four kids (one of them Matholomew) cower in the foreground.]

I was pretty sure from the library shots that there was going to be another Lumity-focused episode in the library, with the third picture possibly being books gone wild from the same episode or possibly not. Meanwhile, I connected the last two pictures from the environment and spell, and given all the plants, I’m betting this is either Gus going somewhere horribly dangerous to impress those kids, or him having accidentally upset Willow by trying to be popular and having to get her out of the horrible murderplant wall she’s surrounded himself with. 50/50, really, giant murderplants are very much her thing, but also not uncommon in the Boiling Isles ecosystem. This probably won’t be where we get canon Lumity, but I bet it’s a major step towards it. Looking forward to it!

---

So, that’s the episodes we have concrete info on. What about the ones we don’t? What else might we see this season? I believe canon Lumity is all-but-confirmed - and even if it isn’t I’d say there’s a very, very high chance - but that feels more like a mid-season thing to me. What else?

[Image descriptions: Pic 1: Lilith desperately reaches forward from where she’s fallen to the ground in the Owl House living room with hands that are growing talons and feathers. Pic 2: A monstrous Curse Beast with a white face unlike Eda’s and mottled plumage stalks around one of the Owl House doorways. Pic 3: A close up of this new Curse Beast snarling terrifyingly.]

Yup, looks like we’re getting a “Lilith’s First Transformation” episode. This confirms that she and Eda’s lessened curse will still have them (probably both) transforming sometimes, which is cool - I like the Owl Beast and it leads to interesting plots. Solid odds on this being something of a horror episode, with Curse Beast Lilith chasing them through the Owl House - and Eda no longer has magic to stop her. What’s Lilith reaching out for there in that first picture? Luz and Eda, warning them away? Her staff? The elixir? Possibly some combination of the three? Gonna be traumatic for her, that’s for certain.

[Image descriptions: Pic 1: Camilla stands in front of a fullblown string-and-newspaper-clippings conspiracy wall, looking surprised. Pics 2 & 3: Nine individuals, each wearing a white cloak fastened with a brooch that bears the symbol of one of the nine major Covens (from left to right: Bard, Beast, covered-but-presumably-Healing, Illusions, Potions, Abominations, Oracle, Plants, covered-but-presumably-Construction (same short bald guy that was manning the Construction booth at Covention).]

On the “authority figures” side of things, we have Camila! And the Coven heads! Looks like Luz’s mama is going looking for her daughter - or possibly for whoever’s sending her those creepy letters - and I hope the background there is meaningful and not just filler backdrop, because that key on a hook to her left looks significant and might be the key for the ruined shack Luz entered the Boiling Isles through, while the strange figure holding what seems to be a paddle of some kind in the newspaper clipping to her right looks like it’s at the centre of the string-web. Meanwhile, we’re gonna be seeing the heads of the major covens in some form, probably in a single episode that has all of them cameo in minor roles - except wait a moment. That figure on the far left; the head of the Bard Coven in the hooded cloak with the shiny glasses and frown. Doth my eyes deceive me? Or...

[Image descriptions: Pic 1: a short-haired older witch whose glasses and frown match the Bard Coven head turning to glare at the camera in front of a rock-strewn sandheap(?) Pic 2: The same witch playing a violin in front of a stone pillar, looking unhappy. Pic 3: Eda’s Grudgby scrapbook, including a photo of her, Lilith and a third girl in the Bard track enjoying sweets with Eda.]

... be this the same character? I believe it be! And it looks like an old friend-slash-possible-girlfriend of Eda’s! (Thanks to HeyRebeccaRose on Twitter for pointing that third picture out). That means Head Bard is probably going to get more focus than the other Coven heads (though the Abomination one is very front-and-centre and might also get significant focus from the Amity side if it’s a “Career Day” sort of episode), and we may get even more about Eda’s past.

Speaking of which...

[Image descriptions: Pic 1: A strange conical figure shrouded in robes with a single yellow eye staring out from within them, holding a purple-fire lantern and pointing with elderly, long-fingernailed hands. Pic 2: Another strange cloaked figure, this one with a crescent moon for a face and stars all over their robes.]

Who are these two? Mysterious, and somewhat Oracley in the second case. Could these perhaps be other Wild Witches? We’re likely to see a running subplot of Luz searching for more glyphs and old-style glyph magic this season, so she may well meet some. I don’t get an “antagonist” vibe from either of these, more a “mysterious possible ally” one. Wild Witches they well could be. I wonder what Luz will learn from them?

[Image descriptions: Pic 1: Creepy statues in a possible-graveyard with glowing red eyes that are crying blood. Pic 2: A giant blue dragon with a Shellder for a face that’s wreathed in cyan fire appearing out of nowhere in said creepy possible-graveyard. Pic 3: Hooty rearing up in the woods outside the Owl House, clearly fighting, surrounded by orange-glowing brown masses that could be trees or could be wings and may well be on fire either way. Pic 4: Lilith in a burning forest hitting something with a broken branch.]

What would The Owl House be without action, creepy monsters and horror? Not half as good, that’s what. These creepy evil statues may just be creepy evil statues or they may be petrified wild witches - either way, that’s probably going to be a horror episode, with the Shellder Dragon as a guardian of some sort for the possible-graveyard they’re in. And the second two pictures look alarmingly like an attack on the Owl House - one involving fire. We’re probably going to see Hooty cut loose and fight again, so, uh... RIP to his opponents, I guess. We’re also going to be getting more wide-scale action in the form of...

[Image descriptions: Pics 1-3: The Titan’s Skull, its eyes first glowing yellow, then burning with golden fire, then engulfing the whole frame in a giant explosion. Pic 4: Luz activates a combo-glyph comprised of Fire and Ice together, painted onto some giant boulder or similar. Pic 5: Luz floating apparently-unconscious in a glowing body of water of some kind, with a rope tied around her waist that’s either connected to something deeper down, or has been cut loose from whatever it was anchored to.]

... the Titan itself. Yeah, we’re going to be seeing it acting in some form this season - and I include the pictures of Luz there, because the first shows her increasing skill at glyph magic and the second looks either like a stock “fell from a great height after the rope tying her to another character/the skyship was cut, landed in water, passed out” thing, or a “communing with the Titan while in trance” pose. Or maybe even both! Certainly I think we’re going to be seeing Luz discover that Belos isn’t the only one with a way to talk to the Titan in this season, and if she takes a trip up to the Skull - highly likely - we may see it take a more active role in communicating its own desires and viewpoint, such as they are, and Luz developing her form of magic further as a result.

[Image descriptions: Pic 1: Owl-Masked figure seated on a techno-staff, waving merrily, against a backdrop of what seems to be the Skull. Pic 2: Owl-Mask in front of a set of doors, watching inscrutably as a horned figure (whose shadow is cast across them) undergoes a monstrous transformation. Pic 3: Owl-Mask taunts a caged King. Pic 4: A distressed Kikimora casts a spell. Pic 5: Luz (in her snazzy new patterned pants and cloak) leaps up onto a roof with a red bird (Palisman?) on her shoulder and Owl-Masks’s techno-staff in her hand.]

So yeah, saving the most interesting till last, there’s this asshole. Owl-Mask (and I’m not giving a gender, since we don’t know either way) is probably going to be the new Lilith in this season, either being the primary one in that role of “Belos’s hand”, or sharing the role with Kikimora (who is at minimum going to be in at least one fight). Given the techno-staff like Belos’s and the owl theme of the mask, this person has strong themes of being a foil to Luz; with Belos as their Eda. And indeed, that monstrous figure they’re watching has horns - is that Belos? Does he have a cursed form as well? That would increase the parallels even more.

Of course, it seems Luz is, hilariously, going to steal that techno-staff (like mentor, like student, I suppose), and possibly learn something about this third form of magic-as-technosorcery without glyph or circle that Belos uses. She also has a friend! This might well be someone else’s Palisman that she’s helping escape (since we see in another shot that Belos is still murdering and eating Palismans), but it might also be her own! If so, hopefully she’ll carve it from the giant wisteria tree she and Amity grew in Enchanting Grom Fight, and hopefully it will be gay as hell.

And of course, closing out the season...

[Image descriptions: Pic 1: A gauntleted hand puts a patchwork key into the keyhole of the reassembled Franken-Door-Portal as it lights up. Pic 2: Belos stands in front of the still-incomplete Franken-Door-Portal, with shaggy blonde hair reaching his shoulders and his mask in hand. The shot, even as he puts it on, very carefully hides any sight of his ears from the viewers.]

Yup. Belos’s work to reassemble the Door and the “Day of Unity” is the ticking clock this season (which I suspect it will end on him successfully opening, and then the three 44-minute Season 3 mega-episodes will be the consequences of that). I’m nearly certain he’s human at this point, the framing is just being too coy about hiding his ears for anything else, and his hands and hair are definitely humanoid rather than some kind of eldritch monster. Though I’m sceptical about him being Luz’s father as some have suggested. It’s possible, but I’d rate it as a somewhat flat twist. We are getting more Camila this season though, so who knows?

The “Day of Unity” is what he’s working up to, and I wonder - unity with what? Between all witches? Between worlds? Between him and the Titan? I’m inclined to believe him when he says it’s not as simple as a straightforward invasion of the human world, less because I trust his word (I don’t) and more because, like... what would be the point? What would it gain him?

There are a couple of other shots from the trailer I could ask about - the giant demon shadow on the wall that I called out as probably being another King gag of being cast by a tiny demon when I saw it and was vindicated by the short excerpt from Ep 1 that got released, the shot of Luz clinging to some kind of mechanical-looking arm holding a boulder, a guard using magic (maybe at a magicless Eda), a knightly-looking fellow being attacked by a giant monster, etc - but none of those are shots I can get much from in terms of what to expect, so I’ll close off there. All in all, I’m super eager for this new season and can’t wait to see how much I got right!

See you when the new episodes drop!

#owl house #season 2 spoilers #criticism #in depth critique #fandom

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