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evolutionsvoid · 4 years ago

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As I have mentioned in a previous entry, the Underworld is not fully a place filled with fire and brimstone, but it does contain volcanic areas. Think of it as just another ecosystem that exists within an underground world. Just like how we have swamps, deserts and forests, they have fungal forests, geode canyons and lava rivers! So if you are visiting the Underworld in hopes of seeing some of this molten material, you are going to need a guide to direct you to the regions where it is prevalent! Be sure to bring plenty of heat protection and tough clothing, as these habitats are a bit harsh! Obviously the sheer heat is one factor, but all the rock that surrounds these places are quite sharp! Pretty much the whole habitat is made of igneous rock, and there is plenty of obsidian and other sharp stones to make the floor like razors! Honestly, I did most of my research and observing from a far distance away, practically sitting in the neighboring cavern and peeking through whatever tunnels offered a clear view. I am a bit sad my body cannot handle these places, because what glimpses I got were fascinating! Lava flowing like rivers of water, branching and winding through the rock beds! Great pools of magma the size of lakes, boiling and bubbling! Fire falls pouring over cliffs, creating a blinding spectacle found nowhere else! Quite incredible, but incredibly dangerous! I would be a pile of ash in seconds if I set root in such a place! In fact, I am pretty sure only demons and shades can truly dwell in these regions, save for any magic users who can create a resistance to the extreme heat. When it comes to these toasty places, the denizens of the Underworld have two different types of molten habitats: lava rivers and magma pools. Those who are savvy with the terms "lava" and "magma" are probably pretty heated with me seemingly using the two interchangeably. However, I must object! Though they may seem wrong to us up above, things are little different down below! Surface dwellers designate lava as the stuff that reaches the surface, while the magma remains down below. For a people who live entirely underground, those definitions don't really help. Instead, they differentiate the two through movement, or lack thereof. Lava is the molten stuff that flows, much like a river or stream. Magma sits where it is at and goes nowhere, like a lake or pond. Think of it like lentic and lotic systems for water, but magma is lentic and lava is lotic! I think I am explaining this right... Anyways! Despite the harsh heat and seemingly barren landscape, these molten regions can also be filled with life! If you know a thing or two about fungi, then you know they won't be stopped by mere heat! Many species of fungus grow here, with some looking quite similar to the ones found in volcanic deserts! Where fungus arises, other creatures will follow, using these mushrooms and molds as the foundation of the food web. Many of these species I refer to live upon the shores of these molten bodies, but what about within it? Turns out, there are indeed creatures that swim through the lava and magma, like the magnificent Pteramafic! These creatures are often jokingly called "lava fish" by us folk up above, but it seems this nickname for the Pteramafic may be fitting! Studies and dissections of these creatures have shown a lot of similarities to fish, mainly those who have no jaws. It is believed that these are some ancient fish species that long separated themselves from the water-lovers up above, and have settled in a hotter home. They have fins, bones and scales, but much of the details in their anatomy and make up is quite different. The most obvious difference is that they can swim through lava! Insane! I can't even begin to describe how specialized their bodies must be to pull off such a feat! The scales they have are tougher than metal, and their fins are arranged like claws to help pull them through thicker bits of magma. Their rostrums have greatly elongated to create a horn-like structure, which helps them slice through the boiling lava. Much like their jawless brethren, they possess no mandibles or likewise features. Instead, they are filter feeders, who strain the molten rock for some kind of mineral or nutrients that they can digest. With this diet, they must swim and burrow through the lava and magma to get their fill, which makes them appear as speedsters! It was quite a sight to watch these bizarre fish tear through the fiery streams, their beautiful dorsal fins looking like sails of some boat trapped in purgatory.

With their homes made in the flowing lava and bubbling magma, the Pteramafic are obviously endearing to the people of the Underworld. Those who worship fire and believe it to be the source of their soul and life no doubt find some holiness in those who literally live in flame. The Pteramafic is seen as the messenger of Pyrogohna, being believed to be one of the few creatures who can actually swim down to the realm of the Gods Below. They relay information and knowledge from the upper layers down to the Goddess of Fire, filling her in on what her children up above are doing. It is believed that these fish are how Pyrogohna knows how to pace her dance, to ensure that the Underworld thrives. Thus, it is forbidden to bring harm to these creatures, as striking down a messenger of the Gods Below is surely one of the greatest sins. Though there is no hunting allowed of the Pteramafic, one may find their parts and pieces showing up in temples. I asked about this, after I saw a priest cloaked in the hide of a lava fish. While the people may not bring harm to these fish, they are allowed to harvest those that have already died. However, this collection can only be done by the priests of Pyrogohna, and the carcass must be brought to one of her temples. There it will be honored for its service, and then its body will be stripped for parts. Its hide and armor are fashioned into garb, its fins into banners and its horn into holy staffs and instruments. These items can only be held by honored members of the temple and Fire Dancers, and often they aren't even allowed to leave the premises. I got to see some of these crafts when Leyick took me to one of the worships, and they were gorgeous to behold! However, I was informed not to even go near these things, as they were meant only for the priests and preachers, and certainly not for outsiders. That turned out to be quite easy, as the hectic worship of Pyrogohna didn't really leave a whole lot of time for inspecting and studying. I was too busy getting pulled into dances and desperately trying not die of exhaustion. My adventures and studies have given me a body built with unstoppable endurance and incredible stamina, but it sure didn't seem like it that day! In my defense, it was a whole lot of dancing in a very hot room. You try doing a two hour country dance in a sauna and I am sure you will be just as winded as I! I must note that during my study of the Pteramafic I was musing about the culture significance of the Pteramafic. The fact that they were a holy species with such protection was fascinating to me, but then Vespar mentioned something that got me wondering. She made a comment that suggested that the Pteramafic was inedible for demons, shades and....well, pretty much anything. A creature built to survive molten temperatures and eat slag isn't exactly something that would show up at the dinner table. No doubt the meat would be poisonous to many species, so I had to wonder if this informed anything. Were the Pteramafic seen as holy before or after they found out you couldn't eat them? It sounds absolutely silly to say aloud, but I am curious. Perhaps it is just pure coincidence, or maybe this helped shape their views of the species. Hard to say, and probably isn't my place to really debate this. I would bring it up to my guides, but I think it would just give them more ammo to make fun of me. Chlora Myron Dryad Natural Historian -------------------------------------------------------- Any lava place has got to have lava fish! And yes, I am aware real lava and magma doesn't function like this, but it is a sin practically every fantasy world commits, so I think its fine. Since we are the Underworld, that means we need prehistoric fish, so why not the pteraspis?

#fish #pteraspis #monster #creature #lava #lava fish #art #drawing

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imagine-loki · 4 years ago

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Ruin

TITLE: Ruin

CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT:

AUTHOR: fanfictrashdump

ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine that halfway through a makeout session, Loki stops abruptly. He stares for a long moment before he says anything. “I can’t ruin you like this.” He anxiously stands to put space between you. “I have to leave.”

RATING: T

NOTES/WARNINGS: My to-do list is a mile long , but I saw this and my mind wrote it on its own. Did I never intend them to be romantically involved? Yes. Did I really think of Lily as an oblivious ace for a long time? Also yes. Do I enjoy the current chaotic bi vibes she’s putting out? H e l l y e s. Language. Kissing. Idiots. Speed run, so errors may be plentiful.

SUMMARY: Loki has been feeling feels that he can no longer shove into box and ignore. Lily didn’t know she could possibly have access to that box and would very much like the opportunity to do so. Loki is dramatic AF and is pleasantly surprised he’s been lied to.

His lips trailed an invisible line over her neck, gliding over the expanse of skin until it reached a point where her pulse thrummed steadily. A second later his tongue darted over the heated flesh, tasting the electricity of her skin and what tasted like fresh morning dew. His teeth followed, pinching skin together so he could suck a half-dollar size bruise into it before returning to the honeyed lips he had already kissed swollen. The half-gasped whimper that followed as response would have usually spurred Loki on in his actions. This time, it was the noise that broke him from his reverie.

He pulled back, blinking drunkenly at the flushed face staring back in wide-eyed, pouting surprise. For a second the perfectly sky blue marbles beckoned him back like a siren call, but the Prince caught himself before he managed to drag her back onto his mouth. Fine, silver strands slipped through his fingers, the ends curling delicately around his digits and tickled his palms. He tried not to focus on the fact that the fact that they felt like each follicle was woven of spider’s silk.

A kiss brushed onto the inside of his wrist, startling him out of the silent exploration of her hair. There was a silent question in Lily’s stare, a curiosity as to why he had pulled away when they both had been perfectly content to try to devour each other a moment prior.

All Loki saw was an innocent curiosity reflected back at him and a genuine desire to share affection. It was all very overwhelming. Loki’s hands retreated abruptly, just as the dark cloud settled over his features. “I can’t ruin you like this,” he murmured, his face screwed into a frown that looked more distraught than Lily had ever seen it. He was on his feet a second later, almost as if shocked by lightning. “I have to go.”

“Wha–Loki!” Lily called at the already slamming door, leaving Lily behind, in his quarters, she might add, earnestly confused as to what had just happened. How all of it had happened.

Lily couldn’t remember who had started their short-lived tryst. It just sort of… happened.

The pair had been play-fighting, an increasingly common occurrence that would come about from Lily feeling a little too sure of herself and would decide to test her reflexes and element of surprise. Loki could always see her attacks coming a mile away, if he were honest. The little plant witch had only managed to startle him once, and it was very quickly rectified. He had not let his guard down ever again.

The familiar sensation of being watched crept up his spine and the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. There was no ominous feeling, but rather a knowledge that he was not alone. The smirk that crept up on his face was unintentional, but it also unsuppressed. Loki continued sorting through materials as if there were nothing amiss. The slightest breeze fluttered his hair and the smell of ozone and magic filled his nose as he easily grabbed the arm that had intended to wind around his neck and he flipped the person over his shoulder.

Lily landed, flat on her back in bed with a choked gasp, scrambling quickly out of the vulnerable position, but Loki was far faster than she ever hoped to be. Not to mention that he was so much stronger, his hands bigger, able to pin her down neatly with little effort. Her veins glowed green in tandem with the vines that intended to squeeze Loki still.

He gave a surprised chuckle in response–they never had resorted to magic when they grappled like this. His response to shapeshift was second nature. The giant serpent that slithered eerily in her screeching direction dealt with the vines with little issue. She swallowed her protests to pin him down before the shape of a porcupine had her shuffling off again. More vines, more pliant and dense than the first, bound the creature down before a fox took its place. The ebony of its fur contrasted with the bright green of the vines was surprisingly endearing. Loki noisily gnawed at the vines as he rolled onto his back, hind legs kicking up a storm.

“Aww, I didn’t think you could shift into cute things!” She cooed, scratching him under his chin, prompting him to let out a startled yelp.

While Loki was no stranger to Lily suddenly thrusting affection in his direction in the form of hugs and genuine compliments, they were usually after he was in dire need of it, or vice versa. They never seemed to share this affection when they were both perfectly fine, but rather as comfort. And while the gentle stroking of her fingers up the bridge of his snout was soothing in a quasi hypnotic manner, there was still a bubble of emotion that he was sort of uncomfortable with gurgling at the pit of his stomach.

In the tumult of his emotions, he had shifted back, vines disappearing into the ether, and yet her fingers still trailed that lazy route from his forehead, down the bridge of his nose and back. He couldn’t exactly pinpoint when his head had shifted into her lap or when he decided it was a good idea for his teeth to playfully nip at her fingers. All he knew was that after a moment he her face was down by his and their mouths pressed together. Everything after that had been a blur.

And now she was sitting alone in his room, trying to piece together the last hour and why in every god’s name he had decided to bail on her.

Lily marched out of the dark bedroom and out into the hallways. She was sure Loki would be hiding quite proficiently–there wasn’t a creature alive that could find Loki if he did not want to be found, but she could certainly try. Lily peeked into the lab where Tony and Bruce tinkered away at their science projects.

“Tony, have you seen Loki?” She knew Bruce would rather stay far away from the demigod, so it wasn’t worth asking.

“Have I seen Scary Spice? No, I have not and I count myself lucky.”

“That’s not nice.”

Tony didn’t miss a beat. “Neither is he. What do you need him for?”

“He wasn’t feeling well,” she fibbed, easily. “I wanted to check in on him.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Bruce quipped, flashing an awkward smile and going back to adjust an array of tiny screws. Lily raised an eyebrow and Bruce did a double-take in her direction. “What?”

Lily ignored the question, dropping unceremoniously into one of the stools by Tony’s bench. “Honestly, I think we should kick Loki out,” she said after a long moment.

Tony’s face crumpled into an odd frown. “Not that I don’t fantasize about that every single day, but, why?”

“He’s a bad influence I think.”

“On who? The assassins, the 1940’s super soldiers, the recovering alcoholic with anxiety or the rage monster over there? Or do you mean you? Because I think we both know you’re your own bad influence. We’re all our own worst enemies, here, kiddo.”

“He’s going to ruin me.”

The loud bark of laughter spewing from Tony’s mouth startled Lily. “You lied to me for five years about who you really were and then you failed to mention that you would go all Poison Ivy if you were out on missions for too long. The only being brave enough to go into that room and keep your borderline non-murderous was that dumb, goth, wannabe-boyfriend of yours.” Tony peered down his nose at her. “Loki is a lot of things, mutant ruiner is not one of them.”

“He made out with me.”

“Good. If he’s busy sucking your face off, he can’t keep messing up the paint job on my suit.” He smirked when Lily pouted. “It’s not my fault if you make terrible choices. You have to deal with them yourself. Welcome to adulthood” He sobered slightly, cracking his neck in a nervous fidget. “So, you, er, like him or something?”

Lily turned a brilliant shade of red, suddenly becoming interested in a loose thread on her jumper. “I don’t know. I’m usually kind of oblivious and assume everyone just wants to be my friend, so I never… I didn’t think…”

“Oh, god, you do. Disgusting,” Tony quipped, making retching noises to tease her.

“Shut up, Tony.”

“But, you do! You’re totally–”

“Shut up, Tony!”

Tony frowned, the expression turning to curiosity when Lily’s eyes trailed to stare out of her peripherals towards Bruce’s benchtop. Realization lit up his face as his mouth formed a wide ‘O’ before he chuckled. “You better put everything back the way you found it or Bruce is going to Hulk-smash you into porridge.” Something clattered noisily onto the ground before the sound of footsteps shuffling overcame them. “He’s heading for the balcony,” he whispered just as the steps retreated. “Don’t make sudden moves, he looks terrified.”

“Thanks. Pleasure wreaking havoc with you, Tony,” she announced, hopping to her feet.

Cool air rushed her face as the automatic doors hissed open. The weather was already biting in the late autumn, and Lily was in no way prepared to be outside for any length of time in just her jumper and jeans.

Loki stood at the railing, staring off into the city when she pressed her forehead to his back. His body stiffened, taking several heartbeats before his muscles stopped seizing up. By that time, however, the bone-wracking shivers had prompted some protective instinct within him to turn, shedding the charcoal zip jumper off his shoulders and over hers.

“You’ll catch your death.”

“Do you mean you or the weather? Because you’re rather elusive today”

Loki scoffed. “Lilian–”

“Not my name.”

He drew in a deep breath whose chill rattled noisily in his chest. “How’d you even know?”

Lily rolled her eyes. “Bruce pretends you don’t exist. He wouldn’t express his sympathy for your illness. Rookie mistake. I know how to read people rather well.”

There was a long stretch of silence between them, eyes jousting before he couldn’t bear to hold her gaze any longer. “I’m not what you want.”

Lily chuckled to herself, burying herself deeper into Loki’s coat. “Forgive me, but you have no clue what I want. Mostly because I don’t know what I want. Frankly, I didn’t think making out with a Norse god was one of the options.” She shrugged, leaning into his side and smiling to herself when he instinctually pressed in closer. “I mean, if you don’t want it, that’s a different matter, altogether.”

Loki cut his eyes to the side to stare at her. “You’re ridiculous. You can’t tell me you don’t see–don’t you?”

“See what?”

“Fucking oblivious.”

“It’s not like I actively seek anyone. I can’t exactly be myself with anyone else.” She smirked, nudging him with her hip. “I don’t want to be–” A yelp cut her short, swallowed into Loki’s throat before it ever got the chance to break through the air. His long digits bunched up either side of his coat to pull her closer. She sighed, molding herself into the curve of his body. Just as she was tilted her head to deepen their kiss, he pulled back.

“No. I–I have to go.”

Once more alone, wrapped in Loki’s coat, she remained confused. Lily let out a groan, letting the cold autumn air cool her down before marching back inside. She hoped he shifted into someone easily recognizable. And that this sudden attack of guilty conscience was short-lived.

It wasn’t.

A month-long game of cat and mouse, of watching him disguise himself as every single occupant of that godforsaken tower to escape temptation and they still had not managed to sit down for a conversation. Lily decided that if that was the game he wanted to play, that she was entirely fine with it. She prepared breakfast for the team, as usual, setting a bouquet of fresh flowers in the center with a smile. Eventually, everyone began to stream in for the morning meal and Lily sat at her usual spot at the far end of the table to watch everyone come in, half-asleep and ravenous.

Blue eyes trailed Loki shuffling in behind Natasha, who sat to her right while he sat to Lily’s left. Not missing a beat, Lily smiled at the assassin before tugging at Natasha by the strings of her hoodie. Their mouths met easily, the Widow’s lips quirking at the corners and prompting the sound of clattering utensils across the table.

Nat pecked Lily gently before allowing her to move back and grinned. She licked her lips almost lewdly and followed it with a sip of coffee. “Good morning to you, too, hon.” Impish energy glittered in her eyes. “You know what? I don’t think I got enough of you. Come here–”

A thud echoed in the room and the table clattered. Loki was half out of his seat and had buried his dagger into the mahogany surface of the dining table. Tony protested quietly, almost half-heartedly.

“If you so much as breathe on her, again, I will skin you alive, Agent Romanoff. I swear it,” Loki hissed. “When I said I didn’t want to ruin you, I wasn’t suggesting you go off and find someone who would!” Loki snapped back at Lily, his expression halfway between annoyed and hurt.

“What else am I supposed to do?” She declared loudly, grumbling unintelligibly for a long moment. “I have been driving myself dizzy chasing these stupid circles you’ve led me on. Do you want me or not?”

“In what Universe do I not want you? It cannot be more obvious that I love you and you make me feel special, you impossible woman! Even fucking Stark noticed! But I don’t deal well with emotions if you haven’t caught on, yet, and I don’t want to lead you on when I’m not sure how to feel anything!”

“I don’t know how to feel, either, you ass. Which is why I’d rather we figure it out together than have to play Guess Who?: Shapeshifter Edition with everyone in the Tower!”

Loki growled, scrubbing a hand down his face in frustration. “I’ve just told you I love you and you said you didn’t know how you felt!”

Lily stabbed a sausage rather aggressively onto her fork, bending two of the tines in the process. “Of course I love you, you moron. Who in their goddamn right mind would voluntarily put up with your moody bullshit, otherwise?”

He scoffed. “Fine, I guess we’re in love, then!”

“Whoop-de-fucking-do!”

Loki opened his mouth to snap another witty retort back, when the conversation caught up to him. His eyebrows rose to meet his hairline as wide, green eyes cut instantly at Lily. “We’re in love,” he mumbled. “We’re in love?” Surprise melted into hopeful softness.

“Wait, were you two not together?” A chorus of Clint and Barton followed the interruption, but it was enough to cut through the magic of the moment.

Loki fidgeted on his feet as he paced in front of the bed. Lily looked bemused as her eyes moved like the swing of a pendulum to follow him back and forth.

“I’m not good enough for you.”

“Not for you to decide,” she countered, easily.

“I’ve killed.”

“So have I. You’ve been there.”

He stopped to face her. “I tried to take over the planet.”

“Mind control.”

“I’m a monster.”

“I’m legitimately an eldritch horror hybrid.”

Loki kneeled, resting his forehead on her lap with a sigh. “But we–you–I don’t think I could bare losing you after a paltry few decades,” he reluctantly mumbled.

Lily giggled, which Loki thought odd, but weirder things had happened between them. “I mean, fair. I’m not sure how long I’ll live, but I am also a hundred and six.”

His head snapped up so quickly he felt the muscles contract painfully. “What?”

“The hair is not a fashion statement,” she whispered, feeling the weight of his stare and the million questions it contained with it. “There’s a reason I haven’t really dated. I’ve never met anyone I can ostensibly spend my whole life with.” She laughed nervously, rustling her hair. “Say something.”

“You lied to me?” He seemed impressed rather than angry.

“No. You’ve always just assumed. And, I let you,” she admitted, her cheeks coloring faintly. His hands had curled around hers, dwarfing them in his comfortable warmth. “If you had let me explain a month ago, I would have told you that I’m really not some innocent maiden you can ruin.”

The little anxious notch that she was so familiar with formed between his brows. “By the Norns, we have a lot to talk about then, flower.” Lily sighed good-naturedly at the statement. Before she had managed to protest, Loki craned his neck enough to slot lips to hers. “Later, of course.”

#Loki #Lover #Others #Submitted one shot #submission #fanfictrashdump #ruin

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fancifulwhump · 5 years ago

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people tend to stab Jaskier a lot in whump fics but I’ve only seen ONCE instance of near-drowning and it was INCREDIBLY GOOD, so if you’re still taking prompt requests,,,

Jaskier tends to avoid large bodies of water if he can help it. Nothing against them, really — only he’s heard one too many stories from Geralt’s reluctant lips, of Aeschnas and Brukolaks and Drowners, pulling oblivious travels down into the deep. It would be enough to turn anyone off a nice afternoon swim, really. For life — if you’re lucky enough to get away from the water’s edge breathing. As someone who quite enjoys living, and has little desire to meet an unromantic end in some boggy mire, smothered by mud, Jaskier’s learned to keep his distance whenever he finds himself passing by a lake or river. Though he always gives Geralt’s monsters a wide berth, the water beasts get the widest berth at all.

Whatever lurks beneath the deep, it’s not his business. Jaskier’s got no desire to bother them — so, by the gods, they shouldn’t want to bother him.

Of course, the gods always have a nasty sense of humor.

“I’ve heard the stories, of course,” he declares, while keeping an easy pace at Geralt’s side. Before most kills, Geralt is usually quieter than the grave, focused on going over what he knows and forming a plan on how to kill it. Jaskier’s not the ‘thinking ahead’ sort, really. He’s also really good at filling silences before they can become uncomfortable. Really, if Geralt didn’t have him around, he might forget what words sound like entirely. “They call it plenty of things — the nokk, the nix, the nik-nak — okay, maybe not that last one, but you get the point. Beautiful women who live in lakes and streams, and pop out naked to lure unwary travelers to a brutal demise!” He claps his hands together, a wide grin spreading across his face. “Ooh, my friend, is was one I can't miss!”

“There’s still time,” Geralt replies, not even bothering to glance over his shoulder. “Start running back to the inn. Maybe you can make it by nightfall.”

“Very funny.” If Geralt meant it, he’d do more than tell Jaskier to go home. He wouldn’t have let him come in the first place. They’ve been there before, and Jaskier’s learned to understand when a monster’s simply too dangerous, and when Geralt’s just indifferent to company.

All he warns before setting out on this job, Jaskier trailing at his heels, was, “don’t make friends.”

“Oh, no no.” Jaskier throws back his head and chuckled, keeping quick pace on foot with Roach’s trotting. “I appreciate the female body in all shapes and sizes, but a tail is a bit much, even for me. All parts where they belong, if you please.”

To Geralt’s credit, he doesn't buy that for a second. “Tell that to the Dullahan you bedded last month.”

Jaskier gasps. “That woman —-“ he sputters for a moment, scrambling for some way to salvage his pride, but comes up blank. “Was possessed of great personal charm! It was all going great until her head fell off, I’ll have you know.”

“And you started screaming.”

“Reasonable.”

“And I burst in to find you naked, in bed, holding a woman’s head in your hands.”

“Hardly the worst thing you’ve accidentally seen, let’s be honest.”

“And that,” says Geralt, picking up the pace on Roach, “is exactly why you should have stayed home.”

Winding up jogging half the way to the nokk’s lake has Jaskier out of breath and aching, though not at all deterred. By the time Geralt settles down to make cake for the night, they can hear the trickle of the stream not far off in the distance. If Jaskier’s puny little human ears can make it out, Geralt’s Witcher senses must be on high alert. Any move the Nokk makes, they’ll know. Why, this job should be wrapped up before dinner time!

“Is it…” he ventures tentatively, after watching Geralt sit and stare, stone-still, into the distance for a solid five minutes, “awake?”

“No.” Geralt finally sighs, kicking a bit of dirt into the makeshift fire pit Jaskier has been creating. “And it won’t wake up unless it sees a reason to. No flame tonight.”

“Thank god it’s summer,” Jaskier mutters, filling his hard work back up again. “Don’t exactly fancy freezing to death because you —“

“Shit.”

He doesn’t even pause. “Don’t really need to know that, Geralt, but thank you for the wonderful input —“

“No. Shit.” Geralt catches his attention by rattling something metal. When Jaskier looks up, he finds the other man holding his water canteen aloft, upside down and empty. “Out.”

Jaskier’s mind flashes back to his own canteen, tied to his waist… but he’d been operating under the assumption that Geralt had plenty of water, see, and it was a very long walk. He’s got a few mouthfuls left, maybe.

They blink at each other, silently debating what to do for a long moment. Well, Geralt’s debating what to do. To Jaskier, they’ve got exactly one option, and it seems obvious.

“Well,” he declares, planting both hands on his hips, “seems like we have to go make friends.”

At once, that peculiar look comes over Geralt’s face, the one that acknowledges he and Jaskier aren’t the same species anymore, but questions whether they ever started out that way to begin with. “No,” he declares at once, settling down on the nearest log. The poor thing grunts under his weight. Jaskier’s frown deepens. “We’ll have to do without.”

Snorting, Jaskier tosses his head in the direction of the running water. “Excuse me, were we not just walking for half the day? I had a chance to replenish myself with ale at the last inn, but you didn’t even get to do that. We both need water, Geralt. It’s really not a topic for debate.”

Geralt’s eyes narrow into slits. A lesser man might be intimidated into shrinking into a cowardly turtle shell, but Jaskier’s seen him do the exact same thing with flies bothering them on their way. At this point, Geralt could start doing vaguely-threatening tricks with a very big knife and Jaskier wouldn’t be phased.

At any rate, though, Geralt shows no signs of giving in. His glare doesn’t falter… and after a moment, Jaskier decides it isn’t worth it to press. He sighs, slumping down on the adjacent log, and tugs the water satchel from his waist. Leaning over, he holds it out to Geralt; when the Witcher blinks at him, he gives it a tempting shake. Finally, Geralt gives in.

“There.” Jaskier feels much more reassured, seeing the last of their water slip down Geralt’s throat. After all, it wouldn’t do for the experienced monster hunter to collapse in the middle of a job. Jaskier could hold his own against a monster as far as running went, and could probably scream it’s ears off, but any actual fighting would see him monster mash rather quickly.

Which is why it’s probably a bad idea to sneak off with their canteens the very first moment Geralt is distracted. But, well, Jaskier’s never been known for his instincts of self-preservation.

They need water, is the thing, and as far as Jaskier can see it they’ve got two options: try to pilfer some out from under the nokk’s nose, or lure it out with a nice juicy human, let Geralt kill it, then help themselves to however much water they feel inclined to. Either way. Everyone wins.

The stream is deceptively peaceful, almost eerie in the bright moonlight. Water glimmers wherever it ripples over stones and gullies along the ground; it isn’t very wide, enough for Jaskier to conceivably cross in a running leap, but he can’t gouge deepness from here. It could be up to his thighs or well over his head; there woodland streams are deceptive, and he’s accidentally blundered into both.

Most importantly, it’s quiet. Very quiet.

Exhaling softly in the midnight air, Jaskier creeps to the water’s edge. The only sound is that of running water, from the falls somewhere in the distance. The only crunch of leaves come from beneath his own feet. When he leans over, gazing into the clear waters, the only blurry silhouette is his own. Hastily, Jaskier uncaps his canteen, and bends to begin filling it with water. It flows without hesitation, filling in a matter of moments; the water is a bit too cool against his bare skin, biting like a predator wherever it touches, but he braces himself and ignores it. By the time he fumbles the cap back onto his canteen, his hands are shaking. As though he’s just stuck his hands in snow, his fingers ache, chilled to the bone. When he huffs out a breath, it’s visible in front of him.

But wasn’t it just… summer?

Jaskier looks up, and his heart freezes, too.

The woman makes no obvious effort to be beautiful. One glance at her, and it’s clear she doesn’t need to try. She moves with a natural grace, inimitable to anyone who doesn’t possess it naturally; dark hair flows down her shoulders and back like a waterfall, clinging to bare skin until it reaches her hips. Bare, there’s the thing — she is utterly bare. Jaskier’s blinded by her breasts first, a perfect pair; in the glow of moonlight, they’re practically translucent. Then his gaze ventures down, along the hourglass slenderness of her waist, to — to — oh, by the gods. He’s always tried to live a good life, and this sight alone is his reward. This is the sort of body ballads were invented for.

“Please,” he heard himself say, though he’s certainly not conscious of it. “I didn’t mean to intrude… forgive me.”

Her head bows, and he is forgiven. Whatever chill jaskier may have been feeling seconds ago is thoroughly forgotten. What was it Geralt said back at the camp? Make friends? Surely this is just what he meant… oh, and if there’s ever been a soul he’s more interested in befriending…

“I’ve had so many dreams like this,” he hears himself say, transfixed by her hand as it extends out to him. “Usually they end… marvelously, on a great dramatic crescendo… then sometimes they end with my friend leaping out of the water with a sword to ruin the party, but I try to forget those. More… nightmares, really…”

Geralt. Where is Geralt? Won’t be be worried? Jaskier had something to do here, he’s sure… but the canteens have fallen from his hands and gone forgotten in an instant. With a dull ripple of realization, it dawns on him that he can no longer feel the shore under his feet. There’s water lapping round his calves; he takes a step closer, and it reaches his thighs. Something about this isn’t right, but he can’t put his finger on it… not when the lady in front of him is still reaching out, consuming all his thoughts. But Geralt… halfheartedly, Jaskier tries to break away, the thought of his friend left alone at the campsite troubling him. It’s like pulling his thoughts from molasses. He hesitates, starts to churn, feels a shiver penetrate the blanket of warmth suddenly surrounding him… then the lady’s arms are on his shoulders, and he can’t feel anything at all.

Her eyes are pitch black, pupilless, leaking something dark down her face like tears. She flutters lush lashes at him, and a smile spreads across Jaskier’s face, goofy and unmoored. What was he doing? Can’t remember, not important. This… this is a poem in itself, a living sonnet, and he has fallen headlong into it. Whatever he’s done to earn this… oh, her hands are there, and her lips are there, and he can’t think of anything more, nothing else…

Come with me, he hears her say.

Jaskier is already dissolving in her arms. If he wanted to, he couldn’t refuse.

And gods help him, he doesn’t.

Her lips find his; they are cold as ice. His eyes can suddenly no longer stay open. The water closes over his head, and he knows nothing at all.

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

It’s Geralt’s fault, really, for looking away.

But ultimately there’s no sense blaming himself for the idiot bard doing what he does best; trouble is drawn to Jaskier like a magnet, and whether he’s warned once or one hundred times, he’ll find it. As soon as Geralt realized the conspicuous absence of irritating voice at his side, he took off through the woods, tracking Jaskier’s scent… but ultimately, he couldn’t make it in time.

If he owes Jaskier anything tonight, it’s making his job a little easier. They found the Nokk.

Specifically: the Nokk found Jaskier.

He reaches the water’s edge just as Jaskier’s lips are captures by the monster’s determined own. Restraining a shout requires every ounce of self-control in his body — if the Nokk has a chance to get away, she’ll vanish into the depths of the water, taking Jaskier down with her. As it is, Geralt only has the chance to register a handful of things: the way Jaskier goes limp in the Nokk’s grip, it’s monstrous clawed hands scraping possessively along his shoulders, and the blue tinge to Jaskier’s skin a second before the water closes over his head.

Geralt doesn’t think. He leaps.

The Nokk doesn’t see him coming, so she doesn’t have a chance to react. She springs out of the water, mouth opening in a feral shriek. It’s fangs are needle-sharp, black and dripping. Geralt brings the silver blade down towards its head, but the Nokk is too quick. She twists in the water, lashing out. What were slender legs a moment ago has transformed into a tail, sleek and powerful, that almost succeeds in taking Geralt’s legs out from under him.

He stumbles back instead, and rips a much larger blade from its sheathe against his chest. This one, he doesn’t give the monster a chance to register. He swings, catching it in the chest; the Nokk wails. Caught off guard, she’s easy to attack, again and again. The more swings catch her, the more fight goes out of her, and the more her visage melts away. By the time Geralt’s blue comes down for the last time, it is in a shriveled, serpentine creature, scales covering the entirety of its withered body.

The Nokk’s head comes off, and it quickly cast to the shore. Geralt’s eyes take in the edge of the water; his pulse quickens. There’s nothing there. There’s no one.

He wheels back to the stream, where a cloud of black blood is quickly spanning out to tinge the water black and depthless. It’s deeper than it looks, but not so deep. Jaskier’s somewhere, somewhere below the surface, and if he hasn’t emerged —

Geralt plunges forward, scrambling in the anger for anything to grasp onto. His hand closes around something solid, but it’s a roof that refuses to leave the ground. Somehow, he gets his arms around a piece of driftwood; this is hurled aside with a grunt of frustration. “Jaskier!” he hollers, though far past the point of expecting an answer. “Jaskier!”

There’s nothing there, until there is. In the depths of the frigid water, Geralt closes around something solid — and finally, finally, Geralt can breathe.

Which is considerably more than Jaskier is doing. As the limp body is hauled out of the water, Jaskier is completely motionless. He doesn’t struggle, even as Geralt hauls him over his shoulder and trudges towards shore. Already, a hand is rubbing along Jaskier’s back instinctively, trying to coax any water he’s swallowed up. Even when Geralt drops him down to solid ground, however, Jaskier doesn’t so much as cough.

His chest is still. His dark hair looks black, papered to his dripping face. His lips, his cheeks, his everything, have a blue tongue which sets Geralt’s sluggish pulse alight.

“Jaskier,” he hisses, pushing once, then twice, on his chest. Nothing. “Jaskier, wake up!”

This isn’t something he’s ever had to deal with before. Most victims of water monsters are far beyond the point of saving; Geralt’s tried once or twice, but has never been able to manage. He’s carried those bodies back to town along with the monster’s head. The very thought of doing that with Jaskier sends his pulse into a frenzy, bike racing up his throat. Now, he moves on instinct alone. Jaskier’s head is tilted back, mouth open. Geralt pushes down on his chest twice more, then leans down to breathe air against his mouth. Jaskier’s lips feel like ice beneath his own.

“Breathe, damn it!” Out of sheer frustration, he gives Jaskier a desperate shake.

“Come on —“ Another compression. Another breath. Jaskier doesn’t react. “Come on —“

He will not be able to stand it if he has to cradle Jaskier’s corpse against his chest the entire way back to town. This isn’t Jaskier’s home; these are not his people. Geralt doesn’t even know where his home is, where his body belongs once his spirit has flown. If Jaskier’s never even mentioned that, then how is he possibly supposed to put him to rest? And the idiot bard was getting water, of all things — not for himself, because he’s not that stupid, but for Geralt —

It’s his fault. It’s all Geralt’s bloody fault.

“You’re not allowed to do this!” he snarls, slamming down on Jaskier’s chest once more. “Not like this! Wake up, Jaskier!”

Up to that point, Geralt never believed it was possible to yell someone back to life. As usual, Jaskier is eager to prove him wrong.

He sputters, once. It’s sudden, convulsive, and so quick Geralt feels certain he imagined it — but suddenly black water is bubbling up Jaskier’s throat, he’s gurgling on it, and it’s all Geralt can do to flip him on his side. Immediately, a torrent of water bursts past Jaskier’s lips. He heaves, trembling, and braces himself upright on weakened elbows. As soon as the water has left him, the coughing starts. He sputters as if he’s going to die.

Geralt waits, a hand massaging firmly between Jaskier’s heaving shoulder blades. Whether this helps or not is anyone’s guess. Jaskier gags again, eyes fluttering. Almost like a muscle spasm, one arm soars up to grip Geralt’s arm, desperate. Taking the hint, Geralt wraps both arms around his shoulders, heaving him into an upright position. Free of having to support himself, tremors begin to wrack Jaskier’s entire body, like a leaf in a storm.

“Oh—“ he hiccups, rubbing a hand over his mouth. His entire face scrunches up like he’s in pain. “Ohhh… that was… not at all what I was hoping for…”

“You idiot,” is all Geralt says. With the bard braces heavily against his chest, he finds himself unconsciously rocking him; if Jaskier notices, he doesn’t say anything, and though Geralt is startled at himself, stopping now would be even more conspicuous.

Jaskier’s chest heaves again. He tries to catch the gag in his throat, but can’t manage; a hand flies up to his mouth. Geralt has just enough time to flip him before he’s vomiting again, a torrent of more water, plus the meagre breakfast they managed that day. His chest convulses violently. If Geralt wasn’t holding him, he surely wouldn’t be able to hold himself up.

When he finally cuts off, he slumps back heavily against Geralt’s chest. For the moment, all self-respect is abandoned. All he can do is breathe heavily, head lolling back against Geralt’s shoulder.

“I’m really sorry about this,” he manages after a moment. A hand comes up to his chest, and he grimaced visibly; Geralt has the decency to feel guilty about that.

“Don’t,” is all he says, brushing some remnants of water from the corner of Jaskier’s mouth with his own sleeve. The other man is still soaking wet, trembling, and it’s urgent they get him back to camp as soon as possible. Now that there’s no monster to alert, they’re clearly going to need a fire. “Can you walk?”

“Gimme a minute,” Jaskier manages. He takes more than one to gather his strength, slowly testing his weight when it isn’t braced against Geralt. After a moment — with a bit of support — he finds his feet again. Jaskier looks practically sturdy.

“Yeah,” he huffs out hoarsely. “I think… I’m alright.”

“Let’s get you back to camp before you freeze to death,” Geralt grunts.

He starts to take a step forward, but Jaskier doesn’t move. Jolting, Geralt rounds back on his companion in annoyance, but Jaskier is looking over his shoulder.

“The water, Geralt,” is all he says. “Get the water.”

It takes Geralt a moment to understand; then he sees the two canteens, abandoned at the stream’s edge, and gets it. With a heavy sigh, he leaves Jaskier by the water’s edge and scoops up both canteens; when he turns back, Jaskier is miraculously still standing.

“Next time,” he mutters, slinging an arm around Jaskier’s shoulders once more, “tell me before tracking down a water monster by yourself.”

Jaskier laughs hoarsely, his entire body convulsing with it. “Oh-ho, my friend,” he mutters, “next time, save yourself the trouble of inviting me.”

“When did I invite you?” Geralt asks, and Jaskier’s elbow digs lightly into his side.

They are quiet the rest of the way back.

#whump #hurt/comfort #jaskier #the witcher #sickfic hope this is as good as you were hoping for!!#Anonymous

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degenerate-perturbation · 4 years ago

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Chapters: 16/29 Fandom: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Female Amell/Female Surana Characters: Female Amell, Female Surana, Anders, Velanna, Nathaniel Howe, Oghren (Dragon Age), Justice (Dragon Age), Sigrun (Dragon Age), Varric Tethras, Isabela (Dragon Age), Male Hawke (Dragon Age) Additional Tags: Established Relationship, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Self-Harm, Blood Magic, Prostitution Series: Part 2 of void and light, blood and spirit Summary: Amell and Surana are out of the Circle, and are now free to build a life together. But when the prison doors fly open, what do you have in common with the one shackled next to you, save for the chains that bound you both?

Hawke let go of her, embarrassed, and stepped aside to let her in. “I’m sorry it’s a bit of a mess. I haven’t been taking visitors.”

Yvanne looked around the enormous, beautiful home, with hardly a single decorative pillow out of place. “Yeah, real pigsty,” she said, and immediately cringed. Why would she say that? Did she want her single remaining family member to hate her? Assuming he really was family.

While she boggled at it all, she dripped rainwater steadily onto the carpet. Hawke noticed before she did. “Oh, no, you’re soaked—of course you are, it’s pouring. I’m sorry I kept you waiting—Orana, could you get Yvanne a towel?”

Right away the elf girl disappeared, reappearing moments later with the fluffiest towel Yvanne had ever seen. It felt strange against her skin. What was it made of?

“It’s fine,” she said, haltingly. “It’s not even cold out.”

“Yes, but still. Do you like tea? Let’s have some tea. Orana, could you put on some tea?” Orana left for the kitchen to put on the tea. Yvanne didn’t particularly like tea, but she wasn’t about to mention that. With Orana gone it was just her and Hawke in the foyer, her patting her hair dry, him nervously twisting his hands.

“Er, you should probably have a change of clothes, too,” he said distractedly. “You look about my m-mother’s size—afraid I don’t have anything else. Orana, could you show Yvanne—? Blast, she can’t hear me, she’s in the kitchen making tea. I’m—”

“It’s fine,” Yvanne said before Hawke could apologize to her again. “I’ll dry fast by the fire.”

“Oh. Yes,” said Hawke, visibly relieved. “Yes, I should build it up. Tea by the fire...and we can talk…”

A fire was burning in the fireplace, low but alive. Hawke puttered around in its vicinity, nudging it with a poker, and it leapt implausibly higher, though he’d barely touched it. Yvanne came over to stand by it, feeling the cold leech out of her bones, but not feeling quite comfortable enough to sit. The silence between them stretched more and more intolerably awkward, until Orana finally brought out a tea tray.

“Please,” Hawke said as she set it down, “do sit.”

Yvanne sat, even though she was still damp, and probably ruining the upholstery. Neither of them touched the tea.

“So, ah,” Hawke cleared his throat, but seemed to have misplaced the rest of his sentence. He scratched his beard. It looked a few weeks old at most, coming in patchy and uneven. He looked like a man who shaved under normal circumstances. “I’m sorry, not that you’re not welcome, but—why are you here?”

And she’d so hoped he wouldn’t have asked that right away. She bit her lip. “I don’t know.”

He blinked at her.

“Look, I get that this is weird,” she said, all in one breath. “I don’t even know what I want from you. If anything. Certainly you don’t owe me anything. But I haven’t laid eyes on any of my family since I was nine years old. And I heard the name Lord Amell spoken in Highever. And I wanted to know about my family, and you were the only one I could find, and...here I am.”

He looked at her with sudden and impossible compassion. “I see,” he said. “And ah, you said you were Revka’s daughter?”

“I don’t really remember her. I hardly remember Kirkwall at all, even though I was born here. It’s certainly, uh…”

“You get used to it,” Hawke said, trying for an encouraging smile. “It’s not so bad once you acclimate to the smell.”

“How long does that take?”

“I don’t know. I’ll let you know when it happens to me.” He gave a weak laugh, but it came out almost creaky, as though laughter hurt him.

He picked up a tea mug and held it in his lap, not drinking it. “If you’re Revka’s daughter, then...pardon me, but I thought all of Revka Amell’s children were found to be mages and taken to Circles.”

All? thought Yvanne. She knew about her eldest sister who she’d never known...but all? All five of them? When she had first been taken to Kinloch, Yvanne had spent long hours fuming at the thought of her father and sisters getting along perfectly fine without her. Better without her, even. How she had hated them, for daring to be happy without her, for daring to continue to live their lives together when she was suffering alone.

But that hadn’t been what had happened.

Hawke was still waiting for her answer. She had to force the truth out of herself water from a stone. "I grew up in Kinloch Hold.”

“Kinloch,” Hawke repeated. “So you’re from Ferelden.” He gave her a watery smile. “I was born in Ferelden, you know. My family lived in Lothering until the Blight. We came here as refugees along with everyone else. That was a time, hah. I had to work as a smuggler. That first year my brother and mother and I lived all in one room in my uncle’s house, can you imagine? We were so desperate to get out of there, but now I miss it more than anything. Odd, isn’t it?” He laughed uncomfortably.

She stiffened. The Blight brought back uncomfortable memories for her of a different sort. But Hawke was lost in his own memory and didn’t seem to notice. “I’ve been to Lothering,” she said absently instead.

A clock was ticking somewhere.

“Look, if,” Hawke cleared his throat, “if you need a place to stay, my home is open to you.”

He cut her off before she could object. “I won’t ask you how you left Kinloch or how you got here, I can fill in those blanks myself. Tell me as much or as little as you want, I won’t press, or judge. I know how it is out there for a mage.” She must have looked doubtful because he continued. “I promise you’ll be safe here. My partner is active in the Mage Underground, he helps apostates all the time. Look—I’m a mage myself.” To demonstrate he conjured a bright sphere of spirit energy and held it in his open hand before letting it dissipate.

This did catch her off guard. “I heard a rumor that you were an apostate,” she admitted. “But I heard a lot of rumors about you.”

He laughed a little more easily this time. “Varric does like to encourage them. Probably for the best that there are so many that nobody believes the true ones.”

“Right. Well, you definitely weren’t at Kinloch, so what Circle were you in?”

He blinked. “Oh. Oh, I was never in a Circle. My father trained me, and my sister."

That stunned her. She imagined what it might have been like, to be trained in magic by her mage father. Would she still have hated her magic then? Perhaps not. Perhaps her whole life could have been different. Perhaps she would have been the one living in this estate, not this man who didn’t even use the name Amell.

“But I really mean it,” Hawke went on. He stood and approached, hovering, threatening to embrace her. “We’re family, so you have a home here. For as long as you need. There’s plenty of room here, of course—too much, if you ask me. You can sleep in my mother’s old room, I never go in there anyway. Orana does all the cooking, so no need to worry about that. Do you mind dogs? Flower is around here somewhere. My partner doesn’t care for him, claims he’s a cat person, but I know better. You’ll love him—my partner, not my dog, hah—he’s a mage, too. He runs a clinic in Darktown, that’s why he’s not here right now. He’s working late again. Really, he’s wonderful, I’m sure you’d get along…”

Yvanne was getting entirely sick of Hawke mentioning his partner. She hated the way he said it—‘my partner,’ in that syrupy way that made it obvious that the relationship was new. Every time he did it his eyes went soft and gooey. She’d been like that once, with Loriel. Her mood, already ambivalent, took a decided turn for the sour.

“Sorry,” Yvanne cut him off, ��could you explain to me exactly how we’re related?”

Hawke brightened. “Yes! There’s a family tree around here somewhere. I’ll show you. Come, come!” He went to one of the gleaming, polished chests and rummaged in it, withdrawing a handful of heavy parchment scrolls. He picked out one particularly wide one and laid it out carefully on a nearby desk, weighing down the corners with four beautifully polished stones. Eagerly he waved her over.

The family tree was beautifully illustrated with tiny portraits of each Amell, richly dressed and ornamented. Beside each portrait was a block of close-written text in such an elaborate hand that she could not make it out, along with lines and lines of annotations along the edges. The tree stretched so far up that surely the majority of the people in the document were now long dead

Hawke plucked a little golden hand-shaped pointer from somewhere and used it to indicate the parchment, avoiding touching it with his hands. “Here you are—and your sisters of course—daughters of Revka and Kiran Amell. I never realized that he must have been Rivaini...I don’t know much about him, I’m afraid. Perhaps you could tell me and I could add to this document, ah? That might be a pleasant pastime.” He produced a cracked smile and moved on.

Yvanne had never thought of her father as being Rivaini. He looked like her and her sisters, and not much like other Fereldans, but she had always taken that as a sign of their nobility, like Queen Asha Campana of Antiva. It had never occurred to her that her father was from anywhere, that he hadn’t simply sprung fully formed from the aether as her father.

“Revka was the daughter of Fausten Amell, and sister to the unlucky Damion—accused of smuggling, and bankrupting his poor father in the process of futile attempts to prove him innocent. Fausten was the son of Lord Thaddeus Amell, our great-grandfather. So I suppose that makes us third cousins! Thaddeus had another son, Lord Aristide, my mother’s father…”

Hawke carried on in this fashion well past Yvanne’s capacity to listen to him. Instead she stared at the little oval portraits of her estranged noble clan. How strange it was to think of these ink-and-paper people as her family, as people who might have loved her, had her life gone a different way.

“...but they’re gone, now, too.” Hawke fell silent, pained.

Yvanne was still looking at the portrait of her mother. Had she really looked like that, pale-haired and long-chinned? The woman whose scraps remained in Yvanne’s memory smelled of rosewater and clean linen—but her face was a cipher. She did not recognize the woman in the portrait. Strange how Hawke had known right away who she was, when Yvanne herself didn’t.

“Do you know where my mother is?” she said, not knowing that she intended to say the words until they left her lips.

Hawke gave her a pitying look, and she felt a hot flash of hatred for him, just for that. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I don’t. Nobody does. There were rumors, I’m to understand, that she went to be her husband’s family. I suppose that would be in Rivain—Dairsmuid, probably. But that’s just rumor. All I know is that she took the loss of her eldest quite hard—but you know that, of course,” he added quickly.

Yvanne imagined her already-mostly-imaginary mother weeping in the streets, begging on her knees for salvation, all out of love for her eldest child. Revka had never cried for Yvanne like that. Revka had left Yvanne on purpose.

“You really don’t know anything, then?” she said despondently. “What about my sisters?”

Hawke shook his head. “I’m sorry. Only that none of them would be the Gallows, being Amells. They try to keep families separated, you see…but you know that.”

She did know it. And now she had lost a hope that she hadn’t known she even had. Some part of her had been imagining that Lord Amell—Hawke—would somehow be her gateway to the rest of her family. That perhaps her mother would be here, against all odds, waiting for her. That this could be her home.

But it wasn’t. All there was was this man, surrounded by riches, living a life she would have killed for, totally unaware of everything he had taken from her.

So she simply stood there with her fists clenched, holding back ridiculous, childish tears.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help,” Hawke said, worrying his fingers. “You have to understand, I’m an exile here myself. I only know anything at all about the Amells from my mother. And she was always closer with Carver, before he...well.” He sighed. “I wish more than anything that I could ask her about our family now.”

Yvanne had nothing to say to that.

“Maybe we can find something later,” Hawke said, with an almost manic optimism. He grabbed her hand. “We have some leads. I have contacts I could write to. The Amells aren’t what they were, but I still have some pull. And money always loosens lips. My partner has contacts as well, he might know something. We can ask him when he gets back from the clinic! I know it seems very hard right now—I remember how hard it was for me.”

How hard it had been for him! How hard for him, here in his golden palace, swathed in silk, waited upon by cringing elven servants, him who had never so much as seen the inside of a Circle!

“But we’ll figure it out!” He smiled at her. He still hadn’t let go of her hand. “Here, let me show you to mother’s room—it’ll be your room now. You look about the same size as she w-was, you could certainly fit into her things. And anything that doesn’t fit Orana will alter. Better they get used by somebody, rather than eaten away by moths. What a depressing thought. Let’s not think it. Come, come!”

“Wait—” He tugged her up the grand staircase to the second floor of the estate. The red carpet was decadently soft on the soles of her thin shoes.

“It’s a bit dusty in here, I’m afraid—I haven’t gone in there for weeks, and it felt wrong to ask Orana to clean an unused room, but that’s all different now. Are you hungry? You must be—I’ll have Orana send something up. Of course feel free to arrange the furniture however you like, I’ll help you.”

Yvanne looked around the darkened room as Hawke flew from corner to corner, lighting the gas lamps to reveal more and more of it. It was finer than any quarters she had ever known, even as the mistress of Vigil’s Keep, which had after all been a military posting, and not a nobleman’s estate. “Hold on—”

“—and tomorrow I’ll show you around Kirkwall properly. It can be a little overwhelming, even for an experienced Kirkwaller. My friend Merrill still gets lost all the time. It’d be charming if it didn’t make me so worried. To be honest, it would be good for me to get out of the estate. M-my mother died recently, and I lost my brother and sister not long before that, and it’s been, well—well, it’s been difficult. You know, if it weren’t for my partner, I don’t know what would have happened to me these past couple weeks, haha!” The manic edge was back in his voice.

Then he clasped her by the shoulders and beamed again. “So I want you to know, I’m really glad you’re here. Really. I have some wonderful friends, a wonderful partner, but nothing can replace family. We’re each all the other has left”

This sent her over the edge. All he had left, indeed! Him with his silk robe and servant and wonderful friends and his oh so wonderful partner. She struggled out of the embrace, skittering to the corner by the door like a feral dog. “Actually, ” she said, breathing a little heavily, “I don’t plan to stay.”

He drooped like a puppet with its strings cut. “Don’t plan to stay? What do you mean? Of course you have to stay—”

“I don’t have to do a damned thing,” she said, feeling for the doorknob behind her, finding it, and escaping.

“Wait—” He nearly tripped over the finely woven Orlesian rug as he chased after her. “I don’t understand. Have I offended you somehow? Please tell me!”

“You haven’t offended me,” she lied. “I’ve simply achieved my aim in coming here. I’ve found out everything you had to tell me about my family. We have no further business together.”

“That’s not true! We haven’t exhausted our leads! I know you don’t know me—but you could!” he pled.

She was struck by how pathetic he was. This was the legendary Lord Amell, who consorted with apostates and pirates and smugglers. Near as she could tell all the stories she had heard were true, and what did all that add up to? A sad unshaven man in a stained robe, begging a woman he didn’t even know to come live in his house.

“And I could help you find the others! I’ve been known to achieve remarkable things, you think those rumors about me are totally baseless? Please, you don’t have to stay here if you’re uncomfortable , but at least let me have Varric put you up at the Hanged Man.”

“Stay in Kirkwall?” Yvanne made a disgusted face.

“It’s not so bad, once you get used to it.”

“I could hardly get used to Templars roving every street like weevils—”

“You don’t have to worry about that!” he insisted. “I’m a very powerful man in this city. The guard, the Viscount, even the Knight-Commander, they all look away if I ask them to. Nothing would happen to you while you lived here. I could protect you. You’d be safer here than practically anywhere else in Thedas.”

“And have nothing but your personal power between me and the Gallows? With that wretched place barely a stone’s throw away?” She clenched her fists. She could hardly believe the nerve of this man. “You have no idea the kind of terror of that place I grew up with. Kinloch was bad enough, but as long as the Gallows existed, they always had something worse to threaten us with.”

“I do, though—my father—my partner—”

“Your father!” she said, furious. “Your partner! Their lives, not yours. You have no idea what it was like. You have no idea what I have been through! We have nothing in common. Nothing at all.”

“But we’re family,” he bleated. How pathetic, she thought, to want things. How disgusting. “We’re all the family either of us has left.”

“We aren’t family,” she said coldly. “We happen to share an ancestor, four generations back. A thimbleful of blood. What could that possibly mean for the two of us now?"

“I still want you to stay,” he said, helpless.

“You don’t know me,” she said furiously. She didn’t understand why her throat was so tight, or why her vision was blurring. “You couldn’t possibly want that from me. You have no right to want that from me.”

Of course he didn’t know her. Who knew her? Loriel had—no, not even Loriel. Loriel had been with her all her life, through childhood and adolescence and adulthood, and at the end of it neither of them had known the other at all.

She paused with her hand on the doorknob. Then she forced it open, cutting her last tie.

It had started to rain harder while she’d been talking to Hawke, and it was fully the dead of night now. She was now right where she’d started before she’d come here—penniless, alone, with only a vague idea where to go next.

Well, not exactly penniless. She’d had to foresight to swipe one of Hawke’s candlesticks, and she was pretty sure the gilding on it had to be worth something

#dragon age #femslash #amell #surana #dragon age 2 #please read my wizard lesbian fanfiction

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royalreef · 5 years ago

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(( ENJOY A MASSIVE POST ABOUT MERFOLK TAXONOMY, because biology has long been my BIGGEST special interest ( yes I’m including paleontology under this, I know it’s more considered an earth science and part of geology, shush ).

Merfolk as a whole are a part of an ancient group of animals that diverged from basal amniotes around the same time amniotes themselves came about, 312 mya (million years ago). I say about, because I haven’t fully decided where exactly to put them in this case, whether they’re fully counted as amniotes or no, and I still need to do a large amount of research into this.

I classify this split as happening there, as opposed to somewhere else, because merfolk are obviously tetrapods, and have some adaptations for full land living that amniotes have, though the merfolk themselves are fully adapted for a watery niche. Their eggs certainly were carried internally for a long time, so there’s probably some convergent evolution to how mammalian live birth happened, hence all the more reason to put them under amniotes, but they’re definitely not synapsids and thus definitely not mammals.

These early ancestors also retained their gills and ability to breathe water. They do have lungs too, and conceptually they filled a very fluid niche, where they had to be able to rapidly switch from aquatic life to terrestrial life, with most being oppurtunists who used this wide variability to be able to get a wider variety of food and resources that other animals couldn’t.

I will say these early ancestors mostly resembled newts/salamanders or small lizards, and somewhere along the line they independently evolved scales, both for providing armor and for retaining water when they were on land, along with all the other reasons to evolve scales.

( Ideally, I’d say they never evolved hair, but considering that I can’t fully redesign Miranda for this blog for fear of inability to use my icons and basically making her fully an OC, she has to keep the hair on her head. Her eyebrows are a maybe, since I joke aplenty about them just being markings or her drawing them on. Landfolk get weird when they see her without any eyebrows, so she has to appear to have them! )

They also generally retained the same amount of digits as other tetrapods, so that’s how Miranda has five fingers still, though merfolk lost one of the toes on their feet, bringing that total down to four.

And yes, all of this does mean that merfolk have plenty of ancestors in deep time that probably fossilized and could be found by even human scientists, but they’re probably thought of in this world as an offshoot of tetrapods that has no extant relatives, with what fossils remain being sparse or incomplete, or even caught in nomen dubium hell. Certainly they weren’t featured in this world’s Jurassic Park, that’s for sure, and if they are represented it’d be in something like ARK.

This also does mean that there are plenty of ancestors that fell into more unique or odd niches, with stranger body plans or something much more different from the rest. 312 mya is a long time, after all! Lots of time for there to be more experimental species, though they didn’t pan out in the long run.

So, with merfolk themselves, I generally have the idea of them as coming from a branch of that tree that hung around the ocean’s edge, sticking closer to the shoreline than the mer alive today, though they were oddly social for a tiny, lizard-like species, probably already communicating through small squeaks and chirps. Lizardy kinda sounds. They spend a good amount of their time on rocky shores and cliffs, so they’re good at climbing over and up them. Likely already had something akin to their fins on the sides of their face, used for communication and display, along with pushing additional water over their gills, or maybe even the fins being used in addition to the gills to extract extra oxygen from the water is basal to merfolk, but only the abyssals really retained most of that feature.

As token as it sounds, I think the K/T extinction event was probably what pushed them to evolve into the branch that became merfolk. The death of much larger marine creatures opened up the ability to go more fully ocean-bound, and to take over a role akin to marine reptiles in the past and the marine mammals that were also evolving at that time, but with the addition of having gills to not have to surface for oxygen.

Their evolution from that point probably was a bit like primates - lots of trying out different shapes and styles, more of that basal form than true merfolk, except their roles being out competeted or otherwise led to extinction, until you get the “true” merfolk - which would occur with a focus on social behavior and language, along with tool use, as was the bonus to being a tetrapod that went back into the ocean but never lost their hands.

This is where we get to the merfolk family tree. I’d say probably the first mer was mid-size, generally had all of the traits of the merfolk you see today, very general, but very adaptive.

The abyssal (royal) merfolk were probably the first to branch off. Their tails resemble mosasaurs’ and early icthyosaurs’ a lot, having a much larger lower lobe of their tail where the bone is, and the upper lobe, being all fleshy, isn’t too pronounced. They went down into the deep sea, branching off early from the rest of the merfolk, and thus were generally super isolated from the rest, which you can see today in how the Merkingdom itself generally is conducted.

There are plenty of other species of merfolk, however, and the abyssals (and Miranda) are not representative of the entire group. There’s a lot of different takes on the same body plan, with different niches and different adaptations and different types of behavior associated with each. They’re all super vocal and adapted to be able to hear well, so that’s also basal to the group, but that also means when they all started forming their own societies and cultures and general settlements, it’s even weirder than how humans do it.

Effectively, merfolk are a lot like the homonid family tree, and for that reason they also generally take after the concept of the “braided stream” more than just the tree of life. It’s also why I can feel more confident saying they’re seperate species and not subspecies, despite being able to reproduce and make viable offspring - and anyway species as a whole are fake and weird. There’s a lot of hybridization going on, with some populations getting some genes from others that benefit them and get genetic and physical variation. In more nomadic merfolk, there’s a lot of their genes spread around in other species and a lot of genetic variation in them, because they roam and run into different species - meanwhile, the abyssals are much more genetically restricted, since the abyss is a generally isolated place that isn’t easy to access unless you’re made for it.

I’m pretty bad at clarifying when I’m talking about abyssal mer vs all merfolk, since there’s a huge amount of difference between the two. Abyssals are probably the merfolk with the most bioluminenscence - while some species probably do have a little or even a lot, it’s not as much of a need as with the abyssals. The abyssals also might have gone through deep-sea gigantism? They’re pretty big by merfolk standards. And yes, that is taking into account how tiny Miranda herself is - since she’s kind of an exception to the rule, being that she didn’t really grow right and her bones didn’t get the chance to form correctly, leaving her as a rather unhealthy-looking runt of an abyssal. I’m generally thinking mer grow throughout their entire lives, as something that’s also basal to the group, they just slow down after a point - so if you got proper care for Miranda’s health issues she might be able to fix some of that problems, and mer medicine is waaaaay more sophisticated and generally ahead than current human medicine, so if it was treated she might be able to come up to a respectable height and avoid some of the isssues of that kind of deformity that’ll occur later in life.

I do believe as a whole, merfolk are rather large. Some are more sleek than others, but especially with abyssal mer, they put on fat and muscle really easily. They’re a lot like large crocodiles in that respect. Again, Miranda is an exception to this rule, as she’s really not healthy - but overall, merfolk are DENSE. Abyssals tend to have tough armor, dense bones, put on muscle and fat easily, and generally should be MUCH heavier than a human of the same size. Not to mention their tails, as unless a mer is in the really late stages of starvation, they keep most of the muscle on their tails. It’s how they swim and get around, so losing that muscle is basically a death sentence to merfolk.

There’s also variation in diet, dentition, and what they can digest. I will say all merfolk generally can handle meat - some of them are more adapted towards eating coral or plant matter or filter-feeding, but generally they can all digest and handle it and won’t turn it down if they do get it. The abyssals do tend towards being carnivores and most of their diet should be meat, but they can handle other biological material as well. They’re equal parts predator and scavenger - their jaw strength is a lot like a hyena’s or a T. rex’s (at least, in the theory of them being scavengers and not predators). It’s VERY useful in getting into any hard material the ocean can throw at them, cracking not only bone but shell and scale and cartilage and shell too, and to extract as much nutrition from any food they find. I can say their jaw strength is probably the strongest among the merfolk for that reason.

This also means, while abyssal mer have their triangular, serrated teeth like a great white shark’s - that tooth shape is more unique to them and their specific niche than to merfolk as a whole, who have a LOT more variation. I imagine at least one has teeth that come together a bit like a parrotfish’s beak, and one has teeth more similar to a crabeater seal’s, useful for seiving through water.

Abyssal mer are also the ones that really retained the ability to extract extra oxygen from the water through their facial fins. That’s why Miranda’s fins are so fluffy and large - they’re basically pseudo-gills, and that’s why they’re so sensitive. Other mer do also have some of that ability, but it’s to a lesser degree than abyssal merfolk, and most are probably less sensitive because of that. That being said, the shape of the fins is kept, as is the “fluff” closer to the cheek. That fluff actually has a purpose beyond oxygen extraction - they’re little outgrowths of flesh and skin that act a lot like an owl’s facial feathers. They’re effectively radar dishes, helping pick up on sounds in the water and assists their hearing and communication. The fins are also universally used for communication and display - they move with a merfolk’s emotions for a reason! They’re really good silent communication when hunting.

I also think mer do universally have the pads on their hands and feet. Honestly, they aren’t really anaogous to a cat’s or dog’s paws. They’re far closer to what you’d find on an Osprey’s foot, and provide a lot of the same uses - namely being used as a grip in holding onto slippery prey, but also in movement, when mer cling to sheer rocks or climb over coral or what have you. Normally they’re very rough and thick - but because Miranda is a royal, she files hers down, and so they’re much softer and thinner. They’re all pretty squishy though.

I’d add more but I think that’s MOSTLY it. Can you tell I have a special interest?

#Most secret royal advisor || OOC #Given by Divine Right || Headcanons #You built up a world of magic ; Because your real life is tragic || Self #(( spell check gave up on me like a third of the way through so...#(( im very very sorry #(( rip mobile users #long post

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365daysoftododeku · 6 years ago

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2nd June 2019

Author: CrzA

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(Soon-to-be) Pros At Cons

A hero nerd as big as Izuku couldn’t call himself as such without having attended at least one hero con, and throughout the years, whenever money allowed it, he had been to plenty. He loved it all: the panels, the merch, the guests, the cosplayers. Every part of it was just as exciting the tenth time as it had been the first, even when most of the stalls were the same every year, if some faces were so often present, they became familiar.

Izuku had tried to cosplay his favourite hero once, his mother had helped him fix up his All Might onesie into a more proper suit that earned him some excited compliments and a few requests for photos. Though Izuku isn’t really one for being the centre of attention—seeing as most of the time when eyes were on him, it was for all the wrong reasons, it seemed—, it had been a nice change of pace from his middle school interactions. At the cons, he was among his people, so to speak.

People of all shapes and sizes, from all sorts of backgrounds, came to these events to share in their love and admirations of Japan’s heroes. And the people who noticed him were just as enthusiastic about them as he was. It was nice, to not be looked at as the quirkless kid who aspired to be more than he was meant to. No one knew him, who he was, whether or not he had a quirk or what it might be. No one really cared either. They knew he loved heroes and that was that, enough to strike up a friendly conversation before they parted ways after only a few minutes.

When he started at U.A., things changed slightly though. After not only the villain attacks, but the sports festival as well, Izuku grew a little more recognisable than he had originally expected. Now that his face had been imprinted in hero aficionados’ minds as the kid who broke nearly all the bones in his arm in the fight with Endeavor’s son, people started approaching him even as he was just dressed as casually as any other day of the year. The con had happened not that long after the event was broadcast for all of Japan to see, so he reasoned that it was only natural the fight was still fresh in people’s minds. They were bound to forget about him once the hype had died down, and the next convention he managed to go to, he would go just as unnoticed as he had done in the past.

Or at least, that was what Izuku thought would happen.

To be fair, he hadn’t expected to get himself a boyfriend between then and now. He most certainly didn’t expect it to be the very boy with whom he had fought to make him noticeable in the first place. And the thing about Todoroki is that his hair doesn’t really qualify as something one could consider discreet. After the hero nerds found out who he was, who his father was, it was unlikely that they would forget.

In retrospect, Izuku should have expected this particular outcome. But he didn’t. And he invited Todoroki to come to the convention with him because he thought it could be fun, a bit of a date but not really. He just wanted to enjoy something he loves with someone he cares about. It seemed harmless.

But then people saw Todoroki, they recognised his hair, his face, his standing in the hero world. They saw Izuku beside him, their fingers laced together as they absentmindedly browsed an artist’s table. First came the shoulder taps, then the questions of whether they really were Endeavor’s son and the guy he had thrown out of bounds in a fit of blazing glory, and finally, the long, awkwardly silent stares as the cogs turned in these people’s brains. Some legitimately shrieked in uncontained excitement, and Izuku was torn between feeling amused at these stranger’s enthusiasm for their relationship, guilty for the way it made Todoroki shift uncomfortably and anxious about the possible consequences it could have.

Luckily, everyone was relatively nice and only wanted some pictures with some of U.A.’s most promising. It made Izuku feel like some sort of celebrity, which was a little strange. Todoroki kept mostly to himself though, almost cowering behind Izuku as he made all the small talk for the both of them. He was clearly thankful when people didn’t pry at his standoffish behaviour, though Izuku had done his best to steer their attention off of him to begin with.

Despite most simply approaching them about their iconic fight, however, they had a few stray encounters that were… interesting, to put it nicely.

It was definitely weird finding out that some people shipped them together ever since the U.A. sports festival. According to them, it was something about some obvious romantic tension—a couple of people may have called it by a slightly different name—that made Izuku blush so hard he was worryingly close to passing out from the lack of blood reaching his brain. Apparently, there was even a forum in some dark corner of the internet dedicated to speculating whether there was something between them in the little glimpses they caught of their lives when they were thrust into the media for one reason or another.

Izuku didn’t know whether to be impressed or extremely put off by the fact that these complete strangers had pieced together their mutual feelings long before they had managed to do it themselves.

Regardless, it was an overall taxing experience. Between trying to enjoy what the con had to offer and running around the venue to reach all the things that caught their eye as soon as possible, and handling their supposed fans and/or supporters (shippers?) while doing his best to keep them from poking at Todoroki’s life… Izuku got to the end of the day utterly exhausted. Conventions always took a lot out of him, no doubt about it, but this… this was a whole other level of tiresome.

If Izuku had a say in it, the next time they went together would go without a hitch. No people nearly cornering them with questions or requests that sometimes were borderline invasion of privacy. He knew that they meant well, but it was still clearly uncomfortable for Todoroki to be in these situations, so Izuku would like to find a way to avoid them entirely in order for him to actually have a good time.

“You want me to go with you to another one of these?” Todoroki asked, and Izuku realised with a start he had mumbled his musings out loud.

“Ah, sorry, you probably don’t want to go to something like this again, huh? After how this one went, I don’t really blame you, since it’s not even your kind of thing…”

Izuku smiled bashfully, though a hint of sadness settled in his chest at the thought of not getting to enjoy his boyfriend’s company at the next convention without people bothering them about something or other every few minutes. With a small shake of his head, Todoroki pulled Izuku into his arms, letting himself fall back onto one of the empty couches on the common room with him on top of his chest and stomach. Another rush of blood pooled in Izuku’s cheeks and he buried his face in Todoroki’s shirt in a futile attempt to hide it.

“I just didn’t think you’d want the attention I draw to us. I like spending time with you, especially if it’s something you like doing…”

A little whine of embarrassment sounded muffled against Todoroki’s chest and Izuku bit on his lower lip for a moment before lifting his chin and propping himself up on his elbows to look into his boyfriend’s tired, mismatched eyes.

“We could wear disguises… Maybe even couple’s cosplay… If you wanted, of course…”

Todoroki hummed softly, letting his head fall back against the armrest and his lids droop closed. “That would be nice… People wouldn’t really recognise us…”

Izuku tried to agree but was cut off by a large yawn, covering his mouth just in time to stop the little yelp from escaping his lips entirely when Todoroki wrapped his arms around his waist and pulled him closer to his chest. His breaths quickly settled on an even tempo and Izuku shifted to a more comfortable position, closing his eyes too and listening closely to Todoroki’s calm heartbeat. The exhaustion from the convention finally took over him as well, and by the time Iida woke them up to go up to their dorms before curfew, they had spent hours napping it away in each other’s arms. Even if the day didn’t go quite as he expected, Izuku couldn’t really complain about how it ended.

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Would you like your work to be featured in the 365 Days of TodoDeku Project? Apply here! (≧∇≦)/

#Story #crzangel #TodoDeku #365DaysofTodoDeku #TodoDeku365 #365 Days of TodoDeku #tddk #Shouto Todoroki #Todoroki Shouto #Izuku Midoriya #Midoriya Izuku #Boku no Hero Academia #BNHA #My Hero Academia #MHA #Todoroki x Midoriya #Shouto x Izuku #TodoIzu

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nneefa · 5 years ago

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fic: linda

fandom: xiaolin showdown

characters: raimundo/kimiko, clay, omi, the tohomikos

summary: if raimundo hadn't known kimiko better, he'd think she was fishing for a compliment, given that omi and clay had just sung her praises. as it was, he did know her better, especially if the glint in her blue eyes was anything to go by, and he suddenly felt very uncomfortable.

notes: ooh, boy. let's see where to start: 1) "linda" means "beautiful" in portuguese; 2) the park our teen kiddos are at is "Shinjuku Gyoen." i highly recommend y'all google it. it's very beautiful; 3) kimiko's yukata is based off this image; 4) this is like headcanons gone wild, but most importantly, credit goes to @sunbirddtellsstories for "Tomoko." i can only hope i portrayed her the way she was intended to be. 5) dedicated to the anon that asked me for raikim. i hope to the heavens that i portrayed the characters accurately.

[[MORE]]

❀

Raimundo barely had time to brace himself as the chilly spring air cut past the defenses of his layered clothing, right down to his bones.

He fought the urge to shiver as he sunk lower and lower into his coat, pulling his skull cap further over his ears before burrowing his hands into the safety of his coat pockets. He watched Clay shake like a pair of maracas on the ground, Omi pressed close to his side, like a squirrel clinging to a tree, in an effort to provide him warmth. He almost wanted to join them, anything to get rid of the goosebumps settling on his skin, but there was hardly any room on the blanket they sat on, with Clay's massive body taking up more than half the space, and somebody had to keep an eye out for Mr. Tohomiko for when he came back. The elderly man had insisted on getting them all hot drinks while they waited for the girls to show.

If only Kimiko were here; she could heat things up in an instant.

Speaking of Kimiko… leave it to her to take a long time, especially when this whole thing was her idea. Okay, maybe it wasn't her idea exactly - more like her sister's - but still. Japan was ridiculously cold. Where he's from, anything below sweltering was foreign, and even if he did spend the better part of three years training in the mountains of China, that didn't mean he was used to it.

Raimundo breathed a deep breath, watching it fade in the frigid air, and turned his gaze away from his friends to survey the park they were in.

Tokyo really was a beautiful city, especially in the spring. The only things he'd seen since their last visit were skyscrapers, shops, and shrines, and while those were nice and all, they paled in comparison to the city's blooming cherry blossom trees.

Sakura, Mr. Tohomiko had called them, stretched as far as the eye could see, the pink and white flowers breathtakingly beautiful against the bright blue sky, like something straight from a painting. There were hundreds, maybe even thousands, of people, families and couples and loners alike, scattered across the large expanse of the park with blankets and baskets and cameras, some seated in the sun having picnics, some relaxed beneath the shade of the trees on the petal-laden ground.

There were women, children, and even some men dressed in elaborately designed kimono for the occasion, though the bulk of them wore regular, civilian clothes, and he wondered briefly if Kimiko would be wearing hers. (He quickly banished the thought). Raimundo was pretty sure he saw at least three ponds on their walk across the park, two different sections of landscape with their own sets of flora and fauna, a pavilion located across a bridge, and from their spot beneath a Sakura tree he could even see a tower in the distance.

If it weren't for the fact that he was waiting for the others, he definitely would've gone exploring by now. What did Kimiko call this festival again? Hanabi? Hanami? Hababi? Whatever! It was nothing like he'd ever seen, and he was thankful the Tohomikos were kind enough to let them join their family outing.

Though I'd truly be thankful if they hurried up, he thought to himself as another gust of wind blew through the park. Any longer out here and I'll be a human popsicle.

Just as he was about to ask Clay and Omi to make room for him, he saw Mr. Tohomiko slip through a gap in the crowd, carrying two cup holders full of piping hot drinks. Raimundo immediately moved after him, his hands already on the drinks before the man could react. "Here, let me help you with that."

Toshiro blinked at him, surprised, but then he smiled before relinquinshing his hold on the items. "You have my gratitude, Pedrosa-san. By the way, I hope I didn't take too long. Japan's spring can be a little unforgiving at times."

"Nah, it's okay," Raimundo replied with a smile of his own, following him to where Clay and Omi were seated. "Though I'm not sure if I can say the same for our pal Clay."

"Forgive me, Bailey-san," Toshiro apologized with a slight bow of his head and a sympathetic smile once they'd reached them. "I wasn't expecting to encounter so many Goo Zombie fans in one place."

"That's quite alright, sir," said Clay, nodding his head in thanks when he handed him a drink from the tray. "If anythin', I should be the one apologizin'. Had I known you'd be swarmed, I'd gone with you."

"With your station, you must get attacked a lot," Omi said, making a grab for one of the teas. "I can't imagine what it's like to be a famous person in such a big city."

"You certainly like to try," Raimundo teased, grinning when the young boy shot him a glare over the rim of his cup.

The Dragon of Water blew into his tea before taking a sip, sparing Toshiro an earnest look. Genuinely, he added, "If you'd like, Mr. Tohomiko, we can accompany you until we return to the temple. We'll make sure no harm befalls Kimiko's papa."

Toshiro let out a hearty laugh, his smile as kind and warm as ever. "What kind young men you are! But there's no need to worry over an old man like me. Kimiko and Tomoko help me plenty already."

"Now that you mention them," Clay trailed off, curling his knees to his chest with a swig of his coffee, "what d'ya reckon's keepin' 'em?"

Toshiro fished into his coat pocket for his cell phone in order to check the time, his brows knitted in confusion. "I'm not sure," he answered. "It has been quite some time since we were scheduled to meet. Perhaps, I should call them."

"Knowing Kimiko, she probably lost track of time doing her nails again, right, Omi?" Raimundo joked, elbowing him with a wink after placing the trays on the blanket. "It wouldn't be the first time, now would it?"

"Nor the last," the younger monk agreed, recalling the time where their friend forgot the Ancient Scroll of the Shen Gong Wu over her panda faces.

"What d'ya think it is this time?" Raimundo asked with a grin, pilfering a cup of hot cocoa from the tray before opting to lean against the tree. "Giraffes or smiley faces?"

Omi shook his head. "She did smiley faces last week." Then he smiled and said, "My butt's on teddy bears."

"Uh, that's 'bet's,' bro," Raimundo corrected him with a raised brow. "I think she'll settle for something simple this time, like french tip."

"My wager's on flowers," Clay added, gesturing to the pink petals on the ground with his cup. "It'd certainly fit the theme of this here's festival."

As the boys continued to ponder over Kimiko's possible nail designs, Toshiro watching the exchange with a hint of amusement, none of them noticed the girls making their way through the crowd, towards their group. Not until one of them called out to Mr. Tohomiko.

"Papa!" Tomoko exclaimed, earning everyone's attention.

She looked completely out of breath as she came to a stop in front of her father, though that did nothing to stop her from smiling, and she hugged him just before launching into an explanation in Japanese. Apparently, her fans had swarmed her on the way here too, and wouldn't let her leave until she'd signed every single autograph and taken every single group photo there was to offer. It was thanks to the efforts of Kimiko that they even made it at all.

Raimundo heard a series of footsteps from behind father and daughter, followed by a chain of frustrated grunts, and knew it was Kimiko and her friend Keiko. Clay and Omi stood up, eager to finally see their teammate after what felt like hours in the cold, dusting cherry blossoms off of their clothes in the process. The Shoku leader smirked into his cup before closing his eyes and taking a swig of his cocoa, relishing in the sweetness just as Kimiko came into view.

"Geez, Kim. It took you long enough," he teased after swallowing his drink. "D'you have any idea how long we've been waiting for y-" But the faux complaint died on his lips when he finally opened his eyes and saw her, and in that moment only one word came to mind.

"What," Kimiko shot back with a raised brow, a smirk dancing across on her face. "Cat got your tongue? Say something!"

If Raimundo had thought Tokyo was beautiful in the spring before, then that was nothing compared to how Kimiko looked now. While a tiny, fleeting part of him had hoped she was wearing a kimono, he hadn't really expected her to go the whole nine, considering how much she'd loathed them in the past, but then again, it wouldn't really be Kimiko if she wasn't constantly proving him wrong.

She stood out like a flower all on her own in her black kimono, a dark swirl in a sea of color. Small pink and white petals adorned the top half of it, much like the cherry blossoms surrounding them, including the sleeves, though the closer it got to the bottom, they varied in size and shape until it was bursting with color, and holding it all together was a bright, gold sash and red string. Of course, her outfit wouldn't be complete if she didn't have a purse to match. Her hair was fashioned with both the Tangled Web Comb and Changing Chopsticks in an elaborately braided bun, her face framed by the loose, black curls that managed to escape her updo.

Had it been him three years ago, he'd have acted like an idiot and teased her on the spot, anything to downplay his attraction. But now, at 16-years-old, Raimundo found himself, not for the first time, speechless. She was- Kimiko was-

"Beautiful!" Omi had blurted at the top of his lungs.

Raimundo hadn't realized he'd been gawking at her like some kinda dopey, cross-eyed schoolboy until the small monk was no longer at his side, but fluttering about Kimiko with all the tenacity of a 13-year-old boy in love. Quickly, he averted his gaze to Keiko, whom he acknowledged with a nod of his head, as heat settled in his ears and cheeks, and for once since he'd arrived in Japan, he found himself grateful for the cold. He didn't trust his voice and he was pretty sure he looked like a tomato right now.

"Look at you! Well, aren't you 'bout as pretty as a magnolia in May?" Clay remarked, tipping his hat up with a finger to get a better view of their friend.

Omi nodded his head with a flourish as he admired her apperance from head to toe. "You look very pretty, Kimiko. You've even managed to incorporate the Changing Chopsticks into your wardrobe this time!"

Kimiko's cheeks darkened, though she beamed at their compliments, and she touched the aforementioned Shen Gong Wu with her free hand. "You like? At first I wasn't going to add them, but it went too well with my outfit to pass up. Plus, you never know when it'll come in handy."

"And look!" Omi cooed excitedly, taking her hand and holding it up like he'd just uncovered a new Shen Gong Wu. "She even styled her nails after France, just like you said Raimundo."

Quietly, she looked to Rai, who hadn't said a single word since she'd first arrived and raised a brow at him, her cocky smirk ever-present. "Well, Rai? What do you think?"

If Raimundo hadn't known Kimiko better, he'd think she was fishing for a compliment, given that Omi and Clay had just sung her praises. As it was, he did know her better, especially if the glint in her blue eyes was anything to go by, and he suddenly felt very uncomfortable. She'd purposely put him on the spot. (Granted, Omi did it first; he'd have to have a little talk with him about this later). He was vaguely aware that the guys were staring at him, anticipating his next words, but thankfully Tomoko had latched onto her sister's arm before Raimundo could loosen the knot on his tongue and speak.

He released a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding when the older Tohomiko girl had pulled her, and by extension Keiko, towards Toshiro for a group photo, with Omi as their photographer. Clay put a hand on Raimundo's shoulder as the group huddled together, a soft, yet knowing smile overtaking the cowboy's lips.

"That pretty, huh?" Clay asked, dropping his hand when Rai looked at him.

Though his hot cocoa was long gone, Raimundo felt a warmth settle in his stomach as turned back to face the group, just in time to see a genuine smile break out over Kimiko's face. For the first time ever, he found himself admitting a very obvious truth: Kimiko was beautiful.

"Yeah."

Clay blinked, taken aback by his best friend's gentle admission, but it didn't last very long and soon he found himself smiling too.

#xiaolin showdown #raikim #raimundo pedrosa #kimiko tohomiko #clay bailey #omi #toshiro tohomiko #neefa writes

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nitropetexpress · 4 years ago

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The Best Toys to Keep Your Dog Busy All Day

This post contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links at no additional cost to you. It will help us keep Summer’s toy box full :)

This blog post is part of our Complete Guide for New Dog Owners in 2021. Check it out for all of your essential dog items!

Most of us have spent a lot of time at home this year. I don’t know about you, but this has caused me to see just how much attention our golden retriever, Summer, really needs throughout the day. I know she loved attention but I never knew it could be this much! I love giving her all the love and attention she needs but when we start to be away from the house again, she’s really going to want something to keep her occupied throughout the day.

I’ve compiled a short list of some of the best dog toys available today. These are good for all breeds and ages of dogs no matter how they like to play. Check them all out using the links included in this article to see which one might be the best option for your pup!

Best Non-Toxic: West Paw Design Hurley Dog Toy

This bone-shaped toy is easy for your pup to hold onto and play with. It’s made from recycled non-toxic materials like BPA-free plastic so you can be sure your dog will be safe while chewing on it. Many reviews on this toy state that super durable and great for strong chewers. “I'm shocked that they barely look worn after over 2 weeks!", said one reviewer. “Still providing TONS of pleasure and energy outlet for our fur babies.” If Summer was a heavy chewer I’d be picking up one of these for her. Especially since it’s non-toxic. I love that it’s dishwasher-safe, too!

Buy it! West Paw Design Hurley Dog Toy, $7.15 - $15.95; amazon.com

Most Durable: Mammoth Cotton Dog Rope Toy

Rope toys for dogs have long been a reliable standby. Dogs love them for playing fetch, tug-o-war, and just to chew on. This one from Mammoth is a great option since it’s made from 100% cotton. They also don’t have any artificial fibers, colors, or dyes. One reviewer said, “These rope bones are tough and, despite being her favorite toys, last quite a while.” Summer isn’t much of a tug-o-war player but if she were, we’d certainly have a few of these around the house.

Buy it! Mammoth Cotton Dog Rope Toy, $4.98; amazon.com

Most Affordable: Hartz DuraPlay Bone

If saving money is your main goal here, this may be your best option. It’s less than $4 and still has 4.5 stars out of over 13,000 reviews! This bone is made from firm, natural latex. Soft and flexible, it’s great for dogs of all ages but recommended for pups under 20 pounds. It’s lightweight and even floats so it’s great to play around the water in the summertime. One buyer had this to say about this toy: “If your dog loves this as much as Taz you will need zero other toys.” This particular model is even bacon scented so I’m sure Summer would love that!

Buy it! Hartz DuraPlay Bone, $3.49 - $11.99; amazon.com

Best for Puppies: KONG X-Small Teddy Bear

Everyone knows KONG brand dog toys to be very durable. What better brand to get for your new puppy? You know it will last at least as long as he’s a puppy. This particular KONG toy is a teddy bear, the perfect first toy to give your new puppy. It’s nice and small for them, too, but still very durable. There’s no messy filling or stuffing in this bear, though. It does have a squeaker, though, but KONG was smart enough to cleverly make it easily removable and replaceable. “I know Kong toys can be a bit pricey, but they really are worth it because of the good quality.”, one reviewer said. We adopted Summer when she was already grown but if we had gotten her as a puppy I would have loved to have gotten her this as her first toy.

Buy it! KONG X-Small Teddy Bear, $10.99; amazon.com

Best for Exercise: Chuckit! Dog Ball Thrower

If your dog loves to play fetch then this toy will be just as much fun for you as it is for your pup. Summer doesn’t really love to play fetch but when I’ve played fetch with other pups with this toy, they really loved it. Especially since you can really launch the ball a lot further than with just your arm. Make sure you find a big, wide open dog park for this one. Your pup will be wanting to really run after this ball! The launcher and ball are both really durable, too. One reviewer mentioned, “Love that I no longer need to bend over to pick up the ball or have to touch a slimy, sandy, filthy ball!” That’s actually one of my favorite parts about this toy, too.

Buy it! Chuckit! Dog Ball Thrower, $9.95; amazon.com

Best Multi-Pack: ZippyPaws Squeaky Plush Dog Toys

Summer loves to try and chase squirrels and raccoons, and other woodland creatures. I think most dogs probably do so these are perfect! They've got multiple squeakers that dogs love. Each toy has three of them. There’s no messy filling but the seams are still really strong so your dog will probably have a harder time tearing them up. “Lasted way longer than any other toy we have gotten and paid a lot more for”, said one purchaser. These come packaged as a set of three, too, and for a great price. This is one of Summer’s favorite kind of toy so I’ll be picking some up for her real soon.

Buy it! ZippyPaws Squeaky Plush Dog Toys, $12.44; amazon.com

Best for Strong Chewers: Petstages Dogwood Mesquite Stick

Like I said, Summer isn’t much of a chewer. If she were, though, I’d get her one of these. She’d probably love the mesquite flavor at least! (They also make a non-scented stick) If your dog loves to chew, they probably love chewing on sticks. This is suppose to be a better, safer, longer lasting, and cleaner version of the good ‘ol outside stick. This toy is actually made of wood but it’s much more durable and doesn’t splinter which can easily harm your dog’s mouth. They’re also a great shape for throwing if your pup likes to play fetch. One buyer said, “She loves it and she has not chewed any wood off the house since we got the first one about a month ago.”

Buy it! Petstages Dogwood Mesquite Stick, $3.82 - $20.46; amazon.com

Best-Selling: KONG Classic

The classic KONG. I feel like every dog needs at least one of these in their toy box! They are great for both fetching and chewing. Their shape causes them to have a sporadic bounce when you throw them, giving your dog an extra little thrill as he tries to chase it down. And since they’re so durable, they will stay intact for a good long while, even if your dog loves to chew on their toys. Another great feature is the ability to stuff a treat inside the KONG. That will really make them go crazy. They’ll spend hours trying to get it all out as they lick and chew it. “Kongs are to dogs what Candy Crush is to humans.”, one owner said. “No, seriously. You pull the Kong out and they get this crazed hyper-focused look on their faces and you know the fun is about to start!” I know exactly what he means. Dogs seem to really love KONGs! Summer loves hers stuffed with dog safe peanut butter.

Buy it! KONG Classic, $7.99 - $23.45; amazon.com

Best Overall: Nylabone Flavored Dog Chew Toy

This tough, durable nylon bone will keep your dog happy for hours at a time. And since it’s so durable it should last weeks; not days. It’s a long lasting chew toy for even the most aggressive chewers. They even come in a few different flavors that you dog will love! “I have two 35lb pit-mix pups. They just turned a year old. They absolutely LOVE chewing these bones down.”, said one reviewer. Summer doesn’t need one but I know plenty of pups who love these things! Nearly 5500 reviews and it’s got four and a half stars, too.

Buy it! Nylabone Flavored Dog Chew Toy, $2.17 - $9.99; amazon.com

Summer’s Favorite: Wangstar Mallard Duck Dog Toy

This is Summer’s new favorite toy! We just got her one for Christmas. Her second favorite thing in the world, besides getting all the pets, is trying to catch birds. So we finally got her a bird toy that’s actually about the size of an actual bird. She loves this thing! We will play with her with this toy and she gets almost as excited as when she sees an actual bird. It’s so fun how excited she gets! If your dog loves birds as much as Summer then they will surely love this bird toy.

Buy it! Wangstar Mallard Duck Dog Toy, $13.99 - $17.99; amazon.com

What kind of toy does your dog love the most? Are they a chewer, fetcher, tug-o-warrer? Let us know in the comments below. We’d love to hear what you have to say!

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pagemichelle1992 · 4 years ago

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What Adaptation Allows Conifers To Grow Taller Stupefying Useful Tips

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Increase Your Height Shoe Inserts

Your best bet will likely be as tall as him!Puberty is a great pair of good to be an effective way to improve their height.Are you unhappy with your mom and dad is at, when you buy is also extremely important, both for grownups and young people do not want to get the intended inches really fast?The growth hormone is not in their adulthood yet to grow taller.Go down on your back and letting your spine and knee exercises.

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A healthy diet would certainly be done to help in enhancing your growth hormones.Growth in height and weight management; it also makes you a more exacting eye.It's really important to have proper posture in order to solve the problem of getting used to save your time and help you to question your lifestyle.He seemed to be consistent as much of our body.If you are very important to make some changes to your diet will be able to follow a steady diet of humans for thousands of years, because we have several varieties of ways on boosting your energy, sharpening your memory and stabilizing your mood to create a satisfying and healthy lifestyle.

#What Adaptation Allows Conifers To Grow Taller Stupefying Useful Tips #How To Increase Height At 16

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carterrollins96 · 4 years ago

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How Pituitary Gland Increase Height Staggering Cool Tips

Aside from your body's growth hormones present in healthy foods as possible.You do not create a wider grip if you know that there is a proper diet.With continuous training of stretches and exercises.Skipping/Basketball: Skipping or playing games such as surgery in an attempt to grow taller; it only increases your leg as well.

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How To Get Taller Overnight

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#How Pituitary Gland Increase Height Staggering Cool Tips #What Can I Do To Grow Taller Faster

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cavalorn · 8 years ago

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Unearthing the Bones: digging into the myths of Alien: Covenant

WARNING: SPOILERY AS ALL HELL BELOW THE BREAK Hi. It’s me, the guy who did that Space Jesus blog about Prometheus on Livejournal that some of you read. I’m not using Livejournal at the moment for various reasons, so you can find my work here on tumblr for now.

So. It's been a while, but Alien: Covenant is finally here. I've now seen it. I’m banging out the first of a series of blogs while it’s still fresh in my head.

There's a sense of deja vu about this post. Is Alien: Covenant a flawed movie? Absolutely. Does it feature characters making stupid decisions? Emphatically. Will it frustrate the hell out of most people who go and see it? Probably. So far, so Prometheus.

Well then, smartass, is there a ton of stuff going on under the surface so that we can at least have fun digging it out and playing spot-the-reference? Predictably, yes there is.

The most jarring thing about Alien: Covenant is that it doesn't feel like a meaningful sequel to Prometheus. It follows on from it chronologically, but the theme and the important questions have been completely changed. Storywise, it's a jump from 'what is the ultimate origin of mankind' to 'what will befall this ship full of hapless colonists', and having Wayland openly speculate about where we all come from in the first five minutes does not equate to continuing that line of questioning. Referring back to it is not equivalent to picking it back up.

I'll hold my hand up here and say I thought we were going to get something very different from what we actually got. I expected Ancient Egypt and Biblical plagues, not yet another run through of the familiar land – make stupid decisions - get infected – die a lot – escape – fakeout ending – real ending cycle on yet another alien world. But I still enjoyed it.

To be fair, the nature of the followup to Prometheus has been changed several times, so we can hardly be blamed if we had different expectations. The original title of 'Prometheus 2' yielded to the provocative 'Alien: Paradise Lost' and thence to 'Alien: Covenant', leading many of us to wonder what story Ridley intended to tell. My honest opinion is that Ridley changed his mind during the production process. I think, for reasons that will become clear, that Giger's death may have had a bearing on this change of direction.

Alien: Covenant is, to use Ridley's words, about 'Who made [the alien] and why? No one ever asked that question.' To me it seems obvious that the moment you conceive of the Alien as a designed creature, as opposed to a being that is the product of some kind of natural order (however foreign to our earthly understanding that natural order may be) you inevitably invoke the spectre of Giger. It is not facetious to point out that we already know who made the alien, and why.

It was Giger. In the locked studio. With the box of bones.

Why? Because Ridley Scott wanted him to.

(Before expounding further, I want to acknowledge a debt of gratitude to the brilliant site http://alienexplorations.blogspot.co.uk which has kept an immense amount of valuable information available. Go and visit them, but make sure you have plenty of time on hand before you do, because the place will suck you in.)

There are several aspects of Alien: Covenant that don't make a lick of sense on the face of it. Why kill off Elizabeth Shaw, the heroine of Prometheus? Why do it offscreen? Why does David declare that he loved Shaw? And why is Shaw's eviscerated, mutated corpse still lying on a slab in David's workshop, many years after her death?

One way to read this is to see Alien: Covenant as a mythologising of the real-world creation of the Alien. Seen through that filter, a disturbing number of things come into focus.

I can't watch David talking to Walter in his secret workshop without thinking of Giger's own workshop, and what Ridley Scott said about it when he eulogised the late artist:

"I think back on how committed and passionate he was, and then consequently, all the security we built up around his 'lock up' studios at Shepperton. I was the only one allowed the honour of going in, and I absolutely enjoyed every hour I spent with him there."

Reading back on this, I was quite startled. Scott's assertion that Giger allowed nobody but him into his studio is contradicted by photographs from the time. They clearly show several members of the team visiting Giger in his various workspaces (he had several, for the different parts of the project he worked on). It's possible that Scott is referring to an earlier stage of the Alien's development, when only he and Giger were present. Or he could simply be misremembering, though that seems unlikely to me.

At any rate, the image of Giger welcoming Scott into his realm is an enticing one, and David welcoming Walter into his surely echoes it. But there are other, more sinister myths woven into the story of the Alien's creation, and at least one macabre aspect of it that is wholly true.

Giger's time at Shepperton Studios seems to have been a memorable tale in its own right, as far as the rest of the crew were concerned. One anecdote found its way into the Book of Alien:

'It was a very hot summer in London, and one day we were out on the lawn, having a picnic, and we all had our shirts off. Except Giger, who was still decked out in his leathers. And everybody tried to get him to take off that jacket, but he wouldn’t do it. You see, I don’t think he dares take off those clothes, because if he did you’d see that underneath he’s not human. He’s a character from an H.P.Lovecraft story.'

Again, Giger is remembered as the odd one out, the inhuman creator among the humans, just like David is in the film. It's only Walter, who serves as the analogue for Scott himself, who David sees as even having the potential to understand and embrace his vision.

It was not only Giger himself but his working space that had uncanny resonances. Giger's girlfriend at the time, Mia Bonzanigo, was with him at Shepperton and helped work on the Alien. However, Mia 'hated being on the set alone, saying she felt some kind of presence there' and 'thought she could hear voices or sounds and was creeped out remaining in the studio all the time' (Charles Lippincott). Appropriate, really, for the genesis of an iconic monster.

Giger liked to work with bones, and it often comes as a shock to fans of Alien to learn that the creature's head incorporated a real human skull. By the time the creature's look was finalised, the carapace had become much more opaque and the skull's shape can barely be discerned, but earlier iterations clearly show the eyesockets and the bridge of the nose. The skull was imported from India, and its condition was so good that Dan O'Bannon was later to voice uneasy concerns about skeleton farms. From his commentary on Return of the Living Dead: 'Well, in fact, when i was working on Alien. HR Giger asked them to obtain some real skulls for him to work from, to build the alien, the full size alien. And they did, and they purchased them and they brought him skulls which were wrapped in plastic just like that and they were the most beautiful skulls I had ever seen, they were like works of art, I was struck by the perfection and the teeth were all perfect, and I was told that they were ordered from India, and then sold for medical purposes but the production had bought them for Giger to use, and he took a hacksaw and cut them into pieces and put them back together, and subsequently when i was working with Tobe Hooper, who was meant to direct this film himself, we were talking about this scene. Hooper was aware also that medical skeletons were purchased from India, and he said that the eeriest thing. Tobe did, he thinks that they have a skeleton farm in India. I thought about it a while, it was such a creepy idea that when i wrote the script, I put that in. The picture was released and a few months after the picture opened, i read a news item that the government of India had suddenly stopped the deportation of all skeletons for medical purposes, and ever since then it's very difficult for medical schools to get them. They use plastic skeletons and it may have been a coincidence or the film may have indeed come to their attention and they put a stop to it. I have a feeling, the creepy feeling that there was something very criminal going on in India. At what age does a person have an absolutely perfect skull and set of teeth? When they're young.'

Ridley Scott would certainly have been aware that Giger was using human remains to create his Alien. How he felt about it, we can only guess.

Although the account of Giger cutting up a real skull is true, there were other stories about the artist circulating at Shepperton that were completely mythical. When considering Alien: Covenant as a mythologised retelling of the Alien's actual creation, the most important story is that of Giger's deceased girlfriend, Li Tobler.

Accounts varied wildly even at the time, but it was believed that Giger's former girlfriend had committed suicide (that part was true) and that he had kept her skull, or her entire skeleton. Alan Dean Foster, the genius storyteller who wrote the novelization of Alien and several of the other movies, believed that Giger had 'the skeleton of a former mistress suspended from the rafters of his Switzerland home'. Sigourney Weaver recounted that '... you would hear these stories about how he has his wife’s skull or some sort of, kind of, you know morbid stuff in his house.' The source of these rumours seems to have been Mia Bonzanigo, who also claimed to feel a ghostly presence in Giger's studio.

It's important to note that these stories were completely untrue. Giger himself debunked them in 2009, adding the exquisite comment 'Shit, I'm not mad, you know.'

But a myth is a myth, and stories have a way of growing in the telling.

It seems inevitable that at some point along the way, the story 'Giger used a human skull to make the Alien' would fuse with 'Giger kept his lover's skull after her death' to become 'Giger incorporated his dead lover's remains into the Alien.' While I'm not aware of this composite version of events having been told at the time, I have seen it stated online: 'First day on the job of designing alien sets, Giger said to the production secretary, “I want bones.�� After touring medical supply houses and slaughterhouses, a truck pulled up to deliver. There was an entire row of flawless human skulls, three fully preserved snake skeletons, and even a rhinoceros skull. Rumors spread on set that one set of bones belonged to his deceased fiancee, who had committed suicide.'

You're way ahead of me here, aren't you?

Let's finish the story, then.

In Alien: Covenant, it turns out that David has kept the late Dr Elizabeth Shaw's remains and used them to create his creature, his 'perfect organism'. Bearing in mind that Shaw appears to have died shortly after their arrival, her eviscerated body has been lying on that slab for something like ten years. He has preserved her. And this, of course, matches the myths that arose around Giger precisely.

More unnervingly still, David claims to have loved Shaw. So from David's twisted point of view, he has kept the remains of a lover, not just a convenient source of biological material. Again, this parallels the Giger legend.

And there's one detail that seems to me to confirm the parallels as conscious and deliberate. Some of Giger's most famous, recognisable portraits are of Li Tobler, the very woman whose remains he was believed to have preserved. Her face is shown embedded in a bivalve, symmetrical mass of biomechanical stuff, the cheekbones protruding through the skin.

This is, of course, the inspiration behind how Shaw's remains appear on screen. Like Giger's iconic image of Li, her bones have grown through her face. Numerous reviews have pointed out the parallel between Shaw's remains and Giger's portrait of Li, but the deeper parallels seem to have passed unnoticed.

There are other angles of analysis we can pursue when approaching Alien: Covenant, and I’ll be blogging about those presently, but I wanted to get this one out of the way first because it's closest to the surface. Ridley Scott does love his myths, and to me it seems very much as if he's chosen to retell a modern myth here – the myth of Giger the visionary artist, somewhat other than human, and how he built his dead lover's remains into a creature that would outlive him. Next time around we’ll talk about the Demiurge.

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tape-hiss · 8 years ago

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Animals in Aetheri

Hello! This month on Tape Hiss, we’ll be doing a topic I’ve put off for a long time—the fauna in Aetheri, native or otherwise! I’ll be talking about not just the wildlife, but also pet ownership, animal products, livestock…lots of stuff. As usual, the rest (with lots of drawings this time) is under the cut.

So we have seen a few animals so far in Aetheri, obviously, both in statue form and living around the Palace. I’ll start with the below—the kuuv, suoki, laar, and hurrtai, since we’re familiar with them.

Quick sidebar: the dragons you see in statue form around the Palace are not Aetherian, nor are they ‘animals’ in the sense we usually mean, i.e. seemingly insentient critters without a culture/civilization etc.

The kuuv we see in the comic is a domestic animal, akin to a cow. There are wild versions, but they don’t actually exist in Aetheri anymore—they are root-eaters, using the large front-claws seen here to dig up tree roots. There’s no longer any substantial forests in Aetheri large enough to support a wild population, so those that exist live in large herds at Aetheri’s northern border, at the edge of the Laith territories, in foothills near the timberline. The domesticated versions are much smaller (comparatively), eat tubers, and have, over time, grown well accustomed to hay—although this last thing has to be supplied for them by spirits, since they are not exactly well equipped to pull up and eat grass. This makes them dependent on people in a way that most animals are not.

Domestic kuuv are generally extremely friendly and smart. They are not fast and will not make trouble if supplied with enough food and some company. In Aetheri they are most often used for milk (kuuv milk is thick, very yak-like), meat, hides, and for pulling wagons over long distances.

Now seems like a good time to talk about domestication in Aetheri. As humans have, spirits have over the course of their history domesticated many animals and bred them selectively. However, spirits have never elected to get *too* fancy with it—at least not in Aetheri, where they have been utilitarians for a very, very long time. Most selective breeding was done with the purpose of making animals more placid or easier to manage. This has to do with Aetherian attitudes towards animals, which I’ll get to.

Speaking of domestic vs wild, let’s talk about suoki.

While there aren’t any wild kuuv in Aetherian lands, there are certainly wild suoki. Size and temperament are really the only differences between a domestic suoki and a wild one, though; even over the many thousands of years that they’ve been domesticated, suoki have retained their black-and-white colors (though pet suoki come in a range of patterns that wild ones do not) and general feral look. I’d posit that things are slow to change in Aetheri not just in spirits but in all creatures—mutations do not happen as often, at least not naturally. This is what enables spirits to live so long and with fewer mutation-related illnesses (i.e. cancer) but also reduces variety. (Disclaimer: I am not a geneticist.)

Anyway, I’ve talked about suoki before. They are for spirits what dogs are for humans—they act as companions, they guard people and property, they do work. They can talk some, their bark sounds like laughter, their bites are very very strong, and they are on the whole extremely obedient and easy to train. People new to Aetheri usually find them very creepy, but you have nothing to fear from a suoki as long as you have nothing to fear from their owner.

Wild suoki are very thickly-furred, as above, and are solitary; they, along with bandits and slavers, are what makes trade in Aetheri hazardous, as they don’t have many qualms about attacking caravans pulled by kuuv. They mainly hunt laar (being one of the few animals fast enough to catch one occasionally) and huurtai. Domestic suoki were bred to have very short, smooth coats described as being seal-like, and Aetherians tend to just feed them whatever they themselves are eating; the concept of ‘dog food’ as being its own thing is weird to them.

The domestic suoki is also the symbol of the du Russi house, along with an edible flower called the enlar and the colors blue and red.

We’ve seen plenty of laar. They’re split-hoofed herbivorous animals that are capable of reaching top speeds of 90mph and can turn on a dime. In Aetheri they are used for racing, herding, and in battle—laar-riding is a very, very difficult art, as a rider needs to be small and very strong. Laar backs are not rigid like a horse’s, nor do their heads stay relatively still as they run; their gaits look more like a greyhound’s than a horse’s, so a rider has to basically crouch over their backs when going any faster than a brisk walk. Conventional Aetherian wisdom dictates that someone who rides a laar for a living is not to be messed with, as they could likely crush your skull with their thighs.

Domestic laar are without antlers; wild laar have swept-back antlers that are really only for show and are shed every year. While not easy to ride, laar are fairly easy to train, and they do love running. They communicate by whistling, though it’s a comical kind of guinea pig sound.

The wild laar is the symbol of the d’Escala house, along with nine tubular bells and the colors purple-grey and gold.

The huurtai is pretty straightforward; they exist in the gap between the slow but powerful kuuv and the slight but fast laar. They are straight-backed, single-toed animals with fur very like that of an alpaca; they are used for distance and recreational riding, herding, and for fur and meat. They are not very vocal but make a noise that sounds alarmingly like a very large goose.

The domesticated version is not as well-bred for temperament as some other Aetherian animals. They tend to be rather squirrelly and obnoxious, but will also get very attached to their handlers. It’s rather like having a very large, four-legged parrot. In the wild, they live in herds and are omnivorous; they use their large beaks to strip certain plants of berries and millet-like seeds, but also to catch and eat small creatures living in the grasslands.

We haven’t seen many actual living rit in the comic yet—I think the only ones we’ve seen have been in the form of constructs. Actual rit come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and are omnivorous creatures that live just about everywhere. They don’t have feathers so much as scaly keratin structures that resemble feathers; they have large compound eyes, and little toothy mouths, hidden almost always by their scales. Their compound eyes see a much wider gamut of color than humans or spirits, and they do not have ears, using their antennae instead to detect vibration. They do vocalize, but the rit native to Aetheri don’t have quite the variety in song as rit native to more tropical parts of the planet; most in this part of the world stick to soft whooping, cooing, or sighing sounds.

There is only one kind of domesticated rit, a ground-dwelling variety used for eggs and (somewhat less frequently) meat. All rit lay soft-shelled, oblong, small eggs that are usually cooked in-shell and eaten whole, or else split open when unfertilized for use in baking. The meat takes some getting used to, as it’s described as having a consistency very much like tofu or seitan, but like those two examples it takes on other flavors very well.

The rit is the symbol of the du Cuppra (again, now a political group rather than a familial house) along with the nilaqudh (a knotted ribbon used in Aetherian ‘marriages’) and the colors yellow and indigo.

That there are no other domesticated kinds of rit points to Aetherian attitudes towards keeping animals, which I’ll finally go into. Aetherians do eat meat, though it’s not hard to avoid doing so in Aetheri (unless you also hate grains, in which case you’re just about out of luck.) There are Aetherians who do not eat meat or animal products, but they’re sort of few and far between. The Aetherian food industry is not big, and there is very little waste, and not much surplus either (not for lack of ability to produce, but for lack of demand.) The slaughtering of an animal is done quickly and painlessly, and every single part of an animal is used in some way, owing as much to Aetherian love of efficiency as to their respect for the animal. Spirits are as much an animal as anything they eat, and spirits have been a prey species in the past, so they’re pretty well in the mindset that eating meat is simply the way of things—it’s down to them as creatures of higher sentience to make their consumption of meat a cleaner and less vicious experience than it would be for an animal to get eaten by another in the wild.

The dhuullena is a creature we haven’t seen in the comic yet, and I don’t even know when we would. Their main function as domesticated animals is for labor and trade; you will almost never see them in an urban setting, they’re just too big. They’re mostly used for pulling caravans that go off-road to the remote villages in the plains, or for hauling wood down from the Laith territories to the north. They are very docile plant-eaters that use their front legs to pull up grass and reeds. There are wild, very territorial versions as well; the domesticated dhuullena is the best example of how Aetherian selective breeding has produced a placid, obliging creature from a wild one.

The fetthu is a sort of exception to Aetheri’s domestication norms. They are not native to Aetheri at all—they’re from Cavillace, a tropical country far to the east that Aetheri has occasionally traded with in the past. Fetthut are pretty much the only invasive species in Aetheri, and are sort of domesticated…they don’t bond with people the way cats do and are best not kept indoors (they smell like mildew, destroy things, are nocturnal, and swallow prey whole before barfing up the bones, hair, etc in the form of pellets.) So they aren’t really pets, but they’re not wild animals either really. Their ecological niche, at least in Aetheri, rests entirely on being allowed to wander around and eat the sorts of pests attracted to civilization.

We’ve seen them in the comic, but not with their horrible mouths open. They come in a variety of colors, some kind of outlandish, and make croaking and hooting sounds mostly. They have a coat texture rather like a chinchilla’s, but they will not let you pet them.

The matuury is not Aetheri’s only small pest—there are a lot animals I’m not doing for this post, come on, I can’t draw every animal—but it’s the one we’re most likely to see. The interesting thing about matuuryt is they are a creature entirely dependent on civilization. They are blind and live exclusively in the dark parts of structures, i.e. behind walls, in basements, in the extensive tunnel systems under major towns. They do not live outside of towns and cities, because during the day there’s few places for them to shelter entirely in the plains. They have evolved rather rapidly over time to be suited to the environment of spirit-made structures.

They mainly eat arthropods (insects, or what passes for them in Aetheri) but will eat anything put in front of them, up to and absolutely including living creatures if they are hungry enough and the creature is incapacitated. One of the longest-held and darkest rumors about the d’Escala family is that, with the big population of matuuryt in the Palace, they’ve gotten rid of more than one enemy by merely tying them up and letting them be eaten alive. This is…plausible.

The river running through Aetheri is home to its own ecosystem as well, of course. Most water-breathing, river-dwelling, swimming animals tend towards a longer, snakier shape than maybe we’re used to in river fish, although I frankly don’t think I can out-design nature on weird water animals. The collective name for these critters is lrecca. (Fun fact: the Aetherian word for dragon is freillrecca, which translates to ‘big fish’ more or less.)

Almost everything that lives in the water has a third eye, in most cases situated on top of the head--you can see that here. These third eyes are not (in most species) fully formed eyeballs, more light-sensitive photoreceptors not unlike those that some animals have which helps the animal detect both predator and prey.

Also pictured is a lum, which is a very cnidarian-like creature that eats small lrecca. It is bioluminescent and, rather than floating freely in the river’s swift currents, pulls itself along the bottom by keeping hold of weeds and rocks. The Aetherian River is very deep and fast, but you can often see lum moving slowly along the bottom at night, glowing very faintly.

People eat most of these river things too, of course. None of it tastes or has the consistency of fish (nothing really does in Aetheri—a lot of spirits therefore find the flaky texture of fish upsetting.) Most lrecca seem to have a texture more like freshwater eel or squid. People even use lumt as an ingredient, as they can be made to have a consistency rather like gelatin and have no real taste; the most common application is to set it in cubes with a heavily-flavored syrup and eat it with shaved ice in the summer. (They can also use a gelatin derived from river weeds, but it’s generally agreed that this doesn’t hold the flavor as well.)

Lastly there’s the ydde (pronounced ‘ee-dee’) which despite its appearance is an egg-layer. They eat just about anything, and are solitary and territorial. They don’t stray far from the shore of the river, and they use their plated skulls to knock heads with rivals over territory. They will even get aggressive with people approaching their section of the shore, though despite their fearsome teeth they almost never actually attack anything bigger than themselves—it’s best just to ignore them, and they’ll hang around a ways off huffing and stomping and making hwouping noises at you. They tend to avoid Escalus due to how busy the waterway is, but occasionally one will get lost in the little canal system off the river proper and cause some excitement by ending up in someone’s courtyard.

That’s about it for this small Aetherian bestiary! It’s just a brief look. Your mileage may vary with these critters—I designed them to be plausible above all else, something you look at and say ‘I could see that existing on Earth somewhere, probably.’ So I worked with the idea of a long planet history, a long presence of domestication, a climate shift (after the great war) from forest to plains, and how cold it gets in Aetheri in mind. I figured getting to weird with it would make spirits seem really bizarrely out of place by comparison.

Thanks for reading y’all!

#white noise #worldbuilding #writing #fictional animals

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euphorichris · 8 years ago

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So here’s the result of this conversation. This is what happens when I plan on writing two pages: You get eight instead. ^ - ^;;

Even though it’s an Old West AU, I must admit that there isn’t too much Old West in this because I don’t write that setting it’s focusing on Jet first waking up and the contents of the abduction. But after spending so much time on it, I still wanted to share. Everything after this point would involve the cyborgs meeting Gilmore and having adventures across the country. I hope you enjoy it! –

Stars Out of Sand - First Steps

Jet Link’s spine arched in a sudden spasm, his breath drawn harsh and desperate as if he had been drowning. Though his eyes were open, he could barely register any sight. His instincts were too focused on getting his breathing back to a normal rhythm. After a few moments of flailing, he was suddenly aware of a pair of gigantic hands clasped onto his upper arms. A different kind of panic burst inside, and this time instinct of the acquired sort set him into fighting mode. For all the good it did him. With his thoughts scrambling to come together, it was all too easy for the huge looming stranger to pin all of the frantic redhead’s limbs to the ground. He could do nothing but helplessly heave in air. A few more moments passed, and he finally realized that the other man had been speaking in a low, reassuring voice for the past minute.

“…Calm… Be calm… The danger is passed for now. You are among brothers.” Jet forced his eyes to focus past his sizable nose toward the man’s face, which he could make out remarkably well considering the low lighting. …An Injun? Had to be. There was no mistaking that strange, down-the-middle hairstyle. The eyes, the nose, the face… Yeah, he was an Injun. A massive one. But he was dressed in the manner of civilized white man, not his own people. One of those, huh. Jet swallowed, trying to wet his oddly numb throat before grinding out, “Who the hell’re you and what d’you want from me?!” The large man didn’t waver. “…I see. You don’t remember yet.” Slowly, he released his captive and slid backwards to sit by the small fire nearby. “Take as long as you need.” Clearly his tone was meant to be non-threatening, but Jet couldn’t help but be on full alert as he hauled himself into a sitting position. He’d woken up in places he didn’t recognize plenty of times before, but this was the first time with this sort of company. Damn, what had he gotten into this time to warrant being kidnapped by a redskin? “You didn’t answer the questions,” Jet snarled, unwilling to let the native think he had too much power over him. Which, quite frankly, he did. Not just because he clearly had information that Jet didn’t, but Jet wasn’t sure he knew people could even get so big. The stoic man unhurriedly prodded at the fire with a stick before returning Jet’s intense stare. “…I am Geronimo. I am not an enemy.” He turned to his other side, gesturing at the rest of the cave they were currently occupying. “None of us are enemies.” Squinting past the bright firelight, Jet realized that there were many other people present, wrapped to some extent or other in dark blankets. “Your folks?” “……And yours, now.” Jet jerked upright. “Wh-What?! Th’ hell they are! Look, you seem a little…confused.” Geronimo raised his eyebrows a bit as if to say, ‘Oh, really. Pray tell.’ “If this is one of those ‘I saved your life, now you’re one of us’ kinda deals, then thanks, but I ain’t interested. If this is your way of tryin’ to get in close with a white fella –” He paused to gesture at the man’s apparel. “ – then I gotta tell ya, this idn’t the way to go about it.” A new thought occurred to him. “And…And if those ain’t other Injuns over there… If you’re goin’ around just takin’ a bunch of folks…er…” He discreetly felt for his pistol at his hip and swore internally at its absence. Who knows how long he was unconscious. Of course his captor wasn’t going to leave him armed. “You know who they are. And you know me. You simply don’t remember,” came the unruffled reply. Jet snorted. “Right. ‘Cause it’s totally normal for anyone to forget a whole night and NOT be sufferin’ any hell at all in the mornin’. Or whatever time it is now.” The large man gave Jet a long, unreadable look before returning to the fire and murmuring, “…Much more than a night… Much, much more than a night…” Jet’s hands pressed firmly against the sand-strewn floor as he tried to subtly push himself toward the distant cave entrance. “Allllright then… This has been a fantastic discussion, but, sadly, I got plenty of my own business to get back to, so I’ll just show myself the way out and be none of yer concern no…more…” His words faltered, distracted by the vague sensations coursing through his body. He swallowed and touched his fingertips to his throat. The strange feeling from earlier still hadn’t faded, and he couldn’t shake the thought that that was important somehow. Shooting Geronimo a heated glance, he grumbled, “Ya got any water?” The giant shook his head mutely, not phased in the slightest by the abrupt change in topic. Jet scrunched his eyes shut as hard as he could. They felt so odd, and the fact he couldn’t figure out what exactly was different was increasingly adding to his frustration. Everything felt different. His mouth, his breathing, his joints, and even the sense of his weight pressing against the ground… And his mind. It was as if he were hyper-aware and slightly disconnected at the same time. He carefully rubbed at tiny granules stuck to his fingers, still trying to grasp at whatever was so out-of-place. …Wait. Why…was his skin so smooth…? He quickly brushed his sandy hands on his pants and brought them closer to his face for inspection. Frowning, he rubbed them together – as if that would change anything – and looked again. Flawless. The most unmarred, perfect hands he’d ever seen. The size and shape were as familiar as always, but every scar, every pockmark, every little spot of discoloration collected from a lifetime of fistfights and time under the sun… There was nothing. He rubbed his fingers together again, trying to comprehend their foreign texture. He then clapped his palms against his face and rubbed vigorously. More of the same. No bristles, no lumped up scar tissue. Just…smooth. What did it mean, and why was it causing him such alarm? Usually when he was stressed, his lungs would feel tight and his gut would roil. That was a normal response for pretty much anyone, right? ……Nothing. There was nothing. The back of his head was beginning to hurt, but other than that his body seemed so quiet. Not ‘still’ per se, but… Somehow, this was more disturbing than waking up with a giant man sitting on him. He looked back to said giant man. “What’d you do to me? And what for??” He tried to stand to advance on the stranger, but his legs felt so unnatural he quickly collapsed with a startled gasp. His prominent snout crashed into rock, but it didn’t hurt nearly as much as it should have. This wasn’t like the impaired motor skills that came with inebriation. That was certainly a familiar situation. And it didn’t feel like his bones were broken, either. That was ALSO a familiar situation. This was different, and far worse than missing scars and stomach knots. If he couldn’t even move properly… Building rage and horror quickly twisted together. “What’d you do to me?! What do you WANT, you crazy son of a bitch?! Is… Is this some kinda revenge?! See here, I ain’t EVER done nothin’ to your kind!! Or maybe yer just goin’ after whatever white man you come across, huh?!” He squirmed in another attempt to right himself, but even just scraping his knees against the ground racked his body with shivers. Something deep in his psyche was hollering the truth at him, but he couldn’t tell what it was. Geronimo turned to fully face the struggling redhead, eyes sad but patient. “You need to rest, and let your thoughts flow back to where they belong.” He raised an arm to once again gesture at the other occupants of the cave. “Each of them has awoken in the same state as you. Afraid, confused, unwilling to believe. I was not the first to wake. They helped me, and I helped them. And now I will help you…if you need it…my friend.” Jet lay shivering on the floor, his vicious words from before quickly discarded as he was becoming aware of his body’s functions with unnerving precision. “I, I can’t rest, somethin’s wrong with me… What’s wrong with me? My guts… My tongue… M-My eyes… Good god, my LEGS, what’s wrong with my legs…! They’re all-! AAH!! There’s somethin’ in my head!!” he yelped and curled up as best he could. Geronimo finally moved from his spot and gently lifted Jet, turning him face-up and propping him against the wall in a slouched sitting position. “The lights.” The short statement pierced Jet like a bullet. He didn’t even know why, but those two little words stunned him. “Th…The lights?” he whispered back, as if in awe. Geronimo nodded. “This will be frightening. And likely painful. But… You need to remember the lights. To come back to us as our companion, you need to remember, Jet.” Jet blinked, not recalling ever introducing himself. Of course, this guy could have heard it in plenty of places, but… He turned to look at the presumably sleeping forms littering the back of the cave. “’Us’, huh… So, what’s wrong with me…happened to them, too?” A nod. “We… We all know each other. …We’re really friends?” Another nod. “O…Okay… I’ll try. ‘Geronimo’, right?” He tilted his head expectantly. Geronimo’s stoic face finally allowed a small smile as he nodded a third time. “Alright… Alright. Here I go.” Jet exhaled carefully and tried to relax against the hard wall. It was quite a lot easier than he’d been expecting. Within minutes after his eyelids lowered and he sought to clear his head, his consciousness plunged fiercely into a mess of recollected images and sounds. – Gang members from both his own motley group and their rivals scattered like startled animals when the pasture they were brawling in was suddenly covered in a wide blue glow. They’d been at it for a while, and now the sun was low enough in the sky to really make that light seem brilliant to the eyes. Only Jet and the other gang’s leader stood their ground, pistols aimed apprehensively at the enormous shape lingering far, far above. His body felt warmth seep from the outside in, and he cast one last glance at the other ruffian before everything disappeared. – Jet blinked languidly, his head held carefully in one long, unidentified hand. The other hand was pressing along the length of his thick orange hair over and over as if stroking an animal, and, frankly, he was enjoying it. Various colored lights were weaving hither and thither at the other end of the room and fastened what little focus he had to their movements. He had been silent for a while now, comfortable in his soft haze and hardly concerned by the sight of his open torso and missing legs. There were things that he recognized, and a great many more that he didn’t. The doctor – at least, Jet assumed that they were a doctor – was working equally silently, long hands picking at this and that, inserting and removing with great care. How curious this doctor was. Tall and robed in white, with a strange long neck ending in a round, mask-clad head. A round mask for a round face. Made sense. The mask greatly reminded Jet of a barn owl with its large dark eyes. He grinned and decided to voice that opinion aloud. “You look like an owl. Anyone ever tell ya that?” There came no reply at first, so Jet prompted with an “Eh?” “…You have told me that. Twice before now.” Jet giggled drunkenly. “Yeah? Well, that’s ‘cause it’s true.” The work continued on, several other tall robed people stepping in to assist at times. Hmm, if he was being operated on by doctors, did that mean…? “…Hey, Doc? Um. Am I sick?” “No.” “That’s good. ……I’m not dyin’, am I?” “No.” “That’s good. ……What’s gonna happen when you’re done there?” The doctor hesitated for the briefest of moments. “…………If all is as it should be…you will fly.” Jet sighed contentedly and settled further back into his pleasant stroking. “That’s great. I can’t wait. Flyin’ sounds pretty nice. Like a bird. Fast and free…” His eyelids began to slide closed. “……Anyone ever tell ya you look like an owl?” – Jet dry-heaved in his container, his consciousness returned to its proper state as it always did after the anesthetics wore off. Information on every new change made to his body sparked through his head. He didn’t care. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t understand how any of this was possible. Choked fragments of halfhearted screams whined from his throat. They had decided to remove an arm to be worked on separately this time. And they still hadn’t re-attached his legs. There had been some minute error or other the last time they’d been tested, so for the time being he was left with just one arm as his only limb. Flying sounded pretty incredible until you realized you had to be taken completely apart, remade and reassembled to accomplish it. The silver-haired man a couple of containers over had just returned from his most recent…session. He was currently grinning and chuckling under his breath. As usual. “Say, you look like you could use a –” “DON’T. FUCKING. SAY IT.” “– hand.” Jet howled wordlessly, slamming his available fist against whatever material these prisons were made of. The other man’s blank, pupil-less eyes flashed with light as merciless laughter crawled out of the side of his crooked smirk. When Jet had first arrived, none of them could understand each other. The ‘doctors’ words were clear as could be, but it wasn’t until after a few operations that Jet and his fellow victims could make sense out of each other’s babbling. The young blonde girl who usually tried to keep the peace between them wasn’t here right now, and their other acquaintance – who at this point they knew only by the soundless voice in their heads – was probably asleep. Sometimes Jet still dreamt of the first time he’d seen the girl, naked and screaming in French for her elder brother. “He sabotaged himself,” the doctor had said to her, voice seething with rare irritation. “He was an excellent subject for flight, but caused his own malfunctions. A nonsensical creature. What manner of animal does such a thing when there are no threats, only rewards? And he left you without familial kin. Terrible.” The doctor turned away from the girl as assistants tried to keep her standing and looked instead to the transporter that Jet was laying on. “How is this one?” “This one is not a perfect replacement, but performs impressively enough. Both physically and psychologically,” the present attendant had replied. How ironic, looking back at that statement now. That had been back when he was out-of-it more often than not. But now he definitely wasn’t feeling that he performed psychologically well anymore. At least he was better off than the silver-haired man. Albert Heinrich, a German immigrant who had lost his wife-to-be when their wagon had careened into a valley in their panicked attempt to flee the giant object in the sky. That alone had done a number on his sensibility, and the mysterious operations had done him worse. Jet hated looking at the shimmering, inhuman body the man currently bore – and hated even more his sudden, spasmodic shifts between hysteria and vapidness – in fear of meeting a similar fate. It wasn’t until later, when they started being allowed to mingle with each other in more spacious environments, that Jet finally saw what the significance of Albert’s odd appearance was. He was a walking, talking toolkit, chock-full from the neck down with almost anything you could need to perform any task. Knives, welders, magnets, lanterns, explosives and more, all of the like that clearly didn’t belong in any realm that they were familiar with. And weapons. Plenty of weapons. “Guns” that shot out bluish-white lights that could incinerate a horse in one shot, blades that only became solid when they were swung forcefully, small projectiles that could follow a moving target… And no one was more horrified by these things then Albert himself. He was a good man, but unfortunately, his initial manner of coping was with frequent cackling and black humor. Worse were the times he blanked out completely. From what the girl, Francoise, had told her new companions, it seemed that she now possessed the abilities to hear sounds from incredible distances, see through anything as if the world itself was transparent, and smell the faintest traces of any substance. The tests had been overwhelming at first, leaving her in a near-catatonic state after each one. Sometimes when she was in her container, she’d stare intently in one direction, watching a scene that Jet and Albert could not. These instances often ended with her curling up with a shudder and refusing to speak for the next hour or so. The two men suspected that she probably received private consolation from Ivan, whether she wanted it or not. The visually-absent member of their tiny group, identifying himself as “Ivan”, had been a reservoir of information to the others…though the majority of it had been fairly undesired. Explanations were supported with images shoved directly into their brains, and the invasiveness left them highly distrusting of the disembodied voice. They had only its word that it was what it claimed to be – a Russian infant imbued with genius intelligence and psychokinetic capabilities. Whatever “psychokinetic” meant. His occasional attempts at levity were hardly any better than Albert’s, and he much preferred to get straight to the point. Despite this, he did seem to care about his new friends, and his clumsy efforts at emotionally supporting them were done in earnest. They wouldn’t meet him in person until close to the time when they would all make their final mad dash back to familiar grounds. And as for Jet… As promised, he could take to the skies, faster than any bird he knew of. The full feeling and movements within his legs left him deeply disturbed at times, white-hot flames shooting out from the soles of his feet. His technique definitely required some perfecting, and he cringed every time he realized he wasn’t slowing enough before reuniting with solid ground. Despite all of this, he couldn’t deny that he felt sincerely euphoric when he was in the air and almost felt guilty for enjoying it so much. The doctors hadn’t lied to him. He really did fly, and hover, and tear off at speeds the naked eye could hardly keep up with. And when he was praised by his…benefactors? Tormenters? When he felt like he could reach the top of the world, he’d remember his three suffering companions and wish that they all had been given the same treatment. That way, they could fly together, and perhaps even away from this incomprehensible place. All of this was beyond any level of machinery any of them had ever even bothered to imagine. Gears and cogs and springs and pistons and occasionally steam were what made clocks and trains and other such things, such objects, function. But what they had experienced here…what had been placed into their own bodies…seemed alive. And perhaps it was comforting to believe that it was, because if it wasn’t, then what did that make them, as people? They’d seen what one would swear up one side and down the other to be living organs woven to completion like needlework. Muscles and tissue were made by those foreign hands as well, and they definitely didn’t want to think of what had been done inside their skulls. Their own organs, flesh and bones were long gone. All of it had been replaced with astonishingly convincing recreations, and plenty of things that were never there in the first place. For what purpose, they still didn’t know. Maybe they never would. – The closer Jet’s recalled memories got to the present time, they faster they came. More containers filled with people of varying ethnicities were brought in and worked on at length. He recognized Geronimo, the enormous Indian, who he now remembered had been endowed with incredible strength. They were all superhumanly strong, but he was even more so. There was a Chinese man who could shoot streams of fire accurately from his mouth, a Brit who could restructure his entire body into any shape and mimic any creature, a Negro who was indomitable in any body of water… And there was Joe. Literally quick-as-lightning Joe, wild-eyed and defiant, who kept telling them all that they didn’t have to live like this. They could get out. They could use all of their abilities together and get back to ‘the real world’. THEIR world. These more recent additions hadn’t been there for too long when Joe made his declarations. His frantic insistence on fighting for their freedom had a much faster effect on them, who hadn’t endured the periods of isolation and repeated operations as long as the first four. They reached out to each other, took their captors by surprise, clumsily fought their hardest against a force that by all means they shouldn’t have been able to hold their own against, and they made sure no one was left behind in their escape. Faster and faster the images flashed through Jet’s mind, fresh tears overlapping the ones that had already leaked out over the course of this journey through the past. He didn’t need to linger on any of it anymore. He knew it all. He knew their names, what they could do, and what sort of people they were. Ivan, Francoise, Albert, Geronimo, Chang, G.B., Pyunma…and Joe. Goddamn it, Joe, you crazy kid. Jet buried his face in his arms, sobbing and laughing simultaneously as his tears slid down his long nose in their endeavor towards the ground. Geronimo’s heavy hand rubbed at Jet’s back until the redhead finally raised his eyes upward. “So, how’d I do?” he sniffed, and then stretched out as if he had merely awoken from a nap. “I’m not as much of a wreck as the dynamic geezer duo probably were, right?” He’d been about to jerk a thumb towards the assorted lumps of blanket but was surprised to find that many of them were empty now. His fellows must have woken and started gathering around while he was reliving the recent traumas. “And just what are you trying to say there, cowboy?” a bald middle-aged man with an English accent huffed as he folded his arms. G.B. “Are you saying he’s wrong?” a dark-skinned young man called out, still under his blanket but propped up and smiling lightly. Pyunma. “Well, we ARE pretty dynamic,” a short, round mustached man offered with a laugh. Chang. “I was beginning to think you’d NEVER wake up. You’re just about the last of us to come back, you know?” Jet glanced at the shining, metallic hand that had landed on his shoulder and grinned up at its owner. “How long was I out?” “It’s been a few days. We’ve been waking up one by one, and I regret to report that we’re only just now starting to get hungry.” Albert’s smirk quickly turned upside-down. “Guess that’s one of the side-effects of being whatever we can call ourselves now.” Jet’s surge of relief at having remembered his friends ebbed a little. He looked down to his boots and tilted his feet to the sides to reveal large, charred holes in the bottoms. “That’s right… What’re we gonna do from now on? We can’t just go back to where we left off before being…taken. Not after everything that’s happened ‘tween us.” He glanced around at the sad collection of eyes. “When were we knocked out in the first place? And where did these clothes come from?” He plucked at his unbuttoned vest. “We didn’t have anythin’ normal to wear when we were up there.” “Joe was the first to wake up. I’m pretty sure he used that insane speed of his to zip into a town and steal these outfits for us,” Pyunma explained while laying back down. “I was next. I had to help with dragging the rest of you into hiding.” He raised a hand in front of his face and sighed. “We probably wouldn’t have managed that if we weren’t the way we are.” “As for your prior inquiry!” G.B. straightened up with one finger raised. “We don’t have any way to know for certain, but the standing theory is that something in our heads was connected to all that madness up in that…that…flying what-not.” He waved at the air as if attempting to swat at a fly. “When we got far enough away, we all became detached from that and collapsed. Fortunately, we didn’t stay down, and now we seem to be able to move wherever we want with no problems!” “I wouldn’t exactly say ‘no problems’,” Albert grumbled while examining his forearm. Something clicked and make a soft whizzing sound, but he clapped his other hand over it before anything else could happen. He groaned and leaned back against the wall a little too quickly, his head clunking dully against the rocks. Chang nodded in agreement, his fingertips pawing at his lips. “A lot of decisions need to be made. Do we just try to ignore our strange bodies and act like anyone else? Should we learn to control it all, for safety’s sake at least? What do we do if…or when…others find out about us?"  

"No. No one can know about any of this,” a soft, tired voice came from the one remaining blanket. They all turned to look at Francoise, who had been watching them with one arm curled around a small bundle that was most likely a sound-asleep Ivan. “Who can you possibly expect to treat any of us as proper human beings after finding out what we are? We’ve had devils’ hands inside of us. Everything about us has been…been twisted and torn apart and changed into some kind of…some kind of horrid…!” Unable - or unwilling - to finish her sentence, she buried her face into the side of the unconscious baby.

“…So, how’s the kid?” Jet ventured, nodding toward the bundle. Geronimo, who hadn’t made any input since Jet’s reawakening, opened his eyes and spoke. “He is the only one of us that hasn’t woken yet. Given the nature of his powers, I don’t think it will take much time at all for his memories to return.” Pyunma snorted. “Given the nature of his powers, I hate to think of what might happen in the time before he pulls himself together.” Uncomfortable silence descended upon the group as they tried not to imagine the possible scenarios.

Suddenly, a figure appeared out of thin air on the other side of the fire, a large bag slung over one shoulder. Everyone flinched, startled by the abrupt movement before recognizing who it was. A lad barely into adulthood, his bushy brown hair haphazardly obscuring one eye. Jet was on his feet in a second. “Joe!” he exclaimed in relief. “Joe, hey, I remembered everyone! I’ve got-”  Joe’s eye widened for a moment before his expression came down in a pained, apologetic smile. With a hand raised to cut off Jet’s speech, his own words hurriedly rushed out. “That’s really wonderful, but we have to move. We can’t wait for Ivan. I got supplies but I also got in trouble and they’re coming now and we have to get out of here as fast as we can.”

Francoise sat straight up, as wide-eyed and perplexed as the rest of the group. “But no one can see you when you’re running as fast as you do. There’s no way they could follow…unless you left tracks?” she hesitantly accused. Joe swallowed, his one exposed eye unsettlingly piercing. “One of them was there.” A cacophony of disbelief erupted. “What?! Are you joking?!” “Impossible! Those guys can’t just go walking around a town!” “Are you still a li'l messed up, Joe? That’s gotta be it, right?” “I don’t mean one of the people who changed us. I mean…someone who is LIKE us.” Joe turned from his gaping friends to face the cave entrance, as if he were ready to bolt for it at any second. “And they don’t seem to have any troubles at all with using their body or being seen by the townsfolk. We can either see how far we can run…or stay and fight them.” He turned back sharply and cast his gaze over his attentive audience.

“If we’re going to vote on it, we have to do it right now.” –

Can you tell the closing of Jet’s flashbacks was rushed? (ﾉ･ヮ･)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧ I’m really sorry for not going into detail on the latter half of the team meeting each other and don’t think less of them, but while I love coming up with stories and describing outlines of them, actually writing them out is exhausting. My steam is spent. If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading!

[Notes: I was originally planning on re-naming Jet “Jedd”, thinking that it sounded more Old West-y (Is it?), but I looked up the various meanings of “Jet” and decided that there wasn’t much reason to change it. I don’t know if it was ever used as a name back then, but the word – meaning “to shoot out; thrust forward” – has existed since the 1600s, according to sources. (…It can also mean a spurt, as of water, but that’s less associate-able to Jet…)

In my first attempt at this, more characters were awake at the beginning. A rather unhinged Albert mocked Jet, a tired Francoise voiced concerns, and Ivan offered to help Jet relax so he could better remember what had happened. Unfortunately, I felt that having so many characters involved delayed getting to the flashbacks for too long, so I went back and completely re-wrote all that. …Albert had a funny line about metaphors, though.]

#It's probably obvious that I favor sci-fi over historical settings #It was an attempt #I'd be happy to hand the wheel to someone who's savvy with both genres #I still want to see this as a movie #Cyborg 009 #Old West AU #AU #fanfic #my writing #my post

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kirukirice · 8 years ago

Text

Among the Crows: Chapter 51 - First Blood

I’m thinking that if chapters are going to be longer it would be better not to post the whole thing here since ‘keep reading’ doesn’t work on mobile. What do yall think?

Anyways, enjoy the chapter uvu

–> Full text here on Ao3!

Dinner at Ukai’s was always scrumptious and plentiful.

Blending together the nuances of Kara and human cuisine, his dishes often resulted in pleasing combinations of flavours that suited everyone’s palate. Today, the table was spread with a heaping serving of twelve-herb grilled pork, a huge bowl of fresh greens from the market, a pot of savoury potato and vegetable soup, and a tall bottle of aged apple cider.

Ukai liked to start off his meals with soup. He loudly slurped down the creamy broth and the softened tubers altogether, draining his bowl cleanly to the last drop. Afterwards, he carved out a thick cut of meat from the bone and sliced it effortlessly into large chunks to chew on. Finally, he washed it all down with a mouthful of cider.

Hinata and Kageyama scarfed down their food with gusto like ravenous hyenas – it didn’t matter what it was they put in their mouths, for it was all delicious – and burned their tongues on the piping hot soup. They never did learn to slow down and cool off their food.

Daichi ate modestly and alternated eating meat with vegetables, sometimes taking a swig of soup in between when he needed more flavour. He often reminded the kids to eat their greens and helped them cut up their steaks when it got too tough to chew.

Oikawa behaved like a proper gentleman as he ate. He made no uncouth clinks or clangs with his cutlery, carefully portioned his food into bite-sized mouthfuls, and chewed with his mouth closed. He dabbed his mouth with a napkin to banish any stray droplets from his flawless appearance, and finished his plate of whatever food he had taken.

Iwa-chan sat on the floor beside Oikawa in beast form, decimating a whole pork leg with his crushing jaws and making a whole lot of cracking noises in the process. He gobbled the leg up in a matter of minutes, and cleanly licked his paws and fur clean of grease when he was done.

“Oh, right. Is Suga not eating?” asked Oikawa when he noticed the Kara’s absence.

“No, he’s on a strictly fluid diet.” Ukai replied while chewing.

“Ah, that’s a shame,” he sighed regretfully, ignoring Daichi’s dagger-like glares. “I wanted to chat a little more with him.”

“Is the food to your liking? Nothing fancy, I’m afraid.” The Kara asked.

“Certainly. Your cooking is exquisite - nothing like the food you get in this town.”

“Ah, I’m an alright cook. We get the ingredients fresh, that’s why.”

Hinata forked a piece of meat and quietly hovered it below the table. Iwa-chan noticed, and snatched it up in one well-aimed bite.

“You humble yourself. Most restaurateurs here can’t hold a candle to you.”

Tickled, the boy lowered down another piece.

“I’ll set up my own diner when I get sick of birds, then,” Ukai laughed, “It’ll be much more profitable, for sure.”

And another.

“So, how did you become a doctor?” Oikawa asked.

And another.

“Long story. My folks were doctors, so I carried on the family trade.”

And another, until Kageyama ratted them out.

“Daichi, Hinata’s feeding the dog his food,” he complained.

Daichi looked over at Iwa-chan, whose canine expression was remorseless.

“Hinata, finish your share before you give it away, okay?” he said, then cut another chunk of meat and placed it on the boy’s plate.

“Okay. He likes it, though.” Hinata grinned happily and swung his legs. Oikawa ruffled the pup’s head and chided, “Let the growing kid have his food, Iwa-chan. You’ll get fat at this rate.”

“Oikawa, what is Iwa-chan, anyway?” Ukai asked the man.

“He’s a kind of werewolf.” Oikawa said, and then winked at Hinata.

Skeptical, the man took a few extra bites on his food. “Werewolf? Huh. I’ve never seen one, but the books don’t draw them like that.”

The mage shrugged and continued scratching Iwa-chan’s chin lazily. The hound obliged to his master’s whim, giving in to his sweet spot. “He’s a rare kind. Not every member of a race is the same, after all. Just like a grey Kara, yes?”

“Of course.” Ukai shrugged back. Except that he didn’t recall werewolves having black, leathery wings. “Do all mages have familiars like you do?”

“No, only beast tamers do. There are many kinds of mages, you see, not only those who command familiars.”

Hinata then asked, “Like what? Can they shoot lightning out of their hands?”

Oikawa laughed gaily and smoothed back his fringe. “No, silly! In theory we could, but that level of magic is too powerful for mortals to control.”

“So they’d fry themselves if they tried?” The child giggled at the thought, and the man grinned and booped his nose.

“Even the Grand Invoker himself couldn’t, you know. And he could do almost anything! You’d have to be a god, for sure.”

“Hey, we know someone who can.” Kageyama said, and Oikawa looked at him with interest. He hadn’t had a chance to talk to this crow yet.

“Oh? And who is that?” he asked.

“He’s called Nishinoya.”

“Yeah, he’s a really short deity.” Hinata added.

Suddenly, a booming roll of thunder roared off in the distance, and everyone stared out the window at once.

“Is that him?” asked the mage, amused.

“Must be. I’m only telling the truth, so don’t get mad!” Hinata yelled upwards, and Daichi covered the boy’s mouth with a sigh. “Don’t say that, or we’re gonna have to pay him a visit again.” He wondered if he had to re-explain the word ‘blasphemy’ to him.

And of course, Ukai hadn’t been briefed about their encounter with the short Tengu, so they had to tell the both of them the whole tale. Hinata and Kageyama were rather enthusiastic to do most of the talking, so Daichi let them and occasionally stepped in to clarify. They started right from when Daichi fell down the cliff, and acted out their utter surprise when they first met the deity. But right when they were getting to the interesting bits, a faint chime of a bell came from the bedroom, and Daichi excused himself from the table to answer it.

“He’s better trained than you.” Oikawa remarked snarkily to Iwa-chan, who rolled his eyes.

Entering through the curtains, Daichi looked at Suga with a smile and said, “You called?”

The Kara seemed more tired than usual, but it couldn't be helped. Having to drink honeyed tea alone for the past few days didn't give him a lot of energy to work with.

"Sorry," Suga spoke quietly, "You haven't finished your dinner, right?"

"It's alright." Daichi replied. He noticed the empty glass, and took it. "I'll get you some more water. Anything else?"

He shook his head.

Returning with a full glass, Daichi set it back down and asked for Suga's wrist. His skin felt cold, but his pulse was normal. His forehead felt fine, too, but it looked like he was shivering a little every now and then.

“Do feel uncomfortable? Are you cold?” he asked.

“A little,” replied Suga.

“I’ll see if there are more blankets.” Daichi said and closed the windows, shutting out the draft. The sky was almost pitch black by now as the rumbling clouds clustered together in a island of grey. They weren’t a by-product of Nishinoya’s wrath, to be sure - just nature’s.

Alas, though towels were in abundant supply, there weren’t any more blankets to be found. Fortunately, Ukai had a much better solution. From the crowded shed he picked up a small round ball of black feathers from a pile of similar-looking ones. The creature retained its fuzzy, globular shape as he held it, and it fit snugly in his palm like a lump of coal.

“This little buddy here’s a coalbird. It’s obvious why they’re called that – c’mon, just look at it – and also because they’re naturally very warm.” he explained to Daichi and Suga.

Nudging the top of its head with his finger, Ukai woke the bird. It gave the tiniest of sneezes upon being disturbed, and then chirped angrily at him and tried to fly off—but the man held it fast between his cupped hands.

“Hey, hey, sorry to wake you, bud. I just need a quick favour.” said Ukai to the bird.

It tweeted once in a questioning tone and calmed down.

“Could you sleep here with this man for a while?”

The coalbird looked at Suga, blinking rapidly and cocking its head this way and that. It then chirruped something lengthy back at Ukai which sounded like a very unthreatening interrogation. Every single time Daichi observed Ukai conversing with a bird, it was like watching him talk to himself like a madman.

“Yes, yes, you don’t have to worry. All you have to do is sit under that nice, comfy blanket, and be yourself. Just get your friend to replace you when you’re done.”

As if in agreement it wiggled its short tail, then hopped out of his hands and walked slowly up to Suga’s chest.

Suga watched it intently and a small rush of delight came over him. “It’s so tiny,” he whispered, and the bird tried saying something to Suga. When he didn’t respond, the bird repeated its chirp twice, then looked confusedly up at Ukai. The doctor shrugged at the coalbird and translated its words for him.

“She’s asking you if you’ve cleaned your feathers already. She’s very particular about hygiene.”

Suga nodded and replied to the coalbird, “Yes, Daichi helped me earlier.”

Satisfied with his answer, it nestled on top of his chest and poked its walnut-sized head out from under the blanket. It closed its beady yellow eyes and rested its head on him, a movement so insignificant that he barely felt it. Its little body radiated warmth like a portable heater, and soon it felt all cozy and warm underneath the sheets. Suga dared not touch it - though he very much yearned to as he found it immeasurably adorable. It was so small, soft, and light that it seemed like the slightest nudge would bruise it, much like a strawberry.

“You can’t understand what it’s saying? I thought all Karas could.” Daichi asked and Suga shook his head, his gaze transfixed on the bird.

“It’s just like any other language. You have to learn it.” Ukai said. “I think they’ll get along fine anyway, even if they don’t understand each other.”

Smiling, Suga closed his eyes alongside the bird and sighed peacefully, “She’s so warm.”

“See?” the blonde grinned and gestured at the heart-warming scene, “No problem.”

And having one less thing to worry about was important, for tonight it seemed like trouble would stir at a moment’s notice. The brewing storm hit the house shortly after dinner, and the rain began pouring down heavily in droves. Thunder crackled across the sky, and lightning split the heavens into brilliant white fissures. Soon, Oikawa foretold, the Carcamas would take advantage of the confusion and darkness of this wretched night and strike. Iwa-chan had already sensed a large gathering of beings within Kabeki Forest, but that was the only point of certainty.

Lying in wait in the cold and wet, Daichi, Oikawa, and Iwa-chan hid themselves behind the barricaded fence that was erected a few metres away from the house. The rest took shelter inside and turned out all the lights except for the oil lamps hanging from the front porch, making the entrance look like a shining lighthouse in the middle of a sea of black.

Just what the mage wanted.

“You really don’t have to do anything, Daichi. We’ll take care of it.” Oikawa yelled over while taking cover from the rain underneath Iwa-chan. The hound was wholly focused on detecting the enemy, his ears swivelling about as he sat unperturbed by the rain pelting his coat.

“I’m not going to sit around and do nothing when I can defend this place.” Daichi replied and docked his arrow. The hood pulled over his brows kept the water out and his sight clear.

“With that thing? In this weather?” Oikawa scoffed.

Level-headed, Daichi cricked his neck and loosened his shoulders. “Don’t worry about me.”

The mage snorted, unconvinced, and took out his whip. “Suit yourself. Just don’t get in my way.”

“Silence.” Iwa-chan commanded with his deep voice and got off his hind legs. “They’re making a move.”

The two humans tensed up at once and peered out from cover. They could barely see or hear anything through the blasted torrent.

“How many of them are there?” Oikawa asked and squinted his eyes.

“I’m not sure. Twenty, maybe thirty,” he replied. Daichi gulped and clutched his bow tightly. That number was far above their estimates.

Then, Iwa-chan’s ears pointed at attention and his eyes glowed red. “Something’s coming.”

Far off in the fields, he heard the swift thumping of a heart that drew closer and closer.

“One.” he murmured, and took a step forward.

“Only one?” The hunter said, and stood up to draw his bow.

Oikawa frowned and stood as well. “Stand down. Iwa-chan’s got this.”

“Why don’t we save the best for last?” Daichi replied calmly and took aim. The mage couldn’t argue with that. He clicked his tongue and sulked on top of the fence, and Iwa-chan took that as confirmation to yield. A job was still a job, however, and he would assist where Daichi was lacking.

“It’s halfway through the field and straight ahead. When will you shoot?” the hound asked.

“A hundred metres.” Daichi said, accepting his help. He could almost make out a moving object in the blurring rain, and he adjusted his arm.

“Understood. At this speed, about fifteen seconds until it arrives.”

Daichi breathed out and closed his eyes briefly.

He couldn’t kill the lynx back then in the forest, but this time would be different.

“Ten seconds.”

A wide open field was child’s play to someone like him. All the times he skipped school really paid off.

“Five.”

What was a little rain and wind but distractions in the hunt?

“Four.”

He even had someone telling him where the target was.

“Three.”

All he had to do was pull back the string—

“Two.”

Take a good, hard look at the cat’s eyes—

“One.”

And let his arrow fly.

The spear sliced through the air with a short whistle, and after a few seconds of suspense, the strangled cry of a Carcama sounded off in the distance.

“It’s dead.” Iwa-chan reported after a moment, no longer hearing the beating of its heart. Yet another soul bound for the underworld, he thought.

“Are there more?” asked Daichi, already ready for the next one. But Iwa-chan shook his head and jogged off beyond the fence. Dragging the heavy carcass into the compound between his jaws, he dropped it off between the two men with a muddy splash and spat out the foul-tasting blood. There, they saw the Carcama’s ghastly face which was locked in eternal surprise, undoubtedly at the arrow that drove itself right between its eyes. The arrowhead emerged from the base of its skull, and whatever brain matter that had burst from the hole had long been washed away.

“Well, well, that was a clean kill.” Oikawa remarked, seemingly unimpressed.

“They’re retreating,” Iwa-chan said with a flick of his tail, “I can’t detect them anymore.”

Pulling out the arrow with a hard tug, Daichi frowned. “That doesn’t make sense. Carcamas don’t attack one by one, and they won’t just leave their friend here.”

“But that was the case last night, and so were the attacks from before. This strange behaviour must have an explanation.” Oikawa said and rubbed his chin thoughtfully, toying with an idea in his mind. “Let’s discuss that indoors, shall we? My socks are getting all soggy.”

No one argued with that.

Once inside, Ukai had many towels but no clues to give.

“I don’t know what to say. They should have destroyed this place a long time ago, but they haven’t. They’ve just come and gone in different places, picking people at random to maul.”

“But is it really, as you say, random?” Oikawa suggested while drying off his wet hair. With just his undershirt and long pants on, the mage’s appearance was a departure from his usually prim and proper self; but still no fault could be found in his enduring charisma.

Hinata took joy in chasing Iwa-chan around with a dry towel, and Kageyama had turned in for the day. The fireplace smouldered with a fresh log that was just beginning to catch the continuing flame.

“What do you mean?” the Kara asked and lit up a cigarette. He looked like he needed three of those.

“Well, what if all they’re doing is in preparation for something bigger?”

Daichi raised an eyebrow. “You mean, they’re planning for a huge attack?”

“They’re not that smart,” Ukai frowned, brushing off the idea.

Oikawa pointed a tentative finger upwards and leaned onto the dining table. “Let’s not jump to conclusions, gentlemen. They have, despite their odd behaviour, been moving in a definite direction. If we were to plot out their attacks and apply logic to the situation—“ he took out a rolled-up map of the town from inside his coat, “—we can see what they’re trying to do.”

Ukai spread the parchment out onto the table and took a closer look at the crosses marked onto it. Then, he realized what Oikawa was trying to say. Every single attack had happened on the outskirts of town, and the crosses were forming what resembled a ring around the entire settlement. The only spot where a glaring space was left was the clinic, right on the other side of town where the first kill occurred.

“Are you saying… they’re testing us?” Ukai concluded.

“Either that, or they’re just playing with you. Cats, am I right?” Oikawa replied jokingly, then waltzed around the table as he spoke. “Every assault so far has been simple. One or two Carcamas sneak into a house in the middle of the night – they did it once during the day, actually – then kill a few people, and leave without the villagers putting up much of a fight.”

Ukai looked up grimly, his palms flat on the map. “Yes. We haven’t managed to take down a single Carcama, and they always run away after making a kill. They don’t eat the bodies.”

Oikawa continued, “It makes sense to say that they’ve been poking around to see where town’s defences are at. They could have come all at once, but they decided to cover their bases and gauge the strength of their enemies. But, even if we don’t know what their real strategy is, we can be sure that they’re not here for food or for fun. So, it can only be—“

“For territory.” Daichi finished his sentence.

“Bingo.” He snapped his fingers. “You’re smarter than you look.”

The doctor combed through his hair and puffed out a long breath of smoke. He left his unruly fringe hanging over his face, and then stubbed out his cigarette on the table. “Fine. Let’s say they are here to take over. Then, what’s causing them to do so? A human settlement isn’t a home for Carcamas.” he murmured.

“You’re asking the right questions, doctor.” Oikawa smiled and tapped his fingers on the table. “That brings us back to their unnaturally organized behaviour.”

Oikawa then caught Hinata in his tracks and pinched his cheeks, stopping the assault on his poor puppy.

“Someone - or something - is leading them,” declared the mage.

“And now that they know there’s someone capable of stopping them, they won’t sit idly by.”

But who could lead a battalion of bloodthirsty cats?

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