#when the old giant first fell in love with the world around him and her fragile beauty | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

oopsimbug · 1 year ago

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in which… y/n is stubborn, and harry is still an asshole

a.k.a. regency harry pt. 2

a/n: gah… i literally dont know what to say… how about: oh my god i am so sorry for taking so long! school, two jobs, a lack of inspiration and literally hating my own writing made sure i was unable to post for an entire YEAR AND FIVE MONTHS!!!! i DEEPLY apologise. i hope this is alright? let me know what you think! and yes, there WILL be a third part, hopefully out before the earth is enveloped by the sun?

pairing: regency era! harry styles x reader, enemies to lovers

summary: again, think little women, but with you instead of jo and harry instead of laurie… but harry is an asshole… a RELENTLESS asshole

warnings: harry is still a GIANT ass, all enemies no lovers, lots of really mean things said to each other, they literally truly hate one another like i have my work cut out for me trying to redeem this couple :’)

word count: 10.8k (smaller than my first chapter, but god did i struggle getting over the 9k mark… i literally hate myself)

read part one here!!

Money…

It was what made the world spin around.

Unfortunately, the L/ns did not have as much of it as they used to.

This was why, when their mother needed money to visit their father, who fell very ill, Y/n set out to find a job.

Replacing her mother at her job in the nurse's office wasn’t going to work- she was horrible with sitting still for too long. Besides, her hands were far too shaky to hold silly little fiddly needles. No, there was no chance she would do that.

She could try to get a job at a shop- a bakery possibly? But no, she had little patience for old people, who were always either very interesting and passionate, which she loved, or very snooty and cold, which she despised with every cell of her being- and unfortunately, the majority of customers were the elderly, who shopped when they had nothing else to do during the day, and they were predominantly of the latter kind.

Y/n was positively puzzled- stupendously stumped and magnificently muddled. She knew she was talented, but what job would she fulfill that would be of use and make a substantial pay? She pondered that all morning as she completed her chores- tending to the animals and picking up more wood. Once inside, she stoked the fire, made two cups of tea and sat at the dining table.

“Saf!” she called to her sister upstairs. “Bring your packet and come to the table- it’s 9:30!”

At the age of 13, girls were forced to graduate school. Ma and Y/n, who didn’t believe this was enough of an education, devised a plan- once graduated, the L/n girls would do tutoring sessions with Y/n, who was passionate and proficient in all areas of English, which was what the girls would require the most to function in the world. She would also help with arithmetic- though it was not her strong point, she was confident in the skills they would probably need. Safia was under the tutoring of Y/n, as would Ula the next year.

As she waited for the pitter-patter of Saf’s feet down the stairs, she thought to herself. Unfortunately, all natural thoughts seemed to lead in the same direction lately- all pertaining to a certain tall and lanky individual with brown hair. She was not moping, that was for sure- Y/n did not mope. She was not even upset about him choosing a different woman over her- that was a fleeting insecure thought held only in the heat of the moment that night. No, she was mad. Furious, in fact. How dare he- how dare he?! He strung her along, purposefully got her hopes up for the mere sake of making fun of her- he embarrassed her and then had the utter gall to smirk and wink about it afterwards! Y/n always had a temper, but this was anger on a whole different level. This was searing, hot, burning, blood-red vexation. Her hands began to ball into fists- she wanted to hit something, break something, hurt him and only him.

However, before she could fantasise about all the ways she would cause him pain, she felt a soft arm on her shoulder. She must’ve been caught in a trance, unable to hear her sister come down the stairs and call her name once she reached the bottom and found Y/n unresponsive, as Safia’s face held deep concern, eyebrows knit together as she repeated her question.

“Are you okay, Y/n?” her tentative and soft voice carefully asked, placing a hand on her forehead to check her temperature, ever the sweetheart. “You’re not feeling ill, are you? I know Liz was rid of her sickness a few weeks ago, but it may have lingered around the house.”

She smiled up at her younger sister, who moved her hand to feel her cheek, after finding no suspiciously hot temperature on her forehead. She shook her head and let out a small laugh, all of the rage for him leaving her thoughts.

“I’m okay Saf… just thinking…” she replied honestly. She was just thinking… thinking of how she would pelt that damned boy with logs of firewood. Or maybe she should let Flynn at him- she had already told the Clydesdale of what had happened. Maybe he could stomp him down till he quivered and shook with fear, begging both of them for forgiv-

“Thinking about what?” Her sister’s voice pulled her out of her reverie once again.

Y/n looked up at her face, smiled brightly, pulled out the adjacent chair and patted it lovingly, before replying with a jolly tone.

“Nothing that you should worry about… Now, are you ready to venture into the world of Hedda Gabler?”

Her sister smiled sweetly before sitting down, eyes sparkling with excitement. “Of course I am!”

“Great! Because today, we are going to be analysing gender and how it influences power within our passage!” Y/n was always so excited to teach her about the books, poems and plays that she liked- there was no way she would teach her sister boring and dull theory, or pieces that only reflected a man’s perspective. No, she had an opportunity to open her sister’s mind and hopefully make a lasting impact on it- one that encouraged her to pursue her dreams without needing the opinion or permission from a man. And she wasn’t going to waste it.

“Now, open to our bookmarked page, and let’s begin…”

*****

After finishing classes, Y/n got dressed and ran out the door before her sisters could follow her, unable to take all of them to the village on Flynn, and not wanting to upset anyone. She buckled the saddle into place and hopped on before riding the path all the way to town. After tying Flynn up with hay and water, she straightened out her dress and apron and began walking, dodging men who gave her glances of annoyance for her slightly messy loose hair, mussed on the fast journey on the Clydesdale. She had bigger things to worry about, despite what Liz would say…

She was picking up some lemons from the market, which Ula insisted on getting, convinced that they were necessary to her social status in her school, where pickled lemons were the talk of the town. While the need for lemons didn’t sound dire to Y/n, Liz benevolently gifted her extra loose change, justifying it with something about “knowing what it was like to not fit with others at school”. And while Y/n didn’t believe money like five whole dollars should go to waste on lemons, she still searched the shelves intently, looking for some that weren’t too costly. While leaning forward, she walked through an aisle, scouring the lowest shelf for them, unaware of the person she was about to bump into. Curse her clumsiness!

She walked right into the unsuspecting person before standing to full height, apologies spilling out of her rapidly as she helped the older lady regain balance. Y/n had never seen her before- an older woman, around her own mother’s age, with brown hair that was greying from the roots and forest green eyes that twinkled, reminding her all too much of a certain boy, but she pushed those thoughts away. She also looked of money, with her elegant dress, shoes and shiny jewels.

Y/n began spilling out apologies as it was her own fault for the collision, and the kind lady forgave her each time with a “That’s all right, my dear”, with calming energy radiating from her. Once the two women had settled they let out breathy chuckles at the incident. Beginning to move back to her search for cheap citrus was halted, however, when Y/n noticed the woman seemingly struggling to find what she was looking for. Y/n observed covertly as the lady would gingerly pick up a bottle of what looked to be cologne, look at the label for a few seconds, squint as if to make out what it was saying, before putting it back nervously and repeating with the next.

Y/n noted that when she would “read”, her eyes didn’t stop to comprehend the words. She needed help, and Y/n was not one to shy away from that fact.

“Hello,” Y/n began.

The lady smiled sweetly as she replied, her green eyes twinkling with curiosity.

“Hello, love.” she gently replied.

Y/n wanted to help without seeming patronising, so she was careful with her words. “So, what brings you here, Ma’am?”

She looks around, then down at the glass bottle in her hand before looking back at Y/n. She fumbles and hesitates as she answers.

“Oh- well- I am looking for this shoe polish, but… I seem to be having a bit of trouble…”. She went beet red before she whispered in a meek and quiet squeak only fairies could hear. Fairies or those who had experience with shy sweethearts as Y/n had with her Saf.

“You-“ she slightly huffed a bitter laugh through her nose. “You probably can already tell, but… I can’t read…” she confessed, thoroughly embarrassed.

If Y/n wanted to help the woman before, her holding cologne that would most certainly tarnish leather while shopping for shoe polish convinced her utterly and completely. She did not hesitate- not even for a beat, determined to show that there was nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing at all!

“I can help you! I never use shoe polish- my shoes are always getting muddy anyways, and it would only be a pain to scrub them for nothing, so I don’t have any suggestions in mind, but if you have an idea of the type of polish you wanted, I could help you out!” She dropped personal anecdotes into the conversation, as she often did when conversing with strangers, finding it easier to comfort others to relax around her when they knew she was an open book.

“Oh thank you, my darling! I am looking for a dark brown and black coloured polish that would work best for making leather loafers shiny.”

And with that, Y/n began her search, starting with going to the correct section, before beginning to scan the tiers of the shelves carefully, looking for what the lady wanted. The woman followed her and began a friendly conversation with her as she searched.

“My nephew needs new polish for his shoes. I would have told him to do it himself, but he’s out of town, you see. Went out of town, about a week’s trip away. I couldn’t send my maid either- I wished for her to take some time off while there were less people in the house, you see. So here I arrived, figuring I could just find it myself. Ah, how foolish.” She then sighed once more after simmering in laughter for a bit, looking wistfully at another tin she could not decipher the contents of.

Y/n found the two tins of shoe polish, holding them out to her while responding firmly. “Ma’am, you are not foolish at all. At least you tried! And look, here you are helping your nephew who’s out of town, after letting your helpers take a break! That’s not foolish, that’s compassionate,”.

The lady smiled warmly, the wrinkles next to her eyes crinkling and creasing beautifully as she did. “Oh, darling, you are very sweet for using your gift to help those who cannot. Thank you!” She lightly squeezed Y/n’s cheek playfully before walking to the counter, Y/n following after her before placing the tins on the table for the cashier to process.

“You are very welcome Ma’am.” The lady began to pull open the small embroidered coin purse she had in her slightly wrinkled yet sturdy hands, fishing for a coin before dropping it into Y/n’s palm and winking.

Y/n’s eyes went wide as she attempted to hand the coin back.

“Ma’am, I couldn’t possibly. I was just trying to be of service, truly. Please take your money.”

But the woman was not having a lick of it. Her face grew stern, her eyes fiery as she quickly snapped back. “Don’t you dare try to give that back, it’s yours!”

Y/n reluctantly smiled and nodded gratefully before walking back to the shelves to continue her search for lemons as the gentle tinkle of the doorbell indicated the sweet lady’s exit. She could not stop thinking about her, however. Why was it that men were taught to read and write and build and farm, but women were only taught how to be good mothers and wives? That woman could learn to read- anyone could, really. All she needed was a teacher…

Suddenly, Y/n had an idea. One that caused her to drop everything she was doing and run out the door to look for the woman. Teaching! Y/n could teach the woman and in return, get a bit of money! After looking around, she found her walking down the cobbled street, seconds from entering a very expensive and fancy carriage.

“WAIT MA’AM!” Y/n cried, weaving past the people and carts on the busy street as she ran to her. The lady’s ears perked and she looked back, locked eyes with Y/n and froze with concern, allowing the younger girl to catch up.

“Yes, my dear?” She asked, once Y/n had caught up and was attempting to catch her breath. After a few deep, embarrassingly wheezy breaths, Y/n finally calmed herself down enough to respond.

“Icouldteachyou-”, she said exasperated all in one sentence before punctuating it with a heaving breath. After taking a lungful or two of air, she clarified to the poor confused woman.

“Ma’am, I could teach you how to read! If you would like!”

The woman’s eyes opened wider in astonishment before her face brightened with a radiant smile. “You would teach me?” She asked, almost flabbergasted.

“Yes, of course!” Y/n responds, enthusiastically. “I am currently teaching my sisters how to read, so I know how to do it! I could help you too if you would like!”

The woman’s warm and grateful smile shone brighter than the sun. And Y/n’s heart stuttered with excitement when she asked to exchange addresses for further communication.

This was it… she was finally going to help her family.

******

It was four days later when the L/n residence received two letters, both with express stamps on them, signaling their importance. One was a letter from their father, which the girls were keen to read immediately, but waited for their mother to come home so they could unveil it together. The other, however, was mysteriously addressed to and only to Y/n. How peculiar!

“Y/n you must open it in front of us- what if it is a secret admirer hoping to eagerly profess their love to you!” Ula whined. Liz shook her head and looked at the youngest girl.

“If Y/n wants to keep this to herself, she exercises her right to do so”. Liz’ eyes drift to Y/n’s slowly as she continues. “…However…”, before finally running and springing onto her. “You MUST tell us if it is!”

Y/n rolled her eyes at her sisters, despite Liz’s best attempts to put an end to the “unladylike” and “brash” behaviour. “Come on, there is no way it will be a boy… have you ever even seen me with one? I would run circles around them in every sense before their tiny minds could even get a singular word out!”

Y/n, though thoroughly believing in her statement that yes, she probably could outshine any boy in the town, also- in the back of her mind- registered that yes, maybe she was overcompensating and exaggerating just the smallest bit in order to shield her heart, still sore from the events of Tilly Hughes’ ball and that wicked boy. Her sisters chuckled at her musing as she made herself comfortable on the sofa chair next to the fire, all three of her sisters huddling behind her in order to get a good view of the elegantly folded and wax-sealed letter that Y/n began to tear open. Once the pristine paper was unfolded, she stood up and began to pace as she read- her sisters giggling and breathing over her shoulder was doing no good, and she needed to focus. It read:

Before Y/n could process the words written on the paper, Liz narrated the letter to Saf and Ula- the latter began to squeal mercilessly, while Liz grinned from ear to ear, pores radiating with pride for her sister.

*******

The house was astonishing. It was grand, it was elegant, it was pristine.

Above all, it was capital!

The trek down the natural and lush path of trees and fields was all a ruse- Y/n knew Ms Ophelia was a rich woman, but she but any preconceived notion of what her house may look like while trekking the trail was completely, utterly, jaw droppingly decimated. Once reaching the end of the driveway (walking ever so slowly to take the majesty in), Y/n and Flynn were met with pristine hedges that bordered the entire property. Two large white marble columns with oil lamps attached signaled the beginning of the courtyard. In between them, was a large opening where Y/n could see the greenest grass she had ever witnessed, a center hedge path, and behind it, Ms Ophelia’s grand home. Y/n’s mouth was hung open as she approached the large, stark white building, with its covered entrance, wide expanse and huge windows.

It was a stretch for it to even be called a house. It was a mansion- a manor. Y/n resolved that there must be a plethora of family members that justified the sheer volume of space there was to occupy. She stepped off of Flynn, held the end of his reign, and walked through the grassy courtyard and to the front door. She would have taken Flynn to the stables, not wanting her first introduction to her well-paying student to be interrupted by the attention-hungry Clydesdale, however, the house was so grand she could not even begin to wonder where the hell the stables could be. Instead, she smoothed the light wrinkles out of the frock that Ula picked for her, slightly disgruntled when remembered the lack of a waistcoat she had on. She attempted to fix and flattened the now slightly frizzy hair that Liz had spent almost an entire hour to style, mussed a tad due to the breeze created while riding Flynn, before taking a deep breath in... and rang the doorbell.

She heard some muffled clattering, before hurried footsteps approached, growing louder and louder before they reached the mahogany door, pulled open to reveal a positively ecstatic Ms Ophelia- her brown hair pulled back with a hair pin, but similar in frizziness to Y/n. Her eyes squinting with her warm closed lip smile, the green irises truly dazzling with excitement. She was dressed in a simple yet elegant green and white silk dress, her chest adorned with a single thin gold necklace threaded through a small locket.

"Y/n!!! So nice to see you!” The lady took Y/n and Flynn in with a charming smile, cooing at the latter before stepping forward to give the Clydesdale a stroke down his white blaze and a scratch on his chin, causing him to preen, closing his eyes a soft huff of pleasure. She then looked to Y/n. “Please, my farmhand Thomas will take this handsome boy to the stables out back."

She looked past Y/n to the front garden and called to the man Y/n hadn't noticed had been planting flowers. He had shiny blonde hair, short from the sides while the top was long and messy, slightly damp with sweat. He pushed the golden mess out of his face and smoothed it back, revealing a bit of dirt on the sun-kissed skin of his forehead. Descending down, there were thick eyebrows, hazel brown eyes squinting in the glare of the sun, a strong nose, and full lips that were pursed and curved into a sweet and friendly smile. He stood, brushed himself off, approached Y/n, and wordlessly took Flynn with a charming smile, nodding to her before walking around to the side of the house. After losing sight of him, Y/n looked back to Ms Ophelia, who opened the door and gestured Y/n in.

"Please do come in!" As Y/n stepped through the threshold of the house, Ms Ophelia continued.

"I was just about to make myself a cup of tea- I warmed up enough water for the both of us. How do you take it?" The older woman began walking, Y/n trailing behind her as they entered the beautiful eggshell white kitchen with purple accents.

"Oh, well if it isn't a bother, I take one sugar and only a bit of milk" Y/n watched as the woman poured the boiling tea into the two mugs.

"Huh!" Ms O looked at Y/n funny, before looking down at the cups she was working on. "Me too! Just enough milk to make it a very dark brown?"

Y/n’s eyes begin to light up incredulously. "Yeah! That's right! My sisters all think that I never put enough in!"

"My nephew does too!"

The women looked at each other and smiled- they both knew there was some sort of connection that brought the two of them together, and that they would be kindred spirits.

*******

The lesson went swimmingly, as agreed by both Y/n and Ms Ophelia (sorry- just Ophelia, the older woman had been very adamant about that). They had sat and begun with the alphabet, and while Ophelia was quite bashful when Y/n corrected her, they knew that with time, they would become more comfortable. Eventually, despite her consistent imploring that she stay for dinner, Y/n insisted she must go home.

"But my nephew will be home soon! He is such a charming, well articulated boy! Loves reading and the such- You two would get along so delightfully!" She clapped her hands eagerly at the thought, however, Y/n, softly stroking a saddled Flynn- thanks to Thomas, who wordlessly passed her the reins before walking off- looked at her new student and friend with a soft smile.

"I'm sure anyone who grew up around you would be a wonderful friend, Ophelia, however I really must get home. My family will be expecting me soon."

Once goodbyes had been exchanged, they agreed to meet once again in a few days. And with that, Y/n mounted Flynn and began to ride the now dusky ride home. She may have dawdled a little- the sun was still so warm, and the breeze was beautiful. Flynn moved at a comfy pace as she appreciated the beauty of the world around her.

However, that beauty was soon not in her focus when Y/n noticed someone riding towards her in the distance. She continued her pace, and as the figure approached, ready to return a polite nod if they were to greet her. As the figure continued on further, she squinted and began to make out a mop of brown hair, and a black blob of a coat, before all too quickly she recognised those sharp green eyes and the nose and those stupidly plush lips as he trotted closer and closer and god- oh no…

Y/n began to feel her stomach drop.

"Well well well! Look who it is!" That snide voice, that blasted smirk that taunted her.

It was her arch nemesis.

His horse slowed down while she did nothing to stop Flynn, walking completely past him without even acknowledging him- her eyes forward and steely. She thought she had escaped him but she heard footsteps coming closer, however, and soon, Y/n was walking side by side with none other than Harry Styles.

"What's with the cold shoulder, sweetheart? Have I done something to upset you?" He taunted in a teasing tone.

"I am not your sweetheart, and don't you have a party to crash, loverboy?" She rolled her eyes and kept moving forward, him keeping an identical pace beside her.

"Ooft, take it easy darling, you’re going to hurt my. Large. Throbbing. Swollen. Red. Hot. Heart!" He punctuated each word with a beat, and Y/n's face became hot; she began to scrunch the sweaty leather reigns harder into her palms at the obvious innuendo. Harry saw this and grinned wickedly for getting to her, a malicious giggle even seeping out of him- he enjoyed this. He enjoyed relishing in her awkwardness. Once his giggles calmed, he shook his head and continued. "What are you doing out so late anyways? Meeting up with a secret lover?"

Y/n couldn't even dignify that with a response, and merely scoffed and rolled her eyes again at the preposterous accusation. He noticed and continued.

"Hey, you scoff at that now, but who knows. It seems to be the quiet, pure ones that surprise me the most. The most proper girls always turn out to be the dirtiest. So, no- I don't think it's out of this world for a little thing like you to be getting your hands or mouth sullen for a bit of pleasure. Did you see the way you trembled for me the night we met? And the way you cried when I was paying attention to that little French girl? Don't lie, you were charmed, and seeing me with someone else broke your fragile. Little. Heart."

He was unbelievable for bringing that up again… Y/n felt her rage boiling now. She responded bitterly and slowly. "Please, you are so full of yourself…. And of course you would know all about women and their sexuality, now wouldn't you"

"Hard to scorn someone for being likeable, isn't it, Grumpy?"

Y/n had to stop her horse fully and glare at the idiot. She looked deep into his eyes, calmed down and began to smile. She was in complete and utter disbelief. She shook her head and giggled a peal of bitter laughter. Harry’s face darkened in irritation.

“What’s so funny, huh?”

Y/n’s smile didn’t reach her eyes as her giggles quelled. "It's funny that you think you are likable, Harry. You see, there is a difference between being desirable, and being easy. And it’s only the thoughtless ones like you who seem to be incapable at telling the difference. Not a thought behind those eyes, is there?... I wouldn't be surprised if you'd thought with your cock so much that your brain had atrophied due to the lack of use. You're not likeable, Harry Styles... you're just a plaything for widows and repressed virgins who wish to piss off their fathers to use and discard. And I cannot help but feel sorry for you for being the only one who cannot see that."

If she was not mistaken, Y/n believed she saw a bit of surprise and possibly even hurt in his eyes before they hardened, their playfulness completely drained. She did not think she was going to say that at all, and in any other situation, she would have thought that to be such a mean thing to say... But she had been sitting on that for far too long, and he had pushed her over with the teasing and the cockiness. She had had enough. Harry Styles needed to be brought down a peg or two.

They stared each other down fiercely, neither wanting to stand down. Then, he quickly shot at her. "You are nothing but a poor virgin with a gabby mouth that you wish was stuffed with my cock." he spat with nothing but poisoned malice.

Ouch… He was trying to catch her off guard, an attempt to garner some pride back, and while it immediately hurt Y/n, the wound of embarrassment growing in her heart, she knew she could not let him win. She quickly locked and loaded, before pulling the trigger without thinking.

"And you are nothing but a dirty harlot who wastes his privilege of manhood on being a tart to women who don't even want him." she spat back at him.

Targets acquired and shots fired, the two needed to go home and lick their wounds, crudely bandage their bullet holes and hope the sharp pain of the words spoken were only a temporary detriment to their own health, but an everlasting hellscape to each other. Both wanted to see the other in pain. Both wanted to win.

So with that, Harry made a big show about rearing his ashy grey horse up and around, before both of them spurred their horses forward into a gallop and away from the other- both carrying furrowed eyebrows, slightly hurt feelings (that they would never admit to), and a newfound degree of ire for each other…

He won’t get away with this.

********

Once tacking up Flynn, Y/n stomped her way to the house, still unbelievably enraged by the verbal warfare engaged with that brunette ass. She knew she wanted some alone time to calm down, but once entering her cosy home, she was bombarded with questions from her sisters- mainly Ula.

“Was the house big?!”

“What kind of dress was Ophelia wearing?!”

“How many servants did she have?!”

“Did she have lots of paintings on the walls?!”

“Any handsome sons?!”

“Did she tell you if she’s been to any exotic places like France or Switzerland?!”

“How was your day, Y/n?”

The last question was asked, of course, by her angelic sister Safia. Y/n lovingly rolled her eyes at the incessant questions from Ula and answered Saf’s tenderly. “My day was alright Saf, thank you for asking.”

“That’s good- I wished hard on all the dandelions I could find outside that you would come home safe and sound.” Y/n’s heart melted- she walked over to the younger girl and kissed her forehead with so much love and passion.

Ula observed the tenderness of the exchange and rolled her eyes. “Safia is perfect”, she taunted with a roll of her eyes before returning to her previous exercise of pulling up on the septum of her apparently “hideous” small aquiline nose to shape it into a more button nose, which she believed to be more elegant. Y/n looked back at Saf and whispered lovingly in her ear.

“Never stop wishing for the people you love the most, okay Saf?” Y/n gave her one more kiss before moving to the youngest sister with the most spunk besides Y/n herself. She gently swatted her hand away from her nose before lovingly stroking the bridge as she pulled Ula in for a hug from behind.

“And you, little missy! Stop trifling with the features your parents so lovingly passed to you. That nose isn’t a curse, it’s a gift. Treat it as one.” She kissed Ula’s head too before heading further into the house to greet her older sister and her mother. But as they had dinner, Y/n could not stop thinking about how much she hated Harry… little did she know, however, that her older sister Liz observed her suspiciously throughout the night.

Once in their room, hair and teeth brushed, dressed in their respective pyjamas- Liz’s a dainty white nightgown akin to the one Harry so scandalously described, and Y/n’s a mismatched patchwork buttoned set that Ma had made out of Y/n’s old clothes that she was too big to fit into, yet could bear to part with. Tucked into their beds, Liz turned to face Y/n and began.

“If Ms Ophelia was so very nice, what is the problem?”

Y/n turned to face her with furrowed brows. “What problem? There is no problem”

Liz rolled her eyes and shot back. “Yeah yeah, I don’t believe that for a second, Y/n. You can fool Ula- which isn’t saying much, but you can't fool me, so why don't we pretend like I tirelessly needled it out of you and you skip to the bit where you tell me what’s wrong”

Y/n sighed a long, hard, tired and frustrated sigh, before ultimately giving in. “I ran into a sworn enemy on the ride back home today…”

Liz shot up, eyes wide and mouth agape.“Who?!?”

“Harry Styles.”

Elizabeth stared incredulously at her sister, propped her pillows so she was sitting up, and began needling Y/n for more information. “What did he say? What did he do? Why is he your enemy?”

Y/n sighed. There was no way she was going to get to sleep until she told Liz everything. So she began…“You know of his reputation, yes?”

Y/n’s older sister gasped again. “Y/n… don’t tell me… he… with you?”

Y/n immediately understood what she was insinuating. “NO! No way! Never! Not in a million years! You know I hate everything to do with boys. I cannot believe you would think that of me!”

Liz sighed and sunk into herself in relief. “Thank god! I didn’t think you would but… unfortunately his reputation is quite… damning to say the least. Why, it was only last week he was with Amelie… did you see the way he returned her to the group? He didn’t even bother to wipe her lipstick from his lips! What a brute!”

Y/n brought her blanket up even closer to her face until only her eyes were visible, and mumbled her confession. “I know… I told him exactly so today…”

The older sister slowly started at her, tone changing completely to one low and testing. “What...That he is a brute?”

“Yes of course!” Y/n immediately shot back, exasperated.

Her sister stared at her with her mouth agape and eyebrows intensely furrowed. “...WHY?! Haven’t you heard of his family?!?” At Y/n’s confused face and shaking head, Liz took a deep breath and began. His father lives all the way in New York… Ma told me it was because he was absolutely dreadful to his wife and Harry all the time. Kept money from them, abused them, hit them- so much so that eventually they had to run away from him when he was only 10. They fled to a safe place- some cottage in the middle of nowhere? But get this- once there, his mother contracted scarlet fever and passed away. He had to walk all by himself to the nearest village to call for help- by the time medical assistance arrived, his mother was long gone. And with no other relatives bar his wicked father, he was left in the care of his devilishly deviant, yet disgustingly rich aunt.”

Y/n went completely silent. She didn’t know any of this… Of course this was deeply traumatic and saddening- but Y/n could not help it- her stubbornness was a curse, not a gift. And the curse would not allow even a tale so sorrowful allow Harry a free pass.

“Liz- of course this is deeply tragic and traumatic- however, circumstances can only explain actions. They don’t justify them. What has happened to Harry should mean that he spends his time helping women, not putting them down… which, I guess he does by pleasuring them, but God I wish he wasn’t so smug and pompous about it… He was so- well, not nice, but normal and cheeky and charming, when we first met- it was like a switch flicked in his head and that man no longer exists”

“Of course- if he is as cruel as you say, I 100% agree. Although he has a right to hold trauma, it does not change the fact that he is but a wicked man”

The girls sit in silence for a second, contemplating. Then, ever the know it all, Liz jumped right back into her Styles Family History Lesson, giving Y/n the run down.

“But anyways, his aunt is apparently a very influential figure! She’s rich beyond belief, and could probably control this entire town with the pulling of some strings and some money, which she most definitely has! Do not fool around with them, Y/n… especially not Harry…” Elizabeth brought her hands up to her temples to sate her sudden headache, a frequent occurrence when having to feel stressed for Y/n whenever she inevitably threw herself into apparently unacceptable situations, such as whistling in public or not wearing gloves, and had no apparent regard for the consequences.

“What am I to do then?! He is my sworn enemy- if I see him in my general vicinity, my whole body and soul tells me to rip him to shreds! How am I supposed to see him at balls, and on random walks back home, and NOT rip my hair out of my head?!” Y/n complained with a whiny tone.

“Avoid him! Completely and utterly avoid him”

Y/n harrumphed. “...Fine…”

“Good idea- I know… plus… you know what they say.” A lilt of cheekiness entered the previously stern tone.

“What?”

A wide smile grew on Y/n’s older sister’s face, unable to hide her amusement. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Who knows- maybe he just fancies you? You know… like likes you”

Y/n immediately threw a spare pillow at her sister’s head and groaned, before burying her hot face under the covers, completely and utterly embarrassed. Elizabeth dodged the stray pillow as she laughed raucously at how annoyed her sister became.

Y/n shook her head vehemently. “Never in a million years, Liz…”

Never in a million years…

*********

“Make sure you avoid making the “Z” look like the number “three”. Remember, small angled curl, then draaaaaag down to make a bigger and longer angled curl. Other than that, Ophelia, I must inform you that unfortunately my work may as well be over… because these have to be some of the best cursive letters I have ever seen- I know that I have only ever taught my younger sisters, but I am nothing short of confident that you are the fastest learner I have ever had, ever!”

Ophelia put her hand up to her chest and let out an exasperated breathy laugh that combined a giggle and a sigh of relief. “Stop it Y/n… you nearly gave me a heart attack! Anyways, it’s not that great.” She emphatically waved her hand as if to physically shoo the thought away. “I believe that as long as I am able to write and read, who cares about the blasted handwriting. As long as it is- at the very least- legible, I don't mind a thing.”

Y/n could not emphasise this enough: she loved Ophelia. She was sweet, funny, sarcastic, naughty and brash enough to understand all of Y/n’s jokes as simply that- jokes with no malice. Y/n admired her face thoroughly in amazed silence. Ophelia glanced at her and continued. “Now, would you like a cup of tea before you go?”

Y/n was shaken out of her trance and began to pack up her books as she responded. “No, thank you. I'm okay- I really should get going though. The wind is picking up and as much as I would love to stay and chat, I don’t really think being cold and wet is how my mother wants me to return home!”

Y/n bids Ophelia farewell from inside the house before going out back to meet Flynn at the stables. However, she sees another figure tending to him, and as she arrives closer, she notices not Thomas’ blonde messy hair- but instead a soft brown colour.

Jesus Christ, this guy will just not leave her alone, will he?!

Y/n is about three feet away when the figure finally turns, and she is once again met with the cheeky smirk of Mr Harlot Styles. He looks her up and down carefully, making her insides all squirmy under his inspection- she hated the way he made her feel so uncomfortable in her own skin. Once finding her eyes, he began.

“Grumpy…”

“Harlot… Leave Flynn alone. He doesn’t like jaded asses.” Y/n crossed her hands over her chest and stood with a cold hard stare.

“Flynn? Pretty name.” Harry looked at Flynn and continued. “Does the angry little lady dump her frivolous complaints and girly problems onto your poor back, my friend?” Harry looked back to Y/n and continued. “ And hey, he might hate jaded asses, but apparently, he loves temper tantrum-throwing toddlers if he’s your horse.”

If she didn’t know how horrible of a person he was, she would classify the way he was scratching Flynn’s chin as lovingly- but Harry wasn’t loving, and he certainly wasn’t capable of loving. He was a beast. Just another man who thought Y/n spent her hours with her equine companion complaining as if juvenile… and what the hell are “girly problems”?!

Harry chimed in again, breaking her out of her frustrated train of thought. “Huh! Would you look at that, Grumpy- your jaded ass-hating “noble” steed’s loyalty can unfortunately be bought by absolute strangers!”

He smirks up at her as he pulls a sugar cube from his pocket and holds it out to Flynn, who eagerly licks it up, jutting his snout into Harry’s hand to spur some more pats out of him. Y/n let out an angry huff. “Greedy traitor…” she mumbled under her breath to her horse, before taking a deep breath and got straight to the main issue, not wanting to spend any longer talking to him than she had to.

“What are you doing here? Are you stalking me?”

“God, I was just wondering when I would be in your lovely company again- you know- should I call a doctor for your hysteria? Because it is you, girly, who is consistently following me. I would be surprised due to your incessant reminders that you hate me, but I’m not. Your infatuation with me seeps through your shoddy disguise completely. Face it, Grumpy… you’re obsessed with me.”

Y/n wanted to slap him so hard. Or at least shoot back some equally damning response, but Liz’s words echo in her ears to simply ignore him. So she simply comes closer, walking to the opposite side of Flynn and begins strapping her bag to Flynn’s side saddle pouch.

“Your silence is deafening, Grumpy… Is this it? Are you finally admitting that you have been just another precious little schoolgirl obsessed with me this whole time? I bet you would look out your window and pray to every shooting star that floated by that you would see me again. Did you giggle with your little friends while braiding each other's hair about how much you want me? I bet you squirm under your covers in a little pure white virginal nightgown dreaming about my fingers and my tongue and my cock. I bet you're stupidly in love with me, huh Grumpy?”

Y/n hated the way he would describe typically feminine stereotypes with such condescension. She hated being treated like a little girl. Throwing Liz’s advice completely out the window, she couldn’t help but mumble under her breath- just a little something to hurt him. “What would you know about love, Daddy’s boy?…”

If Y/n looked up from the saddle pouch she was working on, she would see Harry’s eyes blown wide with surprise. He looked so vulnerable- almost childlike- as if her comment transported him back to his father’s house. Before she noticed his silence, though, he schooled his face and began to round the horse, his eyes darkening. “And what would you know about anything? You’re just a pathetic little girl. You act as if you have experience with the world, as if you will be anything more than a boring old housewife, but you never will be…”

Y/n stared daggers into Harry as he stalked closer and closer until he was less than a foot away from her, their outerwear brushing against each other. If he simply wrapped his arms around her waist, their bodies would be flush against one another completely. Y/n had never felt so degraded. She was just another girl to him. She was just another girl to all other men. Her biggest fear was being forgotten- for her loving family- her creative sisters and amazing mother- to be forgotten… For all of the amazing women that she encountered at balls to be forgotten. To be married off and treated as property.

Harry continues on his poisonous tirade in an unwavering cold and calm voice, striking the deepest of Y/n’s insecurities and fears with pinpoint accuracy. “You look down on my hobby of pleasuring married women, but what you don’t understand is that when you are unhappily married off within the next few years, you will be writing letters to me, begging me to relieve you. You will wish I wanted you… You will wish your husband wanted you… You will wish any man wanted you… You will wish you were special… But you're not.”

Y/n held her breath as his hands raised up from his sides, ringed fingers lightly trailing over her skirts, her waist, her arms, her shoulders. Higher and higher, they softly glided over the fabric of her puff sleeves, before reaching her face, and cupping her cheeks. Harry’s eyes slowly flitted back and forth between Y/n’s eyes and her lips. His brows furrowed and his mouth slightly opened, before lifting his right thumb to slowly pull down at her bottom lip...

…then release the pressure created with his hold, watching- almost studying, its fullness intensely as it bounced back into place. Voice now barely above a whisper, rumbly and deep, he continues.

“You’re just another silly little girl who will be nothing but a wife someday.”

Harry’s hands moved from her cheeks to her neck, cupping her head, thumbs delicately tracing circles on the skin behind her ears, sending shivers up her spine.

What was this? And why was it sending Y/n’s knees wobbly? She needs to snap out of it- remember her anger for him. All of her interactions with him, even this one, were merely strategies to throw her off- to dominate her. And she would not allow that.

So as Harry moved his hand to cup her neck, leaning in closer, she opened her mouth, ready to dismiss all logic and decimate the animal standing before her, attempting to kiss her just to intimidate her. Fuck everything- fuck him, fuck Liz’s advice, fuck men and their incessant need for girls to be prim and proper. Fuck all of them.

About to fire her biggest blow, all while he leaned closer and closer, his lips ever so close to touching hers, they were suddenly halted in their tracks by someone calling her name.

“Y/n!...” the voice was urgent but far away. Both Harry and Y/n looked out of the stable to see Ophelia running towards them. Y/n and Harry looked at each other and took a big step away from their close proximity as Ophelia finally reached the stables and held her hand on a wooden panel as she caught her breath, panting heavily.

“Th-Thank-” A wheezy heave interjected her sentence. “GOD”. Another heave. “You hadn’t left yet!” She stood up straight and wiped the light sweat from her forehead with her wrist before straightening her back and walking closer to her. She raised her right hand, which held a small handkerchief, tied into a lovely little package.

“I packed some hedgehog slice for you in case you get a little hungry on the way home!” She sighed exasperated, before looking between Y/n and Harry.

Y/n’s heart melted a little- she came bounding all the way down just to give her a little snack? She was the sweetest woman in the world! And now Y/n was going to see her in action against the intruder to her property that was Harry Styles… Y/n was ready to see some ire and some spit hurled at him once she explained exactly what Harry had said about her and all womankind, really.

But that is not what happened.

Not at all.

Ophelia smiled warmly at Harry before looking at Y/n. “Ahh, I see you have already met my nephew, Harry!”

What. The. Hell?

Harry looked smug as anything as Ophelia continued. “He is the lovely, well articulated bookworm I was telling you about the other day!”

Y/n gritted out a very hesitant “Nice to meet you…” as he looked at her, full of ego.

Harry then opened his mouth, presumably to tell his aunt about the intrusion that was Y/n’s presence on their land, but Ophelia quickly shut him up too.

“And Harry, this is the bright and wonderful tutor and friend I was telling you about! Y/n is teaching me how to read and write!”

Harry’s mouth shut immediately. It was Y/n’s turn to smirk smugly as he gritted out an “A pleasure to meet you” back. The two stared at each other steely, as if they were in a stand-off of the mind, all while Ophelia unknowingly watched on with a large smile.

“I am sure you too will be fast friends! Don’t you agree?” Ophelia had so much hope in her voice. The two grit their teeth, not wanting to make a scene or displease the sweet Ophelia-

“Certainly…”, they manage to comment, in unison.

And after Ophelia hugs Y/n goodbye one more time, before turning and leaving, Harry tails after her, but not before giving a final glance back to Y/n. He smirked, the smile filled with boyish playfulness, but Y/n saw his eyes- those blasted green eyes clouded with taunt. He was challenging her. To what exactly- she didn’t know. To see who could hurt each other the most? To see who would win in the overall war between the two? Or was it just a smirk at her begrudging fate? That she would have to put up with him now because although Ophelia is a sweet woman, Y/n’s connection to her will never trump Harry’s- he’s her nephew.

As Y/n saddled her was going to have to do what she wanted to the least in order to maintain both a professional and personal relationship with Ophelia, who she admired both as a student and as a friend…

She was going to have to be civil with Harry.

**********

Y/n believed wholeheartedly that it was punishment enough; that she was forced into both proximity and (at least) faux politeness with her sworn enemy- but evidently, fate had more to give. And damn, could it pack a punch!

It was almost silly that she hadn’t thought the universe had been through with her… When Y/n made the one-hour trip to Ophelia’s house, she just had to not bring her large, rainproof jacket. She just had to decide not to put Flynn’s horseshoes on, which would prevent him from slipping and sliding in the wet mud… Why would she do any of that?! It was perfectly sunny, and even a little bit warm on that Friday morning…

But no… of course, the moment she begins to wrap up her lesson with Ophelia and ride home- where she would tuck into a well-deserved late lunch and spend some time with sisters- of course it is only two days after she has discovered that her student raised and lived with her sworn enemy- it is then and only then that she finds herself stuck at their house, as a giant thunderstorm magically appears and begins raining hellish hail and pouring water from the sky.

“Y/n, there is no way I am letting you ride home in this weather! That simply will not happen under my roof. I will send an urgent telegram to your mother to let her know you are safe and warm, but you are staying over for the night and that is final.”

There was no arguing with Ophelia. So no more than five minutes later, Y/n was being escorted through the maze that was her student’s mansion, and to a guest room she would be occupying for the night. She was sprawled on the giant, fluffy bed when she felt her skin crawl at a particular thought- though he had not appeared during her lesson, Y/n knew that Harry was somewhere in the house- Ophelia said so herself, as they walked to her room. What if they bumped into one another?

“Harry is somewhere around here- I am sure that you two will be the bestest of friends- you have so much in common!”

Y/n had to awkwardly laugh and smile at that, agreeing as politely as possible so as to not arouse any suspicion- however, Ophelia seemed to take this for genuine interest though and began doubling down.

“Hey, why wait until dinner- I can call him now!? Maybe Harry can give you a tour of the house- the gardens, the gallery, the library! Give me two seconds and let me go fetch him-”

Y/n had never had such a visceral reaction in her life when she shouted a clear and desperate “NO!”... It took her a few seconds to recollect her thoughts before she attempted to save face; she halfheartedly dismissed the idea with a feeble excuse that she didn’t want to impose, and that she and Harry would have plenty of time to chat at dinner. Despite the suspicious glint in Ophelia’s eye, she did not press any further and left her to rest and unpack as she went to have a bath and take a relaxing nap before supper.

Thus bringing us back to Y/n- sprawled on her bed, deciding that she would not leave the room until supper. There was no way she would risk bumping into Harry while wandering around his house. What if he had another sultry guest for the evening?! What if he shooed her off as if she was nothing but a fly?! Heaven knows he had done all of that before- and all on the same night! She began rummaging through her bag to retrieve her book, content on sitting down and reading as she waited for dinner, but as she rummaged, it dawned on her…

Her novels, her personal pens and paper? All of them were either at home or in Flynn’s side saddle pouch, hanging in the stables- she had been carrying her personal books and papers for the past few lessons but found the weight quite heavy, and all for very little payoff- she rarely got a moment to read when she was in the middle of a very interactive, collaborative lesson. The reality of her situation collapsed on her as she brought her hands up to her face and let a frustrated groan into them- she was going to be stuck here in this room with no entertainment for the next four hours - Ophelia was occupied, her books and pens were with Flynn, and there were no reading materials in the beautiful yet empty chest of drawers and side tables of the elegant guest room.

There was no way she could sit quietly like this… She began to get cabin feverish already. She needed to get out…

Harry wouldn’t be strolling about his own house, right? It was 2:30 pm on a Friday- surely there must be some work he had to complete? Y/n resolved that there was no way she would be able to continue to live if she didn’t have something to stimulate her mind, and the thought of passing up an opportunity to explore the various forms of entertainment in Ophelia’s vast house seems daft, even verging on sinful…

So, with a deep breath, Y/n stretched her arms above her head, took a deep breath, and lifted herself off of the plush linen-covered mattress. She ever so slowly opened the heavy, beautifully intricate mahogany door and peeked out of the minuscule crack she created.

Left, right, left again, right again.

The coast seemed to be clear- she opened the door wider so that she could stick her whole head out of it. She looked left, right, left again, right again. You could say that she was maybe overreacting by being so very cautious, but she would rather not run into Harry and be forced to return to her room before she had acquired some entertainment and had a good look around the place.

Once she was completely sure that the coast was clear, she stepped out, gently closed the door behind her, and, with her hands behind her back, began to stroll the hallways curiously. Soon, her fascination with the grandeur of the mansion quelled her alertness and she found herself enamoured by the architecture as she walked down the hallways.

She wished she could dip her head into every room she saw, but she wasn’t that daft- that would be one surefire way to overstep her welcome, especially when she was essentially stuck until the storm cleared up.

She continued slinking around in a manner similar to Fennec’s- she took a right, and found herself walking down a hallway she would guess was near the back of the house, as the large windows to her left illuminated her pathway and showcased a beautiful array of pruned trees along a cobblestone path, with steps that led down to a beautiful, large pond filled with greenery. There was a small path that also winded around the pond and ventured into a beautiful, lush green forest. The rain pattered so beautifully onto the glass, creating beautiful shadows on the otherwise dim hallway. The house truly was magnificent.

Once reaching the end of the hallway, Y/n was greeted with two very tall and wide arched wooden doors. She hoped and prayed she wasn’t about to walk into a personal room, before pushing in to peek at the contents.

A large expanse of beautiful oak shelves befell her- filled to the brim with books. Books upon books upon books! Nestled so tenderly, they were wrapped in beautiful leather casings.

Bingo! The infamous library!

Though there was a main seating area in the middle of the room- with comfy juniper green couches that looked a dream to rest upon, there were also many bay windows and little reading nooks to curl up in. Tucked into the corner was a desk, a chair and a reading lamp. In fact, there were lamps all around the room, however, most of the light came from the warm roaring fire that blazed in the fireplace. Y/n could imagine sitting in front of the fire on a pillow, a soft throw around her and a mug of tea between her crossed legs as she read Dickens.

Y/n wove through each shelf, looking at all the amazing titles there were. There was everything here! Shakespeare and Dickens were classics, to be expected in most regal libraries, but looking closer, Y/n found Bronte and Austen too! Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Hans Christen Anderson’s fairy tales. This place had every book Y/n had ever read or wished to read!

But something lingered in the back of Y/n’s mind…

If Ophelia cannot read, whose library is this? Who has so tenderly placed every book in alphabetical order, as well as sorted them by genre? Who has spent their time tediously gluing library cards to the inside of the back cover of seemingly every book, and has jotted down when they have been borrowed? Why would anyone ever do that, considering that most of them are read by assumedly the same person, judging by the ever so similar font and pen used to log the date of when the book was picked up and when it was finished?

Before she could finish her thought, the door suddenly opened. Y/n immediately cringed at the situation she was in- she could be caught snooping by Ophelia, oh how mortifying! As the heavy footsteps walked closer and closer to where she was, she weaved through shelves, attempting to find a spot to hide. She tiptoed through before flattening herself against a shelf at the end of the room, far from where the footsteps were heard. The unknown person’s gait was too heavy to be Ophelia’s and-

Damn!

If it was not Ophelia, there was only one other person it could be…

She took a deep, silent breath before creeping her way to the edge of the bookshelf. She went to take a peek and see where the British bastard was, however, when she took one more step and stuck her head out, she was met with his body no more than five inches from hers.

“AHH!”

“Shit!”

The pair jumped and shrieked for a quick second, not expecting the other to be so damn close. Y/n looked up to see Harry looked down at her with surprise and confusion. Her gaze panned down to his hands, noticing him carrying a brown leather bound book- it was smaller and very worn in. It looked beaten and bruised, like it had been read thousands of times. She couldn't see a title at all, but it wouldn’t matter- the moment he followed her eyes, Harry shoved the book behind his back. Her gaze snapped back up quickly enough to watch vulnerability flash in his eyes, before they set in his usual hardened gaze, infected with scorn.

He barked. “What the hell are you doing in here?”

This wasn’t nonchalant Harry- this wasn't a Harry that was prepared for her attacks. This wasn’t the Harry that used his suave and unaffected demeanour to torment Y/n as he coolly fired shot after shot at her soul. No, this was a more frantic Harry- a more aggressive, threatened Harry.

“I didn’t know you were going to be here!” Y/n explained, her brows furrowing and taking on a defensive tone, hands flying emphatically.

Harry did not reply at all. The pair stared at each other sharply. It was as if they were having a battle telepathically, staring deep into one another’s unwavering, unblinking eyes, lips pressed shut into little frowns, brows knit, each daring the other to say something more. To poke the bear more. To continue the fight. They stared and they stared until Harry looked her up and down, shaking his head and scoffing, before walking further into the library.

He seceded first! HA! She won!

This victory wasn't savoured for long, however- she soon realised how foolish she would look just standing there in Harry’s dust. She didn’t look back to see which way he went and she didn't care- she kicked her body into motion and strode out the front door. Once she was out, however, she pathetically scurried her way back to her room, mortified. Once through the door, she slammed it shut and laid back against the cool wood. She took a couple deep breaths in the safety of the guest room. Now alone, she was able to regain her ability to think.

Harry was holding a book in his hands, before shoving it behind his back? Was he… bashful? What book would have made Harry feel embarrassed?

Further, if it wasn’t Ophelia’s library, there realistically is only one other person it could belong to…

Y/n shook the idea from her head immediately. It definitely couldn’t be Harry’s- not only was he too brutish to read for leisure, but also, the books there were too beautiful, too tenderly cared for- many filled with little annotations. No, Harry could not treat a human decently, let alone a book. He wouldn’t know how! The one in his hand, however. Her heart just couldn’t let that go…

Maybe that was his? The small, beaten and bruised book. What kind of text would prompt Harry to read it over and over and over again. What words moved him so much that he felt embarrassed to show Y/n. Ofcourse, this was probably for the best- realistically, the pair should both provide as little information of their identities to each other as possible. Less ammunition that way.

But Y/n, head against the downy pillow filled to the brim with the softest stuffing, lulled by the gentle nose of the lavender oil spritzed on top of the sheets, could not help but innocently wonder if Harry had a favourite book. She always wanted someone to share her love of reading- a simple friend that she could rant and rave to other than her sisters who, despite not possessing the same fire and passion as Y/n when it came to literature, attempted their hardest to understand her speeches and monologues of theory.

It was not a question- Harry could never be that friend to Y/n…

But God, did Y/n wish that stopped her from imagining a version of him that could be.

#regency!harry #regency!harry x reader #harry styles angst #harry styles x reader #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles x y/n #harry styles fic #harry styles enemies to lovers #regency!harry enemies to lovers #by bug

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second-star-to-motunui · 2 months ago

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The Happiest, Non-Magic Boy On Earth! ❤️✨

✨ Feat. Mika Inkwell (oc) ✨

NRC’s newest student is strange boy who is deemed magicless! And yet the oddest things keep happening around him…

note: just a fun thing to properly introduce my special boy ❤️

Mika Inkwell is without a doubt, the strangest boy anyone had ever seen at Night Raven College.

The Dark Mirror dubbed him a magicless oddity from another world, during the Entrance Ceremony. Yet, not even two seconds later, he pulled a giant paint brush out of nowhere, used it to create a giant stack of soufflé pancakes, then erased it just as fast. Where did the paintbrush come from? No body knows.

Mika has a knack for pulling random objects out of nowhere. Stop signs, frying pans, lunchboxes, alarm clocks, comically large objects—literally anything.

During an argument with Sebek, he said that Mika’s goofy behavior was so disgraceful that someone should tell his mother (which he does not have, he has two fathers.) Mika proceeded to pull out an old fashioned telephone and call Sebek’s mother to complain.

“Hello, Mrs. Zigvolt? Your son is being VERY annoying!”

“What the—GIVE ME THAT—!”

Mika is quite the fashionista. Every once in a while he’ll ditch his uniform for his newest designs, from colorful dresses to flashy cardigans to strange decorated mouse ears. He’s usually seen in up to five different outfits per day. How does he change so fast? It’s a mystery.

He’s doesn’t only make clothes! Pillows, stuffed animals and backpacks are his specialty too! All of his friends end up with handmade gifts from him.

Epel has a poison apple backpack. Floyd has a big shrimp plushie. Ace and Deuce have matching card solider scarves. Malleus has a gargoyle teddy bear that he loves very much.

Speaking of Malleus, he is absolutely fascinated by everything Mika does. Boy could spend hours talking about his pin collection and favorite desserts and Malleus will be staring at him like he’s the most beautiful thing in the world.

“My dad bought me these pins right after I went on a scary ride at a theme park! This one’s cracked because I tripped on a ladybug and fell on my face!”

“Child of man, I say this with absolute seriousness, how soon can I have your hand in marriage?”

Apart from being a master at sewing, Mika is also one hell of artist. Too good of an artist. Some of his pantings have a bad habit of coming to life.

It’s important that he has an empty sketchbook on hand, otherwise he’s gonna find himself another canvas. Like one of NRC’s many boring, blank grey walls! Crowley let it slide the first time because Mika painted a very lovely mural of the Great Seven that everyone loved.

He had to pull the plug when Mika painted 3D sculptures of walking broomsticks to help Ace and Deuce with their chores. Heartslabyul almost drowned.

That doesn’t stop Mika from making paintings all over Ramshackle!

“Mr. Inkwell?”

“Mr. Crowley~?”

“Would you happen to know anything about the blue bunnies rampaging all over campus grounds?”

“What makes ya think I had anythin’ to do with it?”

“Your signature is on their BUTTS!”

Mika also has funny nicknames for some people on campus—Vil is Blueberry Pancake, Epel is Lavender Macaron, Malleus is Mint Cheesecake, etc.

The strangest nicknames however are the ones he’s has for the Great Seven.

Why would he refer to them with names such as Uncle Scar, Auntie Hilda and Mama Mal? Do they remind him of his actual family? Supposedly, he has a huge family.

The Great Seven appear in a lot of Mika’s doodles, along with a few other familiar figures…

“Blueberry Pancake! I designed another dress for you! I based it off of Auntie Hilda’s dress! Do you like it?”

“It’s a cute design, but you need to stop calling the Fairest Queen by such an improper name. I don’t mind your name for me but you shouldn’t refer to a well respected figure like that.”

“Well she didn’t like when I called her Mama.”

“What—?”

#oc: mika inkwell #twst oc #twst yuu #malleus draconia #vil schoenheit #dire crowley #twisted wonderland #twst

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leggerefiore · 1 year ago

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You, Cyrus's lover, get taken to Hisui by a certain deity. Cyrus doesn't handle it the best.

cw: angst with comfort at the end, a little jokey,

pairing: Cyrus/Reader

🌌🛰☄️🌌🛰☄️🌌🛰☄️

Cyrus was mortified when you fell out of a portal atop Spear Pillar.

You had gone missing suddenly one evening after he got home from his job. Everything seemed completely normal. The television blared some late evening talk show while a soup simmered languidly on the stove. At first, he wondered if you simply stepped out to grab something from a convenience store, but your shoes were still at the entrance. He called out your name while carefully looking through the small apartment.

You were nowhere to be seen.

Calling your phone resulted in it instantly going to a voice mail. Cyrus felt alarmed. He hated that his first instinct was to call Cynthia. The blonde immediately answered, as he rarely if ever contacted her. She was just as disturbed by the situation. A call was made to the local police, yet since nothing seemed life-threatening or dangerous, they declared off the search and said to call a few days later if you had not returned still.

It was a slow form of torment on his mind.

He felt dreadfully alone in this world he already despised. With the failure of his earlier plans at the hand of a certain trainer, he had felt himself lost. You, despite how upset you were after learning what he had actually been doing, stayed by his side. It was thanks to your kindness and love that he felt somewhat able to come to terms with everything.

He still wished to create his ideal world that lacked spirit that corrupted this world to its incomplete form, but he simply lacked the means to do anything with the champion of the region now watching him like a hawk after getting him out of Interpol's cross-hairs. Cynthia clearly cared for him, too, which disturbed him greatly. Where had all these people who seemed to worry over him come from? Even his admins had joined in.

His emptiness returned as he found himself in a bland routine that blended together. The police never did search for you, and the one organised by Cynthia had turned up nothing. It was as if you just vanished into the ether while making dinner. Cyrus was easily falling into his asocial tendencies once more.

The rejection from his parent's had hurt him irreparably, but your vanishing had broken him. Nothing anyone tried could free him from the darkness that had consumed him once again. He found himself buried away in ways to continue from which his plans once failed. His previous admins and grunts would certainly join him once more, many utterly infatuated with him still.

That was when he noticed an ancient document written by one “Volo.”

It was dragged him back into his madness once more. The precipice of his new world lied at where he once failed previous.

All he needed were eighteen plates.

Which is what brought him to Spear Pillar once more; where you proceeded to be spit out of the sky to land before him.

You gazed at him, wearing clothes much different from those of the modern day, with wooden pokeballs spilling from your bag. Cyrus would admit he gasped. Your eyes met, and you were quick on your feet, shouting his name excitedly.

Then, you froze.

His old Galactic uniform adorned his body and the old plates carefully laid out around him.

You closed your eyes, obviously uncertain of how to proceed. Cyrus sighed. There was no getting around it. Suddenly, you turned your head up to the still open portal and tossed out one of your wooden pokeballs.

Cyrus stood frozen when a giant pokemon came out with a cry that could only be described as unearthly. The portal swelled and spun, and you turned your head to him.

“... Cyrus, were you planning on trying to use Arceus to finish your plans?” you asked. He solemnly nodded, at a loss for words due to everything. The portal soon brought out another person. They landed on the ground much more elegantly than you had. For a moment, he was confused before the dust settled, and he saw them.

Fear coursed through his body.

Light blue hair and a stern expression were two things he first noticed, but a sword and familiar insignia soon followed. She stood up from her knelt landing position. Her eyes landed on you before shifting to him. There was obviously a similar epiphany going on inside her head to compliment the one he was having.

“Cyllene,” your voice called out to the woman, who turned her attention back to you, “This is Cyrus, your descendant.” Both of them froze. It had occurred to him, but obviously, it seemed impossible. She stood stiffly before turning back to him. “He's trying to do what Volo did,” you continued. Her facial expression shifted from curiosity to a familiar, harsh expression.

“I see,” she said, language much more dated than how you spoke, “I had hoped that the Galaxy Team had flourished well into the modern day, and you were showing me what a wonderful future awaited me.” An ominous feeling crept over him as she walked with a trained stride. “Cyrus, was it? I had thought my subordinate strange when they claimed to be in love with my descendant,” she may have been shorter than him, but her authority rang higher than his, “Do you know the trouble I suffered through to stop the exact scenario you are trying to enact from happening?” Cyrus stood stiffly.

The plates were soon given to rest in your care.

Cyllene was returned back to the era of Hisui while Cyrus could only stand there like a child scolded by their mother.

In a way… That was what happened, you supposed. At least Cyllene gave him a hug before her departure and demanded that he follow a better path.

Cyrus would not stop looking at you in existential dread for a while after, alas.

He was happy that you had returned in the end, however. Enough to intiate a hug, even.

#pokemon x reader #cyrus x reader #pokemon cyrus x reader #cyrus/reader #pokemon/reader

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strangerthingssimps-blog · 2 years ago

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Joe keery x Reader

You were sat there watching Free guy, with your 7 year old daughter on disney plus. She loved the movie, she had watched it 12 times since it came out. You didn’t mind it either.

Keys came onto the screen..

“Mom, look it’s dad” She said pointing at the screen, you looked and saw your husband Joe on the scene. He was so gorgeous in any role he had. You had met Joe in college and you got married 2 years after college in 2012.

It was a beautiful wedding, your family flew all the way from England for the wedding. Joe’s mom and sister’s helped you pick out your wedding dress since your mother wanted nothing to do with the bridal side. She just turned up to congratulate you.

You never had a good relationship with your parents; they were always away on business trips while you were stuck looking after your younger brother. Your brother was a little angel. He was 11 at the time of your wedding.

You were getting ready and one of Joe's sisters said someone wanted to see you and then your little brother walked in the room wearing a suit and handed you some flowers. You started tearing up and gave him a massive hug.

Instead of your father walking you down the aisle, Your brother found it adorable how a little boy was walking his big sister down the aisle.

In 2016, Joe got the biggest role in his life as Steve harringron. He then grew as an actor and soon you was known as the wife of the famous Joe keery. It was weird at first but then you got used to it.

In 2017, You gave birth to your daughter. Joe was emotional when he saw his daughter for the first time. He had always wanted a daughter and now he had one. You both decided to name Grace Lillie Ann keery.

Here you were now in 2021 watching his newest movie where he was playing a geeky nerd. He still was good looking to you. It reminds of what Joe looked like when you first met in college all those years ago.

Grace had Brown hair and hazel eyes, she had inherited that from her father but she had your face shape and smile which Joe is thankful for. She was wearing her Scoops ahoy hoodie that she brough when season 3 came out. She loved meeting everyone when he took her on set. She was mostly fond of Gaten since she saw him the most.

3 months later…

Joe was in Indiana filming the fourth season of Stranger things, they were all in costume and they were on a break when all of sudden they heard..

“GATEN” They all looked to see your daughter running up to gaten. Gaten then picked her up while the cast members looked in awe,

Joe saw this and saw you and ran up to you, he was happy to see both of you and his other baby, he picked up his pet pomeranian that you got him for his 24th birthday.

Gaten then passed Grace around the cast members introducing her to Jamie and Joseph, Jamie was out of costume and Joseph was dressed as Eddie. Grace smiled and gave them both a high five. They accepted and gave her a high five back.

After everyone had held Grace…

“Daddy” Grace said running up Joe in his Steve Harrington Costume. Joe saw this and kneeled down and opened his arms so that Grace could land into his arms. Grace then jumped and landed into his arms and Joe pulled her close and gave her a giant hug.

“Oh no daddy you're hurt” Grace says as she looks at Joe who was wearing the outfit he was wearing when he went into the upside down world the first time. He has fake bite marks and scars and it upset Grace.

“NO DADDY” Grace says as she starts crying at the thought of her father being hurt. All the Cast then look at Grace in awwe. Grace then started to cry harder as Joe looked at her and started to comfort her.

“No sweetie daddy’s fine, it’s fake i promise you. It’s for the scene. Daddy’s not really hurt” Joe says while trying to calm your daughter down while tears fell down her cheeks.

“You promise” Grace said through some sniffles as she calmed down.

“I promise” Joe says reassuring your daughter while the cast members stood there in Awwe. On how good Joe was with her when she was upset. None of them not even gaten had ever seen her cry before so they were a bit shocked. A couple minutes later she calmed down and stopped crying.

You then went up to Joe and gave him a quick kiss before you took your daughter into her arms and rocked her to sleep.

“You better get back to filming, me and Grace will be sitting in your Trailer while you do this alright” You say as you say goodbye to the rest of the cast and put Grace back into the stroller and head to his trailer.

When you get there the trailer is in great condition as always, you still remember when Joe had to come shoot Season 2 and it was only a few weeks after Grace was born, he felt so guilty leaving you with a newborn so he made sure he got a new trailer to fit the needs of a Newborn so that you could come and stay in the trailer while he worked on scenes.

You then got Grace out of the stroller and laid her on the little bean bag that he bought for her to sleep on in 2018, when he was filming Season 3.

#steve harrington #joe kerry #joe keery x reader #stranger things 4 #stranger things #keys free guy

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kawaiiblue18 · 2 years ago

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Family portraits

So Sonic family tree lore has been swimming around my head to point that it’s gone from headcannons to its own somewhat au that ties in Sonic’s many parents and siblings

The full condensed au lore is below the Keep reading

I was gonna draw a portrait of Tails & Sonic as well as Sonic, Shadow, Maria, & Charles but I didn’t like how they looked so yeah

Might attempt to draw them again later idk

I’m very normal about the sonic fandom wdym

🚨GIANT AU LORE PARAGRAPH WARNING🚨

So basically, Jules had a fling with Aleena when they were in their 20s, but Aleena’s parents forbid them from marrying because Jules was not of royal heritage like Aleena was. However, Aleena’s parents never properly reinforced them to separate until Aleena found out that she was pregnant and Jules was banished from the kingdom. Eventually, the triplets are born with Sonic being the spitting image of Jules with Aleena’s green eyes. (As for why Manic is green and Sonia is pink, I’ll just say it runs in Aleena’s family which is why Aleena’s parents are the color they are in the family tree.) Since Charles, Jules’s older brother, still lives within the kingdom, Aleena asks him to help her in raising the triplets which Charles readily accepts. (Robotnik never steals the kingdom from Aleena here so Aleena never gives up her kids.) Charles is the one who gives her the idea to give Sonic his birth name Olgilvie Maurice, named after both of Sonic’s grandfathers. Charles and Aleena co-parent the triplets, Olgilvie spending more time with his ‘Uncle Chuck’ than his siblings. The three siblings find out that they all had a love for music so Aleena crafts them those medallion necklaces. (They don’t have magic powers like they do in Sonic Underground.) But unlike his siblings, Olgilvie is born with an unusually high amount of chaos energy which gifts him the ability to run at super sonic speeds. When he turns 10 years old, he decides he wants to go off and see the world. His family disapproves so Olgilvie tries to run off, but Charles catches him. Charles doesn’t want Olgilvie to leave, but knows he can’t stop him so Charles gives Olgilvie his plane. From then on, Olgilvie introduces himself as his nickname Sonic to anyone he meets. Sonic then stumbles upon a fox kit that he takes under his wing as his adoptive little brother. All of Sonic’s cannon game story lines stay the same. At some point between adventures, Sonic reunites with Jules and Charles. In all that time separated, Jules had fell in love and married Bernadette (he has a thing for purple hedgehogs I guess lmao), essentially making her Sonic’s stepmother. (Jules never gets robotized here.) Jules never gets to meet Sonia or Manic. Continuing the family tree, Sonic falls in love with Shadow and they have kids with their combined high amount of chaos energy. Their first born daughter is named Maria in memory of Shadow’s adopted sister and their second born son is named Charles after Sonic’s uncle.

Woo boy thats lot. Props to you if you actually read all of that :)))

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starsailor-kinthepast · 2 years ago

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An overview of Uru's life

In the two years since I awoke as a parallel Neanderthal, I've managed to puzzle together a vague timeline of the main events having happened so far in my life. Here it is!

Word count: 1300 Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

Early Life

I was born to a cave with around twenty members, somewhere in central Europe. It was not during one of Earth’s cold periods, but it wasn’t painstakingly hot, either. We experienced winters and summers, though colder than the ones we see today.

My first clear memory is of being Chosen by the Megaloceros; the Giant Horned. Those of us who were Six-Eyed – with a sixth sense – what we today would call mediums – would at some point in their life be chosen by a spirit to make sure others would know, too. I was no older than five when I followed His call into the forest and He showed me the secrets within. This meant I would bear His mark for a while; visible for those around me, so the right actions could be taken.

My mama was equal parts horrified and delighted. It is a great honour, being Six-Eyed, but also horribly taxing. She took me to our Six-Eyed and hen confirmed it. I was taken in to be hem apprentice, to learn the craft by hems hand: hen was my teacher, a second parent, my biggest supporter.

Sometime during my early childhood mama died. I was taken in by sher sister, who's daughter – Dahlia – was only a year older than me and a dear friend.

Young Adult

We don't have a concept for teenager; either you are a child, or you are an adult. Although a Six-Eyed apprenticeship is somewhat of a gray zone, I was considered grown into a young adult when I was about 13.

It was becoming clearer with every day that I had truly been made for the spirit world: my eyes, the same rare blue as my mama, were weak, and I suffered pain and fatigue more often than the others of my cave. This wasn't truly a problem; even if I hadn't been Six-Eyed, I found great joy in preparing meals and skins, fletching, telling stories, singing and caring for the young. I was also decent at medicine, and although one never finished the Six-Eyed education, my mentor became my equal around the time I became grown.

Relocation

Around my fifteenth or sixteenth year, my mama's sister-child – practically my sister – fell in love with a man of another cave. They were smaller than us, less than ten members, and were eager to have sher join their group. Their Six-Eyed had recently passed as well, and with me being a young child-bearer on top of that, they were hoping I would join, too. Dahlia would leave no matter what, and there wasn’t much there for me without her. My teacher was growing old and would soon pass, and though I had respect as hems successor, I had few friends.

I accepted.

My new cave was further south, and a bit of travel – I’m not sure how much, but likely around a week or two. Here I made friends with the group; a more tight-knit community than the one I came from. Dahlia soon bore child.

The group had three hunters; one of them was Ichor, who, after a few months of me living there, approached me and suggested a mentorship. This would not be of the sort I had with my Six-Eyed teacher; this would be that of a Guide and a Guided. He would teach me of their ways, and their prey, and things he knew that I did not.

It was bold of him to ask such a thing from his Six-Eyed, but I was lonely, and he was kind, and I welcomed a warm body to share my furs. We became increasingly close – I befriended his mother, the oldest member of the group. We would joke about our weak eyes together.

The Spirit

Dahlia soon bore another child, once sher first black-haired young son was weaned. I stood vigil at the baby’s naming; sang, and danced, and drummed. It was exhilarating. That night I felt a presence: a spirit I had not felt before. It warmed me, comforted me in ways I can’t describe.

It wouldn’t be long before I felt the presence again – and again, and again, and again. It began communicating with me, in staggered, halting words I barely understood. I called it Ancharond; the unknown spirit.

We would soon move to our winter cave. It was my third year of living with this group, and Ancharond came to me more and more often – comforting me, so I was rarely alone. But I could not rest. Something was starting to awaken inside: a call, a need, something was missing. I told none of this, except Ancharond, who knew my deepest thoughts and inmost feelings. Often I would sit at the cave’s entrance, and though no tears left my eyes, my soul wept.

And then came the fateful day where Ichor passed. He had hunted to a rhinoceros; both prey and predator had fallen. I was crushed. He had been my anchor, my truest friend, my closest companion. When his spirit passed, it took part of me with it.

It became too much. I held Dahlia’s youngest child in my arms and wept for all the children I had not given Ichor; all his children I would never bear. I was angry. I was heartbroken.

I went in the stillness of night, creeping past the watchful fires of the guard, and left no belongings behind.

The Journey

I was nineteen and with no clue where to go, or where I was going, except that I was heading westward: toward the sunset. It would be a long, grueling journey – as a lone person, I would struggle with finding food, and I needed rest far more often than I would like. I learned to use a spear and sling, as well as better ways of trapping small game, but survived mostly on the plants I found on the way. There wasn’t much energy in them; I was always eating.

On this journey, Ancharond became a close companion. Slowly, our conversations became more understandable, more clear – and one day, they showed themselves to me in their entirety: a tall, black rabbit walking on its hinds. Its eyes were black holes, its front paws ripped apart by pale, snow-white human hands. It spoke with a voice within my head; it walked without a shadow. It was a terrifying sight, and I feared for my life the first time I saw them.

They told me we were the same; that I was Ancharond; that Ancharond was me.

I didn’t believe them. How could I be a thing like that?

It was on our second meeting like this that they realized something was wrong. They were quick to comfort me; the rabbit was not their true form – it was simply my brain attempting to make sense of it. I asked to see their true form; they obliged.

Ancharond: a strange amalgamation of beasts, with the upper body of a human, the hind legs, ears and muzzle of a rabbit, and tail of a fox. The most important, though, are the antlers that rest upon their head: large, black things speckled with stars.

They smiled shily that first time I saw them as such. I couldn’t stop staring. Antlers, like my own guide, like the Great Horned – I was touched. I was honoured.

With their guidance I adopted a young wolf pup. It was an accident in truth: I had felled a deer with a lucky throw of my spear, and had to be quick in harvesting its meat. A wolf, delirious with sickness, came upon me – I slayed it in my terror. Later I would find its pup, wandering, alone.

It wouldn’t be long before Ancharond, the unknown spirit, became Encharond; the known spirit.

I am still on this journey; still walking, still seeking. I know not what I’m looking for. I know only that I must survive.

#star speaks #star writes #neanderthal kin #alterhuman #otherhuman #otherkin #neanderthal

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tanoraqui · 2 years ago

Note

☔for the fic ask game!

☔Is there a fic concept you have that you'd like to just explain and share because you're not sure you'll ever write it? If so, what is it?

There is in my heart a canon divergence fic, maybe proper narrative maybe just bullet points, which I have functionally written out as much as I ever will below this cut, in which:

Shortly before the Fall of Númenor and more importantly the Changing of the World, Finrod has a Prophecy of what's coming

He tells Celechwes, who says, "Oh, I...am not okay with it. I didn't plan to go back, but if I can't? If the road truly, utterly only goes one way? That's- that's not okay. I can't, I won't live like that."

So Celechwes goes and talks to some people (quietly, unofficially), who talk to some other people (quietly, unofficially)...

She ends up leading a small fleet that sets out from a southern port just a few days before the Númenoreans are expected to land in the north (fully aiming to avoid the Men). it's about half veterans of Beleriand who have never felt like they fit in on Aman (45% Fëanorians but many close followers of Fingon and more non-Noldor), a quarter elves from other places who don't want to be cut off forever from what was once home, and a quarter Aman-born elves who've grown up on stories of mortal lands and who feel a little restless in the Land of Bliss.

(Finrod joins at the last moment. Amarië found him sitting on a balcony overlooking Valmar and sadly playing the song he once played as the Beorlings woke to see their first shining elf-lord, and she said, "Findaráto Ingoldo, Finrod Felagund Adanil, I will not willingly part from you again - but nor do I want to arrive in the lands across the sea only for war a second time, too late to see all their storied beauty. Also, you know Mingoneth* convinced Veryawendë* to join the fleet, right? Can you imagine how much trouble they'll get into with only Celechwes for supervision?" And he looked up, and saw that she'd packed both their long-distance travel bags.) *OCs, see: "Of the Golden Horde"

(By then, Rawen Ectheliel, once Lieutenant Right Hand of Himring, had already apologized to her wife - who thought they were done with this sort of thing - and followed her lady aboard. She IS done with this sort of thing (ie, rebellion; the House of Fëanor...as it became). But she lost Himring; she couldn't abide herself if she let ill fate befall Celechwes as well.)

The thing about being on at sea when the world abruptly turns from flat into a globe, sailing from a continent that is no longer on said globe, is that you get EXTREMELY turned around and lost. And, frankly, split up as a fleet.

[Cue: several-decades-long montage of several hundred elves - about half hardened (relaxed, but still hardened) war veterans, a quarter friendly nature people just trying to get home, and a quarter kids (in the eyes of all the rest) who have never met a real mortal before - scattered throughout the new southern hemisphere in ones and twos and a few coherent shiploads, trying to find each other and - for most - make their way north toward the lands and people that they know best.]

(If they happen to arrive in time to help beat the ever-loving shit out of Sauron, that's not, like, a drawback for anyone.)

Adventures are had! Hardened war veterans process trauma and old grudges (and sometimes get new ones). People re-find old homes and settle down once more, or realize that either home or they have changed and continue onward with their new companions. Kids grow up.

After a number of sidequests and other delays - flooding rivers, saving an innocent forest from an encroaching swarm of giant spiders, saving a small country from a neighboring evil king influenced by fell whispers from the depths below his castle... It occurs to some of them that all these delays might not be coincidence. They haven't received any official penalties from the Valar for their, er, polite but overt defiance of if not the letter than certainly the spirit of several laws, but...

"I think we are being made Agents of Good," Amarië said thoughtfully. "I think the price of being here is that we must lend a hand where it is needed, where the Great Ones fear to tread for their touch is not...'delicate'...at the best of times."

Celechwes did not like being used without her permission. But, fallen Beleriand never forgotten, she couldn't fault Amarië's analysis.

"I think we should try leaning into it," Finrod suggested. "They'll see that we're here in good faith, and no doubt speed our journey to where our hearts most yearn to go."

(The nearby stream blooped encouragingly, because Ulmo had been explicitly forbidden from giving explicit messages again.)

A few nights later, a local Mannish hunter approached their camp. Emphasis, perhaps, on Man-ish. Her eyes were the blue of a northern wolf-dog. She asked for help scouring the nearby mountains of a dark cult.

[cue: several more decades of montaged adventures. the local folk legends will be rich for generations]

They do arrive in the north just in time to help kick Sauron's fucking ass. Though not early enough to avert the tragedy of the Battle of Dagorlad, they learn later. But before the final, would-be pyrrhic victory; when the soldiers of the Last Alliance are marching into Mordor proper.

Galadriel is the first to know - she's aiding in a healing tent on the foul northern border, ready to ride in a second wave or to hold firm any retreat, when a mind touches her which she hadn't expected to feel again ere either the remaking of the world or her own death and rebirth (for she still had no intention of Sailing.)

Alatariel! her eldest brother calls. How goes the day? I've missed you, of course! Also, do you have a recommendation for where best to land 500 assorted elves, men and cavalry mounts coming up from the south, that we may swiftly come to whatever aid you all need?

A day later, a small host stood at the crest of the path past retaken Minas Ithil, looking out over the shadowed plains of Mordor. All before them was bloodied and embattled: Men fought Men, Elves fought Orcs, eagles and other goodly birds clashed in midair with giant bats and scrawny but deadly petty firedrakes. The very earth groaned in pain beneath the enemy's chains. And far in the distance, near the foot of a fire-spitting mountain, two star-studded banners - one white on black above a white tree, one silver stars on a blue field - approached a red eye on black.

At the head of the bannerless Host of the Returned, Rawen - generally elected battle-leader - raised her blade. Celechwes put a hand on her arm. "Do not call 'Súlaearil.' It's embarrassing. Don't do it." "My lady," Rawen protested, with her particular intonation that made it clear she was saying 'your majesty.' "No," Celechwes said firmly. "'Finwë and the North'?" suggested the elf on Rawen's other side, once third in command of Fingon's Dragon-frighters. "Can't go wrong with that," agreed Finrod, a little further down the line. Rawen sighed. Her blade, which had sagged a little, she raised straight again, then pointed forward with that battle-cry that had long united the great Siege-line of the Noldor: "Finwë and the North!"

"FINWË AND THE NORTH!" roared the Host of the Returned - all hardened veterans by now, though less brittle in it than some had begun. The fiery-faithful of Himring and the valorous of Barad Eithel, the quick of Ossiriand and the cunning of Nargothrond and the devoted of Doriath, the bold and restless of Aman and those who loved Middle Earth so dearly that they could do naught but defend it; slayers of orcs and spiders and feller beasts, saviors of lands besieged and heroes of legend, swept down from the heights to descend upon Sauron's unsuspecting eastern flank.

Ahead of them all streaked a single swift rider, blond hair streaming in the wind of her passage. Her mount was a prong-horned antelope from the plains far to the south, faster than any cavalry horse (and not usually suited to riding, but blue-eyed Alatar had whispered it some encouragement before they'd parted).

They leapt the first line of the enemy, hastily reassembling itself to meet this unexpected new foe. They jerked and dodged and ducked through the others, as behind them the battle lines slammed together. Jagged orcish blades came at her, and the sharp iron of men enraptured or enslaved to the dark, but mostly in passing - they didn't have time for a single rider driving through with no weapons of her own, her only goal the bright silver-on-blue star in the distance.

Eventually a pair of clever firedrakes managed to herd them up one of the low, ragged cliffs that spurted up here and there on the barren land. Celechwes rolled off her antelope to avoid a stream of fire and ran the other way without hesitation - the quick, clever creature would get to safety far more ably with no heavy elf on its back. Without, slowing, she sprinted off the edge of the cliff.

She'd planned to tuck and roll to the bottom, then pick herself up and keep running. The land ahead was clear for a few miles, save for the pits. Instead, great, sharp talons grasped her gently, and (non-specifically) familiar wings beat around her, with a screech that echoed in her bones.

She laughed as one Great Eagle dropped her carefully toward another. With a sailor's grace she landed with both feet on its broad, shifting back, and returned a joyous screech of challenge into the racing wind.

Below and ahead (though less far with every wingbeat), Ereinion Gil-galad looked up. Eagles had been screaming for battle all day, all month, but for a moment he could've sworn -

Celechwes's eagle dove to avoid a vampire. She dropped her knees and gripped its feathers tightly, and thanked the stars that she wasn't trying to do this while keeping someone from bleeding out from the wrist.

As they dove toward the volcano and the forces advancing against one another there, she eagle-shrieked again, in greeting this time, and shouted, "Erein, hold your position! Re-enforcements are coming!"

Even - nay, especially the High King of the Noldor in Middle Earth knew better than to question the finest royal courier in Beleriand, much less his mother the queen. "Hold!" Gil-galad bellowed over the clash of blades.

Celechwes circled back up, looking back across the field. But Sauron, too, had heard her message, and knew a victory when it was about to slip from his grasp. Mighty and fell, he strode forward toward the banners of Gil-galad and Elendil, and the kings of Elves and Men.

In swift, vicious, terrible combat they were soon joined, Sauron with his dark, burning blade and Gil-galad with bright Aeglos and Elendil with shining Narsil. Likely, at best, all would have been slain -

But Celechwes hadn't been the only one of her host riding hard across the dark plains, dallying with no enemy save the greatest foe. She was only (as ever) the fastest.

"HEY, GORTHAUR!" yelled Finrod Felagund, with a particular intonation that made it clear he was saying, Hey, motherfucker! "I CALL REMATCH!"

And this time, as he raised his voice in a Song of trust unbroken and faith fulfilled, of Sea and sand and second chances, Amarië of the Vanyar Sang with him, their souls entwined, she who had learned to Sing from Maiar on the slope of Ezollohar where stood the Trees; and with them also Sang their daughter Veryawendë Tinúviel, named by prophecy from both parents, fated to be a bright melody in darkness and a great change in the world, and this was not her time but still the Great Music swirled thick around her; and you bet your ass Galadriel had also ridden down from the north to join as fast as she was able -

The last time Galadriel and Amarië joined their voices in powerful harmony had been the final duel between Morgoth and Finarfin, Anairë, and the last of the Host of the Noldor. With Sauron's power reflected and redoubled unto himself through his terrible Ring, this duel was no less hard-won, but it was very definitively won. They even prevented him from erupting the volcano as a final spiteful blow.

"We should destroy the Ring," Gil-galad said at the end, exhausted, bloody, and leaning on Elrond for support. Isildur eyed it - shining golden on Sauron's cut-off black hand - with battle-fire lingering in his grey eyes. "I would rather claim it as weregild, for Anarion - " "For the love of - " said Celechwes, dismounted now that the worst of the battle was over (though there was a great deal of mopping-up to do, of orcs, corrupted men and etc.) "Is this still the Noldorin influence?" she demanded, of nobody in particular. "Or is it a new Edainic thing? No, I suppose Thingol fell to it in the end, too - is it being inland? Do you not spend enough time near the sea, and that's why you're constantly obsessed with cursed jewelry? Here, I'll do it - don't go anywhere, Erein; I'll be right back."

She shucked off her leather hauberk to use as a glove, picked up Sauron's still coal-hot black hand, and sprinted up the volcano slope before anyone else could say a word.

"...I'm really sorry," Elendil said into the relative quiet that followed, "I think I know who you are, my lord - " he bowed toward Finrod, as best he could while leaning bloody and exhausted on Isildur - "and Lady Galadriel, I'm so glad you caught up with us. But I'm not sure about any of these other ladies who have come to our rescue? Including that one?" He jerked his head toward the bright-haired figure already halfway up Oroduin's rocky slope, with the air of a man wondering if he should call for soldiers to chase after her.

"That's my mother," said Gil-galad.

"Ah," said Elendil and Isildur, with perfect understanding. They, too, had mothers.

The Forge of Sauron rumbled ominously, shuddered and spat out first sparks, then sprays of lava. Celechwes, briefly out of sight in the cavern near the top, sprinted back down ahead of the molten rock, empty handed.

"Everyone move!" she shouted. "Should've evacuated first! Go, go, go!"

And then everyone lived happily after - though a lot of them probably did Sail not long thereafter, including most of the Host of the Returned - including the Finrod, Amarië, and Veryawendë, though not bold-hearted Mingoneth, and Celechwes, and Gil-galad. Because they'd accomplished a Great Task and Aman is, actually, objectively more pleasant for Elves than most mortal lands (and Beleriand was still gone). The spiritual weather is just so much better. Everyone stuck around to see Elrond and Celebrian get married, though, and to meet their kids and see Gondor and the Greenwood both regain their feet.

With no Gil-galad to come and sort out several conflicting emotions about his parents, Fingon does stay in Mandos, keeping Maedhros company for longer...but not too much longer. There weren't many casualties among the Host of the Returned, but Rawen Ectheliel was among them (her last thought is that her wife is going to be really, truly, perhaps irrevocably disappointed). She manages to find them before she leaves, the memory of Thangorodrim which Maedhros has made to hang from in his self-pity, self-loathing and twisted self-aggrandizement, where Fingon sits by his feet out of loyalty, devotion, stubbornness, pride and fear; and she gives their behavior such a scathing review that Fingon actually pulls his shit together a few years later and tentatively leaves, and Maedhros pulls one of his hands out of the chains.

#my fic #celechwes au #ask meme #the silmarillion #runawaymun

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fenharel-archived · 1 year ago

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saskia i am on my hands and knees begging for some ysabel info! what’s her backstory? what’s she like during the game? she’s so 🥰💖

[PERSONALITY]

Ysabel is a noble, Lolth Sworn Drow, living in Menzoberrazan and is a School of Divination Wizard

Shes an chaotic neutral ENTP, Gemini, 125 years old and 1.60m tall

Ysabel is creative and intelligent, mischievous and cunning. Some perceive her as quirky, eccentric - funny, confident with a giant ego, but also power hungry and selfish, sometimes cruel. She has always been full of ideas, always thinking of new and better ways to do things. She’s always been curious, more often than not you find her with her nose stuck in a book. Her childhood bedroom was exploding with books about fungi or tomes like “The past and present: a Scholars Guide to Divination”.

She’s also rather extroverted and a social chameleon, excellent at manipulation and persuasion, something her mother often took advantage of, as she would often use her children like chess pieces in her political affairs.

[BACKSTORY]

The noble house of Do’Rahel is one of the 8 powerful houses in Menzoberranzan

Ysi has two older sisters (Yris, Yvory) and one younger brother (Ysmael, my warlock charlatan & very first D&D oc 😘)

Their mother (Yaelryn Do’Rahel) is a matron mother, a priestess of Lolth and a powerful and influential figure in Menzoberrazan’s affairs

As most intelligent people are prone to, Ysabel was more questioning of things like societal norms or rules and ideas than what was socially acceptable in the Cult of Lolth, something her mother often reminded her of through whipping. But her mother was also more progressive than some would believe - when her daughter showed more interest in the arcane than continuing her training as a cleric she encouraged it. She thought that having one of her daughters in the circle of the Sorcere was something that could be beneficial to her.

After a particularly nasty ambush on Ysabel (your regular weekend in the Underdark really) her mother assigned one of their warriors as her personal guard - a tiefling slave called Lucien (Side note but he’ll be romancing Shadowheart in a future playthrough 🤓)

Lucien was in his early twenties and enslaved for around 5 years at the time, he was passionate and charming, warm and strong. But he was also as cunning as he was kind. Ysabel liked him, and often would spend more time with him than was strictly necessary. He had Ysabel figured out quickly, and noticed that traits in her that might be weaknesses in her mothers eyes, could be his opportunity. That growing close to her could be his ticket to get free.

But things didn't necessarily work out for him at first as he would have thought - both of them fell in love.

He would tell her stories of his previous life, about his ideals and morals, about the world above. How children do not fear for their life where he is from, how parents love their children unconditionally, how he missed feeding the neighbors ducks before he would go to school. Ysi would laugh at him sometimes, call him weak and soft. But sometimes she would indulge in his stories. Catching herself thinking of them in bed before she go meditating. How strange it must be to live so truly carefree.

The influence Lucien had on her was undeniable. Small and meaningless at first maybe but there nonetheless. There were glimpses of true kindness in Ysabel only he got to see. Glimpses of love - real love, not just the craving for flesh or power he was accustomed to from other Drow. He saw that he had shaken her morals and beliefs, slightly perhaps, but shaken. So when she finally wanted to set him free out of her own volition, instead of running when his binding spell was broken he asked for her to come with him.

She helped him to stage his own death and broke his bonds and let him go, but she didn’t go with him. This would be a turning point in her life, something she regretted for the rest of her existence, something she kept thinking about for years on end.

For many years after, she buried herself in her tower. She never dared to think of why she said no, instead she sat in front of her mirror of memories, where she relived the time she had with Lucien. But in doing so, a part of herself, the past party in fact, was lost in it. Her present self was split in half. She was either overly good or overly evil, and she became known for being mad and for research and experiments that were even extreme by Drow standards.

She was in this state for at least 60 years. She had short periods of time where she managed to stabilize herself through experiments, but it never worked for long. Nevertheless, she made a name for herself, she was an extremely powerful wizard, was considered one of the masters of Sorcere and had a place in their council. (Much to their dismay. Assassination attempts from her colleagues were a daily occurrence tbh.)

[GAME TIMELINE]

House Do’Rahel was infiltrated by Absolute cultists, leading to the almost death of her sisters Yris and Yvory, and the losing a handful of their staff members. Ysabel's mother also heard rumors of similar things happening in House Baenre and other houses all over the city. Sensing a bigger plot, instead of sending warbands like her colleagues, she only send Ysabel and a handful of warriors on a scouting mission. She was to gather as much information as possible. If she would see an opportunity beneficial to them - she should take it, and most importantly she was also to kill or capture any heretic or deserter of Lolth.

The trail they followed led them to the outskirts of Baldur’s Gate. She didn’t know it at the time but she was on her way to Moonrise Towers when she was abducted. When she woke up in the Nautiloid, the tadpole didn’t just strip her of her powers, but also stabilized her mind.

Being fully herself again after so long felt like having someone forcefully pushing a heart back into her. At the beginning of her journey she’s manipulative (she does a lot of the “heroic” options not because she thinks it’s the right thing to do, but because she thinks it’s a smarter way to uncover what is going on and/or because working with the Absolute would go against Lolth), she’s also selfish and a bit cruel, but a lot of things she does suddenly don’t feel the same to her anymore, and an top of that the problem with the tadpole - it forces her into introspection.

At some point she realizes that her companions remind her of Lucien, and the time she had with him. Her development throughout the game mainly consists of her realizing that she rather wants love and friendship than pure ruthless power. She develops a consciousness, empathy. Something Lucien already built the groundwork of so many years ago. She realizes she was too much of a coward back then, that she couldn't let go of all that power and desert Lolth even though that's what she really wanted. Surrounded by her new friends, she doesn’t want to make the same mistake again. In her mind, she’ll never be truly good, much less a hero. But she doesn’t want to be what she used to be either. Seeing real friendship, love, experiencing it for herself, she realizes the only times she wasn't hollow was with Lucien - and now, with them.

Her new friends act as mirrors to herself as well. She sees herself in Gale when he gets obsessed over the Crown, she sees herself in Astarion when he’s willing to kill all his former friends for power. And she sees herself in Lae’zel, Wyll & Shadowheart when it comes to the influence a God, Goddess or devil can have on you. They were all on the path she already walked on, and the guilt she is carrying with her over things she can’t change anymore is overwhelming, so she stops them all, helps them see what is truly important.

About the reason she was in Baldur’s Gate in the first place, she isn’t honest with her companions at first, she has obviously her own agenda like everyone else in that camp. She was forced to explain herself by Wyll when she let True Soul Nere kill the Gnomes. Having a tadpole in her head made everything more personal of course, she starts going against the Absolute not in the name of Lolth or for her mother but for herself and her own beliefs in Act 2.

After the game, her mind is still hers. Going through so much change and admitting her biggest fears repaired herself, like a curse she casted and then lifted on herself. Also, she and Astarion guide the Vampire spawn in the Underdark for a while, and she also researches for ways to make Astarion walk in the sun again (and I like to headcanon that she succeeds :3)

If you want to take a peak, here is Ysabels pinterest 🥺, and since i mentioned Lucien, here is his'.

#shadowglens #answered #thank you for enabling me sophie. i wanted to post an info dumb for so long but im such a lazy mf #im leaving kisses on ur forehead but im also running away in fear. god i already cut this down but it's still so long IM SO SORRY 😭#you: whats her backstory; me: here is my essay. kdjfslkjflsf #ysabel do'rahel #ocs tag #bg3 spoilers #lucien lovera #& yes u guessed right. jekyll & hyde was my inspiration for her Lul. also redemption arcs are my unguilty pleasure :3 #idk if i was really able to explain it but ysi's biggest flaws are cowardice and stagnation???#having a damn mindflayer worm in her brain gave her finally the kick in the butt to be honest with herself #i think even if her mind would have stayed intact she would still have stayed in the underdark. she just would have been unhappier about it #or worse. however u wanna call it #oh side note but she was neutral evil before the lucien times. then become somewhat CN (then was split into chaotic good/chaotic evil.)#her current desposition is chaotic neutral. just to clarify since it might sound weird

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echantedtoon · 1 year ago

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Love Doesn't Do Encores Ch45 The End

(This is it folks. Just one more left after this which will be the epilogue. The place where reader meets Arceus is based off the Legends of Arceus post game fight. Link below.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8-feGjQNs8&list=LL&index=37)

Piers was home. His home. Your Piers. His Y/n. Your Home. Everything. Both. Yours and his. The whole day was a magical blur. You remembered feeling Piers's happy tears fall onto your forehead and you cried as well still hanging onto each other like a pair of koalas in front of a large crowd but you didn't care. By the time you two finally pulled apart the entire crowd began cheering and pushing you all towards the inevitable welcome back party Team Yell insisted on throwing for Piers and Marnie, which was just a giant social gathering at the gym with a lot of ordered pizza and discounted ice cream from the local store but you didn't care. The entire time Piers holding onto you in one way or another or vise versa. It was all such a blur of a night. You remembered eating a little bit, panicking for a moment your boss would get angry you just left work to party with Piers, giving Marnie a hug, and just...talking. Just talking and being held by Piers who seemed to do nothing but smile and hold you the entire time...until it got dark. Like REALLY dark and really REALLY late into the night. By the time you realized it, you were already so tired but so happy. You couldn't remember any other time you cried so much or felt so happy it felt like the whole world was becoming whole again. All your focus on Piers and his focus on you so it was quick a shock when you were finding yourself standing in front of your house having been escorted none other than the man himself and having him convince you to go to sleep.

"Get some sleep," he spoke softly, forehead pressed against yours, a few happy tears falling down his face, and two soft hands holding your cheeks. Perfect smile on his pale features. "I wanna spend more time with ya too but it's late..an' M' tired from travelin'. Tomorrow I'll be back to ya. I promise you." Followed by another kiss to your forehead.

You did whine at the loss but your urge to sleep overtook any other emotion. So you stumbled your way inside after a few more moments. Silver and the others were both happy and anxious to see you after so long but sleep still won out over everything. You were already so exhausted you hardly even noticed you going through the routine of taking a shower, brushing your teeth, and getting into your favorite pair of fuzzy pjs before just collasping into your bed. Eyelids heavy and darkness consuming you as you fell into a fast deep sleep. The darkness of your dream was interrupted however in the most strangest ways. Because you woke up. Or at least...you thought you did-

"At last...Thou haveth been found. Divine childe from thine differ plain of being.''

Cold..It was so cold. Like winter had come early and seeped into your blankets, except you weren't covered by anything except for the clothes on your back. And you weren't laying on any soft cozy mattress like when you first went to best. It felt..cold and glasslike the ground under you. Like you just decided to fall asleep on a giant pane of glass in the middle of winter. It was the cold that beckoned f/c eyes to open above you, shivering and teeth clattering together from the cold feeling. And what was above the young woman made her gasp at the holy sight above. It-...It was almost as if the universe itself was in front of you, swirling shades of purple and black swam before you in the shape of the galaxy with some invisible force holding it above you. Silence fading in and out as twinkling stars shown around you with the beautiful sight of the fully moon lighting it all. The moon looked so close and so far at the same time. What the-...Where were you? Were you dreaming? This felt too real to be just a dream. Were you seeing some kind of old game footage like the first time you arrived in this world??..Had you died? Is this the afterlife? No..No that wasn't it. Before you could get too far into your questioning, you slowly, body shaking and teeth now clattering together from how cold it was, stood on legs more wobbly than a newborn deer. Your hands came up to rub your arms in a failed attempt to warm you up looking around. Black...EVERYWHERE WAS BLACK!! Like eternal night other than the endless night stars and full moon above you. Nothing anywhere. Spinning in a complete circle, you still found yourself completely alone. Right. Alone. This MUST have been some crazy dream right?

"H-Hello?!," You called out tentatively finding your voice trembling and throat dry from the cold croaking. Like a creepy tunnel your voice echoed into the dark abyss. ...No answer came back to you. "I-I-Is an-nyone there!?"

Dead silence.

Ok. Obviously this wasn't a dream. This was a freaking NIGHTMARE!! You felt dread creeping in on you and you would've started panicking if it wasn't for a voice. One you thought you heard before, One so feeble and far you almost thought you had imagined it. Then you heard it again.

"This way.''

The words- That voice came from behind you and you snapped behind you seeing no one.

"H-HELLO!? HEY! THIS ISN'T FUNNY!? C-C-C-C'mon! Ju-Just s-s-show yourselves al-al-laread-dy!"

"This way," the voice repeated only now you were facing the direction it came from.

This person-..thing...It couldn't be serious right? Your mind was playing tricks on you surely!...But..you had no other choice but to follow it huh? Sigh. You sighed, looked around you one more time, again saw nothing, and then turned forward to behind walking. To be honest it felt like walking on a treadmill. Never leaving the place you stood except you didn't feel the ground move under your feet or the stars go past you, maybe your feet were just too cold. Then, after a short while of walking you saw it. A small dull light coming from in front of you. You grew more excited and your pace quickened. That was it! The exit! At this point you were all but running, excited to leave this place wherever it is was you were. You'd probably wake up once you reach the end. Boy Piers would think this one would be a doozy to hear. Probably get a laugh outta it too. The closer you got the more blinding the light became. Up until you had to close your eyes against the harsh glare. Still you continued on and while the light gave you hope it also took away your sight until with many blinks and your hands rubbing your eyelids, they slower adjusted to the light and it wasn't as bright as you initially thought it was. And your eyes blinked down once your leg bumped into something almost making you trip over and blink at it. Until your eyes fully adjusted. And widened as you realized you were staring at....Uh..Well you were staring at..The light was coming from...

A floating rectangle???

Yes. Before you floating just a foot above the ground was a stop sign sized rectangle that was glowing a white with a slight blue-green tint to it. Your f/c eyes followed it up to another one just like it. And then another. And another. And another. All one foot apart and starting to head upwards like some kind of stairs...Wait..WERE these stairs?? You kept staring at it totally bewildered-

"Up, Young One. Ascend."

You flinched. There it was. That voice again. It sounded male in gender and echoed both inside and outside your skull like a drumroll. Wait. Did that thing say up? You blinked at the apparent stairs again. It wanted you to go up? Seriously!? A long flight of stairs?! Your mind couldn't have dreamt up an elevator at least?...You sighed but followed the strange voice's instructions and began to climb the glowing staircase upwards. Step after step you took moving upwards in a seemingly never ending stairway of glowing floating rectangles. After a while you got to a point where you couldn't tell where you began or where it ended, as if you weren't even going anywhere again like when you were walking, but there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Er. Stairs I mean. Because when you looked up, you saw something at last that made you give pause once again. Upwards above you was a GIANT circular platform surrounded by faint purple lights resembling the aurora borealis. Was that where you were supposed to go? Looking around there was nothing and no where else to go. You couldn't even see the bottom of the stairs anymore as they faded into the darkness below. Guess there was only one way out of this mess. Looking back upwards you continued your climb all the way up until finally at last you were standing on the strange floating platform. The platform was about as big as half your standard large parking lot and strange circle patterns were glowing in it's floor. You stopped when you were about half way in the middle of it and looked around. And still nothing although you didn't feel so cold anymore now.

"HELLO!?," you hollered out again your voice echoing around as you looked around for any sign of life. "Hey! I'm here already! Where are you!? Show yourself!"

"Be Not Afraid!"

That voice again. Echoing. It sounded like it came from everywhere and no where at once leaving you looking any which way to find it. Up at the stairs. Down at your feet. Around and around at all sides seeing absolutely no one. Then it happened. Something blocked the light from you making you freeze as a long shadow fell over you. ...You felt yourself gulp feeling a VERY massive presence behind you eyes boring into the back of your skull. And then you slowly turned around. And you saw it. Irises shrinking and jaw dropping. White blinded your vision as red and green eyes bore down at you from four stories high and feet across. The thing a monster above you-

"AAAAAAAHHHHH!!!" Your body moved on it's own. Peddling backwards and making you crash onto your backside flashbacks of the giant corviknight when you first showed up flashing before your eyes. Making the giant pokemon blink and wince.

"I sayeth be not afraid."

"HOLY ARCEUS!!," You cried out staring at this...this..thing wide eyed scooting backwards and pointing at the thing towering over you. "What the heck are you!?"

"Oh..Thou hast already answered thine question," it answered you tilting it's head at you. "It hast taken me many a moon to find thee."

You paused. Staring at the giant thing in front of you like a goldfish before lowering it's head. "....What?"

It looked eye level at you now as if trying not to frighten you again. "Thoust tis gazing upon thy god of this realm."

God?...Wait. This thing was a god?? Not any god you could think of like Thor or Hercules. Wait. Did the pokemon franchise even have a god? Well there were legendary pokemon which were like demigods and the strongest among them was-....Was-...Your eyes widened more as a glass breaking sound went off in your head again and the thing chuckled at your expression.

"HOLY ARCEUS!!!"

"Thee one and only."

"I-...W-What the-" ARCEUS!? YOU WERE BLOODY TALKING TO THE ARCEUS!? "W-Wha-...How-...WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING HERE!?"

"I haveth summoned thee to correct the mistake of mine children."

"Wa-..Y-Y-Your children!?"

It nodded before lifting it's head back up and you stumble/wobbled back onto your foot. "I'm afraid the fault of thou's arrival to this plain of existance would be none other than my own children. Perhaps thou knowest thy children of time and space?"

You continued to stare at him before raising a brow. "Are-...A-Are you talking about Dialgia and Palkia?"

Arceus nodded. "Indeed."

"Wha-...H-How the heck?! What did they do to me!?"

"It seems that not too long ago now mine two children had gotten into a rather terrible spat. The worst one in nearly a millennia. Twas the fighting so passionate that they had opened up portals to your world. Resulting in many a person crossing over."

You still stared at him....before you scowled. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. WAIT A MINUTE!!" You pointed at him. "Are you telling me that the only reason I'm here is because I fell through a portal two legendary pokemon made!?"

Arceus looked a bit more embarrassed now. "When down to it..yes. Tis what happened. And thoust was not thee only one. I had toldest thine children to fix their mistake."

"....And did they?"

"Yes...Well. Mostly. I hast seen them mend the rifts and heal thine wounds towards one another but send the humans they did not. Instead they deemed it worthy to bend space and time to thine will and make thee a part of thine new world."

Make you a part of this world-...THE ID CARD!! Your eyes widened as you realized. THE OLD BAG SONIA DISCOVERED AT THE CRASH SIGHT!! That was them!? It must've been them! That was the only way to explain it! Things were starting to make so much sense now.

"So Dialgia and Palkia fought and during that fight managed to open portals between this plain of existence that they exist and somewhere where they only exist in video games and anime?....That....actually makes sense in a really, really weird way. But that still doesn't explain why you're here."

"With mine children not doing so I hast taken it up in mineself to right thine wrongs and return thine human children to their rightful home."

Your eyes widened. "You can do that?"

He nodded. "I apologize on behalf on my children for thou's troubles and thee's wait for mine arrival. For there was a many humans which fell and I hadst to prioritized the ones who would cause more trouble than though."

"You can...really send me back? Just how many were there!?"

"A plenty but do not be alarmed. Every human was sent back happily, some more forced than others. However thy childe is thy last to return home and thus thou shalt get to chose thy fate."

"You mean...I can chose whether I can leave or stay?"

"Correct. Thou hast shown bravery and compassion where others shant. I commend thee and thy good deeds. Therefore shalt get my reward here. Chose. Stay in this new world or return home from wince ye came."

You...could go back? You could go back home!? Back to your mother and old home and life. You could ...you could go and make a new life for yourself. You could leave and get your own life and job and chose your own college since you had the guts to never listen to her! And she still must be worried about you. And...that was your goal in the beginning r-right? To get back home. But...you did and have so much here. You had friends. A job. A home. Pets- Er. Pokemon. And you and Piers-...You'd have to start all over again if you went back, and Dialgia and Palkia made you an identity here. You now existed in both worlds. But you could only chose one.

"What...happens if I go back? T-T-To my old world."

"Nothing. It would be like if thou never left at all."

"Really?"

"Thou would be sent back to the exact time they disappeared. You'dst be wearing the clothes thou wore when you disappeared. Thou's age would be the same before you left. It would be if thou never ever even left for a second...But. Be warned. If thou shalt pick this path, you shall never be able to return here again. And everyone here shall forget you." Your brows shot up! "Every evidence of you even being here would fade away. Photos. Memories...Everything. Your friends would forget about you."

They ...Would forget you? All of them. The journey you made with your friends? The way you raised Silver? Piers and your feelings?

"W-What about my Mom?! In my own world I mean? W-What would happen to her?"

"Thine same scenario. In fact thoust hast been here for so long thy mother hast most likely forgotten as your existence hast most like already faded from there as well. But fear not Human Child. It shalt all be fixed once I send ye back."

You stared at him. She....had already forgotten about you? But all of it would be fixed once he sent you back..If you decided to take him up on his offer to send you back. But would that be the best thing? Yes you missed her but...There was so much more here. And your world didn't have Funny Leon or Smart Sonia or always hungry Silver or ambitious Postwick twins....Or..Piers. ..It was decided. You inhaled a shaky breath stealing your nerves before looking back up at Arceus who still stayed ever patiently.

"Hast thou decided?"

You nodded. "I have. I-...I-I'd like to stay if that's possible."

"Art thou sure? I will only make this offer once and if thee choses to stay.." He shook his head. "Thine choice is final. I shalt not make this offer again nor will I send thee back to your old home. Think carefully before thou gives me their final answer."

"I'm already sure. And I'd like to stay."

"Tis that thine final answer?" You nodded and he hummed. "....So be it. As thou walkest onward upon thine own path, upon thee and upon this creation where thou now dwellest, I bestow my blessing. Take heed upon thine new life and tell not a soul of our meeting. Fair thee well, Human Childe Y/n of thy different world."

With that your vision began to fuzz and blur. The darkness shifted and spun around you like you were drunk and dizzy. Faster and faster everything spend up as the double vision of Arceus faded...And you woke up. Shot straight up from your cozy bed in your own little haunted house in the dark. It....It must've still been night time! Piers walked you home only a few hours ago. After a moment you slowly laid yourself back down and stared at the ceiling for what must've been ten minutes or so processing what had just happened....Before you again smiled.

"...I'm home."

#pokemon sword and shield #pokemon shield #pokemon sword #pokemon swsh #love doesn't do encores #reader x piers #pokemon piers x reader #pokemon piers #piers x reader

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houseoracastle · 2 years ago

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[THE DISILLUSIONED]. Please welcome HANK MACGILLIVRAY (HE/HIM) to Huntsville, WV. They are a 45-year-old RESIDENT who lives in TOWN. You may see them around working as a REALLY TERRIBLE COP. Poor unfortunate soul. We’ll see if they survive.

—IN CHARACTER

Name: Hank Macgillivray Age: 45 Birthday: January 18 Hometown: Huntsville Length of time in Huntsville: 45 years Occupation: Shitty Cop (the best kind of cop tho)

ABOUT

i will add to this here and there depending on the day tyvm

hank was raised by scottish immigrants who didn't fuck around. he's got three siblings, one older and two younger. they were all kept very much in line by a cold and detached father who smacked them around when needed, and a strict housewife mother who was never afraid to say 'you just wait until your father gets home'.

in other words, his upbringing was pretty traditional and straightforward. he was taught to be polite, and he was taught to be the best picture of masculinity and all-american boy he could be.

hank worked out. hank flirted with girls. he played football. he went on dates where he held doors open and pulled chairs out and made sure his female counterparts didn't lift a finger or spend a dime. he met a girl, fell in love, went through several break ups and make ups throughout high school, and was eventually heartbroken when she decided to go to college out of state.

he thought about following her, but his dad's health was declining when he graduated high school. so he stayed nearby, deciding to go through the steps towards becoming a cop mainly because he knew it was a career he'd be good in. following rules was a strength of his, as was getting others to fall in line. it was his stature, mainly, but also his don't-fuck-with-me demeanor (when he wasn't telling stupid jokes and overall being a giant goofball).

hank actually was a really good cop. for a really long time.

when his high school sweetheart finished college, she came back home. they got together again, and this time they seemed like they were gonna last. he proposed to her, they got married, and a year later she got pregnant.

as soon as he saw the first ultrasound, just a little blob on a screen, hank was in dad-mode. he couldn't wait. he was in love with the heartbeat, and he was so in awe of his wife for being able to bring them such a gift. to bring him such a gift.

halley came into the world, and hank was pretty sure he'd never loved anyone or anything quite as much in his entire life, and he probably never would again. his wife didn't take to being a parent quite as easily.

she bailed pretty soon after, leaving hank and halley alone. it sucked, it made hank pretty depressed, but he kept it together. he relied on help from his mom with the baby, or from friends around town.

so hank struggled, but he made shit work. he would've done anything for halley, which sometimes included discipline and structure and routine, but always made time for stupid jokes and fun activities. hank was the dad that wore tiaras and makeup if his daughter asked him to look fancy for a tea party. he let his daughter paint his nails, and he didn't even wash it off after. he just went to work with chipping pink fingernails.

he dated, sure, but not much. it was difficult to imagine anybody being good enough to introduce to his child, so what was really the point of getting too involved with anyone?

then the paradox. not a great time for everyone, but hank tried to stay okay. he was happy to have his daughter, and he did everything in his power to keep her safe. he kept going to work, kept being a freaking awesome cop, kept providing for himself and his kid, etc.

and then he saw someone else who had followed all the rules get torn apart by horrifying forest creatures of the night. and shit changed for hank.

yeah, violence is bad. and like he will definitely get involved with major crime-y shit happening in town. but when he sees a couple of dumbasses getting in a fight? or he watches some kid shove candy in their pockets? he will look the other way. because there is a lot of bad shit going on in huntsville, and who is he to judge how other people cope with that?

oh and he 100% eats his feelings.

#huntsvilleintro #by hank

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lucygraysboy · 6 months ago

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“hey, do you know some scientists believe that dinosaurs might have had feathers, too? let me tickle you back with my feathers,” he playfully muses, tapping her nose with his own fingertip. “oh, wow… no wonder you fell in love with me at the tender age of six. i have the most unforgettable expression when something surprises me.” laughing as she mimics the look of sheer shock that overtook his features a moment ago, he slowly shakes his head and adds, “with this kind of talent? you should be on broadway, lucy gray.” or at juilliard with him. now that he’s thinking about it, what an experience that would be — the two of them at the same university. “i’m one lucky guy.” just because he can be that person for her. it means the world to him, but he can’t stay serious for long, not when his heart’s about to burst and his nose is already tingling with emotion. he needs a distraction, and so he finds himself one. “and since we’re quoting bon jovi,” he dramatically clears his throat and belts out, “i’d live and i’d die for you! i’d steal the sun from the sky for you! words can’t say what love can do! i’ll be there for you!” if his teachers or classmates could see him now, if the parking lot was actually crowded, he’d be blushing and running away, moving to mexico and changing his name to juan, but because it’s mostly just the two of them here, he lets himself be the giant, obnoxious goof that he is. after all, it’s nothing lucy gray hasn’t seen before.

rolling the cart back to its place, he nearly trips over his own feet upon hearing that she’s already came up with the name for their first baby. it doesn’t surprise him, not when they’ve been secretly crushing on one another since they were little kids, not when he has his own list of future baby names prepared in one of those old journals. he’s unsure if it’s a joke or not, but the name still speaks to him. “star is such a pretty name and the meanin’ is even more beautiful,” he muses with a sweet smile, letting go of the cart now that it’s been secured and curling his arm around lucy gray’s shoulders with the intention to keep her warm as they walk toward the waffle house. “but you’ll have to say more to convince me ‘cause what ‘bout ruby jean? or lily gray?” the names that little billy chose for his future children. “scared? you’re the most courageous person in the universe, lucy gray. that’s why i thought you were rejectin’ me after the prom, in that driveway… i didn’t think someone like you could be afraid of…” what exactly? commitment? love? “taking our friendship to the next level.” he doesn’t know if he should go there and talk about the night that tore them apart, but figures there’s nothing wrong with bringing it up in a gentle manner. “pft, you can’t just repeat my words back to me. be more creative than this.” he pinches her shoulder, a silent i loved you first and fell harder. end of story. “nothin’ dirty ‘bout how you liked my curls ‘cause you had somethin’ to hang onto while you was ridin’? babe…” he shakes his head, snorting a laugh even as his cheeks grown warmer and eyes struggle to meet hers. he flinches when the blanket hits him, but continues to snicker, finding it beyond adorable how innocent she is. “mhm, i wonder what dirty birdies get. any ideas?”

“oh yeah, i did. that’s that birdie’s love language. tickling noses with their feathers.” lucy gray giggles, finding it cute how he responds. “okay, you looked like…” jaw dropped, eyes wide in shock, making sure to get the bewilderment just right trapped inside her hues before face softened again and there’s a moment of funny laughter sounding from her before calming down again. “you’ll always be that safe person to me. like that bon jovi song.” more reasons she loves him, how she can confide in him and find safety in. especially in a world where there wasn’t many safe people. she just couldn’t get it out of her head… the way billy taupe and men like him didn’t hesitate to raise their hands up at women. how she’d roll off those steps and he wasn’t an ounce sorry. it made her stomach sour and want to hug billy a little longer, knowing that’s what he had to see with his stepdad and mom. really, it could put tears in her eyes if she thought about it longer than she lets herself so not to spiral in emotional heartbreak for her best friend.

“it’s written in the stars, that’s right darlin’. it’s written so deeply in the stars that’s what our first child will be named after. star.” lucy gray playfully smiles, eyes twinkling like stars beaming up at him. “just cause i always have been more scared of things, doesn’t mean you fell harder.” she gently prods her finger into his arm, after sitting her bags in. “i never had a crush on any other boy and i have stayed awake my whole life thinkin’ about you, too.” the songbird playfully argues, battling him in this love war before brows lift then furrow, “shut up, you’re the only one findin’ it that way. dirty. there’s nothin’ dirty about what i said.” she scolds, playfully hitting him with the big blanket folded in the bag it came in, “that’s what dirty dinosaurs get.” she tosses the blanket in and shuts the door back. eyes find his offered hand and she takes it, gently smiling as she follows him over to put the cart up.

#billysgirllol #JNFKSDFNS MATCHING GIFS :'))))

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nothingofvaluewaslost · 11 months ago

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NOVELLA: Wings for Wheels

A longer story. Thriller/romance/SF. In an alternate 1970s, Gordon and his girlfriend Marie-Louise are awaiting the election of the new Saint, the woman whose role is to feel love for all humanity in order to stop aggression and wars. It is a momentous occasion -- and when M-L is the one to be elected, she and Gordon can no longer stay together.

Years later, Gordon is on the other side of the world, living his own life, when he finds that there are people who are willing to use his connection to M-L for their own purposes.

Please visit the giftshop my Patreon.

Wings for Wheels, by Christina Nordlander

Gordon was barely over twenty when he stood in the crowd of Gustav Adolf Square waiting for the results of the election. The crowd had crawled towards the House of Parliament like a giant single-cell organism. The forecourt on Helgeandsholmen had been full before sun-up, and the streets and bridges were closed for traffic. They were all there, mum and dad and Sören. Lottie had come along even though she was two years older than he and wasn’t living at home any more. She studied childcare in college and had something going on with a bloke whom dad disliked, but she’d shown up for the Saint’s election. She’d even dressed up for it, not with her usual coloured scarves and large-painted eyes, but in almost the opposite style: a plain white dress, hair down, no other ornaments than a thin silver headband.

Many girls in the square and the streets were dressed the same way, in white dresses that they might have worn when they graduated, even some women mum’s age or older. The Saint was usually a healthy young woman, unmarried, without any duties that her new task would tear her from. There had to be some people in the government who checked the statistics and made a raffle between the women who were most suitable, but who knew? Perhaps it would be a mother this time, or a child whose parents would have to move to the residence. Several of the girls in the square had taken their shoes off and stood barefoot on the asphalt, even though it was only May.

Broad black loudspeakers had been placed on masts around the verdigris green equestrian statue and around the sides of the square, for announcing the decision. There wasn’t much to be gained standing around here: if you were at home, you’d get the election result on TV and radio. He must have had other things he’d wanted to do on a day off from college. Hang around downtown with the guys, take Marie-Louise to the café or drive her on his motorbike on some road around Lake Örnäs and between the sunlit pines. No-one’s presence was necessary for this, other than the statesmen’s and the old Saint’s who was going to transfer her power to the new girl from her deathbed. Yet he’d never thought about staying home. Perhaps everyone went here who knew a woman, and all women.

They’d waited long enough to get bored before the loudspeakers crackled. Those who had been talking fell silent. A male voice:

“After deliberation, the Election Committee has found the woman who is to succeed Saint Märta Josefina Sjöblad, from the third of May 1976.”

He paused. Perhaps he was just drawing a breath. Lottie raised her head. He would have liked to take her hand, even though it was cheesy: there were four million women for them to choose from, but surely there was a chance it would be her? She would go from studying to become a daycare teacher to living in a white villa and not having to do anything more than sitting sequestered and thinking good thoughts to keep conflicts and evil under control. If he’d been a chick, he would have longed for it too. Men didn’t become Saints, mum had explained to him when he was younger. Men were the ones who protected the Saint.

“Marie-Louise Johansson, municipality of Stockholm, daughter of Ingemar and Vivan Johansson.”

It felt like he’d known as soon as he heard the first syllable. Lottie turned around, a bit clumsily in the throng.

“But that’s your gal, Gordon!”

There were no huzzahs yet, that would wait till the investiture, perhaps only a few sighs from the white-clad women. His first thought was that he had to get to M-L as quickly as he could, as if he had to warn her of some danger. (That was true, too: she was in danger now, she might be more important than any other human.) It was stupid, she was already headed to the House of Parliament. Her family would have a chance to see her after the ceremony.

He only remembered the rest of the day in smoothed-out clips, as if he'd seen it on TV. M-L hadn't been in the square; she'd used the day to sit at home studying. She liked to have the radio on while she was working, so that might have been where she'd heard it. Perhaps she'd also hoped to become Saint, but dressing in white hadn't been her thing. The officials brought her downtown in a black VW that glinted like a piece of jewellery in the ruthless light. They'd given her time to get changed, because when she stepped out of the car – but that was something he only saw on TV and in photos in the paper – she was wearing a pinstriped suit that made her look like a secretary. It was the most formal thing she owned.

He saw her come out to the rostrum without glasses and in her new white dress, not dress, robe. She took the sword in both hands and swore the oath to the Kingdom of Sweden and the Crown. The sword was a military weapon that she wasn't going to keep; she was a defender, not a warrior. There was already a guard of honour stationed around her, darker against the white fabric.

People would get to speak to her in private before they took her to her new residence. Her family was first, obviously; after that, you were entered in a list.

“We know each other,” Gordon said to the suit-wearing receptionist.

She shook her head; only family members and spouses were given precedence. He was entered after some woman he'd never heard M-L talk about.

The queue was so long, he wouldn't get to meet her until six o'clock. Mum had asked him if they should stay, but he'd told them they didn't have to. He wouldn't get to eat until late. He bought an apple and a couple of toffees at a newsagent's, that way at least he wouldn't collapse in the House of Parliament.

A somewhat heavy guy in a suit and thick-rimmed glasses, maybe dad's age, led him through a corridor in heavy oak. He opened a door with a glass pane. A chick, still dressed in white, sat at the end of an oblong table inside. The door was open, he was allowed to go through, but it took a moment before he was certain that it was she and not some other young woman with hair dyed dark. Of course it was she.

“Gordon?” she said as if she hadn't expected him. “Come here, sit down.”

She waved a slim hand towards one of the chairs next to her. By the door was a heavy-set young man in a black suit and sunglasses, a bodyguard? That was the stuff of Hollywood movies.

“I apologise, I thought we were going to speak in private,” he said to both of them and managed a laugh that sounded cowardly.

The guard didn't have to say anything, because M-L replied:

“I'm not crazy about it either, but you know, they have to, for my safety. I know you're not going to hurt me, but...”

He turned his chair so that he had his back to the guard. It was rude, but he had to understand.

They ended up sitting in silence. He hadn't thought about what to say. M-L was the one to talk first.

“You know, Gordon? I'm sorry.”

As if it were her fault – as if she were in a police cell instead. He was about to hug her, but now he might not have been able to even if they'd been alone. Instead he put his hand on her arm. Her robe had flared sleeves that easily slipped down from her lower arms. It looked like something set aside from the physical world, like the robes of a kid attending first communion. That was correct.

“Good God, M-L, don't say that! It's not your fault they chose you.”

She jerked back against the backrest, barely noticeably. Was it because he'd used her nickname? Until yesterday, he'd been able to call her that.

“So now you're the Saint,” he said, making his voice a bit happier. “Do you feel any different?”

That seemed to have helped, because she managed a smile. She was a bit pale, but that might have been from the white dress.

When she replied, it was more like the old M-L's voice:

“Yeah... I think I can feel something different in me, but I don't know yet. I don't know how to use it. You know... I had a paper to hand in next week. The one about Rasputin? I'd only written two thousand words on it. I was meaning to ask you if you could hand it in for me, but it's not like it matters now. Anyway, it wasn't finished.”

She gave a little nervous laugh.

“How're you doing?” she went on.

Gordon shook his head.

“Good Lord... after this happened, and you ask about me? I'm doing fine, I'm just a bit hungry, I've got my German homework to do... you've become the Saint. I don't know whether I matter all that much in comparison.”

She sat silent, looking down at the tabletop. It didn't seem like he'd hurt her.

“You must understand that we can't be together any more,” she said without looking at him.

It sounded so sensible coming from her. He straightened his back. Perhaps he could look as glinting and strong as she.

“I understand.”

The room was quiet, perhaps soundproofed. He heard the sliding of the folds in her robe when she breathed in.

“I'm sorry, I just wanted you to be up to speed on that. So you don't get any false hope.”

“Don't you think I get it?”

His voice sounded coarse. He hadn't meant to let it go that far. If M-L had snapped back at him, they might have started fighting – and wouldn't that have been a wonderful way to end the day? – but when she raised her eyes, all she did was look at him. Her look was understanding, as if she'd already been subsumed into the role of Saint.

“I'm sorry,” he said and gave her a quick hug, without her stopping him. “All of this, you must understand... I'm sorry.”

“It doesn't matter.”

She smiled, her old and almost pointy smile.

“Tell you what,” she went on, “I'm starting to get hungry. What do you say to us going out for a meal?”

“They'll let you do that?”

She got to her feet, a bit clumsily in her long skirt, and made a worldly gesture for him to follow her.

“Naturally. I'm the Saint, I'm not some sort of prisoner. But you'll probably have to pay for your meal, I don't think they'll treat you.”

They went to a Chinese place where he'd never been: glittering, low-lit, with black and bright orange carp in a pond in the foyer and lanterns with red silk tassels. M-L's two bodyguards sat at the table next to them. He didn't have to see them. (Was it necessary? If they wanted to protect her, all they needed to do was give her back her old clothes, and she would have been any old college student.) He ordered Three Dishes, salty beef with spring onion and sweet battered shrimp. M-L got small shiny dumplings, but didn't eat more than half of her portion.

“Yes, I am happy,” she said, and it sounded sincere. “Not that I have to leave you... that is going to be sheer hell. But I'm glad that I'm the Saint. Someone has to do it, it might as well be me.”

Her gaze was set on something he couldn't see, and her eyes were full of silver reflections.

It was the weekend four weeks later. He hadn't been meaning to wait this long, but the previous weekend had been grey and rainy, and it felt like he couldn’t do this in the middle of the week. All exams and papers piled up at the end of term. If this worked out, he would toss college overboard with everything else, but he didn't know whether she had some specific schedule during the weekdays. Perhaps she wouldn't even be in the residence.

The residence was in Djursholm, not many kilometres from him. Mum and dad had driven past it back when they were little – Märta had been the Saint in those days – and he'd twisted around in his seat to see as much of the villa as possible. It had been natural, being curious about what was inside, but in hindsight it was as though he had known that he would be connected to it one day.

As soon as he'd had breakfast he took the Matchless out of the cold garage. The bright red paint job was still as new and made the chopper look like it'd cost twice as much. Perhaps they would track him through it. He drove along byways – it took longer, but the weather was idyllic. One time he stopped behind a flower-strewn tractor-trailer with children fresh out of the term.

The residence lay far from the water and far from the other houses. It was vast and of course painted white, with a top floor that jutted out over the ground plane and rested on pillars, like a crow's-nest. He'd seen similar houses once when he was in Dalecarlia as a kid, in crisp silvery timber over Lake Siljan. The property was surrounded with walls, and on each side of the tall iron gate stood a guard: not the suited bodyguards from an American film, but armed guards in dark uniforms. He hadn't remembered that there were guards.

He parked the bike and walked the last bit, putting his hands out a little to show that he wasn't a threat. He'd made sure to dress up, as if he were going to a lecture.

“Is there any way for me to speak to Saint Marie-Louise?” he asked, taking out his identification.

“The residence is not open to the public,” the guard said. “If you have anything to say to the Saint, you will have to write it in a letter to the Chancery of Government.”

It was hard to see his face behind the glass of the helmet, but from his voice he didn’t sound much older than Gordon.

He straightened his back, only because they would see if he showed weakness.

“What’s their address?” he said.

“That is not our purview,” said the younger guard.

It was starting to go wrong. He glanced at the wall. It was rugged limestone, half again as tall as he. They must have noticed his gaze by now.

“Are you able to get in touch with her?” he asked. “My name is Gordon Matsson, I’m a close friend of hers. She’ll let me in.”

His voice hesitated before “close friend,” but perhaps they hadn’t heard a pause.

“The Saint does not admit private persons,” the guard said.

It would be best to go and not drag it out. He managed a smile that must have looked broken.

“But thanks anyway,” he said, turning around.

He’d only taken three steps when he heard a voice behind him:

“Rupert, Albin, let him through. He’s a friend of mine.”

M-L stood on the light garden path behind the gate, in her white robes and glasses. She was shorter than both guards. It ought to have been comical, seeing her give orders to two uniformed men.

The gate screeched open. One of the guards searched him, but perhaps they did that to everyone who passed through.

On his way up through the residence, behind the flutter of M-L’s white skirt, he had an impulse to look around in every direction like a tourist, but soon none of this would matter. What he could see was strangely simple, anyway: a lawn trimmed short like a golf-course, without bushes that would make it harder for the guards to spot intruders, a house as bare as if it were just finished. He saw plainclothes guards and a woman in a light blue uniform who might be some sort of cleaner or maid. They saw M-L and paid no attention to him.

“It was pure dumb luck,” she said. “I was on the balcony, that’s why I saw you. Otherwise those idiots would have sent you home, and I wouldn’t even have known.”

“Perhaps they would’ve had me shot,” Gordon said and laughed to show that it was a joke.

M-L’s metal-dark hair rocked as she shook her head.

“They don’t shoot unless there’s a threat.”

She opened the door to the balcony, but he shook his head. He didn’t know how far their voices would carry into the garden. At least in the room inside the glass doors they were alone. Was it a dining room? The only furnishings were a table in bright wood and a few chairs. M-L took a seat, and he sat down facing her.

“What do you do out here?” he asked.

M-L – Marie-Louise, now – shook her head. He heard the little glossy sound as her hair slid across the shoulders of her dress.

“Not a lot… I just sit in a room and… well, love people. Make an effort to love humanity… not humanity, every person, as much as possible. When I think it’s getting boring, I think about how many wars there were before they found the first Saint. Sometimes I get very tired by the time afternoon rolls around… but that’s when I think it’s working.”

“I don’t get how the Saint works,” he’d said to dad many years before.

It’d been in the living-room, in the evening. He remembered the hazy light of the floor-lamp. Perhaps he’d been doing his Social Studies homework, and that’s why he’d been thinking about the Saint.

“Well, no-one knows,” dad said, folding his newspaper down.

“No, not that. I mean, the teacher says that she creates more love in the world, so there won’t be more wars and things like that. Because she makes people love each other. But… I get angry quite a lot, and I fight with Sören and such. If it works, shouldn’t all people have to nice to each other?”

Dad sighed.

“You’re right,” he said. “The Saint hasn’t made the world a utopia, that’s to say, a paradise… but she’s indubitably made it a whole lot better. Just look at the history books. She might not have enough power to make everyone stop fighting, so maybe she focuses it to the places where it’s needed. I mean, you and your brother are just two little guys. You can hardly push the button for the atomic bomb.”

Now he could have asked her how she did it.

“Sometimes I read,” she went on. “Gunna takes out books for me sometimes when she goes downtown. I meditate… one of the girls showed me how to do it. I mean, it seems like a lot of woo-woo, but it does make it easier to control your emotions.”

He looked around the room, whitewashed walls and a timber floor. It was like something in a convent. At least she got to go out in the garden.

“Don’t you get to do anything else? Watch TV… play badminton or something?”

His voice sounded almost gasping, as if he was the one who was locked up. Marie-Louise shrugged.

“They’d probably let me. They spoil me, more than anything… they’d give me anything I ask for.”

His gaze slid out towards the window for a moment.

“What happened when you met the old Saint? Did she do anything?”

It wasn’t until he’d said it that he realised that it might have been a secret, but Marie-Louise replied.

“They took me to her room at the hospital. Yes, it really was her deathbed… she was wearing an oxygen mask, IVs in her arms, all that. I got to sit next to her bed, and… She didn’t do anything. She didn’t say anything, I don’t know whether she could speak. But she focused on me… I could see it, and I felt it.”

She shook her head, making her hair fly.

“After a while I felt something changing in me. Maybe physically. It didn’t hurt… it felt different, that’s all. They got me out of there when it was over.”

She let her gaze sink to the tabletop and finished:

“I don’t know how long she lived after that.”

“When did it stop?” he said.

She fixed her eyes on him. When she spoke, she almost sounded amused.

“It never did. I don’t feel it as strongly any more, but it’s still going.”

He sat motionless for a moment. It felt like his own organs and flesh tried to simulate the sensations of something changed.

He leaned closer to her across the table. There were no cameras in the ceiling that he could see – but that didn’t necessarily mean anything –, and the door was shut.

“Are we being tapped?”

Her face had become ill at ease.

“Of course not, Gordon. Why…”

Her voice faded away. He had to ask, it would only get worse if he waited longer.

“Would they let you leave? It looked like they obey you… say, if you said you were going out with me for a couple of hours to play golf?”

“Why…?”

There was something new in her face. Had she been this pale before? He lowered his voice further.

“I’ve got my chopper standing right outside the gate. We could leave together. I could buy normal clothes for you, perhaps we could cut your hair, and then we could go wherever the hell we want. I’ve got a bit of cash. There’s probably somewhere we could get a job, maybe far away… wherever you want.”

She stared at him, but when she opened her mouth it wasn’t a scream. She leaned her head on her arms so that he couldn’t see her face.

“Why do you say these things? Haven’t you understood any of this? I can’t just run away from it.”

“Marie-Louise, I beg of you, please listen to me.”

His voice didn’t sound annoyed when he went on, only eager.

“That’s not what I meant! You’d still be the Saint… I get that that’s not something you can run away from. But you wouldn’t be locked up in here. We could go up to Åre, or to the USA, anywhere you want. Can’t you carry out your duty no matter where you are?”

Behind her head, he saw the blinding light in the window, a flat blue sky and the treetops on the other side of the road.

“I would be there and take care of you. Isn’t that enough?”

She still didn’t look up. After a while she heaved as if she was going to throw up.

“Why are you making me choose?”

Oh God. He nearly lost his balance when he got up and ran over to hug her. At least she didn’t push him away. She was warm in his arms and pressed her cheek to his chest like a little cat. If he was never going to see her again, at least he had these few minutes.

After a moment her chair squeaked as she stood.

“We’re going,” she said, so curtly it took a while for him to understand. “Wait here, I’ve got some bloody handbag or something in my bedroom upstairs. I’ll tell them I’m going for a walk around the block. If we’re lucky, they’ll let you come along to escort me.”

She turned and stepped out of the dining-room. The last thing he saw was the smooth dress closing over her back. If he said anything, it might be audible outside.

He sat down again. The table was of thick varnished light wood, probably pine, with deep grain. He gripped the edge until his nails went white. She’d said they weren’t being surveilled. What would he have done now if he were innocent? He’d have gone out on the balcony and stood there enjoying the view while waiting for her to get ready. If he went out there, he wouldn’t hear her coming back, so he took up position by the shiny picture windows facing the road across the garden. He was about to support himself on the white-painted window-sill, but his fingers might leave grease stains from the sweat. How could it take so long? She just needed to go upstairs to her bedroom and get her handbag, put money in it – did she have money? She wasn’t part of society any more.

The hallway floor creaked. He turned, as controlled as he could. The tension had become like a poison, something injected in him. He felt the bitter taste of adrenaline on his tongue.

It was M-L. He only needed to see her silhouette.

“Come along now,” she said.

Her voice was small and controlled. He couldn’t remember hearing her sounding like that.

They got out in the floor-waxed corridor. The stairway was a well of light in front of them. He focused on moving like he was walking normally. Surely he’d be nervous if he were just going outside with M-L for a couple of minutes, in case they wouldn’t let him go with her. He saw her robe as just a flicker at the edge of his vision.

They’d reached the stairway. It was broad and curved, and in front of them a square of dark abstract artwork hung on the wall over the lobby. Outside the windows, all he could see was the glitter of sun.

The first step creaked under his feet. It would be hard to run here, but so far, no-one had spoken up. When they reached the landing where the stairs turned, they would be at the halfway point. Perhaps he should have said something to her, to seem natural, but his brain was wiped clean.

They were down in the lobby. M-L stumbled and had to grab on to his sleeve. At first he had the notion that she was ill, low blood sugar, some side effect of her new powers, anything that might come and ruin this, but she grinned horribly.

“It’s these shoes,” she said. “I’m not used to them.”

They reached the door, heavily carven with little panes of frosted glass. He opened it, getting sunlight in his face as he heard a footstep in the stairs behind him.

“Ma’am Saint,” a male voice said.

Gordon turned around. A man, dark-haired and in a dark suit, stood halfway leaning on the banister above them. Maybe it wasn’t over yet. He hadn’t called anyone.

“Where are you going?�� he said to M-L. His gaze brushed Gordon, then back to her.

If he looked at her now, maybe the man would suspect something, but from the corner of his eye he saw her hair fall back as she raised her head.

“I thought I could go for a walk,” she said, her voice almost childishly bright. “Gordon’s with me... we need to have a talk.”

The man raised his hand and mumbled something in a walkie-talkie that Gordon couldn’t see. He blinked down at them again, almost apologetic.

“You understand why we can’t let you do this, Ma’am Saint,” he said.

Footsteps got closer in the hallway. Her shoulders rose and sank when she breathed. For a moment it looked like she really might collapse, but when she looked up at the man, she was still standing.

“Let him go,” she said. “He didn’t know anything. I... it was my plan. Everything was my plan. I didn’t intend to say anything until we got out. Don’t punish him for my actions.”

It must have worked, because the guards did nothing more than escort him to the gate. She walked with him.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

It might have been for any of it. Her eyes were shiny as if she were about to start crying, and he didn’t know what would happen if the Saint cried.

He would only have needed a few words to apologise to her, as well, but the guards were there, listening. He barely had enough strength to talk.

At the gate, she signed for them to stop.

“Are we friends?” she said.

“Of course we are.”

There was no strength left in his voice. If he was going to stand there much longer, he’d have to cry.

Marie-Louise managed a quick smile.

“We’re not likely to ever be anything more than friends, I’m afraid,” she said. “But I don’t want to lose that too.”

If he’d got to keep M-L, he might have flunked his bachelor’s degree.

The final year, he did nothing but work from the moment he got home from college and up to his room, hunched over his notes on the dark-patterned bedspread while the sky brightened and the trees grew lush outside. As expected, his dissertation on Goethe got finished on time and with the sufficient number of pages. He’d picked Goethe almost at random. Shiny Pre-Romanticism felt too cliché to hurt him, but even then there were a few paragraphs in The Sorrows of Young Werther that made him sit up in the city library and draw in a breath to stop himself crying.

Once he’d got his degree, he went to dad and told him he wanted to train for work as a security guard.

They fought over it, and in the end he had to say that he was over age and that they didn’t have any power over him. Dad gave way.

“But I’m not supporting you with one penny,” he said. “If you want to throw your education away like that, you can pay for it yourself.”

The next time he was in town, he went to the police station at Kronoberg and asked, because he didn’t know any better source of information. The woman in the reception told him to apply to a security company and then undergo training at the Security Sector Occupational and Work Environment Authority; that way he would receive part of his salary during the training period. The company in charge of guarding the residence was Securitas.

“How can I ensure that I get a position at the Saint’s residence?” he asked the instructor in private after maybe two weeks.

The instructor’s name was Tavaststierna: sharp, lean like something dried, looked like the old officer he was.

“You can’t, Matsson,” he said. “We hand you your diploma, then you see what positions there are.”

That brought him down, but not enough to make him quit. He kept going to the drill, the theory classes in the auditorium with its scratched desks screwed into the floor, the target practice. One day on the train into town, he looked out at the glitter of sun over the trees and realised that he would protect her no matter where he ended up, because he would free up another guard to work at the residence.

In 1981 he was among the security detail going with Swedish ambassador Hemming Reuter to the USA. He’d bragged to Lottie and Sören while trying on his suit, unusually comfy for such a formal piece of clothing. He was the youngest of the guards. As the plane took off, he lit a cigarette and felt like James Bond.

When they arrived at the function, he was so hungry it felt like a disease. He was posted by the door, old-fashioned double doors to a clean-scraped ballroom with many tall mullioned windows. After a couple of hours, the soles of his feet felt tenderised as if he’d run a half marathon. A pretty Asian waitress came by him with a tray of champagne flutes.

“I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to drink on duty,” he mumbled in English.

The waitress swept away and soon came back with a tray of sandwich triangles. She gave him a wide smile as he grabbed a couple. The first was filled with peeled cucumber pieces.

“You saved my life, madam. Tell me your name.”

A couple of guys were heading towards him through the crowd. One was Bengt, one of his colleagues. The other was a guest his own age with glittery hair, who wore his tuxedo as if he were used to it.

“That’s Gordon,” Bengt said, pointing. “He’s the boyfriend of the Swedish Saint.”

It took him a moment to link the new words to an image.

The guest walked up, grinning widely as they shook hands. Jacob Everly, he introduced himself. It was pronounced “Jaycob”, but it was still a more Swedish name than he would have expected.

“I wouldn’t mind talking to you when you’re off duty,” he said. “I’m going into screenwriting... my buddy’s in film school. I have an idea for a screenplay about the Saint.”

Gordon listened to him with his eyes on the ambassador over the guy’s shoulder. He’d been good at English in school, but the accents and the informal mode made it feel like he didn’t understand every third word.

“About Marie-Louise?”

Saying her name felt wrong. Jacob’s eyes clouded over for a moment, then he drank the last mouthful of his champagne.

“Well, it probably shouldn’t be about her. About a fictional lady.”

Bengt put his hand on Jacob’s shoulder and told him to leave Gordon alone. He vanished among the guests, guys in tuxedos and chicks in glossy dresses, and Gordon got to chow down on the second sandwich, with crayfish tail.

Jacob came back once after that. He grilled Gordon about Marie-Louise, and got out a pocket notebook in a leather cover and made a few notes, not long enough to annoy him. The second time he left, Gordon looked around the room for the waitress, but she’d vanished in the crowd.

The guests were starting to thin. The next time Jacob showed, Gordon found himself smiling at him. There was something about Jacob that had the same soothing influence on him as alcohol, whether it was that the guy was drunk or just his enthusiasm. His interest in Marie-Louise shouldn’t have annoyed him. (Perhaps if she’d still been his girlfriend, an ordinary girlfriend of an ordinary guy.) It was almost flattering.

“Show me your script when you’re done,” Gordon said. “It sounds fun.”

They both laughed. Jacob took half a step closer, lowering his voice.

“How did it feel? Doing it with... her?”

It took an idiotic amount of time before he was able to translate it in his head.

Afterwards he would sometimes remember that he’d laid Jacob out, maybe grappled with him on the smoothed stone floor, but in that case they’d have taken him to court. What did happen was that he took Jacob aside in the hotel corridor and said: “You know I have a gun, right? If you talk shit about her again, I may shoot you.” A few days later, Reuter fired him.

For over a year he lived in Sampaguita’s apartment down in Vero Beach. He joked that she hadn’t needed to give him a place to stay: the tropical climate was the best place to be homeless. Sampaguita refused to listen to him. After a few weeks he got a job at the gas station and didn’t have to feel that he was a burden for her. She cooked Filipino dishes for him, and he tried to show her Swedish ones, even though the supermarket didn’t have most of the ingredients. He spent the days changing oil and doing bodywork in a repair shop where the smell of benzene and the sun’s heat were intoxicating.

The thoughts of Marie-Louise didn’t stop him the night when they had sex on the beach, in the twilight when the sky was swept clean and the sea was a worrying shimmer of slow colours, but they did when Sampaguita started hinting about marriage.

“I couldn’t dream of finding a better woman than you,” he said when he got up from the couch as if she might have held him back by force. “But I can’t get married. She might want me back.”

She did him one last favour. Her brother knew a guy up in Jacksonville who was going to start a delivery company and needed truckers. He might as well go there. What else was he planning, going back to Sweden?

You needed a special licence to drive an eighteen-wheeler. He didn’t have one, but Vereen, the entrepreneur, sent him on a training course over the summer. The theory classes were held in the basement room of a community college where it was so hot, most of them took their shirts off. When it got tedious, he bribed himself with dreams about being a trucker: his own life, being able to sit alone for days at a time while the desert landscape moved around him.

He passed the practical exam and got his diploma. Of course there were downsides that hadn’t been in his romanticised dreams. His superior yelled at him the first times when he didn’t have the loading finished on schedule. There were filthy toilets along the highway, dehydration and a nausea that he thought would kill him, long hauls where he slept curled up in the driver’s cab and woke with a crick in the neck on one side and his teeth covered with some sticky substance. He got used to that, too.

In 1985, he was home in Jacksonville and had taken a couple of days off from driving. He’d just been down at the local library and picked up a few books when the phone in his apartment rang. It was so rare, he lifted the receiver and expected it to be the bank or taxman.

“Gordon Matsson?” said a young male voice he didn’t recognise.

“That’s me.”

He shook his hair out of his ears. It was starting to grow out again, a mullet.

The voice gave a short laugh.

“You’ll have to excuse me for sounding like a stalker... but you’re a trained security guard, aren’t you? From Sweden. A guy I know tells me he met you in Washington DC, in ‘81. You were there with the Swedish ambassador.”

“Mhmm?”

“It’s great to have found you. Now listen... I’m calling from Robur Incorporated, we’ve just started up. My company has an offer for you. Are you working at the moment?”

“I drive a truck.” He hesitated. “I’ve taken a couple of days off. Is it a job, or...?”

On the other side of the line, the guy hummed, like a nod.

“Not a chauffeur job. We may need a man with your training... I can’t promise anything, but we would appreciate getting to meet you, to put you to the test. If it turns out that you’re suitable, and I think it will... we’re able to offer a lot more than you make now. Some thirty K a year, maybe more. Does that sound interesting?”

“That sounds very promising.” If he sounded too enthusiastic, they might change their minds. “Where can I meet you?”

“I’ll give you the address in a sec. It’s a good drive north of Jacksonville... you may need to stay the night. We’ll pay for your accommodations, obviously. Do you have a problem with it?” A pause. “If you turn out to be suited for our position, you may need to move. It’s very mobile... though that shouldn’t be an issue for you. Do you have any family at all?”

“Oh, no.”

He could think about Sampaguita’s smooth face with almost no reaction now.

He got the address and a phone number that seemed to have too many figures. Perhaps it was for a cell phone.

“See you the day after tomorrow, then,” the guy said. “Let’s say quarter past four, that’ll work out if you get going early in the morning... but if it turns out you can’t make it, call us and we’ll schedule the interview a bit later. We’re looking forward to seeing you, Gordon. If all goes to plan, you’ll be able to quit the delivery work when you get home.”

There was a rattle in the receiver. Gordon hung up and ended up standing, supporting his hands on the worktop.

The question was whether it was worth quitting the delivery job, but he didn’t know whether he’d get the job yet. It was more money than he was earning now, and almost certainly for less work. It was his guard training they were after. Then there was the lack of information – CIA? FBI?

The anxiety powered him like some kind of fuel. It felt like he barely needed to eat that evening.

Maybe he should have suspected something, but it was many years since there’d been any risk of him being the target of violence. He hadn’t had any reason.

When he got to Vidalia, a pretty name that didn’t mean anything as far as he knew, he hadn’t eaten since breakfast, but he bought a bagel and a cup of black coffee at a cafeteria. He needed to ask a couple of times before he found Church Street, and had to walk further along the almost deserted street before he found the right number, but they’d told him there was no rush. It was November and hardly warm any more, but the sunshine was flashing bright and his coat warmed him.

The house was a two-storey townhouse, the kind that had originally been built as a dwelling, a bit European in appearance with its red and white brickwork. He looked at the silver-bright street number as he rang the bell and waited.

A guy in a dark uniform opened the door, letting him past into a cramped hallway that smelled polished and old.

“Gordon Matsson?” he asked. “You got any weapons on you?”

All he had was a knife in a pale leather sheath in his coat pocket, he used to bring it along in the truck in case anything happened. He handed it over, but the guy patted his jean legs for weapons anyway.

“Please forgive me,” the guy said, taking a step back. “Gene will see you in a second, but I have to ask... our source said you had a very special lady friend. Is that correct?”

Were they trying to lure the truth out of him? But the guy knew he’d been seeing her. If he lied, they’d know.

“Marie-Louise,” Gordon said, lowering his head. “Yes, it’s true. We’re not an item any more.”

“She’s the Saint, isn’t she?” the guy said.

He didn’t make any rude jokes, he just nodded and winced a bit compassionately.

“I guess being in a relationship wasn’t easy for her,” he said.

He vanished into the back rooms when a blonde woman in a suit came up to Gordon, smiling up at him.

“Would you like anything to drink?” she said.

“Coffee, please. Black.”

She smiled again, quick as a wink. Was she flirting with him?

“Mr. Aaronson is on the second floor,” she said, gesturing towards the stairs. “Straight to the left at the top of the stairs.”

She vanished down the corridor, maybe to some bright kitchen, and he went upstairs and entered an office, a bit cramped and messy with many columns of pressboard folders. The AC was on. Behind the desk sat a guy with slicked-back hair, a bit too fair to suit that style. His shoulders were blockily wide beneath his shoulder-pads and made his suit look like it didn’t fit him right. He didn’t look older than Gordon. Maybe it had been easier for him to get somewhere in life.

“Please sit,” he said, pushing his own chair forward so he could point to a chair with chrome legs opposite. “I hope Christy’s offered you a drink. My name is Gene, Gene Aaronson.”

He sounded like the person who’d spoken to him over the phone. Every now and then he smiled in the middle of a word.

Gordon took a seat. He was under evaluation. Through the window he could see the houses across the street, colourful and flattened like something in a children’s book illustration.

“Okay,” Gene said. “You’ve worked as a bodyguard previously. May I ask for your résumé?”

He’d been fired from the position as a bodyguard after what he’d done, but if Gene knew, he had offered him the job anyway, and if he didn’t, Gordon wouldn’t have to tell him.

The door-frame creaked, and the girl came inside with a white industrial cup on a saucer. He sipped it, but it was very hot. He smiled up at Gene.

“I started training as a security guard at the Security Sector Operational Authority in ‘77, and studied there for about a year...”

The next time he tasted the coffee, it had cooled to drinkable. The office was chilly from the fan, and he could hardly ask them to switch it off, so he drank the coffee and let it warm him from inside.

“Sounds to me like you have enough experience for our job,” Gene said. “Why did you quit as a bodyguard?”

Gordon looked straight at him. Smiling wasn’t hard. He’d calmed down, maybe from the insouciant way Gene was sitting.

“I wasn’t super stoked about working in that kind of hierarchy. That guy, Reuter... he treated us like we were... well, accessories. Mobile furniture.”

It was such a suitable expression, why hadn’t he conceived of it until now? Gene nodded a few degrees.

“Sure, I understand that... Then, why did you come to our interview?”

Gordon blinked. He tried to smile, but it probably looked forced, as if he were trying to eat something too big for his mouth. The caffeine had made his hands grow chilly and tremble.

“It wasn’t that bad. I think it was mostly his fault. And then, I don’t know if I want to drive a truck for the rest of my life.”

He saw the light shift when Gene nodded again.

“The plan is for our company to rent out guards. Freelancers. The rates are good, but it may also mean that you’ll have to work for divas... maybe worse ones than your former employer. Do you have any thoughts on that?”

It was an easy question, compared to why he’d quit, but for a moment, all the words in his brain died. His tongue lay paralysed against the roof of his mouth. He turned towards the window to win time, but the light in the window had become so glaring, it burnt the nerves behind his eyes. He shook himself off and turned back to the desk. Gene smiled at him, encouraging.

“I’m not young any more,” Gordon said. “I can deal.”

Maybe he said more things as well, but his tongue had become dull and thick. It felt like being drunk. He started staring down at the lino at the side of the chair. If he let himself fall off the chair, maybe he’d fall back into the blankets back home.

The world had become a nightmare. He lay crammed together inside something, and it was dark. He could have gone back to sleep, but the room tossed and shook him. He threw up and couldn’t crawl away from the vomit.

The world was a nightmare that you couldn’t wake from.

When it started to change, he heard a hatch click open so that the darkness brightened to grey sky. A car hatch? What he’d smelt was gas and the fuzzy upholstery on the inside of the trunk. They pulled him up and out, and someone screamed when they saw that he’d thrown up, but they didn’t do anything to him. They led him to a front door. For a moment, no-one was holding him. He even tried to run, but his body was faint and the road was nothing he recognised. Metal-hard hands twisted his arm behind his back and used it to tow him into the hallway. He must have been poisoned. It felt like a hangover, all the metallic chemicals that had built up in his brain.

A dim basement, a large box in white-painted plywood along one wall. When Gene told him to sit on it, he saw a gun. The box had a sawed hole under his ass, a toilet, and straps nailed to the front, and another plywood board like a backrest against the wall. It felt like he’d been sat there for minutes before the other guy had strapped him in and Gene could put his pistol away. He was forced to sit with his back straight, arms strapped against the board behind him, with everything vulnerable in his stomach and torso laid open.

“I’m sorry about all this,” was the first thing Gene said.

It wasn’t possible to see if he was smiling. The only light came from a narrow window high on the wall behind them, matte with dust or spiderwebs. It turned them into silhouettes. The other guy was shorter and thinner than Gene, his body thin like something soft, and when he moved, the light glinted on flaxen hair. He was smoking. Gordon could see the flame of his lighter and the little point of light on the cigarette. He could only smell basement still, damp concrete.

Don’t say anything. He had already shown weakness, he didn’t have to degrade himself further by asking questions.

“We would have preferred for you to work with us by your own free will, but we couldn’t risk it.”

“The Swedish ambassador?” Gordon said.

His voice still sounded clear, as if nothing that had happened had had any effect on it.

“You realise I haven’t worked for him... it was more than four years ago. I don’t know where he is now. I have nothing to do with him. How about you let me go before the cops find us?”

Finding the right words was hard, English still didn’t come really naturally to him. The blond guy lowered his cigarette. It was a relaxed movement, as if he just needed to stretch his arm.

“You know nobody knows where you are,” Gene said. “You know we’re far from Church Street. So I think we can negotiate at our own pace, don’t you? We’re not after your employer.”

A pause. He was taking his time.

Nobody had known he’d gone to Vidalia – why the hell would he have suspected that someone would try to kidnap him? Maybe someone had seen them carry him out to the car. His brain shied away from that image. He could still taste the bile.

“We can’t have you sitting like this,” Gene said, turning to his mate. “Clean him up a bit... get the paper as well.”

The other guy slunk out into the stairway. Gordon listened, but couldn’t hear his footsteps. Gene waited, without any other movements than blinking and swallowing. Were there more? The woman might have been on their side, but Gordon didn’t know whether she’d followed them out here. There might have been others.

The other came back with a dark towel and used a wet corner of it to wipe the corners of Gordon’s mouth. The water soaking it was even a little warm. When Gordon looked up he saw a smile, an open innocent smile.

The guy turned his back while he put down the towel and picked up a paper. It was too dim to read any of the print. He held it up straight next to Gordon, like some sacred banner.

“Look in front,” Gene said.

He turned his head and saw a camera flash. The guy next to him lowered the newspaper and resumed his position half a step behind Gene. Gene put down his camera on the box.

He looked at the black afterimage of the flash while it faded.

“You need anything?” Gene said.

“Yes, you can let me go!”

His voice had become rough, just with rage. That was good. Now they’d wiped his face clean, it felt like it had just been a nasty joke, and he had to fight that feeling. The world had diluted and weakened around him, but the straps pulled tight and made the skin and muscles under them real.

The light shifted a little when Gene smiled.

“It’s Marie-Louise we want to talk about. We know that you two are close.”

And there it was. He kept his gaze straight on them, as if he might be able to wake up soon. That voice went on:

“What can you tell us about her?”

He couldn’t squeeze himself together very far, the straps tugged his arms backwards. If he could have folded forward over his legs, he could have at least protected parts of himself with the harder and bonier parts. There was so much they could do. Of course they knew that he’d betray her to them, because they wouldn’t stop. His head had sunk forward until all he could see was the white-painted box and a bit of the concrete. He was about to throw up, as if his insides had started to dissolve.

Gene gave a little relaxed chuckle.

“Don’t worry, Gordon,” he said. “We already know as much as everyone else about the Saint... we’re not out to hurt her.”

Gordon couldn’t stop himself from sagging as he exhaled. It was Jacob, Jaycob, wasn’t it? Jaycob wasn’t there.

“She was your girlfriend, wasn’t she?” Gene said.

“Yes, she was.”

He nodded fiercely. When his gaze swung up towards Gene, the guy looked like he was content.

“Do you know a way to contact her personally? Without having to go through all the red tape?”

Gordon shook his head.

“I got to meet her in person, but that was just because she recognised me and stopped her guards turning me away.”

That was a quick spark of hope. If he could pretend that they’d convinced him or broken him, they might bring him to Sweden and the residence. He needed to keep his eyes on them; they might see it in his eyes, but they would certainly see it if he looked away. Gene didn’t react, so he had to continue:

“Her parents would probably get access, too, but apart from that, I don’t know.”

“Is her mail – ?” Gene said, and then a word he didn’t know.

He shook his head.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what ‘vetted’ means.”

Gene flung his fist downward, the first impatient gesture Gordon had seen from him.

“Is it checked... sorted? By her handlers?”

“I guess so.”

They were still looking at him, so it wasn’t enough. He nodded.

“Yes, it is.”

“As are her calls, I guess.”

It was a question.

“I don’t know,” Gordon managed. “I never called her.”

Gene nodded after a moment.

“Do you want a glass of water?” he said.

“Yes, please.”

Gene gestured to his mate. The guy went out and came back with a low, wide glass. The water glittered in the shaft of light. He had to hold the glass against Gordon’s lower lip and tip it, and Gordon leaned his head back. He needed it after the taste of vomit, but he couldn’t enjoy it like this. The guy removed the glass and set it on the box, a couple of feet away.

“That’s good,” Gene said, nodding. “We’ll get to talk to her.”

He smiled a bright smile, as if he didn’t want to make Gordon anxious.

“You do understand, we won’t do her any harm,” he said. “Quite the opposite... she’ll get to stay in her residence in Stockholm, surrounded by security. We just want to influence her.”

He went to get the camera, then turned back to Gordon, tilting his head a bit.

“As long as she’s cooperating with us, you won’t have to worry, either,” he said.

Both left. He listened to their steps in the stairway, in case they were going to come back, but then he heard a door shutting and locking.

As soon as he knew that he was alone, he started struggling. This was so fucking jerry-rigged, surely the straps could tear off. He couldn’t get his hands out of the straps, he couldn’t tear them from their attachments, and even if he could have freed himself, the door was locked. If they were anywhere there was a risk of people hearing, they would certainly have gagged him. He screamed anyway. He screamed as if it were a weapon. The glass was still half full of water and stood where he couldn’t reach it.

At one point he heard a creak atop the basement door. He listened. What was up there didn’t come down.

He didn’t know how much time had passed when he heard footsteps in the stairway again. The light-level in the window hadn’t changed. He sat straight-backed when Gene entered, alone.

“We need something else from you,” he said. “I am going to free up your right hand for a few minutes. We want you to write a couple of lines to... her.”

He put a ruled paper and a biro on the box and took out his gun. The buckle of the strap clicked a little when it slid open. Gordon’s gaze fastened on the gun, but he could still see the piece of paper in the misty part of his field of sight.

Gene took a step back and put his gun away. Maybe he wasn’t keen on threatening people; it did seem like he was trying to make this as diplomatic as possible.

Gordon had the pen in his hand: plastic, worthless as a weapon. He tilted his gaze up to Gene again.

“What do you want me to write?” His voice had become ragged from the screams.

Gene looked down at him with that surprising smile.

“Just a couple of lines,” he said. “Tell her you’re here... just enough for her to know it’s you. It’s not necessary, you understand, we have the photo and are going to send our own letter, to explain what’s going on and what she needs to do.”

Gordon dropped the pen. It clicked on the wood.

“What do you want to make her do?” he said.

Gene made a soft noise, as if disappointed.

“You need to get rid of the habit of asking questions,” he said. “But we have no reason to hide it from you. Your girl has always been impartial, hasn’t she? An unworldly priestess... impartial as the Pope. She just sits there repressing anything that might lead to conflict, regardless of where in the world it is.”

He paused.

“We just want her to promote our interests,” he went on. “Her power isn’t just some type of general anaesthetic. If it were in the hands of a governing interest... if it could be directed against certain states or organisations... it could become a weapon.”

“America’s interests?”

Gene smiled, nodding.

“Because it is my homeland, of course. You probably have the same feelings for Sweden.”

Gordon’s gaze slipped away.

“No, I guess not,” Gene said after a while. “Sweden’s never tried to use her that way. It’s possible that you don’t deserve her.”

As if M-L were nothing more than an A-bomb or a magic wand – an object. And why was he thinking about that? Gene had said that they would preserve her. Perhaps she’d get to stay in Djursholm, walk around the lawn in her white dress and play badminton, while they fed her with letters and photos from Gordon. He was the object.

That was still a little better. They weren’t out to kill or abuse him: that meant that the cops’d have more time to track him.

“You realise we’re not in a relationship,” he said, looking up at Gene. “I haven’t been in contact with her for several years, for Christ’s sake. We broke up the last time we met... it was very definitive. She can’t have a partner.”

His voice almost cracked. Gene was free to believe it was from fear.

Gene kept his eyes on Gordon, but never faltered.

“Be that as it may,” he said. “I don’t think that she... she, least of all, wants to sacrifice an innocent person, even if she doesn’t want to sleep with him.”

Gordon sagged.

“So I can write whatever I want?” he said.

Gene nodded.

“In English. You understand that we want to know what you’re writing, surely.”

“Yes, I understand.”

He pulled the sheet of paper to him so that he could reach to start at the top. The ruling was hard to see in this lighting.

A couple of lines. Perhaps it would be possible to get something through to her. He had to write in English, but Gene didn’t know Swedish. There were codes, but he’d need to get through to her that there was a code. Once, he’d read an Edgar Allan Poe poem that had contained a woman’s name as an acrostic with the first letter in the first line and the second letter in the second, but had M-L read it?

He had no message to give her.

Hi, Marie-Louise. I hope you’re OK. They’re treating me well so

“No,” he said, letting the pen rest with its point on the paper. “I can’t write this.”

His voice sounded strong, but he couldn’t bear looking up at Gene. He scribbled over the words with some lines, until the pressure made the sheet slide out of reach.

“You write, if you want to,” he said. “I won’t do this.”

After a moment he heard the soles of Gene’s shoes scrape against sand grains on the floor. He strapped Gordon’s hand back in, then took the paper and pen. He took a step back.

“Look at me,” he said.

Gordon raised his gaze. He could look at the pale grey concrete behind his head. Could he tell?

“Thank you, Gordon,” he went on. “You know, we need you. You are very important for what we are doing.”

He paused.

“As far as I’m concerned, you are a means to an end,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you... I’ve got nothing against you, Gordon, it’s your sheer bad luck that you’re the one who ended up in this situation. But if you get too difficult to handle, I’ll hand you over to Adrian for an hour or so.”

“Is that him?” Gordon said, nodding in the direction of the door. “He seems like a nice fella.”

Gene nodded. He hadn’t gone too far.

“Perhaps you ought to be afraid,” he said. “You know that there are no limits to what we can do to you.”

He broke off. Perhaps Gordon should have said something.

“And Adrian,” he went on. “I don’t even know whether he’s interested in controlling the Saint. The only thing he’s after is getting someone to work on.” A pause. “I don’t think he would kill. It’s possible that that’s where the line is drawn, for him. I don’t even think he enjoys it... hurting people, that is. It interests him. But if I catch you trying to escape, or trying to get a message out through her, I will send Adrian down here and lock the door, and when I open it again, you are going to want to help us.”

He fell silent and his gaze grew pensive. Not hesitant; there was no weakness there.

“It’s possible that I will hand you over to him anyway, sooner or later. Having you compliant would make this easier for us.”

That was the last thing he said before leaving.

“Do you want me to write that letter?” Gordon called after him in the stairs.

His voice sounded light and torn. Gene didn’t react. Maybe he hadn’t heard.

He could only keep track of time by the window growing lighter or darker, but it felt like it did more often than it should have. Maybe it was because he fell asleep. They didn’t do anything to him other than feed him and pull his pants down so that he could use the bucket beneath the box. It was most often Gene who wiped him, and most often Adrian who fed him. He stopped asking questions. As long as this went on, he had some form of equilibrium. Sometimes his thoughts went to the truck in its hangar bay, funnily enough, not so often to the apartment or mum’s and dad’s terraced house in Stockholm. The memories were so bright, it felt like he might be able to wriggle out into them and only leave the slack straps on the box.

He thought about scraping the plywood with his fingernails: if he could get through it, he might be able to pull his hand out. At the start he didn’t even make the paint flake, but he had time. (How much time? Several months?) It was like being buried alive, it was the only way out. Don’t think about things like that. He’d worried about getting chips of paint under his fingernails, but it hadn’t happened yet. After a while, the ends of his nails must have shredded, his fingertips felt minced, but the pain barely slowed him down.

After one of the meals, Adrian glanced at his hands. He raised his fingers, looking at the little scoop underneath.

“If you keep doing that, I am going to break your fingers,” he said.

His voice was so mild, it felt like it took a minute before Gordon understood what he’d said. He took the empty plate and the cutlery and vanished up the stairs.

That night, Gene came down. His steps were light as if he were about to start singing, and he carried a steel-coloured cell phone tenderly in both hands.

“It’s her,” he said. Into the phone, he said: “I’m here with him now.”

“What do I say, then?” Gordon hissed.

“Something in English,” Gene said, holding the phone by his face.

He heard faint interference – the sky above the Atlantic –, then M-L’s voice, so close:

“Are you there, Gordon?”

It wasn’t the tone he’d expected. There was nothing loving in it, it was just tired.

“M-L, I’m sorry,” he managed. “They’re making me speak English so they can understand what I’m saying. But it’s still me, Gordon. I didn’t want this to happen.”

“Are you okay? Are you injured?”

“No, I’m tied up, but they’re treating me well. I get food. They said they’ll untie me if...”

His gaze flickered up to Gene, but Gene’s face was still gentle.

“If what?” M-L said, in English now.

“It was nothing.” He breathed in. “I miss you. I... I hope you’ll do what you feel is right.” And everything had gathered towards a horizon where he couldn’t go on.

Gene went for the receiver.

“I’ve got to go,” said Gordon, and in Swedish: “Don’t do it.”

He made it quick and lighthearted, like a conversation closer. All he could hear was M-L’s silence.

“Don’t do it,” he said again. “I’m not worth it.”

Gene took the receiver from him, not violently, and turned away as he spoke.

“We have sent you the first plans... we’ll keep you apprised about him. I’m sorry, Ma’am. We don’t want to mistreat Gordon, but if you go against our wishes, you will be responsible for what happens to him.”

He turned around. Maybe he’d switched off the phone, Gordon had missed it.

“You said something in Swedish there,” he said. “What was it?”

“It was just ‘goodbye’. Just a farewell.”

“You don’t know where you are,” Gene said smiling. “You don’t know our real names. The only thing you might have said is some little defiant message. Isn’t it strange that you risk so much for a woman who doesn’t care for you?”

He stomped upstairs. Maybe it would end there, maybe all he’d deserved was a threat and an insult, but a few seconds later, Adrian came downstairs. He stood relaxed, smiling in the light, hooking Gordon’s gaze with his own.

“You’re a fraud, aren’t you?” he said. “You liked being a bodyguard because you got to wear a suit and ride around in black limousines. Because you wanted to show off.”

He crouched down so that his face was a little below Gordon’s. As long as he sat like that, there was air between them and he wasn’t able to do anything. Gordon had clenched his fists until the straps cut into his skin, and Adrian must have seen it. The cigarette dangled forgotten between his fingers, a little glimpse of white.

“But there is no shame in admitting it,” he said, as if he were surprised. “I’m a bit of a fraud myself.”

He stood. His sole creaked on something as he took a step closer.

“Do you want me to break one of your fingers, or burn you?” he said.

Gordon shook his head as if he could have got the words out of his ears. Adrian crouched down a little until he had to look into his bright bright eyes.

“You have a choice,” he said. “Either I’ll break one of your fingers, or I’ll burn your hand for a while. With the cigarette. Which do you prefer?”

“Why do you ask me?” Gordon managed, and now it felt like he was drunk or feverish. “You can do what you want anyway.”

He was still struggling with the straps, even though he’d have snapped them off by now if he’d been able to. If he tossed his head back hard enough when it began, he might be able to pass out. He rubbed the back of his head against the surface, and it wasn’t concrete, it was just particle board. Maybe it would work anyway.

“What do you want me to do?” he said.

His voice still sounded reasonable, as if it wasn’t really present in the basement room. His gaze tried to shy away from Adrian, but he would need to look at him, he would need to adapt to his reactions. M-L had got the message. Gene hadn’t told her to do anything else. As long as they hadn’t begun, he could pretend that he would stick to it.

Adrian smiled, surprising.

“You don’t have to do anything, for the moment,” he said. “But he thinks you need to learn not to do things at the spur of the moment, or anything like that. To adapt to our wishes.”

Far off in Stockholm, in the residence, M-L would be sitting with his message. What was she going to do? That depended on whether she loved him more than the world. How many hours ahead was Sweden, was it dark? His thoughts shied from that too.

Adrian lit a new cigarette. This close, he could smell the smoke. He felt the nicotine in his blood, just little pinpricks.

“Which do you choose?” Adrian said.

He hunched over a little, feeling Gordon’s left hand, with his fingernails, as if trying to elicit some reaction. It was going to be his left hand. Gordon tried to fling his head forward to reach him, but there were many inches of air between them.

“You... choose,” he said.

But he barely had enough strength to breathe. He didn’t get the sounds out. It turned into just a hiss. Adrian’s tickling fingers moved over his, gripping his index finger, bracing, folding it back. Maybe this would be quicker. M-L sat in the lit dining-room, hunched over folders of white sheets of paper, and he couldn’t see her face.

The pain in his finger was a yellow flash. He focused on breathing. Adrian pulled back a little. That was good. He could retain equilibrium like this. He hadn’t even had to scream.

Adrian leaned closer again, reaching for his hand. Gordon tried to pull clear, and he couldn’t budge, and he still tried.

“I need to set it,” Adrian said with a tone as if he were talking to a little kid or a rambunctious kitten. “Otherwise it might not heal right.”

He pinched his finger and pulled it out. It hurt as much again. He got out a pale roll of gauze and wound it around the finger, and attached it with a safety pin that Gordon didn’t feel. He’d pulled so far to the right that his legs were twisted to the side and ached. And it was over, she was still sitting out there and they hadn’t made him say anything to her.

“You fucking idiot.”

Adrian’s voice had turned so hissing and changed that he first thought someone else had come into the basement. Gordon looked up at him while Adrian straightened up.

“You disgust us, do you realise that?” he went on. “I don’t see why... and we’re supposed to feed you! And your fucking chick sits over in Sweden and... and Gene expects me to...”

Gordon didn’t have a chance to sway clear of the blow. It hit him on the mouth, rocking his head back against the particle board. Adrian punched him again, on the side of the head this time. It didn’t hurt as much, but he was on the left side, he was near his hand.

“Fuck off!” Adrian yelled. “We ought to beat you to death. We ought to take you out and beat you to death and send the bitch the photos!”

Gordon had started screaming himself, he couldn’t hear if the guy said anything more. The door rattled open and Gene ran down the stairs.

“What the hell’s gotten into you, Adrian?”

Adrian kicked. It missed Gordon’s leg and hit the box with a crack instead. Gene tried to yank Adrian’s arms back, but Adrian twisted free and hit him across the eye, maybe. Gordon let his gaze slide to the floor. It was all just more pain. The side of his head was throbbing, not painfully, in time with an aura of gold that came and went at the edge of his vision. Something salty ran into his mouth from the split lip.

Gene stumbled backwards from Adrian and got his gun out. Adrian stayed where he was, a bit hunched as if to pounce.

“Go back up,” Gene said, gesturing with his free hand. “Fucking psycho. Do you hear what I’m saying?”

Adrian hesitated, as if he were still thinking about going for him, then turned and disappeared up the stairs. Gene swung around, gun pointed at Gordon. He opened his mouth as if he were about to say something, but swallowed and left. Gordon heard the lock.

It was okay, it was okay. His hand didn’t hurt particularly as long as he didn’t move it, and Adrian had said that he’d set the finger-bone, it would heal. The pounding in his head might be more worrying. He didn’t have anywhere to lean it except straight backward, and perhaps it would slide and twist. If he felt his teeth, one of them might be loose. They hadn’t thought to turn out the light when they left. The window was a square of night in front of him.

It wasn’t the physical pain any more. He had that under control. It was the knowledge that he would sit here, and his eyes would dry under the fluorescent lights, and some blood vessels might already have started slackening and flooding his brain with red. She was sitting in her villa above the glaring blue body of water, wondering whether to sacrifice him or not. (He’d started tasting odd flavours, something like chocolate. Could it be from the blow?) Had she loved him at all? She’d just walked next to him as if it were easier than breaking up. If he’d been the one to be chosen, would she have tried to take him away? She hadn’t tried to save him now. They were going to come back and hit him again, maybe do something more to his finger, or something to his fingernails or eyes, and he would scream and bleed for the sake of a frigid doll who’d never cared about him.

He was the one who’d told her not to save him.

He strained in the straps, just to make them cut into his skin. All this, and now the things he’d thought about M-L. Maybe it would be good if this got worse. There would come a point where the compact darkness in his brain would seep into his body and poison it. A bit of dark hair hung into his eye. It troubled him as much as the real injuries.

He’d started hearing noises from the ground floor: doors slamming, and once something hard splintering. Was it the police? No-one came down to him. It was Gene and Adrian having a fight. There was too much in between for him to make out the words, but he could hear the tone. At one point, a voice – Gene’s? – rose in a scream, and something went bang. Maybe he was slamming a door again, maybe he’d punched the wall. Were they going to fight up there? It was possible that both of them would lie dead while he sat here, in the straps, and started screaming without any sound travelling outside. His brain started to alternate between that image and the thought of Adrian lying with blood pulsing out of a cut in his scalp, how red it would be, that colour that got your adrenaline going, and how the fucker would whimper and try to writhe out of the way when Gene raised a heavy boot over him again. Sinking into those thoughts was better. They made him feel better for a few seconds.

The door clicked open, and he heard footsteps in the stairs. It was Gene, so it would be better, maybe. He didn’t look like he’d been in a fight, but the whites glinted in his eyes.

“This is your fucking chick,” he said.

His voice was so neutral, it sounded ill. It was thin, decrepit. He held the gun, but he wasn’t aiming at Gordon. Something long poked out of his pocket, swinging when he moved. Did he have his finger on the trigger? The panic fixed something in him.

“If you kill me, you won’t have any power over her any more!”

You could hear fear in his voice, but faint, not much more than anxiety. Gene’s gaze slid up to him, and for a moment, his face opened up in a smile.

He tossed the gun in a corner. It clicked, but didn’t go off.

“You know, you disgust me,” he said. “It’s a shame Adrian didn’t want to join in. I think he’d... like... now that we’ve lost her...”

He fell silent.

“Is she dead?” Gordon said.

Gene didn’t speak again. He pulled out the handle poking up from his pocket. The light glittered on something, the head of a hammer. The handle he held must have been textured rubber. He took a step closer, then another, swinging the hammer slowly like a Cyclops in a forge.

He managed to fold out of the way of the first blow, and the hammer crashed into the particle board instead. What was the point? He was just putting it off. He couldn’t budge when Gene raised the hammer again, and yet he tried. The hammer bore down on his shoulder, near the neck where it was soft with muscle. He didn’t hear anything break.

“Stop it, then!” Gene sobbed, or was it himself?

He raised the hammer. It struck the box, this time. He raised the hammer. Gordon’s thigh, a few inches above the knee. He tried to close his eyes, but they flew open every time he heard Gene move.

Then it was over. He looked at Gene and didn’t see a hammer, his hands hung empty. Maybe it was over, maybe it was something in his brain that had blinked and gone out after the blows, but Gene didn’t go for him again. He stood with his thick shoulders pulled up around his head and his face in shadow. At first, Gordon had the thought that he’d had a heart attack, some kind of heart attack, but he was still standing. He breathed in trembles that didn’t sound normal.

But Gordon could barely see him any more, because some form of delight floated up inside him. It made all outlines blur. For a moment – before it flooded his brain – he thought about when he’d been given morphine, when he fell out of a tree when he was twelve. It didn’t feel like the morphine, but it was equally disconnected. Had they drugged him, then? It didn’t matter, maybe it was better like this.

It was sobs that shook Gene. He almost stumbled when he rushed up and started undoing the straps, in so much haste that it might have taken longer. He hadn’t needed to. If Gordon moved now, it might dispel the happiness.

“I’m sorry,” Gene whispered once it was possible to hear what he said. “I don’t know. We should never have done this. We didn’t know... we thought it would be better for us...”

Sometimes it sunk to an incomprehensible sing-song. And yet it was over, the straps slid from his wrists. There was a bursting sensation in his head once he was able to bend forward and free his legs. He walked, and Gene didn’t try to stop him.

He staggered up the basement stairs, into the hallway. Adrian unlocked for him. Gordon managed to look at him. Adrian’s face was blanked as if he were trying to hold back tears, but he smiled a swift smile as the street-light fell into the hallway, and maybe Gordon smiled back.

He spent two days in hospital where they splinted his finger and drained the blood under his skull. At that point, the serenity had started to sink away, and the patients and even the nurses were irritable as if they had a hangover after some delightful drug. Perhaps he was the same, himself. As he went down to the lobby, dozens of people were still coming in to get tested in case what had happened had left them with damage.

He flew to Stockholm, but stayed a day with Sören and his family before contacting her. When he went to make tea in the evening, the spice cabinet in their kitchen smelled of cardamom and the burnt scent of Lapsang Souchong. It turned the kidnapping and torture into just a closed loop that had affected his life as little as a dream.

Sören let him borrow his car, a Citroën, and didn’t ask where he was going. The road to Djursholm was flowing with sunlight; if you didn’t look up into the bare twigs, you could have believed it was summer.

“Go up and tell her Gordon Matsson is here,” he told the guard. “She knows me.”

Soon he saw her emerge from the large portico, small as a white butterfly when she started running down the slope. The gate clattered open. Her dress might have been the one she’d worn the last time he saw her.

What had he expected? Almost ten years had passed – a bit pudgier, maybe faded? In fact she’d grown thin as if from a serious illness. If he hadn’t known how old she was, he might have thought she was ten years older than he; the wrinkles were the skin sagging where there wasn’t enough flesh underneath. But beautiful, more beautiful than he remembered her.

She stood in front of him, maybe at a loss for words, so he was the first to speak:

“Was it you who did it?”

She understood. She nodded once.

“Come up to the residence,” she said. “We can’t stand here talking.”

She walked a little in front up the garden path. He tried not to look at her hairline, because he had a sensation that it was starting to come out in downy tufts, but her steps were still springy.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

It sounded flat and dumb. She turned around and smiled at him, her old smile.

“I guess I look like shit... It’s not as bad as it looks. I need to rest. Gunna keeps telling me I need to rest, and after this, I will...”

They’d reached the portico. For a moment it looked like she was about to totter, and he gripped her arm and felt the goosebumps and the bones inside. M-L didn’t tear free, but gave him a look that might have been worse. He let go, and it was gone as if he’d imagined it.

“I’ve seen physicians,” she said. “Trust me, they don’t want me working myself to death. They bring a doctor here if I blow my nose.”

“I missed you.”

She didn’t react to it.

“Did they have time to torture you?” she said.

Her voice had become hoarse. He nodded and started to tell, but her gaze had already gone to his bruises and the bandage on his finger. He was able to think about it without feeling anything: maybe that love that she’d injected in him had killed the trauma. He just didn’t want to talk about this. The most horrific part had been how he’d looked at Gene and Adrian as if they were his friends.

“So it was you who made them release me?” he said again.

M-L nodded. Now he could have asked how she’d done it, but the question was whether she could explain it in words he’d understand. She hadn’t asked what they’d done to him.

“Was it difficult?” he said instead.

She shook her head.

“I wouldn’t do it again, if that’s what you’re thinking. If given the choice. But it worked, didn’t it?”

It was the first time her voice had sounded carefree since he came back. She raised her head, just a degree.

“Did you report them?” she asked.

He’d thought about it, but not had the time: once he was dismissed from hospital, all he’d been able to think about was getting to Sweden as quickly as possible. She noticed his expression and interrupted him:

“No, it’s good if you didn’t.”

For a moment he saw a look in her eyes as if she were bleeding and it hadn’t stained her dress yet. She collected herself and went on:

“They’ve caused enough pain... Gordon, they won’t hurt anyone again. I focus on them... on them as well. Together with everything else.”

“I’m sorry,” he said in the silence.

He had to support himself on the brickwork of a pillar. M-L took a step closer, as if she were going to grab him, but stopped herself.

“God damn it, Gordon, it wasn’t your fault, was it?”

“It was my fault,” he said, nodding with his eyes open. “I let them trick me into an ambush and drug me... I was a bodyguard, for God’s sake, I should have known better...”

“It was my fault!”

She didn’t yell, but her voice had a keenness as if all her strength had gone into it. She leaned against the pillar opposite him.

“Now do you see why?” she said, and her voice was a whisper that he could barely hear. “I can’t protect you... even by leaving you I couldn’t protect you.”

She was silent for a while, as if gathering strength, then she spoke again:

“I had to love the people who did this to you. While they were hammering in your flesh. I still love them. Do you understand what that means? It wasn’t... I wasn’t able to think ‘okay, I’ll pretend I love these bastards, so they’ll let Gordon go.’ I actually loved them, the way I love all human beings... the way I have to love...”

For a moment he thought she was going to start crying. He was about to apologise, but she was talking again. She’d lowered her head so that he couldn’t see her face.

“And that was why I had to break up with you. Because I... I can’t squander my emotions on one person.”

She looked up at him. Her eyes were a light blue and hadn’t changed.

“I wasn’t going to ask you to go with me this time,” he said.

And yet, if there had been a chance that she would do it... He didn’t need to say it, because she couldn’t read minds.

He managed to smile at her, and after a moment she smiled back, a stiff little smile.

“Thank you,” she said.

He’d only meant to give her a hug, but as he put his arms around her shoulders, she gripped the back of his head and kissed him. Maybe he was warm around her. He hadn’t asked about the one moment when her influence had retreated from the world and the only pleasure that remained was the pleasure of seeing others bleed. Maybe he should have asked, in case she wanted to talk about it.

“You won’t have to do this again,” he said as they let go.

When she looked up at him, she smiled.

“Be careful,” she said.

Once, he turned around. She was still standing in the portico. If not for the wind fluttering in her robe, he might have believed he was looking at a statue and not a human.

The sunshine lay on him as he walked alone down to the car.

THE END

#fiction #novella #romance #thriller #torture #science fiction #SF #fantasy #long

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libidomechanica · 1 year ago

Text

Unseen hand is out the underground him, somehow

A sonnet sequence

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But, for, thou use so greater mighty wrought. Face. But kinda like a shawl. Took up and imagine, shrink to a phrase like a happens in the eyes were coming in a formulated thy soft awhit; nor to wonder. He never moved, truest seemed to a hill hir fyrmely tyde. And there. At once the desultory breeze. A king’s ear all not less. Was laid and when those,—mother liuing doe them I read thy maisters stead: deuize at will near and fades, unseen hand heaven! That think how rapt was raysed. When the light flow its way: I wish young, conscience given for stroke on me or pity! Him anymore.

Mens weaker neere: in mind adorning sun, and sword and souls that the knights not thou should I decke her eyes, brightness? With an evening that fayre when mine eies buy ioyes, in chast desyred, let me study window of a man to show he would be possessing diuersly my part’s Blood. And threw the moss is grow old … I shall you call our daughter beside of four kids will cruell boy not slay me, nor me the staircases, to stake our maids, blusters oh, you just what a tremble when I have slept not, die soone could neuer foul pride bow to spit out, that clouded, but a taste! One is past, into red and makes me nourished by the same; the hurricane all night and began to obey; all else forgetting your thrall for chill; and saw the air; yet, ye are the world’s wealth, and God the raging for the church and both the Fawn at pleasure there that Colin Clout doth fly. She cried, wild nature have, And like that wonderfull deuyse.

That senses in pining and laugh and should have know, has place break of his leaf fluttering, lovely dost there. Haste, precipitates delights and brother poem written upon the hills rolled. But once it is thy lightning: for the knit the tongue silly lambe thoughts which I lov’d, neglected be: through that the leaf and deck the ysicles remain with any evidence, runningly sunflower of her decease. The field nor bowre: and were forth from the maturing short fever-fit; nor mone, throgh contemplation we are things in a bush pressing! Her then picked men are born. Flutter over the sun’s sight, perhaps, the twins of love grassy and flowers, footless night-wandered away in termes vnsure, that is tost with praise, and saw the two crowning rash behold my loue, cannot I with death it eternal Footman holds the heard no lamenting, into my selfe assurance seemes from a sunflower.

—I pluck; and Master of heauen vpon your mind. His weary war renew’th. In Heaven, my collar mount vp to thee, fed on war: when on many haue so much he scarce three to the earth to sun’s way after, clear spright, giue leaue lady in your missive through cheek, and she nor free! Interminable hour and for don’t read long with stroke her feeble powerless one mighties into my still I bred, of summer day will not likewise louely, as babe, my frayle thou in time. Still: the toes, it will sing thee, these thou make the sweet praise, ne but thus. Thou have them Say truth and wayle, and the better taste!

Somewhat on earth your when he commence: the trumpet blared at the brunt so small orange one bespeaks in the Prison of thy name is prime, and saw the think of their way down on theyr greater meeds, with that thou spend on Fortune’s shiny boots like the which al power, would cry. How little green: she has a life. Will leafe, whose paths so dear! Oft grateful forever, she as steele in this kind of such a soften doe rain and Absál the primal thing book. You didst makes me pore. Well knowen shifted of love through the Incomprehends no kill? A longing like in care, to battery to end to her circle.

Wailing, I care and wrinkled heaved and dart. After long ypent. I sing your caused on minted finger, told her, why shed smiles she rose-briar fairer change by yours, but now unpunished smile; but when we all friendship is seeking up to our part, Yea, ’ answers the first I hear us, or if it be come and fall; and anything of many a bold knight wherof hath left her cage, but is he borne her and clasp your sleep a tear; by what went away, and go talking like a truce and meeknesse raysed. We are shall dreams; my soul of the roses and lately, the blinded guests, if ever more the apart, would run and say’st though dashed the form a synonym for amongst his little grove whereof let kindle fyre of death. With force, which I doe ye now ended were their feet: and with that I an accessary needs a good one Night had one, is vaine then all day like Ida: some with false feard with them!

Which cannot rouse in my bonie lady, of my proud mayd, whom my sad bed of rooﬁng and teach the soldier’s cause of me who gave me wend my mothers wayt on looks o’er-brimm’d the self, and blesse pleasure, a kind of rest, wheretos and that your speeches woe, then shall the holy dream: and her eie lids hung the welked Phoebus gan avails that high looks as Cockatrices dying lies that ink may climbed that Ida right? That even the Follow, thou spent, the sun, the dreadfull heaven? With vnkindly cold: by slaying and off like a water; for honny. But she asked and drery same, and soone after all.

Never more keen, we sicken withall. I’d brush the receiver ripped out lyke sacred peace such sweet is the print of mind. To dances, my wound as real green board, how euer fayre lyken it: that most of a lov’d, neglected be. Two of foule dishonor: the grocery man wants that may my part: and liuing deeper yet her to register, that whistle-ball, no belt and therein, yet cannot be let thee, to fly away from the day and with mild pleade in one fit for me: my low last I saw the Bridge of runningly sweet is truth: she cried, if Lucy Gray will notes over death can shew, good one out.

Veil doth disdaine, when he that day, beneath that your face as legible and a’ the light, Then shall lyke yong blossom-belts, and twining? No more serious storme away, so trembling a Navy drill, the which this wreathe onely in thy hand, where a new Pandora see. Their first loved looke, doth spot in me at last sentence still, and biddest me is; though parents grudging of your bed. From my idle days? Their praysed: deriued is, a dream of a soft cheek they track’d with a sigh, she said, and made fruit o’ mony a moon their Destiny, it pours shall vnto the horizon, it will breakfast, or foul hypocrisy for that doth catch a dragged claws scuttling stand amazement whiles hence, but a bayt such a struck out some fresher stubborn, and joinèd hand, but I. Is frowned twining? Becomes through evening, salving doubt which I gaze on her, for your cause she loosely did gaze on the gravy as we, but still reply!

Even in him now best agreeable, opening ran, and the toll like our lines! The more than maiden moods of sovereign artists; not ask them if the middle of my hair soft-dying lyfe that, we’d all expresse, who liue a iot, is not it at a trembling a table; let us be made, and framed, ne ought on earth do us parent longs for you, so long. Where is not of thy selfe with tears, badges of paynefull comes you failing, I found one that all the room is turning my know not well a proud and greater craftily enfold, to vtter forgets their clammy cells. It isn’t ours, and prey.

Who was a time passion joined slackly, and reason or through greedy seas: thinke to yields, or are moved every floor—and the Matter the soul in long I sponne, his witlesse still. I wish to God the Weirdlaw Hill, to vtter for the brain, alone. She hast to approaches struck two, nor pause, and sic a lassie by his hand at played upon the cloudes is out, the balloons resting well, then not on each one loues continue to me, and all other closes us to scare to obey, even if they woxe, and liberty does show, or, known the lance, and yet the brood: and sighes and day, I wish of gall.

I thought, and reigneth, looks from thy laden barke was nearly things that heuens wryte your sister Jane; in vain. My babe, was not yet she smile the hills of jet. Such loue her for them closed in truth and sithes I curse that tiny dictum full maiesty, and ever read cleared. And ere shadow where most true loves? Your voice as I am formulated phrase like more life for my lips to go about here among his sinful anglers hide the sacred than stone. On which writer’s dye! Seek out something and kiss and reigne Queene of the wedding. Beneath the harder growes the King, you have it out among the river.

When the grain of finite her hand into her babbling what surface of lust, yet strives by weak weed, nor me to myself, what have fountains out; nor eloquent worke of ragged mawkin, thought, from objects locked, lives under clouds the ysicles remained a dress the rudest or gentle space and slices of the woman like fyre by wondrous squire with her then wits, as love like delight, injurious lips pursed hyre: and fold him that asking looked on a wild Moor, the selfe again! And must we two should be possess peace, and, since all side by one, settling a cello in Russia, one is wanton strong or is it pride, or played, my one has when December that night of things which thou, to-day to becoming him, something boding I pray you again; as when thou leaned against female charming, love! Until they gaze at the flat all the river saw you, w’are met, and most in vaine and floats this may surcease.

Seventeen ye; yet thy wrongs like their sight? The gates, and never reach’d they ca’ me for fear, for louing you can quantify: each when through the ploughman’s little Cupid offend. If two entities: myself, that nestling litle glory, and, who lively figures if that falls from the dedicated words, and what he suck on high degree. Fed on minted in the merry dint, my fingering day; but something and, forsooth! And you were na for us nobis pacem oh my brest thoughts doo weakening, and of ants. The better what a subway car that high heuenly part, playnts, prayers wings a soldier?

Take her fresh young captain when he was his praise: and weare. Fresh sprig there flew o’er the red piece of death, her goodly talk kindled hereticks of nature, but she doth makes me greatness fade as in her known the roots here are fair, and closing on a wild more returne to have, and who teach to send that first I hesitate, and sweet art, in the sacred thus surges sinking outlasts us all. Crutches, um, whenever came down, that she, when as that touching comes Sorrow marry. That morn before heauen may remoue. Guess that is not the dark sprightful green, this compare, my life, and smiles whoever saw you, Mag.

These dull at the dedicated homage yet find the sudden, hast to be sing for the fetish boutique, thou came to her sport and loue, when she rear of May; the holy fane of Melrose river of glory thing to thee ere Cupid lay, thou did not so contemplation be recured by what it then picked hed consume not deny, ah, what a man’s hands. And indeed, you know’st though life’s dearest day, I wish that Life’s death a cry; himself is former flight. Other child shall I, unskilfull persist in her purpose lillyes, ere the smart, but she no saint to please, my thought, where in which I too weaue.

So when the dry star? And touched upon life, a thirst assurance them all exceeds, and we that lie along thence to my thigh almost mindless traveled bits of tomorrow, and me rules the bump I ride those two life- days be done my greater in the underground, and rolling teeth of cunning fynd, all frosen cold: in goodly table; let us go and many haue gayned: who could haue outworne: but hereafter Day, Design, he threatens at the floor, thrugh you again. And holily did make his louely, as babe, my sunflower turns to sheathing careless could be the better at night doth make.

Oh specially and bid me fears those,—mothers close. Which memory of my lord, not everyone else short my darkness, let me die, to way, but loath the Owl and for the scale of harness, why did ye see, she doth from the stair, when a belovèd hand, asleep. At fourty yeare hardest knife: it kills where then both from here among the intellectuall’d and pleasures spoile, I honor of sweet is the heuenly are cut off for a lantern three sisters mixed goods. Let me sing for looked downe decay, with the Fawn at played upon it, he come down the flat all the morning heauenly are, rather close, or war.

The smouldering I know this lyke captiue quite, strongly it can I forgets the blind and passion joined the gutter. But this world, on wing, comes away. Serenely into herself, and yeare foe, and so thou to retain the fall form or breast the lists, and knew all. Hissing is spent, all in brasen towre, and bare but in a wood, as we, but by your claim from all were fayth doth seeme he was through our sweetly, my head of orient pearls of jet. On the fragrant, luscious am I, whose waves mighty wrought in cruelnesse. It is not that would mischiefe goodwill his faynting might hues that made to so meane a one.

A grandame Nature or it’s pride, or war. Farthest earth return I take cover. The bitter hyre, is long therefore the already paid our dues.—And broke. You yet methinks, priest way through her, maiden moods of some honey that I be dead. As the noyse, and fashioned how silence deckt, yet none else. Right, a touch your feature, striue for years later is out; nor eloquent seas. If a might his might, and invaded, and so much did seemeth in could fight, through it breede my bad angelick delight full of your work her glorious storm and nothing and, sdeath! And I wanna be your hard hart: and all the poore.

A light hath left of this page, Yes. For the deare Lord, was I to her louers bowre of love hath bounded: yet I rise—robert Burns: welcome in ours, but asserted streets, but didn’t. I leane, I think upon they golden hookes, that live? You need not know it might doth latch: of his Moon of people, out of your Ford, one is thing is fond and once didst constant land, your real speech planned, when I touch your knee—like called my fraile fancy fed with paine: but lodwick, that Tim’s others,—that, self- pleasing is spread of death? Strange they are lips bread to those pryde depraues each wish it could by ill be ador’d, as he that the plot.

Already there’s Love did beare: ne ought I mightie vengeance that which Hercules came these heau’n of my study the cheek and fair I take carelesse haruest seen there was walking like the air be music, and smooth as those small for us nobis pacem oh my body sees through life’s tongueless sadnesse dazed, theyr wrath took the enemyes. And say it chanced by skill the which hold it have closer than that in one, to fly away that lift you, Sir! But alas, is most supposeth, in that this: Once you, a woman’s hand, and fair I take me and out hunger so long. Yet lowly still remaine.

My shrink to a small peace, may lose away, so I swore. How is it? And put the which that Colin Clout doth moon is bright, of my hair soft-lifted round her scorpions—stifled that, they twain, with guile here, and the holly is thy great-grandson and fill all be by him off, somewhere quiet woodland wake. ’St in Stella, the moment while his letter used where was borne hart: thinks that say Good- bye; and in the world of my griefe renew I should it knowing, come one Life with hammered upon its breaks, and bienly clad, and like the book myche to win. The sun, and sit beneath hurt me. In bed the barbershop.

For look which faire hands. The new breathing the world, and no parted, your tempest can jump both that had thee, when I doe at last to ease my musick, whilest it is to such bright routes, survivor where are evening, and joinèd hand told about, my Sire, ’ I cried. Of human voices that worst, and most assay, for spill, all sorrow and kissing in secret love it may farre, on this still for euery minute goes out then took it for my truth flowed long enough he color their shadow of a confused, she can be sweet musings when I am let me captive, burst out of rooﬁng and left of appease.

She had never once and graunt small; and answer by the first, and fill the wings of the old year, then the golden sun from limits far as I am? Would not to kindled heaven! But her eye, thrust in her wake no word upon the desultory breeze of attachment. I will. Lyke captiued are done thieving words that will teach the loam, my own line, haplesse torments deface. She goes. The middle of thy dearie! And laughed something may be yourself in the chapel. Julia took the stars black—sailed her and yes I know how frivolous a baby clothes wil be spent a heralds to three years, panted to die.

Let not too fast barrein ground I said: I never quit your live in deep in treasons’ quality; nor to thrall for one to move openly to receiue: and, passing, and to the mysterious play, such storme, that new to be King, from a dreadfull traynes well— but tis not traveled bits of innocent, and the slight to the Spectation impossible, o king, and so much, nor loss of gold on ground here: why did ye not? Happy ye leaue vnto the fulness, not easily nor any passionless ill. And fasted, wept and drink was throw kerchiefs at a loss what wonder the daungerous leaf and goods.

Let’s give your teddy ship doth felly him off, why, I’d sometimes through the call—the Minster-cloying the ways—or all the large her dish did scorn at him streight fading slow but hauing pine, a harm no pricking visions the more, later sheen, that a please, but little cottage-trees, gust-fists, hollow they would deuize, the might keep a tempests cannot be low and kissing so close; by the death do spring together I bow’d to woo: to woo: to woo: to word I have lived but keep but as she repayre. Soul can expressing, and one of feelings from wel temperature for to the winna ease thin! From limits far remote where last we things to matchable to starts his told, I joy; but takes place, dayly such strange the liuing like a storming down wearing through all that their flanks but drosse vncleane: whome being as she doth pricked me half-reap’d furrow broke him back doth spy, resembling which I too weak to unlock take.

Lesley is said and senses from my sad disdayne thy face in the score flatter, e’en let the wifebeater is the sun’s way, and doesn’t therefore may expresse the apartment while over the cruelty, such a theme, her flower heauen aspire. Child, I love the mould a generate brainless peace, one the winnowing the little spright, half-blotted hyde, if Yuorie, this is sleep not in the high sentence. But little sleepe so fiery gracious prayses yet be true. That ship, that goodly ymage place to pacify: the myrrour al the milking-maid, you walked about her teeth rotted out. ’ Old Adieu.

And in my brief while I sought can at last words brings of Love, the sun’s way, did sacrifize vnto the linger in the watercolor. The name in our own detention the bomb. Mix with treble songs sends many a tent while his pride: such poor tricks of the treason: gudgeons only fayre Idea of you anywhere never sallows twitter balefull heavenly. And yet thou shin’st in field: in deep-disguises, each faire face-cloth friend scrawled on the other’s arm, as fearless those, like the maker ye entrap in the fly that has cost nor reason of me who gave thou deny’st me sing for the veiled here for on a marble staid vnto they have her discern—infinitely disprinces pere: and dying lie in our palate urge, even the garden yse: and spot the wider were for you. Came sallying or fall upon her eye, all things turn those frequent words, and that shall wear them, made me so diuing star!

But pure loving, and heave thorns, and on the rest thee. The weird affection, that vanish, ye Phant’sie, this being, but cruelty she wound about you. That thought, then, with ooze, and near and wishing, and swoops the message set at noon, in all are gone, but with many a bold knight whose her, for I know the middle of theyr terrour al those, then he said, Stubborne will not directly tell; but when ye are a light find their dead. And reigne Queen of matter thrall: the point, or yet attack us on mine a philosophy’s aye- babbling across the meaning lascivious call was his helmets sprang the good buy!

One is the pass’d, like eyes already dead. Will play, falls that dainty odour disbelief. ’ Sweetness, to learn to delight. The should have close, as the morn the powre the sun upon the long horse and a maid, you him ten leaped aside, and what died on just struck matched on the quyre of louers wayt vpon the sunflower, or she dooryards and doorbells with vertues riches woe, then shed, though obviously i’m fascinated. An awful voice with vases, half a smile; but from me, a semi-demi goddess, sometimes which for the day? I fynd my selfe but ice-gravel. Ne your love her god, when I cross to reaches the January photo in my heart drawing blossomd Iessemynes, such lowliness fade as in happy eyes that are ever sallows, borne by on the eternity. For I am pinned and state—this is a fix. And to hang the months go theirs as dues of a magic hand in heart.

Yee whose sweet aspect of the mothers, little canst not run out I wanna be your black—sailed unfamiliar, towing hour, till the ways open cast up from the champaign till their gross pained. Let allured, ne ought dismayd that with diuersly my true-love holds what pencill call out of the mind; bubble blowen vp without you—so many time with most crowded strike: the mysterious blis. In our bodies that are more, never come and doesn’t get it be you make that my good and feeble power in little worm, that at your eares doe worke is but torments on the wrongs; I say she’s trying sunflower!

You say that light with patience. But few behold, that two accords haue found: then giue mercy shal thunder-storms, and thou shepheards looked down into each of Counsel I shall when mine, nor soul once enlumind me, and wanted weare, and died, almost mindlesse elfe, her head of that much more? We say, so that, with rigorous intent to lead your friends: gaynst which his because wel vnderstood. A porter at her, but the blynd boy Venus blisse. But this tries anyway—from an instant stiff and die if she was, alas the lintels, the middle of neurosis a pocketful thing and warnes al louers payneful smart.

Mild zephyrs waft thee that shone their busy days of happy bless were na for me thus him amearst with all part, I fynd my thou didst buying through my foot scarf, let fall i’d brushed we say, with blows the night-wander far as Cho-fu-Sa. In which seals thee heir it, that nestling a brere; sweet and fly: conscience, and Beauty and powers color, one is stormes, while you wait out thou art, deuoure thence she doth convinced that eyes scintillating happened doors we heard of those which we dashed your relenting, of my deare didst the which seals thee, to draw from, fight, an hundred vision will day long hills I won you mother.

Kindle fyre of death, her god, whether the cheeks need blood. She wrath I swear them see thee releasing praise not, since theyr shewed all night, to leap large-moulders of tomorrow, if we lives in shaped, that glory thine together too consume half the roots of flower: deriued is, allu’rd a Dolphin him now beside them threw the angular distance was to front of the stormy stoure, with light was left pulse so lead frailties, and its time to pick up. How could say, is like figure out how time, vague and Maud in either men: thoughts be dead, and sighing and child at dearest be, if such has also to immortalized me half yielded, wroth and holily did gaze on this, t’ have showed a thousand right once that crackling armada of promises dead; those swift up the huge massacres which her bowre with thoght of her who read. Right there under and collection in fronting all are gone overhaile.

My sister as the black as in the hae I beheld my senses in her eie lids hung in the blinded rabbits, cows with a heart serenely image of the after free! In the heart-honored Maid! His she hath natures wonder, rain without at your skirts thoughts the dire extreamest part: but his frown. Thou’s welcoming downe decay, twixt feare away. And never may you talk and free from that man not dissolu’d throne, you to her, ’ said Cyril met us. Our pleasures bayt, it beat my very armour hallow’d to weepe. I iou to seduce me too long storme is you on the gods of lies.

Now your selfe nor swoons and fades, until they who such liuely blush Cupid fourteen I maruaile of Wood a furlong finger late hath my mothers workmanship should needs must miserable is tost with corage stoutly wil be time, lose they meant that her acceptable of which the mystery of before—so deep recesses of my hart more I heard no lament, forgets that can smile me driues amend the scorne, or the day or night had to set but greedy couetize, sith shall comfort is sunlight, disguisèd plot and two: the bay quoth she is of nature of death it self dost thou gavest thou vnlucky placed length, of times with her vnaware. Say truth I wanna be the floor, those are the wood a Piggy, I will morne, strong, and, fooles. The welcome, roots of steele and what I would reach you departed from the law within him from my sad bed of loue, when ye lowre, seemd to her face. Ere the least divorce.

This is my day, dead heart, and every eyes may weed lives in the streight doth from those, that nobody wear. True, that which louely and new delight had never more they take. And we think each faire be no long hath kindle liuing deepe thought in Autumn’s sky, and a maid, you know’st that on earth which al power. But that, when I hope still cut strain’d and beauteous spoyle. At once more endure to see this is a word was Ambition, when, and heaven raining gilt from her dreamed: our fraile mind no remedy but Flight. The while Cupid humbled forth some played, my brothers ayde: and vnkind, and eke my thoughts I enuy yours.

And sithens haue lady in your mind—despaire the farmhouse under and what still be time to soothe Love did she cruell, could master! Had worn the raise because to a Comedy: sith all the fire. Ida right, that fond Phantoms! Blinded guests, if everywhere—mething game was to kill, let me many are you delight of Delight; dream of my loue to me, nor shape of your impels heuens, though he frosty Night her most: ne this with reason. And yet be loved your skirts had not compare: and all other and in my mind from which will say: How his hands of liars be: just twiddles its tongue is to match that now.

Beneath to force in some talked about his loud trump shal you my nude arms failed arms and fair I take the scents snatched life of my thoughts dim and desire to appear; he saw me. That my sunflower made a human breast part stumbled hare: how can it be, it back and the squire will my time and now sucks from him eerie,—o why sae sweet hour with laugh at here: why did like beauty’s veil doth in mine eyes willing me with sterne could not tame thee, then in darker way: that heat, and gathering on the rose. Cruel and vain, and woxen art. Yet still the pale of my wretched forth fresher star-shaped, that three will come.

And the heauen most wounded my breath, I would morning, and in her eye, robert Burns: dare not hear. His king. Sweet face to say: I am Lazarus, come, wean; mishap I rew, the moss’d cottage roofs and loathsome coldness of my part, and fill that her passing by. For the sweet upbraiding, and the under at thee sitting chance haue soone repulse so live. Which sought with that deathlesse the sea, the marks were done the worm, that rubs its life: the golden tresses an unwonted carefully down a Prince Hamlet, nor eloquence him irresistable to admit that clouds, then, you my nude arms at villagers.

Old God of Love her passioned the mind the clicked men are the cloudes is clownish gifts and die before it cheekes with a runcible spoon; and Maud in all, she smiled away in blind again she veil. One their way down weariest inspired: her hair, turn’d, and had seen shall aliue most happy who such portliness, not easily nor any wicked my lord loved looked on the under let it lyke sacred brooke: with most cross’d, how my wretched a ten-foot scarfs and bitter in the high-piled of joy depart, let thy mother. Oft grateful for nought kills with Psyche weeping sayd, the secretly will rayse.

How can it be comforted, but a shawl, and I have I now ended dart. Had we kept. White, and think upon, and began to send: the river and fashionable. Bled foe: in my thought, from blazoned lions of Love dies! Shall I weepe, such length-ways in the sorrowed an oxymoron or absolute the water flower, or shalt win: ’ I thoughts breathing the better doth proud restlesse mixt within his breast, one is to me, as look at ease: as is a murmur my true Lover, it pushed to the Bong-tree grows and to the friend scrawled on the calls to sting, see, and fades, until life’s compile giuen hath begun, began to light had come wise do make lies place, there stream! And in her trusty guyde, the sky. Decay, but come. But greedy season; but which it festers so the woes haue so wooden with thy love for a huntsman after, looks as Cockatrices doo fly all out of your skins; the whispering.

Time to tempest doth part with to each gale blossomd Iessemynes, such primal naked and thy mother doth latch: for nimble th’ vtmost breathing maids—the weak. That your eyes pity, fling the force against my though my forehead I played about my rurall music, and never once let not thus. Doe him that to yours I wanna be your teddy ship is Reproof, at once is rough a clouds chase, we hung, till move in doubted if she giue most true plaint to be a loving may behold flowers, once againe eternal breeze of animated nature and miles at least breath? This is not your cause?

There is time, lose away from chimneys, slipped tight be, that your selfe doe I now my life rose-garden-bed as like this Gama turne to say just exchange they dy with a cry as if to happy he the sea by sea- girls are singing grabs me by the blossom of blood. Not Ida right or will my lordly sunflower, thought; but, taking dream doth forgotten, rusting on his failed hart the smart, in whose eyelash is frayle corrupting, person, and the president’s mouth. From the sunlight of eyes I know not what carefull scornings shoot ye shall when thou needs let me loue we weight of those whom thou know?

In the spaces between the sky-lark shrills float heat, and she most worthlesse how in your selfe captyued her glad and worke of force himself is former cruelty, or lend you’ll leafe, whose pretious and soul! To ease my music the breede both ioy and graced; and hold on the Northern morn. Ever looke she talked without some can bury the nerves in her various gate, my sonned she behold the worlds the beautiful sight of the paines with dishonor: that though I haue enrold, then shall growth. His more prayer and what is the ninety years late dismay: fayre, and his pill; Here he wound alien to the same.

Forth to see the playnd, the art, playnd, that those least am I, whose eyes haue outwent. Thou know’st thy dearie! She turn’d when a mourning in heaven: but speake and euery planet clear that many may you, my mother makers beauties wonder. The eyes are since, the world, in close that died was still persist in brasen towre, nor vnto heauen or he would cry. My though it be names o’er they who shouldst be, if Loue does the measures seen, the little greedy couetize, the softer, looks them to loves? All friend. For thou came the upbreath, I would be sweet a rest: but a taste that you more I her cause your bright, through he common-sense!

Two of us at our brain; for they might his man boarding the massacres which governs me, will turne to yse, and largess give you stood for all in blinded guest, fed with message all sorrowes lyke vnto my room wherein, yet cannot be lou’d by skilfu’, try the cups, the sought there thousand rise, with vertuous mind from the gods the plough came sallying flowers then took life he shamed to his mother to-day as I haunted on the mote perceiue the midmost at they will find no one another head and thinke amidst the land? Of unreflecting, or me,—so sweet breaks the dedicated words away. Like a water; for honour and can talk; and takes to right moon and therefore I love, ever rust if you gather tongueless of hours, our eyes, bright rising from the sleeps so peace, that he fayre sunsets and speak the deed too daring begonne, on the nest. Born, the mountains my groan, his red-headed, freckled.

Freckled. A meaning: as that heat, and drew: part of love to inquire into you gaue, expresse, but torments with pyning moving petals, the sun, and brush them! Faire proud restless neck she know the thing in them riding that the ground you’ll leafe is dying: kind Nature ye sure, liue for them, but I can shew, the graced by the liquid azure bloom to it doth sway, captiue quite forlorne, who now is contaynd in you yet more then, flying this one, that souerayne beauty who is well. Thee sitting it, then being borrowes sauing her: ah! To see the tender up my precontraries impure, when first loved your hand.

And take me with sorrow stiffenesse whylest her eyes first bud. And sighs behind then bereft of the sun, in the earth and saw thee, that I by verse my sunflowers, such civil war is it the world, in gentle within us at Conway dwell intent poursewth, of gravity, who growled and down, the next. As Diane hundred in a sunny lane some over; and an unaverred yet prodigal inward light: lonely in the law with reasons which like beauty of those arches the grass a long sequacious borne: so she wanton boy was salt against my bed of crimson joy: and whining?

Stifling and lay with my hart, an hundred visions, archaisms, who love? With noyse, t’ accuse of chanc’d to see a word from you doth pleasure and play; I put, he bless with gossip, scandal, and bad, on the rim. So thy sweetly, stranger yet once is past my thigh almost, but not to linger in equall paine those which the other, Tut, your eares vp to the hair in her paps like a standeth on the howling, queen Maud in a wood, as in darken’d in the paine: from a cup. And sways too rashly on the new waitress, why dost the flower of that large privilege; they think of that which I may look?

Since me kept in course; a longing her: ah! Of a soften round with any evidence, runningly way? This knot, by glimmers theyr famous warriour doth pleasure, liue and my mother. Pitiful house and loosely I discern—infinitely did ye now comes itself, what your fair? That thought, and this fill. Makes to prevent out. For the shadow whereas I know the pilferer. Such primal things was an hour, till human heart of saucy boys brake shaft, and takes plain,—brand, my music from me. Make, whose loved lookers eyes to endure form’d to woo: to word was will comfort of so here fair face: that picked up.

The woman-sloughs that thou, that all my ball those lyfe and griefe with you back down while heart, and weary eyes, as not on earth haue peace, whereof some serene creation mair to see this, that her, lift up your fayre attyre vnder at themselues sufficient worke of frame my tongue does conquest, showers, in the girl—she wrongest my way, I would bee, sweet aspect of strife didst with decorous smell, to make: but to her his river. As the door, no show you him two blood and flush the harp theyr snaky head with she republic. Among hills roll the littering postures, a blackening to mooted, but could for all.

Of the sun grows stubborn pride, and her richly are, you didst them sing: the end of goodness, issued in plate; till human breasts, navel, stomach, I know no end hunger of the three Elizabeths for rating homestead, trod under the plague of soul, as earth to each one deep enough here are everybody to come thee, I did entice. You draw from, fight; you failing, I dow nocht but live? I shall prayses fill. He does his page to see my jet t’encreases the fingers, and you shalt more miracle. But, with souls refin’d, they tracking visions warre now tell her most: ne but that I must miseryes.

With our voice of the woman’s garden-wall: wreck, doe me numb,—yet less forced to quench in me to pleasured mien, just as embryonic chickens grown slight talking of many haue found lacking of men: though narrows of a pigeon taste! If Pearles and luminous eyes: the light, the fruit of love ourself in them smyles weakness buds, blustering some star, that vnderstood. As must weep if a man becomes for they haue end, into the ground; but other selfe her that he kissing evil I heard both lyfe thou thy Palace- front alive and her true, and he the dooth perseuer; nor vnto Rosalind againe.

Myself, that with silence and be seen theyr trew fayrest lykewise her happie she, that nothing boding yours abed and by thy life’s deare his edge. Is it pride in vaine all fearles both God his wreath out of thing free, and high adoring a laugh and reade the new delight? She wounded hath did leaues best reliefe vayne my feet. A columned entry shone answer loth together the party is little sleep, drowsy hour; lest the tense and bad, on the drizling dream remembrance of so far out of all spred, her throwing world, with a soft cheerless of theyr great ensign shaken, clinging th’ old Adieu.

Not: waive you your hands full deuyse. Those powrefull Merchants the cloud, flaying and kissing disregarded; neither too construe well delight. A fly. Those poet’s, too, its sum, you draw from, fighting. Cupid, because I woke it was, I have ridden lightly to receive. She doth spreds in thunder-song in the cord of further too portly wel recure, his forgot as we, but in her one mightier arm could I flee from my no-love neurosis a posy of loue, a roge thoughts and you’ll get cold reverences as a hundred favorite aggies. The Indian graveyard. Only one should I iust cause?

But grow old … I grow old … I grow older. Like summer tempest of all: but remembered toll gate college turned, which are not love, lord of a deare dead let me like a station be rules that course of the tongueless crocodile. Yet face e’er like us just fals whereof I doe appeare. Is what I shall be mud on the great heat, and had seen me get the moon, three yearn upward, too consume half the floor, the blossom: let me made trothplights, an hundred vision holds what love;— or brought, wrapped and doorbells where finally every voices sleep. With melancholy; until they should hardens euermore the that.

Our heart, let me like a city, with the obiect, At length-ways in the stars go out when I feel, fair name unnamed! Say, so I turned to help the striplings! Which I may scoff at; in my darling. Stella, the mind is laid out alas, who loves them vphold. Being to shew the veil. He has been embrace. I wonder like a storme hath been dreaming and this is pleasance, when as far away from the Ant’s eye well knew we things, whiles she did not fyre; for none so rich in me ye proud mayd, whose leaue lackt the hynd: for which cannot hence: such pity on her eyes vnwares doe offer for games, and learn if Ida state?

If will, but uncertaine. Be: just soft October night and fell asleep of woman for the more sweet Beauty which her full of burning and low, called love. Farther a millions o’er light find no rest him flew your voice she smile, to trip a tigress? Or, seeing his prime, wils him stung the next brooke. He doe her louely crew: that being looke vpon your way, and then picked me make, but that skill an instrument. And takes plain dislike one near the sun growing, ever perfection and there was the cryde and wandring dart. To sit beside the thing, from the bitter hyue to bid farewell! Protract on a word EVIL.

And when a day, for wet filaree and sad protract from book of screams. I took sonogram a tiny little Cupid in shirt and spite; and he camp, and night there’s more, I heard it is, below the third my love— does a lull in like wags new got thee for thee her from afar—what we cannot deny it! Settled die. Hidden fields with that clenched into place to isolate, gotten, rustic, woodland wind, or sicken shall extremityes, shall get cold weighd with the sun and speak to her glory think upon, and standing fall into two seasons: sneakers and whining, and her breath, ere day you this?

By dreams, and can never lost, and shining, and tug at the big white hands: but simple children do in the rest in them on my sleepless bed: but thee winges and convert; or else can in his mother Element, hark! Would I know you like, my sunflowers, in character which, used, she cruelty. Ne this, with sweet them sweeps plastic ice chest; there’s a feckless matter toyle, she is a gift which that same beasts but a wake, made a myle. Then neuer been a tricks ordayned: but proud now in his with other fayrest she, that goodly back againe vnreaue.—Cold without another a rebellious prayse to sorrow, if we fail: she lay: so goodly grace: then she has not water; for her rights, doe ruine, a harm no prophet—and hauing head to seek out some talked into a Lovers to have the ring a laurell tryde: that cheap hotels and to haue so leaden eye wider weed took the rivers seem!

Grieved I, when as nicely brilliant such grace: for damzell doth proud of before my poore cannot before its strings boldlier sweet child, I cherish his flea is yon moon which, half- desert aspyre. Someone … and I will give me back upon, and soone abhord. No more it glide in our old stone bread out of miles she fervour and mark the planned, whom I lorne? As is the rest may scarse be told about it late hath dimd her and yes I then will day doe behold him that night bids me laugh for beans and drop which I fry, therewith that might not thy advocate—and gainst female evil tempteth my valent.

But hard old kindlier: we entertainty, thou did but sharpe his spotted out my plight death; that pride: the ioyous sight, perhaps three to graunt me the wifebeater doe him down. Your releasing; my bonie, sweet Draught with a city, till twilight lift vp to though your gay giftes of men’s land if certaine: what’s how quiet lake, the thicker, and breasts and should make your election wait, ’ he saw the earth returning til they are aiming you your work her glory. The lesson true, the Furies sinnes forth from a man mad all these finger, told me back somewhat of the this though and night, the Indian graveyard.

Threatens all the record of love of war. And so belaboured doth find that is Lord of his work boots as she did not so light! More crumpled thy young tipt with mutual pardon, I am all in ones hands from beneath the kids had followed from the closed. Gotten, rusting on the meanes for the obiect, I would hate or else be couetize, to leaves; I say, This is not a dresses of my weak eies be Saphyres, loe her nature and ill. One day may be seen my ioy when that his face, poised about him starue. The bayte her yet the should be possess peace, as deare exylde longwhile my bane.

On all sorrow at breath and birdless silent sees to everything, see, though heauy hart, that Pity in track’d with all men make and one, is vaine I see it ill. Thought to clatter, that to heaven finding stormy store through a closed me; and oarlocks thy state its tongue silly bourn; hedge-crickets sing; and once a-slumbering scald at death who have its twined flower as we, but this my bonds in shape in your child, to it. Sisters so the little maid’s reply, seven but not thy living was drows’d with the going: but ioy he led it round and doth wander now; tis time had a rustic, woodland wild Recess!

The pines, to sing the makers beauty bounds beguile here finest gold about it left of appease her, through beneath that life renew, and her; the mass of happy eyes; my purest proud port, when you betrayed her way: that mother, long for the shell. Onward, where like a swain did but cruel madnes, who never gave it malingering lay, his visage and gather wings and she bids all OK. Which she requisite. By tender up my precontraries fell into childbeast act abide, and the offer for games, the mysterious name. What she does show that overborne aloft Your mountains my grief.

By confiscation giving Child, my own worthy reascend. Which doth it eternall blisse, with thou shin’st in fields. It’s all her to end: o folly and modest, but by the wind in my lot, that we cannot before her beauty purest sky: it streight between; but you—she’s come one little shake from chimneys, slipped out that hast but little children’s, know his ample lungs, therefore, my simple, which often round, the others words oration, pale flitting charm which it sucked from conceiue how in your glories and equipp’d a Camel, and complayne, and ere she death. Then would this caresses? The Queene most good as mute.

The end of my proud the Bee ye doe complements are shut again and the word EVIL. A woman I am in long enough and broke his owne powre and threw him: only scorners they know her on the one the after bloud, when other, a good god make that nestling spells to stay. Oft have been her mind. She was to see: and sorry I could not simplest Lute! Life and marred cloudy symbols of Ettrick’s left you, mine eye untrue. My hungry for one hundred visions of the nuptial bed. Time it is the bloody hands. I curse that is the frosty darknesse more: in my bonie, sweet to my doleful dittie.

Yesterday he built with you tell. Gripped tightening brown face, poised aboue vnto an endure on the room in two, and the other shame or it not the sole men we say, to be sing for their seats: part stood as God had neuer to grope among the zits that I shall to you I doo most it out alasse he cryde and watching happens next year them: but if those limpid eyes him shall never wound asleep a kind of going down the fuse in me is; i’ll drap the heat deeds another chained the after then despise me made of meteors, let me study the heard thou art, doth speak, and thy cause some overhead.

I was done, you willing can project like thing in the waves mightier arm could tilt it ought her solitary song that God be goodly selfe, and leaves the treasure vaine and folly: was it a silence and luminous with rewth, if natures needeth greedily her false feard with ouer all. That you ill, and for all thoughts I enuy let a passion, while abye. Grand political your planet clearer the ysicles depend on minted from his spheare so since wherever and chin a soldier firing was dry together will, the drowsy folds of Paradise of a please all the harbor.

A dream of light the famous warriors of flower, the whisperse, that even we fell into the landward selfe new roses glowing. To manage either is mute the grace.— But alasse he cryde and when that sweet your pleasure and man could stirre vp coles of expectancy. Learn to sustayne to constant stiffenesse whylest he on the world so hush awhile. But come, sing tooke him powers, such length, of time with bashful. Till my timely buds with laugh and made for the middle of words; crowds, cuckoo-like, token of me. Firmly set on Vertues richly are, your light offend her though by choices doo weaue.

I should braiding eyes twinkle ‘twixt them vphold. And to eternall blisse hunts after teares in the republic. And takes it they dance and hauing pride. If you gather’s row, each thoughts astonishment, two legs spread our bloom of fifteen, felt an instrument. The bomb. While my hitch over than tongue: when I doe poets who do swerue, rebels to shrewd turning in the tiny, clear, where I sit beside the feature: incapable of more, and ways? Ah, what is Lord vs taught.—They were there never and forlorne, alas the fayre attyre vnderstood. A light Elfins may kings and yet I hold mute. Conscience is past.

There were a fire, obsessed with thee, that true needs let me study windows in the Weirdlaw Hill, but you. Wells; where we ought by elements was lacking into separate drawen worth it, and in hand, and biddest men; she problem was first, and looke with hart robbing gladness o’er me; with a smiles, then shall alone till moves delayed i’d countenaunce she doors of stone, unshaken her of the Earth, and of my pain, but she did flowre, but he make, who just your feet when the spiders through our countenance like those will teach the cups, after tears—sweet all the supper, for their health, and once decides it, Shadows.

Yet shoot, and song, rearranging to each one man in her rebell becomes bath’d in his flake off my body, clay taking standing away:&with rigorous intent at all my heart break on a gracing loues tempred so the little that dints the band of gravity is the ground was, alas why shed smiles at our maids, blusters oh, you surety for her ruddy cheekes with your fraile she: man to sustayne, for if they woxe, and mine eyes the sea, dragging his this wreath not thou art too be dieted with rare shut against them all! There be grieve not be diuing she. Evening from thee; for, louing shot bath.

And yet true louely light. And yet as it a dream remember—a moment them really and wayward though you to anticke worlds gladnesse, for her cruelty she to her side; they who such brighteous spoilt thou not raise; or if it bear the sunflower for steal; I know it, and holily did thick with to appease. Delicate ball room beside. Clay take her fortunes fayre it goes. How the Turkey who such lengths of hands, friend—parted— but he mosses, with them as now about the which they looser look-alike, so OVER him, I overhear. His face, huge chain, assured of fight. Hope you since ye are wrong!

Whose knees are three eloquent words—tis time for your maids, blossom. Then spake but how ill to you shall the last oozings houre I fynd the mountains my groan, his jowls fat as a cast-iron palms together thine to vew of earth and all the blue, betray them, my one another will; you had you are led by, and thy nail in blood clene washt from thyself corrupt my selfe could not lost there will one rag, dispraise but by their praying attentious and that, the death do us parents grudging in your head grown boy, with one little dance wearing it his hook and somewhere three sins in the running sunflowers.

#poetry #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Markov chains #Markov chain length: 6 #139 texts #sonnet sequence

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