#which seemed appropriate

[sarcasticdolphin]

“Named” Todolf fae au. If you are new since I did the other fae au stuff, then I recommend you read the earlier drabbles in this verse on ao3.

This one is for the lovely @adridoesstuff :) after you mentioned fae au yesterday this idea has refused to leave my mind.

Cut because fae au, though strictly speaking this drabble isn’t actually all that bad.

Even after he’s fae, fully and properly, he and Tod only watch at the mingling, lying contently in each other’s arms. They enjoy each other in the privacy of their bed, sometimes before, so Rudolf can feel the deep ache as they listen to the sounds of pleasure around them as they exchange lazy kisses, and sometimes after, their lust stoked by the lust of the others as it permeates the air.

It’s one of the times when Tod has thoroughly and utterly sated them both beforehand, so much so that Rudolf is amazed that he even managed to walk in himself, that the thought first comes into Rudolf’s mind, between the moans all around them, filtering through the gossamer curtains. 

Rudolf hadn’t been looking at all at the others, content to gaze up at Tod as his fingers lazily drew spirals on the king’s bare chest. Tod’s arm was around him, his thumb making gentle little soothing motions just at Rudolf’s waist.

Rudolf. His name. It was the only thing left, that had come before Tod. He didn’t remember the surface world. Tod had told him of it on occasion, and had shown him a few sketches. But Rudolf didn’t care to remember anything before the sunless sky, before Tod’s arms, before Tod. Tod is his world, his life, his everything.

The gentle fingers that stroke his cheek, that tilt his chin up to gaze at Tod’s luminous eyes are so welcome, though Rudolf can tell Tod has recognized the turmoil in his thoughts. He leans up, pressing a little kiss to Tod’s jawline.

I’m fine. We’ll talk later.

Tod presses a kiss to his brow in turn and cradles him closer, slotting their legs more properly together.

They continue to lay there, Rudolf rarely moving, just listening to the sounds around them, feeling the steady rise and fall of Tod’s chest, the beating of his heart, the warmth of his skin. He is loathed to do so but he does break the spell after a time, slipping more fully into Tod’s lap, humming at the ache in his body as he and Tod trade deeply possessive kisses. Tod’s fingers find Rudolf’s and they mesh together as Tod pulls Rudolf closer still. 

They kiss again, and Tod lazily flips them so Rudolf is gazing up at him, hands arched above his head for a moment before they go to Tod’s shoulders, giving little tugs. Tod doesn’t indulge him immediately, slowly lowering himself until they are chest to chest, legs fully intertwined once more. A few more slow kisses follow before Tod shifts them once more, returning Rudolf to his earlier place, tucked into Tod’s side.

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

The mingling is long over by the time they stand once more in their chambers, Rudolf’s clever fingers keeping busy as he helps Tod into his sleeping garb. His own is easy enough to attend to alone, but Tod never minds the help. It’s different, in a way. Where once they were opposites - Rudolf in garb white as snow, even for sleep, and Tod in inky black - now they are mirror images, the black stark against their pale skin.

But even as Tod reclines in bed, Rudolf nuzzling close, kissing the king’s jaw once more, he speaks.

“Something troubles you.”

“Yes, Majesty.” Tod has never asked him to use his title. Never when he was small, never even at court, with the others. But Rudolf likes the way it sounds, and he thinks Tod quite likes the way it flows off his tongue.

Perhaps once Tod would have had to tip Rudolf’s chin up so their eyes would meet, but not anymore. Rudolf meets the king’s eyes with ease, feeling the king’s thumb begins to make little soothing circles by his waist, where the sleep pants and shirt meet.

“I was just thinking about what I remember, from when I was young. And the thought occurred to me - this name, Rudolf. It’s from the surface, from the human world.”

Tod’s grip adjusts a little as they settle further, but he doesn’t speak, waiting patiently as Rudolf finds the right words.

“I don’t remember anything of the surface. And I find I mislike having my name be such a constant reminder, of there. I-” Rudolf’s eyes had been shifting, not downward but away from Tod’s. He looks back at the king, who is listening intently. “I was hoping you would give me a new one.”

“Oh, my precious prince.” Tod presses a kiss to Rudolf’s brow. “It would be my honor.”

They lay together for a long moment before Tod rises, much to Rudolf’s dissatisfaction, but he goes along with the king to their little balcony, the one that overlooks the gardens. The trees and fruits are so different in the dim light. Some wilted and withered, asleep, while a select few are fully blossomed, their own sleep being something for the day. 

Tod’s arm remains around him, as they take in the gardens for a long moment before the king turns to him, touching their foreheads.

“Golnar.” One of the king’s hands has moved to stroke Rudolf’s cheek as he pronounces the new name.

Rud- Golnar. It will take some getting used to, but he quite likes the name the king has chosen. Golnar is his name now. He raises himself onto his toes to kiss the king’s cheek in thanks. 

“Thank you.”

[cicada-candy]

happy WKM-iversary i am Never Escaping 10 year old me's interests ✌️😔

[✨️Ver w/o chromatic aberration under the cut✨️]

[from-the-coffee-shop-in-edoras]

🪓 Hewn and Sewn 🪡

I’ve been thinking a lot about Háma’s death again lately and started this fic for Tolkien Horror Week. And then I both failed miserably on the timetable for that and realized that what I needed for myself was to find a way for his horrifying end (it’s there in the books, and it’s not pretty) to not be totally devoid of consolation. And so it maybe wasn’t right for a Horror Week event anyway. Your mileage may vary on whether you find anything remotely consoling in it. I just love my guy, my #1, and want him to be happy. I don’t know if this accomplishes what I want, but I tried.

CW: canonical character death. He met a brutal end, per Tolkien, and that’s here, along with a fair amount of battle/war reality, incl. some blood and guts and general violence/death.

Art by @ rinthecap

**********

A body is surprisingly hard to kill. 

The first thrust of a spear may bring a man to his knees, the second fills his mouth with blood, the third can barely be extracted again from the depths of his chest, but only the fourth brings mercy at last. Until then, the body clings to its life like a sailor adrift in an ocean storm, scrabbling after any tiny scrap of floating debris and clutching with bloodied nails and broken fingers to the last vestiges of a smashed and splintered ship that somehow hasn’t yet totally disappeared beneath the roiling waves. The body finds its greatest strength at the moment of its greatest vulnerability, stubbornly refusing to relinquish its desperate hold on survival and rallying to endure unimaginable suffering for just a little longer — one more boot to the skull, one more arrow through the gut, one more blade in the back, one more, and one more, and one more — to see whether the body’s will to live can outlast the enemy’s will to kill. 

Háma knows all of this now.

He knows that the great tales of history have left out much of the truth, that the epic songs of invincible riders who slice through enemies like a scythe through wheat are more fantasy than fact. They have left out the hard work of dealing death, the sweaty, gruesome, arduous labor of cleaving into skin and muscle, hacking through sinew and bone, splitting open hearts and stomachs and lungs. They have left out the vomit and the blood and the entrails, the slippery gore that loosens grips and unsteadies footings, sending blows wide of their marks and into places that deliver pain rather than ending it. They have left out the soul-deadening horror of looking another man in the eye and realizing the only way to end his misery is to first give him more.  

These realities are seldom spoken of, threatening as they are to the necessary project of war. New soldiers each discover them on their own, and Háma was no different. He came to the army while still hardly more than a boy, an idealist raised on stories of grand, heroic campaigns and aspiring to the honor of being one of the king’s own guards. None but his mother had tried to warn him of the cruelties he was sure to encounter, for she knew well the gentle heart that beat in her son’s chest. Always the first to smile, to extend a hand of welcome, to offer quiet encouragement, to assume the best even of those who had done him harm, she knew how such a heart would rebel against those inevitable cruelties. But he had so little experience of all that was vicious and foul in the world that he couldn’t truly comprehend the warning, no matter how carefully he listened, and in the end her bleak, abstract prudence was no match for the vivid potency of his dreams. He kissed her farewell and went off in trusting pursuit of all that was noble and righteous, blissfully innocent of the ugly truth behind the fantasy.

It took only one battle for him to realize that the valiant and glorious contests of poetry were neither valiant nor glorious but rather panicked, messy slogs where nothing was simple, nothing was clear and nothing was as he expected it to be. The shock of it nearly got him killed, frozen fast in horror amidst a raging squall of bristling spears and glinting blades and hearing nothing but the echo of his mother’s words, suddenly so palpable and so obvious. Only the panic and the mess and the general disorder saved him from meeting his fate before he was able to rouse himself at last to the grim necessity of action and do what was expected of him. He waded into the carnage, he added to it, he turned aside from suffering that he couldn’t relieve, he tried not to look at suffering that he had caused. And somehow, by the grace of Béma, he survived to see the victory, though the word itself now caught in his throat, devoid of meaning.

He cried after that battle, hiding alone in a darkened corner of a stable and wracked by huge, shaking sobs that both embarrassed and reassured him, proof that the day’s bloody brutality had exposed his naive ignorance but not taken his humanity. He wondered whether that humanity could endure even one more such pitiless trial or if it would break him, changing the very core of who he was. He wondered if he was already broken in ways that he couldn’t yet understand, ways that would be revealed to him only later in the long dark of a sleepless night or the cold grip of a relived memory. He wept for the man he had been and for the man he had wanted to be, someone who might now be a stranger to him forever. 

He may have quit that very day had an older soldier not stumbled upon him and his tears, pulling him to his feet and tossing him a scrap of cloth to dry his face. We have all felt what you’re feeling, the soldier said. Anyone who is untroubled by taking lives should never be trusted with a sword. The soldier walked him over to a nearby field where neat rows of villagers were laid out to await burial — old men holding canes, young mothers in bright dresses, a few girls and boys with skinned knees or milk stains on their upper lips — all caught unaware by the enemy before the forces of Rohan had arrived to drive them back. Remember that you have killed so that people like this might live, the soldier said, and he left Háma to keep watch among the corpses, to contemplate death anew.

It seemed a simple reminder, a basic truth so obvious that it need not be spoken, and yet he had needed to hear it all the same. To be a guardian, using his strength and abilities to protect others, had been his earliest aspiration, and now perhaps that dream could protect his own heart as well, offering him the sense of purpose that would help to make the suffering feel worthwhile. He walked slowly from the silent field and back into the center of the village, where water was being drawn, animals fed, children minded, lives lived despite the tragedy to befall them. He rejoined his éored with a brief nod to the older soldier, and when they rode out again, he did so with the rent in his heart not healed but at least knit loosely together again, mended with stitches of duty and honor.

*****

Since that day he has killed many times, never unprovoked or with wanton disregard and never with the overpowering horror of that first battle, but also never with the clean, simple ease that he had once been led to expect. Each time he is forced to inflict pain on another, he feels it in his own limbs, and though he hates no man, he comes closest in his despair over those who fight him the hardest, who persist through blow after weary blow and refuse to yield or retreat. Do not force me to do this to you, his mind pleads silently, and sometimes, though it means the same thing, do not force me to do this to myself. In direst conditions, compelled to keep defending himself from an opponent with the white glimmer of bone shining out from mangled red flesh or with a dark, empty space where an eye had just been, he cannot keep these thoughts contained to his own head. Barely audible amidst the clash of metal and the thunder of hoofbeats and the groaning of the injured and maimed, he speaks the words aloud. I am sorry.

Many of these men linger in his memories, images of them emerging suddenly and unbidden from the depths of his mind while in the middle of doing other, more benign things. The man who stared up at him from a puddle of gore, tears streaming from eyes that were the same pale green as those of Háma’s youngest sister. The grievously wounded man who had spit in Háma’s face when offered mercy before plunging a knife into his own throat. The man who whimpered one word over and over as they grappled for control, a word Háma later learned meant ‘please’ in the tongue of the Easterlings. These memories tear at the stitches in his heart, testing their strength and threatening to sunder him anew.

One man in particular haunts his thoughts, lurking always in the shadows of his waking mind or the hazy, fragmented mirages of his dreams. Part of a company of Dunlendings who crossed the Adorn without leave, this man was a talented warrior, and had he only been taller or slightly larger of frame things might have ended differently. As it was, it took three heavy strokes of Háma’s sword to bring him down, and the battle-notched edge of Háma’s blade caught on something as he sought to pull back the final stroke. Forced to lean in close, to brace his foot by the dying man’s chest as he struggled to free his weapon from whatever barbed hook of metal or bone had trapped it, he found something he did not expect on the haggard, shivering face that was now only inches from his own — a smile, small but clear, and growing only wider as the man pulled in his last rasping breaths and the light slowly dimmed from his eyes.

The memory of that smile never truly leaves Háma. It follows him everywhere, as attached to his mind as his shadow is to his feet. He sees it when he stands long, lonely hours on watch in the cold and when he sits in a crowded tavern that swelters with the heat of a hundred bodies pressed side by side. It creeps up on him in the quiet wandering of his thoughts while his hands perform some common, repetitive task, or it appears with startling suddenness in the middle of pressing matters, insisting on claiming a share of his focus with the urgency of its unknowable mystery.

He dreams up a thousand different reasons why a man would smile through such agony, somehow finding happiness in the moment of ultimate despair. Perhaps the man hated his life and was glad to be rid of it at last, or he felt honor and pride in the idea of dying for his cause, though that cause was repugnant to Háma himself. Perhaps the smile was brought on by a delusion or hallucination, a vision of pleasure or comfort that shimmered with false loveliness for that Dunlending’s eyes alone. Perhaps it wasn’t even a smile but rather a spasm or tic, an arbitrary contortion of muscles masquerading as a familiar emotion and torturing Háma now with a futile search for meaning in the utterly meaningless. The only man to know the answer has taken it to his hastily dug grave. 

Háma lives these years balanced on the knife’s edge between revulsion and understanding, doubt and certainty, heart and gut. But with each battle, he learns better how to fight in a way that feels true to himself, anchored to his decency, and he learns better how to strengthen the parts of him that quail at the task, reinforcing those weak spots so that they prove all the harder to wound a second time. He patches himself with reminders of all that he fights for, and, in time, life gives him more and more to add to that armor. A beautiful wife who brings warmth and light into all of his days. A daughter who owns him, body and soul, from her first breath. Hard won respect and admiration, first from his commanders, then from the men entrusted to him, and finally from his king. He will never be a battle-hardened veteran, numb to the business of death, but he finds his way forward, refusing to let the sharp edges of those old memories and doubts carve and pare his spirit until it is shorn of all that is hopeful and joyous. Instead, he embraces the business of life, of being a husband, a father, a son, a brother, a friend, a King’s Guard, a captain, a doorward, all of his selves linked together like the rings of his mail and bringing him just as much strength. He is happy, and he is whole.

*****

And so it is that he finds himself strangely at peace on the ride to what will prove his last battle. He has spent a lifetime preparing himself for this moment, this challenge, and he will meet it with honor. The hand of fate has landed on Helm’s Deep, an unexpected turn but one that he welcomes. He knows this place, its gate, walls and keep, unbreached by any outsider in all the long years of history. A fortress and a refuge at once, it is everything that he holds himself to be: strength and shelter, protection and not aggression. If the Rohirrim are forced to this step, with the point of a sword at their backs, there is nowhere else he’d rather make their stand, defending the inviolable.

They have been warned that this fight will be unlike any other in the lifetimes of this army. This is no skirmish over the placement of a border, no periodic flare-up of ancient, simmering tensions. This is existential, a contest that will decide whether Rohan endures a little longer or falls entirely, and among their old enemies of Dunland there will be new enemies as well, orcs of Isengard that are taller, stronger, unafraid of the sun, more desirous of blood. They drink in the joy of death like a cat laps up cream, he is told. Show them no mercy, for none will be shown to you. He sees the logic of this advice even as he has no plans to follow it. He has worked too hard to keep the cruelty of the world from making him cruel in turn. He will do what must be done, but he will do it as himself, from goodness, and not in imitation of those he deems wicked.

Final commands are given. Théoden sends him to hold the gate, and though he feels ill at ease to leave the king, his one and only charge, he knows it is the greater need and he goes willingly. The ragtag assortment of defenders at the gate are his charge now — cavalry riders preparing to fight from foot, farmers of the Westfold, teenage boys whose beardless faces catch the moonlight — and he assures them that it is alright to be afraid. They will face the fear together. He feels some of that fear himself, more aware than ever of his captain’s uniform that will distinguish him among the masses, drawing attention in the one place where such attention is least welcome. But he would sooner die in this symbol of all he believes in and all he has worked for than to hide in common disguise. His uniform clothes him in courage.

The fighting itself, once it begins, passes quickly, as do most things that overwhelm. There is scarcely a second to take in what is happening before it’s happened, and things grow only more chaotic as the late night stretches into earliest morning. Fear keeps him moving, because to give in to the exhaustion, to stop for even half a second of stolen rest, is to expose yourself to the heavy stroke of an axe or a sword or a pike or any of the other tools Isengard has devised to sever the loose connections that hold a man’s body together. Fear keeps him on his feet, and courage keeps him pressing forward, unwilling to give ground toward that precious gate.

He fights this battle his way. He leaves those enemies who are injured beyond the point of threat to be collected by their countrymen. He dispatches mercy to those whose injuries have already guaranteed death, bringing an early end to their suffering. He takes no action from anger, only necessity. He kills, many times over, but always as a last resort and each time with a heavy heart, for even the orcs are living creatures, once descended from elves if old tales are true.

He is not unscathed in the struggle. Bloody weals, red and shining, cut across his cheek and throat, and his left arm hangs dead now at his side, the muscles needed to raise it severed by the point of a spear. But he is undaunted and rallies, again and again, as men and boys, soldiers and herders, guards and merchants, fathers and sons, fall all around him to the seemingly endless waves of new opponents. His luck holds, until suddenly it doesn’t.

The first sharp blow slides neatly into the narrow band of exposed leather near his shoulder, where a piece of his armor has been forcibly pried from his body. It slices cleanly through the layers of hide and cloth, cleanly between ribs, cleanly into the center of him. It stops him in his tracks, not from the pain, which is strangely delayed, but from the abrupt sensation that all the air has gone from his lungs, which leak uselessly now into the hollow of his chest. He is still standing, struggling to pull in delicate half breaths that each slice like a blade of their own, when the second blow lands, a sword at the knee that sends him to the ground. The third, a heavy, percussive jolt from a bludgeon, shivers the bones that don’t shatter outright and leaves him sunk helplessly in the muddy grass, surrounded by a pool of blood that started out as someone else’s but is soon more his than not.

A burst of flame to his left draws attention away as both sides rush toward the noise and light, and he is left for a moment on his own. Above him hangs the black, blank sky, the stars now blocked by clouds and haze and smoke. Beside him are an elderly man with no helmet and a split skull, eyes fixed open in unseeing horror, and a teenage boy, face gone grey and breathing shallow as the contents of his veins empty steadily from a gaping hole in his side. Háma would comfort him, take his hand and bid him a swift journey to the halls of his forebears, if he could only lift an arm or force a word from his lips. But there is no strength in that arm and no air to carry the sound. He manages only to inch his hand next to the fading warmth of the boy’s fingers, and he hopes the boy will feel it and know that he is there, that they are not alone. It isn’t enough, but it will have to be. 

A burning pressure builds in his chest, pushing out against his broken ribs and mangled muscles with a force that could tear apart whatever is left of him that is still intact, and somehow, above the screaming and the thunder and the clang of weaponry, he can hear a wet, bubbling sound each time he tries to inhale, as though he is drawing breath through a sopping cloth. He wonders if he might drown, miles from any river or lake or tide except his own blood that is rising in his lungs, and he uses his last gasp of energy to weakly raise his head, eyes searching desperately for a friendly face that might be able to drag him to help. But the eyes that meet his are instead cold and cutting, and they sparkle with sharp malice when they recognize the fine armor and burnished insignia of the captain of the King’s Guard. 

A voice calls in a tongue that Háma cannot understand, but he needs no translator to know its meaning or that of the answering calls. Fingers are pointed in his direction. Grips are tightened around axes and knives and clubs. Lips curl into wicked smirks as many feet advance toward him, the defenseless prey whose brutal end will send a message to no less than the king of Rohan himself. No mercy will be shown to you.

The crushing realization hits him in an instant, though perhaps he should have known it all along. This is the end. There aren’t enough allies left standing to save him, even if his wounds could be healed. The gate, the one object of his focus, is being torn now from its hinges, riven with deep fractures and fissures, and these men and orcs will pour through the gaping rupture just as soon as they are done with him. It will matter to none of them that he is as good as gone already, slowly choking to death on his own bile and blood, because they mean not just to kill but to destroy. They mean not to leave him in one piece, not to keep him recognizable even to those who love him best. They will take his life, but they will also take his identity, his dignity, his grace, his chance to be mourned over by those who would hold him, stroke his hair, kiss his brow, touch his cheek. 

He turns his head again to the young man at his side, to see one last Rohirrim face, but it has gone stony and lifeless, an unmoving mask of arrested youth. Háma studies this face, the soft down of a first beard, the skin unmarred by old scars or new wrinkles, and his heart trembles at the thought of all that this boy never got to do or have. A whole lifetime that was yet to be lived, with loves to be found, achievements to be celebrated, misfortunes to be endured, contentment to be earned. His death is a tragedy of lost hopes, of all that might have been had the boy been given even the twenty extra years that Háma himself has had. And that is the thought that brings a sudden and utter calm to Háma’s spirit, quietly reassuring despite the looming specter of gruesome execution treading closer and closer each second.

He cannot see his own imminent death as a tragedy like this boy’s, for Háma has lived — not as long as many men, but fully and well. He has loved and been loved. He has made himself and others proud. He has laughed and cried and grinned and gasped. He has seen great beauty, heard words of great kindness, tasted much that was sweet, felt hands of true tenderness. He has served a land he reveres, one that he knows in his heart will prevail and find a way off its knees to stand tall once again. He has joined himself to people worth dying for, people that he would weep to leave if not for the knowledge that he was more fortunate than most to have ever had such people in his life, no matter how briefly. A wife who was the love that made all the others irrelevant. A daughter who was every bit as perfect as she adoringly believed him to be. Another baby that would arrive in four months’ time and bring consolation and joy to its mother when she’d need it most. They will be pained to lose him, but he trusts their strength, the kind that isn’t sharp and brittle like iron but binds and flexes like thread.

Amid all the suffering of the world, he has been blessed, his fate woven together so tightly with filaments of gladness and fulfillment and favor that those things can never be sundered from him, even now at the very end. When the first axemen crowd around him at last, he doesn’t feel fear or hatred or regret. He feels only gratitude for all that he’s been given. When an enemy first takes his leg at mid-thigh and then his arm at the elbow, he isn’t thinking of the pain. He is thinking only of how one man could be so lucky, how he had somehow managed to claim not only his share of good in the world but many times that much. When a blade takes his ear and iron-toed boots prod where his ribs no longer provide resistance, he hears Brytta’s sweet voice calling his name and feels Hálwinë’s soft cheek rested against his chest. And when the last rattling breath leaves his battered lungs, sighing softly from his bloodied lips, he looks right at the man above him and smiles. 

[cator99]

out of curiosity, would you consider yourself butch?

used to be a blonde underweight twink and now I'm a based jock still got the chanel bag and the sick albeit matured mind of a suckpig to prove it so I'm gonna let you decide whether you wanna call me that word just cuz I got a pussy and short hair. I promise you that there have been enough advancements made in the art of lesbian sexual dynamics in the past 50 years to broaden the vocabulary used to describe the plethora of types of masculine females.

[metanarrates]

its interesting to me that the common sentiment appears to be that han sooyoung intended for jang hayoung to be trans. I think there's room for multiple interpretations, but I view being trans in orv as being inherently tied to the themes of self-actualization, as well as the idea that a narrative is unable to be fully defined by either author or reader. put more simply, jang hayoung is trans regardless of either kim dokja OR han sooyoung's intentions in creating her, or in how they each interpreted her. maybe the version of her in the novel was meant to be something else, but in the reality of this world, she is a trans girl. han sooyoung's intentions kind of don't matter there because the text has moved beyond its author

[marlynnofmany]

Always Bring A Flashlight

“This delivery,” I said, trying to hold my feet stable on the uneven ground, “Would have been a great use for the hovercycle.”

“Yes it would,” Blip agreed. She pushed the hoversled along with me, having just as much trouble with the criss-crossing tree roots that made up what passed for a road here. Her clothes for today were the type that fit closely and displayed muscle, leaving her natural frills as the only things waving in the breeze. Or maybe they were waving with frustration.

Normally she and Blop would have done a delivery together, but he’d sprained his shoulder trying one of Wio’s impossible puzzleboxes. He knew full well those were meant for people with tentacles instead of arms. Now he was recuperating on the ship, while we pushed a sled full of packages over some very treacherous footing. No, I wasn’t bitter about that.

“Have we tried hooking the bike up to a sled before?” I asked, stepping over a python-sized root and walking down one the size of a playground slide. “I know it would take some quick work on the brakes to keep it from crashing into anything, and you’d need somebody to ride along and steer, but it seems doable.”

Paint piped up from where she was riding on the front of the sled. “Oh, like when we did that one rush delivery with you running and pulling it!”

I chuckled, slipping just a little. “Yep, like when I was a sled dog. But with less of a risk of spraining an ankle.”

Blip said, “Pretty sure Captain Sunlight declared it too risky for regular deliveries. The hovercycle’s for small packages, not whole piles.”

Paint clambered over the stack to look down at us. Her orange scales were bright in this foresty dimness. “But it’s all tied down so well.”

I craned my neck up. “Are those rated for sitting on?”

“Hm. Probably not.” She climbed back to the front where the brakes were. She was a little small to be of any help in pushing, but she made a good lookout.

Like now. ���Hey, what’s that?”

I peered around the side of the package stack, but didn’t see anything other than giant trees and a ground covered in roots. Plus the occasional white marker attached to the trunks so offworld courier crews didn’t get desperately lost. It was all very shadowy and green. “Where?”

“There’s misty-looking stuff in the distance,” Paint reported. “Steam? Fog? Poison gas?”

Blip groaned. “I hope not.”

I thought back to the briefing for this location. “There wasn’t anything hazardous in the report. No predators of note either.”

“Good,” Blip said as the mist grew thick enough to spot in the shadows. “That means probably nothing will jump out at us when the visibility’s egg-dark.”

“Probably,” I agreed. “Are we still going to be able to see the pathway?” The white marker sticks were kind of far apart. I didn’t like our odds if we missed one.

“So far,” Paint said from the front of the sled.

We pushed on. The fog thickened faster than I expected, and I found myself struggling to make out the root shapes before I needed to step on or over them. “Paint? Are we going the right way?”

“I think so?” she said, a faint distressed blur in the darkness. “I don’t suppose either of you brought a light?”

“No.” I sighed. “Just my communicator, which isn’t going to do us much good.”

“I’ve got one!” Blip said, tugging at a pocket that I hadn’t realized was there. “It’s the kind that doesn’t make your eyes adjust, too.” With a quiet click, suddenly everything was vivid red.

“Ow,” I said on reflex.

“Perfect!” Paint exclaimed, setting the brakes and climbing over the boxes again. Her scales were as red as the boxes, though Blip looked black like the roots underfoot. While they handed the light off, I checked my own hand out of curiosity: red too, though not as bright as Paint.

“Twist it to adjust the focus!” Blip called. We were in shadow again, now that the light was on the other side of the stack.

“Got it,” Paint said. She fiddled with it for a moment, then sent a beam of red lancing into the mist with much less scattering in all directions. “That way! A little more to the left!”

Blip and I resumed pushing. We had to rely on Paint completely, but it worked.

She sounded delighted. “We’ll be there in no time! Onward!”

It was then that I realized what all this reminded me of, and I nearly fell over laughing. They of course demanded to know what was so funny.

“Another legend from my planet,” I said, wiping away tears. “Paint, I got to be Balto last time. You get to be the hero today!”

And then I sang Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer for my alien coworkers, and they were honored to be part of it.

~~~

The ongoing backstory adventures of the main character from this book. More to come! And I am currently drafting a sequel!

[oflights]

wip snip 4.2

thank you for the tag, @elskanellis! your snip is so intriguing 👀

in return, have some more of time travel fic: extremely gooey and tender and basically what the next 10k or so words are going to be (the fic is currently 20k lmao) before things get Bad again. still heartbreaking in its tenderness, though, because baby harry is heartbreaking (a contextual reminder that he is 7 in this snip!!! adult harry is henceforth "potter" from draco's pov).

“This is for me?” Harry asks, doing another turn, clutching at the still unnamed dragon in his hands. “All of this, the bed and—I can—”

“Harry,” Draco says softly, coming closer and dropping to crouch again, ignoring his protesting thighs starting to truly feel all the activity of the day. “Yes, all of this. You can sleep in the bed, you can name your toy—it’s all yours. This is what looking after you means; everything that I can offer is yours now. I promise.”

“Do I have to—” Harry starts, and Draco simply doesn’t want to hear where that’s going.

“No. You don’t have to do a single thing. It’s just yours. Because—because you’re a guest, and a kid, and kids deserve these sorts of things no matter what.”

“Oh,” Harry says, sounding genuinely startled in a way that makes Draco want to punch—someone. Perhaps Vernon or Petunia Dursley, or perhaps Albus Dumbledore. He did not ever imagine he would one day find new and more infuriating reasons to resent Dumbledore this long after his death, but he supposes life is surprising that way.

Harry breaks up his surprised, revelatory stance with another yawn, and this time Draco makes sure his tone brooks no argument when he directs him to the bathroom with the pajamas. To keep busy and shove down the punching urge, he resizes another set of clothes from the wardrobe for the morning, startling himself when he leans too far in and his hand disappears through the back wall.

“Oh, right, I should warn you,” Draco says when Harry returns, changed and padding gingerly towards the bed. “The wardrobe is a portal to the treehouse, so be careful if you go too far into it.”

“You have a treehouse?” Harry asks with a gasp, and Draco smiles at him, striding over and pulling the quilt back for Harry to settle in.

“You have a treehouse. I’ll show you tomorrow, if you’d like.”

He waits as Harry clambers onto the bed and settles against the mound of pillows, smoothing the quilt over him and then making sure the dragon is tucked in, too. “Any ideas on a name?” Draco asks softly, tweaking the dragon’s snout. “Do you want to sleep on it?”

“Can I name him after a—a con—a constellation? Like you?” Harry asks, frowning in concentration.

“Yes, of course you can. Which do you fancy?” Draco sits on the bed near Harry’s feet and leans back on his hands, gazing up at the ceiling as it cycles over them. “There’s Cygnus, the swan I was telling you about—he was my grandfather, you know, and right by Draco, so that’s convenient. There’s Pegasus, too, a type of flying horse, and Cepheus, he was a king in Ancient Greece—well, he chained his daughter up to a rock, so maybe not the best role model, but a cool name nonetheless. Just stop me if anything grabs you, really.”

“What’s that one?” Harry asks, squinting up and pointing; Draco makes a mental note to solve the glasses issue as soon as possible. He looks where Harry’s pointing, southwest of the quadrant he’d been explaining, and spots the most recognizable constellation there is.

“Ah, that’s Orion. The hunter. He was a Giant, you know, and he got pretty boastful, so Gaia—super powerful Earth mum, you did not want to get on her bad side—sent a great big scorpion after him. They fought, so you’ll never see Orion and Scorpius—that constellation all the way over there—in the sky at the same time. But Ophiuchus—he was a Healer, that one over there, see how he’s sort of between Orion and Scorpius? He gave Orion some medicine and saved him from Scorpius.”

Harry’s eyes are drooping closed, but he still murmurs, “Really? Is that all true?”

“Well, sort of. They’re stories, myths; all the stars have stories. There are different versions and they change depending on who you talk to, but I have my favorite versions because they’re the ones my mum told me.”

Draco checks in to see that Harry’s eyes are almost completely closed, and keeps talking hoping they’ll close further; how many times had his mother talked him to sleep?

“If you’re in the sky, it means you’re pretty important, right? So that means lots of stories. I’ll tell you all of them, if you’d like. I think you’ll enjoy this room, and you’ll be happy here. I hope so.”

That’s all verging on a ramble, but he thinks it doesn’t matter because Harry is asleep. So Draco gets up gently, patting Harry’s foot over the quilt, shoots the still unnamed dragon a grin, and starts to leave the room.

He stops only when he hears Harry mumble, “Orion. That’s his name,” and curl around the dragon, breathing going smooth and even, arms clutching it tight against his small frame.

Draco smiles at them both. “Goodnight, Harry and Orion.”

tagging @teledild0nix @phoebe-delia and @thehoneybeet, fully randomly chosen so absolutely no pressure!!

[valinoar]

the praise rhaenyra gets for being a “feminist queen” or someone who “cares about women unlike *insert character they don’t like*” is so unbelievably ridiculous it makes me laugh. so many team black stans love to paint alicent as a misogynistic demon who hates her daughter and will then use rhaenyra as the antithesis of this as if that woman didn’t deliberately undermine baela and rhaena’s own very much legitimate claims to driftmark to further her own agenda. she passes them off as contenders all for the sake of her sweet illegitimate son, whom she knows genuinely has no claim, and thinks all is well after proposing a lousy betrothal (which she makes BEFORE consulting either girls).

[oneefin]

no objections to gooseworx naming the protagonist of the amazing digital circus POMNI, but if it was PONMI instead it would:

contain four consecutive alphabet letters in reverse (five if you write the i as a capital letter and pretend it's a lowercase l)

consist of two concatenated music-related terms (PON, one of the drums from patapon, and MI, the third solfege note)

be homophonic with PAWN ME, which is somewhat appropriate - or if you say it differently, PWN ME, which is even better

work as a ligma ('pon me [sexual organ of your choosing]), especially if you mispronounce the MI as MY

rhyme with BAHN MI, which is just cute

[seagull-scribbles]

Mr.United States Canada Mexico Panama

[silverfoxstole]

Paul as Dennis in Joe Orton's Loot at the Ambassador's Theatre in March 1984, with Neil Pearson, Gemma Craven and the late, great Leonard Rossiter.

There was a piece in Saturday’s Guardian marking 40 years since the death of Rossiter (the chap in the hat and raincoat in the last two photos), in which various people who worked with him over the years shared their memories, including Paul, though he doesn’t mention the story he told in an interview years ago about the ‘body’ falling into the audience one night and Rossiter snapping at him without missing a beat: “Well, go on, boy: ask for it back!”

I've pulled out Paul's comments:

Working with Leonard was the sternest acting lesson I was ever given. Being a young actor and a bit half-arsed, two things he appeared to loathe equally, I got the silent treatment from him during rehearsals and was expected to speak only when my character did. I felt both intimidated and awed.

....

To this day I’ve not seen another actor combine comedic deftness and menace the way Leonard could.

....

I remember having just one conversation with him, one night towards the end of the run when we found ourselves the last two people in the pub after a show. I’d been doing a ludicrous London accent for the play and remember his surprise when we spoke that I was actually Scouse.

After some awkward small talk we landed on the safe subject of football. He, naturally, had played a bit and mentioned a 1950s Liverpool business houses league and was amazed when I knew its name. I told him my Dad had played in it too. A minute later he asked, “Did your Dad have an older brother and they’d play centre-half and centre forward?”

Exactly right, I said.

He’d only played against him.

Leonard Rossiter died during a performance of Loot in October 1984, a few months after Paul had left the cast:

I heard about Leonard’s death as as were preparing to leave to go travelling with friends. I remember feeling shock but strangely little surprise, at least on hearing it was his heart. My dad had died a few weeks before — his heart too — and something in Leonard’s physical presence had reminded me of Dad’s.

[mrfunnyinthebank]

Where Is My Mind by The Pixies is a fucking insane song choice for a wrestling entrance. i thought my ears were fucking deceiving me when i heard the first note hit during a promo. and then the guy who comes out is ORANGE CASSIDY??

[smorgasbort]

Imagine if V.VII Swinburne got a disembodied Rubiconian stuck in his head and they had to put him through the full Scrooge treatment.

He becomes a changed man and starts redirecting funds to RLF cells and everyone thinks it’s because the re-education broke his mind but it’s actually because Coral Jacob Marley taught him the true meaning of Rubichristmas.

[leguin]

anyway it's nice to have the dramatic personal growth and development thing paired with someone with whom i can talk at length with about how the sunrise looked and what we think of the new tyler album and what we like about our cats, and biking, and food, and, increasingly, local politics. one day we're both going to get written up for having 30 minute long conversations in the middle of the workday every day but until then, and hopefully even after then, it's a good time.

[wavebiders]

Been trying to figure out what age Shadowheart was supposed to be in the wolf flashbacks, and turns out Viconia really did just kidnap a whole 8 year old huh?

[the-busy-ghost]

I have finally emptied the blue bench of all the library books I need to hand back, even though they were terribly photogenic in there, and instead have filled it with all the old children's books I've been keeping around for like fifteen years or more, even though the chances of me ever having children or even passing them on to nieces/nephews/cousins etc is vanishingly small. These are less photogenic but at least it's one way to start clearing the living room of boxes.

Currently strategising how to fit them all in but also wow this is a list of Problematic Children's Authors TM