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deathonyourtongue · 4 years ago

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Willow Run | Ch. 8

Summary: On a horse ranch in Texas, life is far simpler than on the streets of Bakubah, but Syverson has a bad habit of taking in strays of all kinds, no matter what demons may be after them. Pairing: Captain Syverson x OFC Word Count: 4K Warnings: Mentions of past sexual assault A/N: It’s late and it’s long and sadly, there’s not nearly as much fluff in it as I thought there would be, but that’s where the story went. CHAPTER 1 | CHAPTER 2 | CHAPTER 3 | CHAPTER 4 | CHAPTER 5 | CHAPTER 6 | CHAPTER 7 |

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Sasha awoke excited for another note. Though she’d only received two, they’d become something of a calling card for Sy, his thing, so to speak. She loved that he took even a moment out of his day to ensure she felt comfortable and safe in his home, and though she never brought it up, she’d begun keeping them in one of the shoe boxes that came from their shopping spree. Always carefully folded, she allowed herself the small, childish hope of one day filling the box with Sy’s writing, if only so she could go back and reread them, remembering their story from the beginning.

Flopping her arm down on the pillow, she pouted as she found only cotton. Maybe it was just a formality. Truth be told, while she trusted his character and kindness, Sasha didn’t truly know Sy, especially where it pertained to how he acted as a lover. Maybe the gestures stopped once he knew he’d locked down a lady, or maybe this was just a one off.

Sasha pondered both sides as she got dressed and headed downstairs, surprised when she found Sy leaning against the counter, still in his lounge pants. Despite a serious case of bedhead, she couldn’t help but find him even more attractive in his freshly-woken state. Sy smiled when he saw her, gesturing for her to join him in the kitchen. It was only then that Sasha noticed the phone pressed to his ear. Sy blindly lifted his free arm up, a signal for Sasha to snuggle in close if ever there was one.

“Morning, darlin’,” Sy whispered against the crown of her head, giving Sasha a tender kiss that turned her knees to jello on the spot. Squeezing him tight, she pressed her own kiss to Sy’s chest, just over his heart.

“Yeah, uh, I’m not sure...Would you be able to tell that from lookin’ at ‘er? Okay, okay, good. Yeah, uh,” Sy checked his wristwatch briefly before his hand swept over Sasha’s head affectionately, “ten works. I took the day off, so we’ve got plenty ‘a time. Alright, thank you. See you soon.”

Closing the call, Sy set the phone down and wrapped Sasha up in a bear hug, a plethora of kisses scattered all over her face before he cupped her jaw in one hand.

“I called my mom this morning. Told her about you and asked her for advice on the lil’ one, especially when it came to a doctor--”

“I can’t go to one now! He’s got all my information, Sy! The second I go to a doctor and they pull up my name, the insurance company will send a letter, and he’ll know where I’m at!” Sasha interrupted in a panic, eyes wide, hoping Sy hadn’t just done what she thought he had.

“Darlin’, I know. That’s why I called my mom for advice. The answer was under my nose the whole time and I’ve just been so caught up in makin’ sure you were okay and that things are runnin’ smooth around here, that it totally escaped my mind. None of us Syversons were born in a hospital. I was born upstairs in my room, actually.” Sy spoke soothingly as he held Sasha’s shoulders, his blue eyes holding her gaze so she understood that they were on the same page.

“Our family’s been friends with the Taylors for years, and Nat’s taken up her mama’s post. I invited her over so y’all two can get acquainted. If you end up likin’ her, she’ll be your midwife and see things through with us to the end. Her husband is actually one of my best friends. We served together. If she manages to wrangle him away from his job, it’ll be more like an afternoon barbeque than anything else. Don’t panic, mama. I got you.”

Sasha took a deep, shaking breath, emotion threatening to get the best of her once more. Pressing her face into Sy’s chest, she was silent for a few breaths before looking up at him, her eyes glazed with tears.

“Why are you doing all this for me, Sy? You barely know me.” She whimpered, her breath hitching in her chest as Sy kissed her tears away, his smile sweet and understanding.

“Because someone helped me once, and I’m in the position to do the same. And because you’ve been doin’ a lot for me too, mama, without even realizin’ it.” At the confusion on Sasha’s face, Sy’s smile grew.

“I don’t...I don’t open up to people much, darlin’. I’ve told you more than I’ve told...anyone...in years. And I’ve been sleepin’ through the night, which never happens. I don’t know what kinda magic you brought with you, but I haven’t felt this at peace with life...ever.” He explained, a blush creeping up past his beard, Sy’s long lashes dusting his cheeks as he gazed down at the floor, utterly vulnerable.

Sasha’s guilt was forgotten as she reached up and stroked his face with the back of her hand, bringing Sy’s gaze back to her. No words needed to be said as they stood, an island unto themselves, each understanding the other’s heart in a way they’d never expected to.

“You’re special to me, Sasha. Very special. I hope you know that.” Sy whispered, each word spoken closer to her lips, until his were pressed to hers in the most tender show of affection she’d felt yet. Sasha’s arms slipped around the broad frame of his back as she drank in the gentility that rolled off Sy in waves, knowing she’d never find another man like him.

She could have stayed like that forever, wrapped up in his strong arms, floating away on the gentle breeze of his attentive kisses, but the clock on the stove caught the corner of her gaze and she knew they had precious little time to eat and get ready for Nat’s arrival. Still, she couldn’t help but cup his face and tug him down for one, much more playful kiss before they finally parted, each wearing a lopsided, twitterpated smile.

Natalie Taylor was probably the most beautiful woman Sasha had ever seen, and her husband Mark was no slouch either. The couple looked like they were straight off the cover of a magazine, with Mark wearing a smart gray-blue button up, black tie, and matching black slacks, while Nat wore a carmine off-the-shoulder top and high-waisted jeans with heels Sasha was immediately jealous of, even if she’d never worn heels in her life.

Sasha watched Sy greet them both warmly, her anxiety growing as she wondered just what the pair would think of her and Sy being so close, so fast. One look from Natalie however, and Sasha’s worry was thrown out the window.

“Sy, you told me she was pregnant, not that she was damn near ready to go!” Natalie laughed warmly as she stepped out of her heels and made a beeline for Sasha, her long braids trailing behind her like the train of a wedding veil.

“You must be Sasha. God, you’re gorgeous! I’m Natalie, but you can call me Nat,” Natalie smiled, extending her hand, which, like the rest of her, was perfectly manicured. Sasha shook it with a shy smile, wondering if Nat was always this put-together, or if she just dressed up for the initial meeting; she couldn’t imagine a midwife who attended a birth in heels and super luxe-looking fabrics. The cleanup alone would be a nightmare.

“Sy, there’s no way she just ended up at your gate. Where’d you meet her, really?” Nat shot a playful glare over to Syverson, making him laugh.

“At my gate, I swear on my mama.” Sy chuckled as he gave Mark a hug before holding a hand over his heart as though he were pledging allegiance to the flag.

“Sy’s always had a horseshoe up his ass with this type of stuff. Shame it never came in handy outside the wire,” Mark joked with a wink, moving to join his wife, carrying her stuffed-to-the-brim work bag with ease.

“Well, however you two met, I have to say, first and foremost, congratulations. Second, do you know how far along you are, honey?” Nat asked, getting straight to the point, her smile faltering a bit as she saw the marks strewn all over Sasha’s arms and legs. A look back at Sy made him close his eyes and huff out a breath.

“We met three days ago, Nat. None of that was my doing,” Sy explained, doing his best to stay patient, knowing full well everyone assumed the worst, even if they knew him.

“I was about to say…” Nat murmured, shaking her head, her eyes moving back to Sasha with even more kindness than before.

“Good riddance. No one needs a man like that in their lives. Boys, if you’ll excuse us a second, Sasha and I are gonna have a little chit chat about the baby, then we’ll be back.” Natalie said with confidence, taking her bag from Mark before giving him a kiss on the cheek, having to reach up on her tip-toes to do so.

Taking Sasha’s arm in hers, Natalie led her upstairs, keen to find out not only more about the baby, but about what had happened to Sasha and how she’d come into Sy’s life. Sasha moved as though on autopilot, looking back at Sy for reassurance and only feeling better about everything when she got a gentle nod of encouragement from him.

The boys had turned the TV on downstairs by the time Sasha and Nat had closed the door to Sasha’s room, only the faint sound of garbled voices coming through the wood.

“Well, first thing’s first. I’m glad you got out of wherever it was that you were before Sy, ‘cause any more of this,” she pointed to one of the fresher injuries to Sasha’s legs, “and who knows what would have happened. I’m so sorry you had to go through that, sweetie. You’re safe here. Sy’s good people. I’ve known him since I was little and that man’s always gone out of his way to be kind to others. Even more so after he enlisted. Heart of Gold, just like my Mark.” Nat’s words were earnest and sentimental as she unzipped her bag, pulling out everything she’d need to carry out an exam and then some.

Sasha didn’t recognize half of what the devices were, but she panicked a little at the sight of something that looked more like a penis than anything medical ought to. Nat, seeing where Sasha’s gaze had gone, smiled knowingly.

“It’s for an internal ultrasound. Helps me see the baby a little easier. It doesn’t hurt, I promise. Have you had an ultrasound yet?” The concern in her tone came with the last question, Natalie fighting every urge she had to hug the other woman, already feeling for her and the situation she’d escaped from.

Sasha shook her head, too overwhelmed to speak much. Logically she knew she’d have to be examined at some point, she just hadn’t counted on it being so intimate. “I only managed to get to the doctor twice before coming here. Once just to make sure I was carrying, and the second to get some general info on what was normal and what wasn’t.”

“Did they do a blood test?”

“Yeah, but just in-house. Just to confirm.”

“Okay. Well, we can cross that bridge another time, since I didn’t bring my cooler with me today. Don’t worry though, all my testing is done with patient numbers, not names, so if you ex is savvy to that sort of stuff, he won’t be able to tell you apart from any other woman in Texas,” Natalie explained, wishing Sy had told her more of the story over the phone, but understanding that Sasha’s story wasn’t his to tell. Turning to face Sasha after dousing her hands in alcohol, Natalie indicated to the bed with a kind smile.

“If you wanna go ahead and lay down for me, undies off, we’ll have a quick look, and go from there, okay?” Sasha nodded, feeling a touch more anxiety as she moved to lay on her bed, slipping her underwear off as she was told to.

“This won’t hurt, will it?” She couldn’t help but ask, her anxiety getting the better of her and making Sasha’s breathing more laboured than it needed to be.

“Shouldn’t hurt at all, sweetheart,” Nat confirmed, gloving up to do the visual inspection.

Once started, it didn’t take long for Natalie to find the tell-tale signs of abuse she was nearly certain even Sy didn’t know about.

“How long ago were you raped, honey?” She asked as kindly as she could, her face one of sympathy as she watched Sasha tense up immediately.

Though in the back of her mind, Sasha knew what it was, she’d spent years avoiding the word, not wanting to admit it to herself. Tears filled her eyes as she looked over at the nightstand, unwilling to meet Nat’s gaze.

“About f-five days ago,” Sasha mumbled, face red and hot with shame, one arm coming up to cover her eyes. If the house caved in on them at that moment, it would have felt better than remembering her last time with her ex.

“That’s why you ran. I understand. You’re beyond brave, Sasha. Most women, even under those circumstances, are too paralyzed by fear to leave. You took the most important step to save your baby’s life, and that’s something you should be very proud of.”

Though she wasn’t certain anything would come of it, Natalie discreetly took a swab, labeling it separately, and slipping it in her bag, hoping that if nothing else, it could be used later against the man who’d caused Sasha so much physical and psychological pain.

With her visual complete, Nat set up her portable ultrasound and attached the internal wand to it. Anxiety rose up in Sasha once more as she watched Natalie prepare, and before she could stop it, her voice came out in something of a whisper.

“Could...Nevermind.” Quickly correcting herself, Sasha shook her head, wiping furiously at her eyes and chastising herself for being such a baby about things.

"Nuh-uh, honey. None of that holding back nonsense with me. You want or need something you voice it out. Loud and proud, mama." Nat coached, stopping what she was doing and moving to slip a blanket over Sasha’s knees, having a good idea of what the other woman meant to ask.

“No, nevermind. It’s fine. Let’s just get this over with, please.” Angry at herself, Sasha took a deep breath and nodded to Nat, who still looked concerned, but nodded back.

Though the ultrasound was uncomfortable, it didn’t hurt, something which gave Sasha only the smallest bit of joy, as she knew it meant she was healing physically. Looking out the window, she mentally checked out through the rest of the exam, responding only when spoken to, and only with what she needed to say. It was all overwhelming, but having shed enough tears in the past three days, Sasha refused to allow herself more, her internal monologue having nothing good to say about her own behavior.

“Okay, sweetheart. We’re all done. Both you and your baby are in great shape, although I would ask that you start eating more. With Sy around, that shouldn’t be an issue. Man loves to cook,” Nat said with a sympathetic smile, feeling for Sasha even more than before.

Taking a seat by where her patient had sat up, Natalie took Sasha’s hand in hers. Smiling softly, she looked down to meet Sasha’s gaze.

“Do you wanna know what you’re havin’, or do you wanna wait ‘till the day?”

Still lost in her own thoughts, Sasha merely shrugged. “Just want it to be healthy. Nothin’ else matters.”

Natalie’s lips pressed together, the answer breaking her heart. She’d tended to many a battered woman due to her volunteer work at a women’s shelter, but it never got easier to see just how things that were supposed to bring joy on any other occasion, were nearly always reminders of what a woman had endured instead. Rubbing Sasha’s arm, Natalie stood.

“I’ll go get Sy. After all of that, I know you could use a snuggle.”

Sasha decided then and there that she liked Natalie, hoping Sy would keep his word and allow her to entrust the other woman with her and her baby’s care. Though she didn’t outwardly show it, she felt relieved that Nat had the intuition to know when to pull back and keep from being overbearing; it was a rare gift, in Sasha’s experience and one that would be useful during what she could only imagine would be a painful labor.

“That girl’s been through a lot.” Natalie sighed as she took a seat on the couch, handing the ultrasound photos to Syverson. “Sasha’s about 6 months in and she’s gonna be having a baby girl. She was too overwhelmed to even ask about pictures or care about what the sex of the baby is. There were signs of repeated sexual trauma, and she confirmed that she’d been raped two days before coming here. Whoever she was with before? Needs to get bit by a rabid dog and die as slowly as possible, because what he did to her is just…” Natalie couldn’t finish her sentence, too angered by what she’d seen on Sasha’s body to even think of a fitting word.

Without needing to be told, Sy tucked the pictures into the back pocket of his jeans, pointed at Mark then at the barbeque where the steaks were cooking, and jogged upstairs. Knocking softly, he opened the door after getting no reply.

“Hey, darlin’,” he whispered kindly, taking a seat at Sasha’s hip, one hand reaching out to rub the back that was facing him, Sy knowing she was upset just by how heavy the air was. Still getting no response, he slipped the pictures out of his pocket before getting into bed behind Sasha, one hand sliding under her head while the other went around her swollen tummy.

Sy stayed silent, not wanting to push. If Sasha wanted to talk, she would; he’d gladly spend the day with her wrapped up in his arms if it helped her more than talking did. Pressing kisses to her shoulder and the back of her head, it wasn’t long before he felt Sasha’s fingers thread through his over her belly.

“It’s funny how easily you can push something to the back of your mind, to ignore it completely because to believe it means accepting more pain.” Sasha whispered, her voice hoarse with emotion. Sy squeezed her hand, urging her to continue

“Nat asked me point blank if I’d been raped, and up until she said it that way, I’d never once thought of what had happened to me, as that. He was basically my husband, I just...I always told myself that it was normal. That husbands just took whenever they wanted to get their rocks off, y’know? But in the back of my head I knew. Knew it wasn’t normal to...to bleed after, stuff like that. Back when I had friends, they always went on and on about how good it felt, and I just...It’s never felt good. Never.” Sniffling, she curled further into the pillow she held against her chest.

Feeling his rage rise to meet the bile that made a knot in his throat, Sy breathed deeply, reminding himself that it would do neither of them any good to be angry at a man who wasn’t there to answer for his crimes. Stroking a hand over her hair, he gently shifted them until Sasha sat with her back pressed to his chest. Holding her close, he tucked his face into the crook of her neck, choosing his words carefully before speaking.

“It shouldn’t ever hurt. Even if you’re just havin’ a one-night-stand. What he did to you wasn’t out of love, like a husband’s supposed to. He did it to control you, to make you fear ‘im, because he’s a weak sonofabitch. I can’t imagine the kind of pain you suffered under his hand, but I know one thing; it backfired on him, big time. Because the moment he put this lil’ one in ya, he made you the strongest woman on earth and no amount of fear or control could keep ya. You fought, you got out, and you got to somewhere safe. Never again will he have any power over you. Never.”

Sasha felt herself smiling as she realized that Sy was speaking the truth. She had gotten out, gotten away, gotten somewhere safe. All because of her baby. Sniffling, she wrapped his arms around her tighter, Sy gladly giving her another squeeze as he kissed her cheek fondly.

“Wanna see your lil’ one, mama?” Sy murmured against her cheek, his own smile growing as he slipped the pictures into view, resting them on her bump.

Sasha’s breath hitched in her throat as she took in the grainy, black and white image of her baby. Though there wasn’t a lot of detail, it was easy to see the baby was at ease, sucking on its thumb.

“Is it a boy or a girl?” Sasha asked, remembering Natalie’s question, and immediately regretting her answer. She did want to know.

“That right there, darlin’, is your lil’ sweetpea,” Sy whispered, surprised when he found his own voice thick with emotion. Sy let out a wet chuckle when Sasha practically dove onto him, hugging him tightly.

“Congratulations, mama,” he murmured against her hair, Sy’s expression softening as he felt Sasha cup his face. Their gazes connected only for a moment before she brought him down, their lips connecting in a way that made both their hearts sing.

#henry cavill #syverson x ofc #captain syverson #captain syverson fic #fic #deathonyourtongueoriginals #willow run

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kagrenacs · 4 years ago

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Explaining the Iceberg #5

*Not everything is covered, take note of trigger warnings before the links

Altmeri Poetic-Architecture: Referencing a response by Lawrence Shick to a question about Alinor buildings resembling insect wings and glass. There was a lot of criticism directed towards the appearance of Altmeri buildings in ESO when it first debuted, and then again when Summerset launched. Shick commented that, despite fanciful descriptions, their materials are still practical, and that architects can’t create buildings from poetry.

Megalomoths: Similar to the Sunbirds of Alinor, Megalomoths are spaceships that look like moths.

Dreugh Undersea Cities: From Mankar Cameron’s and Vivec’s writings. Both indicate the dreugh have (or had) their own empire, or other sorts of colonies that exist underwater.

Possi/impossipoint: Some more MK jargon, an impossipoint is a point in time where nothing suddenly becomes something. Likewise, a possipoint is where something that exists, can become something else. Essentially moments in time where something changes.

Night Mother is Mephala: A well known theory by this point. An in-universe and out of universe theory that Mephala is actually the Night Mother, and that the animosity between the DB and Morag Tong is her own creation.

The Oghma: Presuming this references to the Oghma Infinium. A book created by the wizard Xarxes, he named it after his wife, Oghma, who he made from his favorite moments in history. In general, an Oghma seems to refer to a journal or a recorded history.

Sovngarde on the moon: Shor/Lorkhan is the ruler of Sovngarde. His corpse is also said to be the two moons. This theory ties the two together and proposes Sovngarde is/is on the moons.

Misanthropic Space: Not much on this one. Taken together, Misanthropic means dislike of humanity. The book Sithis mentions that Sithis the god is sometimes thought of as misanthropic. Considering he’s also considered the void itself, Misanthropic space may refer to this.

Tharnatos: The Cyrodillic sect of the Mythic Dawn, mentioned in the Redguard forums. As a side note, tharn-atos probably refers to the Tharn family, of which Jagar Tharn had ties to Mehrunes Dagon

Continental Time: This draws from MK’s C0da and other threads. At the end of c0da a new universe is born, in a later thread (since deleted, it was a jab at the Otherkin community), MK states that this universe is Akavir, and that Yokuda (misspoken as Hammerfell) was the past (this might be a reference to timezones in the real world, but judging from previous comments from MK regarding his writing on the Redguard history I doubt this). This would mean the Redguards are from an entirely different universe and not related to the other humans, which is racist! This lore has since been disowned by MK and LadyN, but fans still perpetuate this theory. This post discusses racism within the writing. (PLEASE NOTE, that if you click the final link or search for MK’s statements on the Redguard lore, there are some anti-indigenous statements by him) https://betterbemeta.tumblr.com/post/190628347692/corsairesix-fallout-new-vegas-2010

The Marukhaki Selective: A sect of the Alessian Order that was named after the First Era prophet Markuh. They caused the Middle Dawn, an especially long Dragon Break, by trying to remove Auri-El from Akatosh.

The Prime Gesalt: Another name for the Numidium. Gestalt comes from the german word for shape, and refers to a school of psychology that essentially looks at behavior and consciousness as a whole. Essentially this is probably referencing the theory that the souls of the Dwemer became the ‘skin’ of the Numidium, like cells in a body.

The Jills: Described as ‘female dragons’ (why they’re female when dragons traditionally have no gender, and not just a subset of dragons/Aka, is an unfortunate product of cis writers). They’re agents of Akatosh(more attributed to Alkosh, the dragon-cat) who mend tears in time. They’re described sometimes as sub-gradients which essentially means they’re small shards of Akatosh’s soul.

Versidue-Shaie still alive: Not much was found on this, but i don’t think much is needed. Probably a theory that the Tsaesci Potenate of the 1st Era wasn’t assassinated and is alive.

Molag Bal Destroyed Tamriel: Not much found on this either, I didn’t look particularly hard however, because there’s a lot of nasty shit people write about Molag Bal! If I had to take a stab at it, I'd assume it looks at the fragments of Nirn in Coldharbour and theorizes these may be from previous Kalpas. Possibly from Kalpas Molag Bal himself destroyed.

Seekers and Ascended Seekers: A possible (if flimsy) connection between Hermaeus Mora’s Seekers (seen in Dragonborn) and the Ascended Seekers of Morrowind. The book, Sithis has a line that states ‘Come unto the Sharmat Dagoth Ur as a friend AE HERMA MORA ALTADOON PADHOME LRKHAN AE AI’ This thread discusses this theory and why there’s probably no connection better than I can.

Ordinated Receptile: Possibly another name for the Eye of Magnus. The King of the Kamal from Akavir landed at Winterhold stating he was searching for the ordinated receptacle

Varlinance+ No results from any site, there seems to be a typo in this entry

Rorikstead: A theory stating that Rorikstead is actually a cultist hotspot. Based on the fact that one of the characters seen in Skyrim, Rorik, states he founded the town. Previously in this area there was a town named Rorik’s Steading, founded by a man named Rorik. There are other key points, Rorikstead having good crop production and soul gems found in every house.

Sovengarde Shor’s Kalpic Army: Sovengarde is described as a hall where the spirits of Nords wait until the ‘final reckoning’ If taken with the obscure text ‘Shor, son of Shor.’ This is explained by the Kalpa cycle, where the universe is reborn and the Ehlnofey wars begin again. Also, this resembles the Norse mythology of Ragnarok.

World-Refusals/Anti-Creation: A primarily Dwemeri school of thought. Basically the denial of the world and existence, either to return to the state prior to the creation of Mundus (godhood essentially) or the nothingness/collective unity of souls before things learned to be separate.

Mathematical Atheism: In the context of tes, this is probably another Dwemer belief. Mathematical Atheism is used to describe a couple different things over the years, but taken in context, I’m guessing it’s comparable to the irl philosophy that math isn’t something fundamentally woven into the universe. It’s more like a language humans have came up with to describe what we see, and aliens may have a totally different language of math than us.

Many Ysgramors: As if one wasn’t enough, a theory based on the fact that Ysgramor exists as a Draugr, and as a Soul in Sovengarde. Either the deeds of multiple people got attributed to his name, or there were multiple people named Ysgramor.

The Crux of Transcendence: another name for the Mantella (the big old soul gem that powers the Numidium when the heart doesn’t)

(D)aedric artifacts sentient: Fairly straightforward, artifacts are the essence of a d/aedra, condensed into an object, they also change hands fairly often, appearing in random locations, possibly by a mechanism inherent to the artifacts themselves. Excluding special cases like Umbra, this theory proposes the artifacts may make conscious choices to jump around.

Paleonumerology: A field of study within tes. Numbers carry significant symbolic value (the sharmat, 1+1, the tower being a 1, ect). Paleonumerology is studying these numbers, their historic basis, and their relation to the physical world. Remember when I said math is the language of the universe? Well this would be it.

Jagar Tharn was good: An argument supporting Jagar Tharn. If he was such a powerful mage, there’s a chance he knew Uriel Septim would be the last heir, and imprisoned him to keep the dragonfires lit. There’s more to it than that, here’s the full thread if you’re interested.

Aldmeris was real (in my mind): The ingame theory that Aldmeris is nothing more than a myth, acting as a setting for ancient stories, or a previous name for the Summerset Isles and/or Tamriel.

Vivec killed Moraelyn: Moraelyn, a member of the Ra’athim clan, was called the witch-king of Ebonheart, during the first era. He has no notable connection to Vivec, so i’m a little confused at this one. My best guess is Moraelyn was likely a proto-version of Nerevar, therefore this might be a roundabout statement regarding Foul Murder

Divine Skin/Dwemer Numidium Skin: A noncanonical statement by MK saying he believes the Dwemer’s souls were collectively absorbed, becoming the Numidium’s ‘skin’

The Dream: The thought that the entirety of the TES universe is either metaphorically, or literally, a dream. Metaphorically speaking, it’s a way to conceptualize the universe, everyone is a character playing a part in the dream, an individual in their own right, but ultimately a part of a greater whole. Literally speaking, the universe may be the Dream of Anu, who is using the universe to comprehend his grief at the loss of Nir and Padomay. It may also be the dream of an entity higher than Anu, called The Godhead. And even beyond this, the Godhead might be a metaphor for the creators of The Elder Scrolls, the world being their creation/drea

True Nords are all Bandits: The observation that bandits within Skyrim often call the gods by their Nordic names, rather than acknowledging their imperialized counterparts.

Sotha Sil’s Last words: An obscure text written BEFORE the release of Morrowind. The author is anonymous, but many speculate that a dev wrote this.

Deep ones: In oblivion, in the town of Hackdirt there are books mentioning the worship of ‘The Deep Ones’ as you descend into the town you can see where the townsfolk worship these entities. There are a good deal of theories about what the Deep ones are, but they’re probably taken from the Cthulhu Mythos, specifically the Shadow over Innsmouth and the short story ‘Dagon’.

Nirnroot tiny towers: https://www.reddit.com/r/teslore/comments/4qdw78/tiny_towers_a_nirnroot_theory/ A half-serious theory that states Nirnroots are created by the Hist to reinforce the towers and prevent them from ‘erroding’

The Loveletter from the Fifth-Era: A noncanonical MK text that acts as the precursor to C0da. A letter sent from the future discussing Landfall and the events afterwards.

Kagrenac possessed Dagoth Ur/Sharmat: Dagoth Ur was said to hold the same motivations as Kagrenac, ie: remove colonizers from their home. Going a step further to look at non canonical sources, specifically the Dwemer Numidium Skin statement, Kagrenac was attempting to share godhood among the Dwemer, and may have succeeded. Morrowind shows us that Dagoth Ur was attempting to do the same. The main theory here is that Kagrenac’s spirit may have possessed Dagoth Ur and was the source of his motivations, or that an entity more powerful than both of them, the Sharmat, possessed them/took them over. The Sharmat may be metaphorical or literal, either a desire for power, a hunger for something more (which is comparable to Lorkhan creating Nirn, in an effort to find something more/enlighten everyone, or to his darker manifestations, the Greedy man, the thief, ect.)

Cuhlecain Reman Bloodline: In universe speculation that Emperor Cuhlecain (the ‘emperor’ before Tiber) and Reman are related.

Cyrodiil Spread to the Stars: Found within ‘Where were you when the Dragon Broke?” Empress Hestra of the Alessian Order, who ruled during the Middle Dawn, stated that the Cyrodiil empire spread to the stars. This could refer to the goals of the Marukhati Selectives in ‘removing Auri-el from Akatosh’, effectively exerting will upon the gods(stars) themselves. Or more likely, a reference to the out of game texts discussing space travel during the Middle Dawn.

Anti-CHIM: Separate from Zero-Summing (having an existential crisis so hard you disappear) although the two are sometimes used synonymously. While CHIM is realizing you’re just one part of a larger whole, while retaining individuality, and Zero-Summing is realizing you’re one part of a whole, but unable to accept that, Anti-CHIM is a person realizing their part in the universe, but refusing to accept it, instead gaining the ability to manipulate the universe but essentially seeing themselves as the center of it, instead of another part. https://teslore.fandom.com/wiki/Anti-CHIM:_A_Concept_and_Theory

Thalmor and Jygalagg: A theory that states that the Thalmor worship Jygalagg due to his nature as the prince of ‘order’

Dibella=Y’ffre: A thought that these two deities of nature and beauty are the same entity. This theory is mostly hinged on the (very cishet) thought that mer are feminine and have the masculine god Y’ffre (who is described as female in lore occasionally), and men are masculine and have Dibella who is feminine.

The Void Ghost: Described as the lost spirit of Lorkhan, who remains because his work isn’t done.

House cats are Khajiit spies: Referring to the Afliq, a form of Khajiit that resembles a housecat. Because of this they’re often used as spies.

TEM (Warspore Tiberia): From the text Cyrus vs.Tiber Septim, either a battleship or battlespire.

The Athedorix Conundrums: A book that is never actually seen in game, and only mentioned briefly. Said to contain 9 riddles that drive people mad.

Aetherius Dream Visitation: Pretty much what it sounds like. The ability to travel to one another’s dreams (probably through the Dreamsleeve)

Revelation at the Death of Alesh: While this doesn’t directly refer to anything I've found, I'm guessing it’s discussing Marukh the Prophet, who in a state of near death was visited by Alessia’s spirit.

Empire ended in 3E 417: This year could be seen as a beginning to an end. The warp in the west occurred, allowing the Underking to die, keening and sunder were lost to Dagoth Ur, which eventually lead to the empire taking an interest in Morrowind and the Heart being ‘destroyed’ leading up to the events of Morrowind and Oblivion and the end of the Septims. As a side note, this seems to be an original theory by the original author of the iceberg, as i can only find it in association with discussions like these.

Coldharbour is the remains of Lyg: The only discussion on this is on 4pleb, while I don’t give enough shits to read that thread, if I had to guess this would be a theory connecting Coldharbours mimicry of Tamriel, to Lyg being a parallel to Tamriel

Falmer White souls: An observation that in Skyrim, the Falmer souls fit into white soul gems, instead of black soul gems. Some theorize this is a result of the Dwemer’s curse upon them, shrinking their souls.

#tes iceberg #this is fun to research because i get to learn more. but mostly i'm learning i hate tes fans on any sort of fourm #long post

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orthodoxydaily · 5 years ago

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Saints&Reading: Fri., Feb. 27, 2020

St Procopius

Saint Procopius the Dekapolite lived during the eighth century in the region of Decapolis (Mark 7:31), to the east of Lake Galilee. There he labored for his salvation, struggling in asceticism.

Saint Procopius, his fellow ascetic Saint Basil (February 28), and others zealous for holy Orthodoxy rose up against the Iconoclast heresy of those times. By order of the emperor Leo the Isaurian (716-741), Saint Procopius was arrested, subjected to a fierce scourging and thrown into prison. Here he languished together with Saint Basil until the very death of the oppressive emperor, after which the holy confessors were set free.

Saint Procopius spent the rest of his life in peace, guiding many on the way of virtue and salvation. He died in old age, around the year 750.

Keep Reading today’s saints OCA

Repose St Raphael, Bishop of Brooklyn (+1915)

Proclamation on the Glorification of Our Holy Father Bishop RAPHAEL (30-Apr-2000)

Our holy Father Raphael was born in Syria in 1860 to pious Orthodox parents, Michael Hawaweeny and his second wife Mariam, the daughter of a priest of Damascus. The exact date of Raphael’s birth is not known, but he estimated it to be on or near his Name Day, the Synaxis of the Holy Archangels Michael and Gabriel and all the Bodiless Powers of Heaven (November 8). Due to the violent persecution of Christians, at which time their parish priest, Saint Joseph of Damascus (July 10) and his companions were martyred, the Hawaweeny family was forced to flee to Beirut for their safety. It was here that the future saint first saw the light of day, and not in the city of his parents. Indeed, as the child’s life unfolded, it was evident that he would have no continuing city in this world, but would seek the city which is to come (Heb 13:14).

On the Feast of Theophany in 1861, he was baptized with the name Rafla, and later that spring the family was able to return to Damascus. The child attended elementary school, where he did very well, but in 1874 it appeared that Michael Hawaweeny would no longer be able to afford his son’s tuition. Fortunately, help came from Deacon Athanasius Atallah (later Metropolitan of Homs), who recommended to Patriarch Hierotheus of Antioch that Rafla be accepted as a student of the Patriarchate in preparation for the priesthood...Keep reading, source OCA

Jude 1:11-25 NKJV

Greeting to the Called

1 Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James,

To those who are called, [a]sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ:

2 Mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.

Contend for the Faith

3 Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. 4 For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord [b]God and our Lord Jesus Christ.

Old and New Apostates

5 But I want to remind you, though you once knew this, that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. 6 And the angels who did not keep their [c]proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day; 7 as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the [d]vengeance of eternal fire.

8 Likewise also these dreamers defile the flesh, reject authority, and speak evil of [e]dignitaries. 9 Yet Michael the archangel, in [f]contending with the devil, when he disputed about the body of Moses, dared not bring against him a reviling accusation, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!” 10 But these speak evil of whatever they do not know; and whatever they know naturally, like brute beasts, in these things they corrupt themselves. 11 Woe to them! For they have gone in the way of Cain, have run greedily in the error of Balaam for profit, and perished in the rebellion of Korah.

Apostates Depraved and Doomed

12 These are [g]spots in your love feasts, while they feast with you without fear, serving onlythemselves. They are clouds without water, carried [h]about by the winds; late autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, pulled up by the roots; 13 raging waves of the sea, foaming up their own shame; wandering stars for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.

14 Now Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men also, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints, 15 to execute judgment on all, to convict all who are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.”

Apostates Predicted

16 These are grumblers, complainers, walking according to their own lusts; and they mouth great swelling words, flattering people to gain advantage. 17 But you, beloved, remember the words which were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ: 18 how they told you that there would be mockers in the last time who would walk according to their own ungodly lusts. 19 These are [i]sensual persons, who cause divisions, not having the Spirit.

Maintain Your Life with God

20 But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, 21 keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.

22 And on some have compassion, [j]making a distinction; 23 but others save [k]with fear, pulling them out of the [l]fire, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh.

Glory to God

24 Now to Him who is able to keep [m]you from stumbling, And to present you faultless Before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, 25 To [n]God our Savior, [o]Who alone is wise, Be glory and majesty, Dominion and [p]power, Both now and forever. Amen.

Footnotes:

Jude 1:1 NU beloved

Jude 1:4 NU omits God

Jude 1:6 own

Jude 1:7 punishment

Jude 1:8 glorious ones, lit. glories

Jude 1:9 arguing

Jude 1:12 stains, or hidden reefs

Jude 1:12 NU, M along

Jude 1:19 soulish or worldly

Jude 1:22 NU who are doubting (or making distinctions)

Jude 1:23 NU omits with fear

Jude 1:23 NU adds and on some have mercy with fear

Jude 1:24 M them

Jude 1:25 NU the only God our

Jude 1:25 NU Through Jesus Christ our Lord, Be glory

Jude 1:25 NU adds Before all time,

Luke 23:2-34, 44-56 KJV

23:2-34 And they began to accuse him, saying, We found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, saying that he himself is Christ a King.

3 And Pilate asked him, saying, Art thou the King of the Jews? And he answered him and said, Thou sayest it.

4 Then said Pilate to the chief priests and to the people, I find no fault in this man.

5 And they were the more fierce, saying, He stirreth up the people, teaching throughout all Jewry, beginning from Galilee to this place.

6 When Pilate heard of Galilee, he asked whether the man were a Galilaean.

7 And as soon as he knew that he belonged unto Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod, who himself also was at Jerusalem at that time.

8 And when Herod saw Jesus, he was exceeding glad: for he was desirous to see him of a long season, because he had heard many things of him; and he hoped to have seen some miracle done by him.

9 Then he questioned with him in many words; but he answered him nothing.

10 And the chief priests and scribes stood and vehemently accused him.

11 And Herod with his men of war set him at nought, and mocked him, and arrayed him in a gorgeous robe, and sent him again to Pilate.

12 And the same day Pilate and Herod were made friends together: for before they were at enmity between themselves.

13 And Pilate, when he had called together the chief priests and the rulers and the people,

14 Said unto them, Ye have brought this man unto me, as one that perverteth the people: and, behold, I, having examined him before you, have found no fault in this man touching those things whereof ye accuse him:

15 No, nor yet Herod: for I sent you to him; and, lo, nothing worthy of death is done unto him.

16 I will therefore chastise him, and release him.

17 (For of necessity he must release one unto them at the feast.)

18 And they cried out all at once, saying, Away with this man, and release unto us Barabbas:

19 (Who for a certain sedition made in the city, and for murder, was cast into prison.)

20 Pilate therefore, willing to release Jesus, spake again to them.

21 But they cried, saying, Crucify him, crucify him.

22 And he said unto them the third time, Why, what evil hath he done? I have found no cause of death in him: I will therefore chastise him, and let him go.

23 And they were instant with loud voices, requiring that he might be crucified. And the voices of them and of the chief priests prevailed.

24 And Pilate gave sentence that it should be as they required.

25 And he released unto them him that for sedition and murder was cast into prison, whom they had desired; but he delivered Jesus to their will.

26 And as they led him away, they laid hold upon one Simon, a Cyrenian, coming out of the country, and on him they laid the cross, that he might bear it after Jesus.

27 And there followed him a great company of people, and of women, which also bewailed and lamented him.

28 But Jesus turning unto them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children.

29 For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck.

30 Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us.

31 For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?

32 And there were also two other, malefactors, led with him to be put to death.

33 And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left.

34 Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots.

44-56 Jesus Dies on the Cross44 Now it [a]was about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. 45 Then the sun was [b]darkened, and the veil of the temple was torn in [c]two. 46 And when Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, He said, “Father, ‘into Your hands I commit My spirit.’ ” Having said this, He breathed His last.47 So when the centurion saw what had happened, he glorified God, saying, “Certainly this was a righteous Man!”48 And the whole crowd who came together to that sight, seeing what had been done, beat their breasts and returned. 49 But all His acquaintances, and the women who followed Him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.Jesus Buried in Joseph’s Tomb50 Now behold, there was a man named Joseph, a council member, a good and just man. 51 He had not consented to their decision and deed. He was from Arimathea, a city of the Jews, who[d] himself was also waiting for the kingdom of God. 52 This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. 53 Then he took it down, wrapped it in linen, and laid it in a tomb that was hewn out of the rock, where no one had ever lain before. 54 That day was the Preparation, and the Sabbath drew near.55 And the women who had come with Him from Galilee followed after, and they observed the tomb and how His body was laid. 56 Then they returned and prepared spices and fragrant oils. And they rested on the Sabbath according to the commandment.

Footnotes:

Luke 23:44 NU adds alread

Luke 23:45 NU obscuredLuke 23:45 the middleLuke 23:51 NU who was waiting

Source: BibleGateway

#orthodox #spirituality #ancientchristianity #firstchristian #bible #mysticalchristianity

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unofferable-fic · 6 years ago

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Do You Fear the Devil? (Loki x Reader): 4 - Milk or Sugar?

Summary: You are one of the many working women roaming the streets of Whitechapel when a madman begins to murder your comrades one by one. The attacks are so gruesome, that the detectives can only describe his work as that of “a devil than of a man”. Loki Laufeyson is a Metropolitan police detective and surgeon who is assisting on the case. As more bodies pile up and you and your friends fear for your lives, the police remain well and truly stumped. When Detective Laufeyson turns to you for help to find the murderer, you must face your fears to save yourself… But who can you really trust when you are the prey being stalked at night by someone who calls himself Jack the Ripper?

Gif originally posted by isleoftom

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Victorian London AU

Pairing: Loki x Reader

Warnings: Descriptions of injuries/violence, gore, language, angst, lil fluff.

Word Count: 5,658

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Playlist: “Everyone Loves Oranges” — Abel Korzeniowski, “Born Unto Trouble” — Bill Elm & Woody Jackson, “Minnesota, WI” — Bon Iver, “All Gone (Alone)” — Gustavo Santaolalla

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A/N: Also available on AO3. I managed to churn this bad boy out in about four days after thoroughly researching the murder of Annie Chapman. Hope you guys enjoy it, because it was a nice slight change of pace from the other chapters. Thank you very much to those or commented, read, and left likes. Seeing feedback and such genuinely makes my day. Happy reading!

8th September 1888, 6.30 am.

Despite his haggard appearance and fatigue, Loki made it to Hanbury Street in good time. Along the way, PC Barnes provided him with everything they knew so far, and Miss Y/L/N also informed him that the victim was known to them, but mostly to Miss Maximoff. He appreciated the update, even if it was a struggle to keep his eyes from drooping shut.

You are in for a long morning, he reminded himself as they arrived on the scene. Pull yourself together before you draw unnecessary attention!

His first thought was on the massive crowd that stood before him. It must have been several hundred or so strong, and he turned to PC Barnes in displeasure. “What do you expect me to do with all of these people here?”

“Shit,” James mumbled, placing his hands on his hips. “Stark sent Wilson to get more men to contain it.”

The doctor scoffed. “And they are clearly doing a wonderful job of containing it.”

“What the hell do you expect? You know how understaffed we are.”

“Well then let’s make this quick.”

With PC Barnes clearing a way through the throng of agitated people, Loki emerged on to the crime scene with Y/N at his side. Sgt Rogers, PC Wilson, and two other constables were doing their best to control the bystanders, but there was only so much they could do when it continued to grow with each passing minute.

“I’m going to stay with Wanda,” Y/N said, gesturing to her friends, who were sitting against a fence, as far from the body as possible. “I’ll be just over there, not that you shall need me anyway… I would hardly be useful to you.”

“I would imagine that you would be far more useful comforting your friend right now,” he offered her with genuine sympathy. “If you are needed, we shall call upon you.”

“Of course, Doctor.”

He gave her a brief once-over when her back was turned before he joined the inspectors who stood around what he assumed was the victim. “Gentlemen.”

“Ah, Dr Laufeyson,” Inspector Stark greeted him. “Sorry to keep you from your beauty sleep.”

“Luckily I am blessed with an appealing appearance, so no harm done.” Only then did Loki notice Chief Inspector Strange standing beside him. “Oh, Strange, back from your holiday already?”

“It would seem that violent murders have a tendency to cut them short,” he replied, looking grim. “The Chief Commissioner has put me in charge of this case—”

“Co-charge,” Stark added swiftly, wagging a finger between the two of them. “Co-investigating, co-parenting, kinda like a marriage.”

Dr Laufeyson raised a brow and looked between the two of them in amusement. With a slight laugh, he spoke. “Right, of course. Co-inspecting. How innovative.”

Chief Inspector Strange narrowed his eyes at his comrade, his brow furrowing in concern. “Are you well, Doctor? You look quite rough around the edges.”

“Now that you mention it,” Stark began. “You do look more rugged than usual. Not sleeping?”

“Somewhat,” Loki dismissed them, turning his attention back to the body. “I did not sleep well last night. But regardless of my exhaustion, I need to see to this body urgently, Inspector.”

The older man snapped back into action. “Of course. We need you to work as quick as you can this morning, if you wouldn’t mind. The crowd is getting…frisky. Bad frisky.”

“Her name?”

“Annie Chapman, confirmed by Miss Maximoff over there.”

“When was she found?” he asked, squatting down so that he could begin a quick examination.

“A little before 6 am,” Chief Inspector Strange elaborated, looking at a small notepad. “By a man called John Davis. He came straight to the station to report it and we came here as quickly as we could.”

“I do not think your speed would have mattered. A quick glance is all I need to confirm that she is unfortunately beyond all medical help.”

With the little time he had before the body would need to be removed, Loki got to work and performed a quick examination. Annie’s left arm was placed across the left breast, while her legs were drawn up and skirts pushed above her waist, revealing a pair of red and white stockings. He turned his attention to her face, which was swollen and bruised, and turned on the right side. Between the front teeth protruded her swollen tongue, a clear sign to him that she may have died of asphyxiation. A bloodstained, white and red neckerchief that matched her stockings was tied around her slit throat. Upon closer inspection, he noted that it was dissevered deeply, with the incisions through the skin being jagged and reached right round the neck. This attack was as vicious as the one on Nichols, and, upon recalling the abdominal wounds inflicted on the previous victim, Dr Laufeyson quickly checked Chapman’s stomach and found a large gash inflicted by a knife. Though still connected to her body, her intensives were removed from her gut and placed on the ground over her right shoulder.

“Her throat is slit,” he said to the inspectors, without removing his eyes from the body. “But I do not think that is what killed her. Look at this.” He pointed to her protruding tongue. “My guess is that she died by asphyxiation. No sign of a struggle… She must have entered the yard alive. Look here.” He noted the fence above her head. “There are some small drops of blood on the fence, but not enough to imply that her throat was slit while she was alive. Rigor mortis has yet to set in, but the body was quite cold. This could be due to the cold weather, but it is hard to tell. The time of death may have been at about 4.30 am. Then again, I cannot be sure under the circumstances.” With a deep breath, he stood up, not wanting to let his eyes wander to her destroyed abdomen any longer. Even with his profession, he found it difficult to handle.

As Strange took notes of his findings, Stark pointed out some more details to Loki. “Her belongings are scattered around her and the yard too, so I don’t know how that goes with your theory of no struggle. We have yet to question the neighbours on whether they heard any disturbance.”

With a swift look over the items that were strewn about, Loki shook his head. “The ones by the bodies seem purposely placed to me.”

“Like they were arranged?”

“Possibly. It could have been a surprise attack as well. That would not give her a chance to fight back.”

“There was something else of note,” the Chief Inspector began before he ushered the men to a nearby water spigot. “So, let us say that you’ve just murdered a woman, slit her throat, and stuffed your hands into her intestines… Wouldn’t you urgently want to wash your hands of the blood? This spigot is perfectly clean and shows no signs of being used this morning by someone with bloody hands. Why not use it?”

“Why stick your hands in a woman’s intestines in the first place?” Inspector Stark replied. “The guy is probably bonkers beyond belief. If anything, this is just further proof of his audacity. He ran off, quite literally, red-handed.”

Strange nodded in agreement, though visibly put off by the notion. “I should also mention that we found a leather workman’s apron in the yard. It seemed out of place, so I thought it was a curious thing.”

Loki nodded slowly, glancing around the scene again. “The more information, the better, Chief Inspector. But I think I have done all I can here. Chapman needs to be taken to the Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary before this crowd gets any bigger.”

“I shall send for an ambulance, Doctor. We should also have a word with Miss Maximoff — until we can contact Miss Chapman’s family, she is the closest thing we have to any information about her character or people who may want to hurt her.”

Stark nodded. “Noted. We shall see to it. How about you accompany myself and Wilson to the mortuary, Dr Laufeyson, while Strange sees to the women?”

Loki and Stephen both agreed, mostly just eager to have Annie moved out of the public eye. PC Wilson was sent to fetch an ambulance, and it wasn’t long before one was wheeled to the scene and the body was hidden away it a battered old coffin. The doctor threw a cautious glance at Y/N and her friends while Chief Inspector Strange explained to them what the next steps were. They appeared apprehensive, and Loki hesitated for the briefest of moments before taking his leave.

Upon arrival at Brick Lane, shortly before 7 am, Stark let out an audible groan. Loki looked at him curiously as they pulled up outside the infirmary. “What is the matter?”

“Look who is here to receive the body.”

Loki looked at the gates and immediately set eyes on Robert Mann, the same employee who had taken part in the unauthorised stripping and washing of Mary Ann Nichol’s body. “Oh, for God sake…”

“I’m not having this,” Inspector Stark immediately declared and approached the man. He looked him up and down with narrowed eyes, while Mann appeared thoroughly put off by the stare-down. As Loki and Samuel approached the pair, Stark made his instructions clear. “Considering Dr Laufeyson was apparently misunderstood before, I am going to put this in black and white for you boys. This body is not to be touched, other than being carefully placed in a room, until my colleague has completed a full post-mortem examination. Is that clear?”

“As day, Inspector,” Mann replied with a gulp. “Crystal!”

“I would certainly hope so. I would hate it if you lot were to lose your jobs, or if more women were to die because of your mistakes.” With a grin he gave the worker a hard pat on the shoulder and let them carry the coffin into the mortuary.

“Damn, Stark,” Wilson sighed. “It’s not often that I see you let loose on someone.”

“I suppose it is a rare occurrence.”

“I would usually comment on your out-of-character reprimanding, Inspector,” Dr Laufeyson began, taking off his top hat so that he could wipe his brow. “But with lives clearly at stake, one cannot allow room for silly mistakes.”

“Right you are, Doctor.” He looked to PC Wilson and continued on. “Do me a favour, would you? I would rather you stayed here and act in my stead. You are in charge until we return.”

“We?” Dr Laufeyson repeated.

“Yes, we. Look, I need to go assist Strange in questioning the women. It shan’t be an easy experience for young Miss Maximoff, of that much I am certain, but they are a little more familiar with you than they are with us. Your presence might make it easier.”

“Have Rogers do it,” Loki suggested, not entirely eager with leaving the body and having to be in the women’s company when he looked a mess and needed sleep. “Or Barnes.”

“I already have Rogers and Barnes in charge of speaking with the residents on Hanbury Street. C’mon, Doc. We’re short on men enough as it is, and I want to make the process as easy as it can be for the girl. She’s basically still a kid who just saw her friend’s intestines strewn out on the ground.” While Loki was visibly hesitating, Stark tried to ease his worries. “All I need from you is two hours. Then you can come right back here and perform the post-mortem, that sound alright? Wilson will be here to make sure nothing goes wrong.”

He could hardly go against Stark’s wishes given that he was his superior, and Loki knew that. Despite the fact he would much rather do his job and be done with it, he also wasn’t overly eager with the idea of the inspectors blundering their way through an interview and hassling Miss Maximoff more than necessary. His mind briefly drifted to the thought of seeing Miss Y/L/N again, and he was immediately perturbed by the fluttering sensation that made its home in his chest. He wasn’t sure whether he hated it or liked it.

Give yourself a break, man. So she is an attractive woman — it is not like you have met any of them before. Get on with it and stop making a fuss.

“Fine,” he relented, putting his hat back on. “If you insist.”

“I insist quite strongly, so thank you,” Stark replied, before saying his goodbyes to PC Wilson and returning to Commercial Street Police Station. They quickly made their way to one of the more comfortable back offices where Strange was already speaking with Wanda. Natasha and Y/N sat by her side, offering support whenever the younger woman needed it. The four of them were sat around an interview table in the centre of the room, on which there were a number of cups filled with tea, a kettle, and a few plates of biscuits. As the two of them entered the room, Strange paused the interview to offer them a beverage, which they both accepted.

“I hope you are not giving the young lady too much hassle, Chief Inspector,” Stark teased, sipping from his cup as he took a seat next to him. “I have heard you are not the best with delicate issues.”

“I am doing just fine, thank you,” the man replied, somewhat miffed by the accusation. He turned his attention to Loki, who was shrugging off his coat and hat and hanging them by the door. “What is Dr Laufeyson doing here?”

“I thought the ladies would appreciate his familiar face while Miss Maximoff tells us all she can about Annie Chapman. You hardly expect them to stare at our ugly mugs all morning, do you?”

The women chuckled at that, and Natasha was the first to pass comment. “Give yourselves a bit more credit, boys. You are rather pleasing to the eye.”

While the group around him spoke, Loki kept his mouth shut and instead focused his attention on gathering a few cups, a plate of biscuits, and the tea pot from the table on to a tray. He brought it to the couch that sat to the left of the interview table where the group were gathered. When he set the tray on a nearby end table, he then carefully began laying its contents out before returning the tray to its previous place in the centre of the room.

“And you flatter us, Miss Romanoff,” Stark replied, always quick to give a flirtatious comment. “I request that you cut back on that before our heads explode.”

As Loki took a seat on the couch and began making himself a cup of tea, the chief inspector continued on with his complaints. “Should he not be attending to his duties at present?”

“I have been kind enough to give Inspector Stark two hours of my time,” Loki replied calmly, reaching for the plate of biscuits. “After which I will attend to my duties. Right now, I am to remain here and provide whatever help I can to our ever-complying ladies, here. Would any of you like some tea?”

He knew that Stark had brought him in to try make the atmosphere calmer and less professional. He had stressed before that they were on equal terms with these women, and while it may take Strange a moment to adjust around the arrangement, the women were a little more familiar with him. If his presence would bring them some ease and, in turn, progress the investigation, then so be it.

“I would actually,” Y/N answered, looking between him and Wanda. “It might help to wake me up a little.”

“Go and relax for a bit,” Wanda insisted, wiping the wet stains on her cheeks. She sniffled but pushed her friend on. “Natasha is here, so go sit down and have a cup.”

Y/N looked apprehensive at the thought of leaving her side even for a moment. “Are you sure?”

“Positive.” She gave her an appreciate smile before Y/N retreated to the couch and sat on the opposite end to Loki.

He was quick to grab an empty cup and pour her some of the hot beverage from the kettle. “Milk? Sugar?”

“A little bit of milk, please.”

While the others continued on with their interview, Miss Maximoff providing whatever details and answering any questions about Annie that she could, Loki and Y/N were left to their own devices. When her tea was ready, he carefully handed her the cup and encouraged her to take as many biscuits that she wanted. The others paid them no mind, and the doctor had been prepared to sit in comfortable silence until his companion broke it.

“I’m sorry they made you come in here to humour us.” He met her gaze to see her staring into her tea. “I’m sure you would rather be doing your job in the mortuary.”

What was she apologising for? Did she really feel guilty over such a thing? “I may be of more use in the mortuary, but Stark thinks my presence would make this whole thing go a little smoother.”

“I thought he just wanted you here because you have a handsome face?” she replied, a teasing smile slowly stretching across her face.

Oh? Did she call me handsome?

He could feel his own lips mirroring her expression. “I do believe he referred to my face as familiar as opposed to handsome, but it is nice to know that you think that of me.”

Though she laughed at his observation, he noticed the small tint of red in her cheeks. “My apologies.”

“It is quite alright. I would hardly refuse a compliment, especially when it is true.”

She let out a laugh and shook her head. “Your arrogance knows no bounds, does it?”

“Not particularly. But to answer your question, Inspector Stark thought my being here might help conversation flow easier. After all, the three of you are a little more familiar with me than you are with our dear inspectors.”

Y/N sat there and nodded, pulling her legs up under herself as she got more comfortable. “I think you helped us relax a bit. I know Wanda seems better than she had been earlier.” She sighed. “She could have done without seeing what happened to Annie, but I guess it was unavoidable.”

Loki sipped on his tea before offering his thoughts. “It is grim business to be involved in, and certainly not for the faint of heart — though I would not peg any of you ladies as such — but it is always harder when it is someone you know lying on the pavement.”

“How do you do it?”

“Do what?” he asked, momentarily confused.

“This,” she pressed. She met his eyes now, gesturing around herself. “All of this. You have to witness such gruesome things on a daily basis, most of them up close too. You have to bear witness to how vicious and violent people can be. Does it not horrify you when you see what we do to each other?”

Loki was known, especially by his living patients and colleagues, for having a silver tongue, the ability to string together words, and to talk himself out of anything. It was a proficient skill that he had trained just as much as his medical knowledge. This was, however, not a question he was asked often. Sometimes, PCs Barnes or Wilson may jest and make their usual exclamations such as “that’s nasty! How can you look at that without throwing up?” and he usually dismissed them with a sarcastic quip about how he loves the sight of lacerated organs. But he knew those men, and he did not know much about Miss Y/L/N. Still, he knew by her tone and the events of the day that her question was a genuine one that she wanted to understand. Even though she worked a difficult job and probably saw her fair share of unpleasant sights in Whitechapel, she wanted to better understand how he did what he did. It was clear that her question came from a place of confusion, distress, and genuine interest, and this was a new interaction for him. He didn’t have the urge to reply with dismissive sarcasm or disinterest. Despite the fact he knew very little about this woman, he still wanted to talk to her because she wanted to listen.

Regardless of the anxiety that came with talking to someone about such a personal matter, he was somehow willing to explore it. He barely knew Y/N, and maybe that was the reason why he did it.

“Of course it does.” He paused, carefully keeping his tone level and focusing on the still hot cup in his large hand. “In my experience, you eventually become somewhat desensitised to the horrors you witness. It never becomes wholly manageable, but only a little easier to deal with as more time passes. It is definitely something for only a few lucky people to do, but there are still days when I witness something so… nauseating that sleep eludes me or I turn to a strong whiskey to forget.”

“That certainly doesn’t sound easy,” she said after a few beats of silence between them, the other people in the room forgotten. “You must be very passionate about medicine to be in this line of work.”

“I suppose I am.”

“What made you want to become a doctor?”

He felt her eyes on him again, and turned to meet them, momentarily transfixed by their vibrant colour. He smirked. “Eager to learn more about me, are you?”

“I don’t exactly get the opportunity to ask doctors questions such as these,” she chuckled, opting to grab a biscuit and munch on it. “Usually I just experience a very swift visit with the doctors who check in on all the women that work at the brothel. We hardly get on the subject of how we ended up in our respective professions while they are making sure we’re not pregnant or ill.”

“A fair point,” he agreed and fiddled with his cravat in an attempt to loosen it. “If you must know, I have been fascinated with anatomy from a young age. That, and I liked the idea of helping people.”

“You do not exactly come across as the helpful sort.” When he raised a brow at her, she quickly elaborated. “Ah, that’s not exactly what I meant to say—”

Her mild awkwardness amused him. It was a vast change from the challenging woman he had previously encountered. Loki wouldn’t exactly be himself if he wasn’t eager to poke fun at her for it. “Well, colour me well and truly offended.”

“Dr Laufeyson—”

“It is Loki,” he cut her off, using the lull in conversation to take a biscuit for himself. “Just because you have offended me does not mean that you must start calling me by my title. As stated previously, we are on level playing terms.”

“Loki,” she began again, treading carefully. “What I meant to say was you don’t exactly express an obvious air of concern for others. You definitely seem intelligent and knowledgable and show a genuine interest in your craft, but caring was not a characteristic I would have chosen for you.”

He chuckled bitterly. “You are not the first person to say that to me, darling. And I am sure you shan’t be the last.”

“I wasn’t finished my point.”

“Well, don’t stop on my account.”

“Look, I meant what I said; you didn’t come across as someone overly concerned with others. But then again, you showed up here with the intention of making us, well, more specifically Wanda, feel at ease. You didn’t necessarily have to do that. And not that it’s a big deal, but it was nice of you to make me tea as well. I’ll admit that I didn’t expect even these little caring gestures from you, but I can see now how you would become a doctor so that you can help others.” She finished her explanation and then shrugged. “It makes a little more sense to me now.”

“You seem to be quite good at reading people.”

“Yes, well with a profession such as mine, you more of less have to learn in order to stay safe. It’s something I’ve had to practice over time, but I think I have made a fair go at your character.”

Before he could stop himself, he was suddenly replying with a joke. “And here I was thinking I was doing well to stay mysterious and aloof.”

“You can certainly do better, Loki,” Y/N joked back, and he felt glad that he hadn’t put her off. “Let’s just say that I am certainly right about you being a stuck up, arrogant toff.”

“Ouch… You wound me, my dear.”

“I aim to wound, Doctor. Speaking of...” She pointed to his cheek and winced a little. “Are you alright? I noticed earlier, but felt that Bucky annoyed you with enough questions about your wellbeing.”

His smile faded, and he suddenly recalled how he had acquired the cut on his cheek the night before. He turned his head and looked down at his hands for a moment so that the wound was no longer in her line of sight. He offered a small laugh before he answered. “I will be fine. Robbing is not exactly uncommon around here.”

“I know, but it’s hardly a pleasant experience either!”

“It is nothing I have not dealt with before,” he said, hoping she would simply drop it. “I can handle myself well enough.”

“If you say so.” If she was curious, she let it go for his sake. “At least I just wound you metaphorically.”

“Well, perhaps you would diverge from your wounding to instead humour me.”

“Humour you about what exactly?”

“By telling me how you come to your profession.” When she laughed at his suggestion, he frowned. “Well, it is only fair considering you asked about mine.”

“Yes well, I certainly didn’t chose my profession because I liked it,” she admitted, folding an arm cross her breast, a motion that did not go unnoticed by him. “I think we are both in very different positions.”

That much was clear to him as well. They were currently sitting on opposite ends of the spectrum when it came to work. Loki was no fool — he knew well that most women turned to prostitution out of desperation as apposed to personal preferences these days. Whitechapel wasn’t an area known for its flourishing opportunities. But he couldn’t help but wonder about Y/N and how she came to be in this position. Much like her friends, she was relatively young, younger than Annie Chapman had been anyway. At the same time, he supposed they were all simply women who found themselves stuck in a situation that was less than ideal. It was obvious to him that the reason she found companionship with Natasha and Wanda was their mutual understanding. “I preferred to not make any assumptions.”

“I’m sure your assumptions would be mostly correct.”

He hesitated for a moment before asking his next question, though he felt like the answer was clear already. “Do you have any family that could help?”

She stiffly shook her head before nodding to the two other women. “They would be the only family I have. My parents died quite suddenly, so I didn’t have much choice.”

“I’m sorry,” he offered weakly, well aware that his words would do little. “Were they ill?”

“Tuberculoses.” Her eyes glazed over as if she was no longer in the room or thinking much about their conversation. “It’s one hell of a thing.”

A sensitive subject, it would seem. Perhaps it would be best if I didn’t push that further...

“What about you?” she asked after taking a swift gulp of tea, eager to forget her own memories. “Any family or other Laufeysons floating about?”

“No,” he answered quickly before he could stop himself. She was looking at him quizzically, but he merely repeated himself. “No one of note. It’s just me.”

“At least we have something in common,” she offered, but there was a clear note of sympathy in her voice, one that caused him to look down at his cup again. “Although it’s not a great thing to share.”

“I suppose not, although I am quite content with my own company.”

“All the time?”

“Well with company such as me, how could I not be content?”

She chuckled at that, and he was glad that she found his arrogance amusing rather than annoying or distasteful. “I wish I could feel that way about being alone sometimes.”

“You unfortunately have to learn to manage when it is unavoidable, Y/N.”

“As long as you’re not forcibly excluding yourself, of course.”

He paused, irked by the insinuation, mostly because he knew it to be true in his own circumstances. While he was teased by his colleagues for being a loner, it wasn’t a lie. Bar his patients and his colleagues with whom he worked, he rarely socialised with anyone else. It wasn’t entirely self inflicted, but he had resided himself to that way of life, and he was happy with it. Wasn’t he?

They sat in comfortable silence for a little while, each of them finishing their tea and once again realising the dire situation with which they were so tightly bound. Even when lighthearted conversations could be had, it seemed that the murders and their horror were inescapable. They were both in the thick of it, but Loki couldn’t help but wonder how Y/N felt about it. Yes, they were both hunting the same monster, but said devil was hunting only one of them.

After a while, she spoke again, exhaustion evident in her voice. “My mother used to say that life could be a right load of shite sometimes.”

“Elegant,” he noted. “But also true. It can be tough.”

“The sooner I realised that fact, the better off I was.”

The conversation drifted after that. It never returned to the former depth with which it had begun, but Dr Laufeyson was somewhat relieved to instead speak of things that held little meaning. He always hated small talk, but on this occasion it was welcomed. It did him until the interview had ended and the women were escorted back to the White Swan by Chief Inspector Strange. Inspector Stark thanked Loki for his cooperation once again before the pair of them made their way back to the mortuary.

It was here that they made several unpleasant discoveries.

The first of which was that in spite of PC Wilson’s presence, two nurses had stripped and washed down Annie Chapman’s body after being instructed to do so by the Clerk of the Workhouse Guardians. Dr Laufeyson was so angry that he very nearly flung the clerk on to the street. He had never seen Stark as exasperated before, and his superior’s similar reaction helped to validate his own anger. After a lot of shouting, damning, and cursing, Dr Laufeyson was allowed to carry out his post-mortem. Stark sat in the room with him, grumbling about the idiocy of the mortuary’s employees.

“It is as if they are trying to tamper with the investigation,” he ranted, massaging his temples. “I swear, Loki, my brain is this close to exploding.”

“Shall I perform your post-mortem as well then?”

“Ha, ha, ha. Very funny. I just can’t believe they would do this again…”

Stark kept talking, but Loki zoned out as he turned his attention from Anne’s neck wounds to the large gash on her abdomen. He opened her up to survey the damage inside. What lay waiting (or rather, not waiting) for him both baffled and startled him.

He felt the blood drain from his face at the sight.

Stark was still rambling, but he couldn’t her any of it.

“Stark?”

“… if they’ve tampered with the evidence—”

“Stark?”

“—I swear, Strange won’t let me hear the end of this—”

“Stark?”

“—I shall tell that wanker that the only one who can boss me around is me—”

Loki couldn’t help but run out of patience. “For God sake, Stark!”

The inspector threw his hands in the air and spun around to face him. “What?”

“Her womb is gone!”

Silence engulfed the room.

Stark stood frozen on the spot, his face twisted into an expression of dread and confusion. “Her… womb?”

“Is gone,” Loki finished, turning his attention back down to the disfigured body. “He cut it out.”

In fairness to Stark, he did come to the doctor’s side so that he could peer at the damage himself. He was silent for a long moment, his eyes scanning over the wound. “What the hell are we dealing with?”

“A man with anatomical knowledge,” Dr Laufeyson pondered, unable to pull his gaze away from the mess of mangled flesh and muscle on the table. “A doctor perhaps?”

As he spoke, Inspector Stark’s voice held every ounce of hatred that the man possessed. “This isn’t a man, Doctor. He is beyond that. Whatever we are dealing with, it is more like a devil.”

Despite wanting to remain hopeful to some extent, when Loki studied the work done by the murderer, he couldn’t help but feel the dread that Stark was expressing. The brutality with which this woman’s life was stolen was now as clear as day. This was way out of their comfort zone. Far beyond it.

This was otherworldly.

This was evil.

And they were not ready for it.

Taglist: @heysliver @lisalisa007 @ava-royal @eloisemacguffin @tvdplusriverdale @trickster-grrrl @mellow-mischief @arttasticgreatnessoftheawesome77

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bountyofbeads · 5 years ago

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The 1619 Project https://nyti.ms/2Hjvu0L

The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.

"We asked 16 writers to bring consequential moments in African-American history to life. Here are their poems and stories:"

Published August 14, 2019 | "1619 Project" New York Times | Posted August 16, 2019 |

⬤ August 1619

A poem by Clint Smith

In Aug. 1619, a ship arrived in Point Comfort, Va., carrying more than 20 enslaved Africans, the first on record to be brought to the English colony of Virginia. They were among the 12.5 million Africans forced into the trans-Atlantic slave trade, their journey to the New World today known as the Middle Passage.

Over the course of 350 years,

36,000 slave ships crossed the Atlantic

Ocean. I walk over to the globe & move

my finger back & forth between

the fragile continents. I try to keep

count how many times I drag

my hand across the bristled

hemispheres, but grow weary of chasing

a history that swallowed me.

For every hundred people who were

captured & enslaved, forty died before they

ever reached the New World.

I pull my index finger from Angola

to Brazil & feel the bodies jumping from

the ship.

I drag my thumb from Ghana

to Jamaica & feel the weight of dysentery

make an anvil of my touch.

I slide my ring finger from Senegal

to South Carolina & feel the ocean

separate a million families.

The soft hum of history spins

on its tilted axis. A cavalcade of ghost ships

wash their hands of all they carried.

Clint Smith is a doctoral candidate at Harvard University and the author of the poetry collection “Counting Descent,” as well as a forthcoming nonfiction book, “How the Word Is Passed.” Photo illustration by Jon Key. Diagram: Getty Images.

⬤ March 5, 1770

A poem by Yusef Komunyakaa

In 1770, Crispus Attucks, a fugitive from slavery who worked as dockworker, became the first American to die for the cause of independence after being shot in a clash with British troops.

African & Natick blood-born

known along paths up & down

Boston Harbor, escaped slave,

harpooner & rope maker,

he never dreamt a pursuit of happiness

or destiny, yet rallied

beside patriots who hurled a fury

of snowballs, craggy dirt-frozen

chunks of ice, & oyster shells

at the stout flank of redcoats,

as the 29th Regiment of Foot

aimed muskets, waiting for fire!

How often had he walked, gazing

down at gray timbers of the wharf,

as if to find a lost copper coin?

Wind deviled cold air as he stood

leaning on his hardwood stick,

& then two lead bullets

tore his chest, blood reddening snow

on King Street, March 5, 1770,

first to fall on captain’s command.

Five colonists lay for calling hours

in Faneuil Hall before sharing a grave

at the Granary Burying Ground.

They had laid a foundering stone

for the Minutemen at Lexington

& Concord, first to defy & die,

& an echo of the future rose over

the courtroom as John Adams

defended the Brits, calling the dead

a “motley rabble of saucy boys,

negroes & mulattoes, Irish

teagues & outlandish jacktars,”

who made soldiers fear for their lives,

& at day’s end only two would pay

with the branding of their thumbs.

Yusef Komunyakaa is a poet whose books include “The Emperor of Water Clocks” and “Neon Vernacular,” for which he received the Pulitzer Prize. He teaches at N.Y.U. Photo illustration by Jon Key. Boston Massacre: National Archives. Attucks: Getty Images.

⬤ 1773

A poem by Eve L. Ewing

In 1773, a publishing house in London released “Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral,” by Phillis Wheatley, a 20-year-old enslaved woman in Boston, making her the first African-American to publish a book of poetry.

Pretend I wrote this at your grave.

Pretend the grave is marked. Pretend we know where it is.

Copp’s Hill, say. I have been there and you might be.

Foremother, your name is the boat that brought you.

Pretend I see it in the stone, with a gruesome cherub.

Children come with thin paper and charcoal to touch you.

Pretend it drizzles and a man in an ugly plastic poncho

circles the Mathers, all but sniffing the air warily.

We don’t need to pretend for this part.

There is a plaque in the grass for Increase, and Cotton.

And Samuel, dead at 78, final son, who was there

on the day when they came looking for proof.

Eighteen of them watched you and they signed to say:

the Poems specified in the following Page, were (as we verily believe)

written by Phillis, a young Negro Girl, who was but a few Years since,

brought an uncultivated Barbarian from Africa

and the abolitionists cheered at the blow to Kant

the Negroes of Africa have by nature no feeling that rises above the trifling

and the enlightened ones bellowed at the strike against Hume

no ingenious manufacturers amongst them, no arts, no sciences

Pretend I was there with you, Phillis, when you asked in a letter to no one:

How many iambs to be a real human girl?

Which turn of phrase evidences a righteous heart?

If I know of Ovid may I keep my children?

Pretend that on your grave there is a date

and it is so long before my heroes came along to call you a coon

for the praises you sang of your captors

who took you on discount because they assumed you would die

that it never ever hurt your feelings.

Or pretend you did not love America.

Phillis, I would like to think that after you were released unto the world,

when they jailed your husband for his debts

and you lay in the maid’s quarters at night,

a free and poor woman with your last living boy,

that you thought of the Metamorphoses,

making the sign of Arachne in the tangle of your fingers.

And here, after all, lay the proof:

The man in the plastic runs a thumb over stone. The gray is slick and tough.

Phillis Wheatley: thirty-one. Had misery enough.

Eve L. Ewing is the author of “1919,” the “Ironheart” series, “Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side” and “Electric Arches.” She is a professor at the University of Chicago.

⬤ Aug. 30, 1800

Fiction by Barry Jenkins

In 1800, Gabriel Prosser, a 24-year-old literate blacksmith, organized one of the most extensively planned slave rebellions, with the intention of forming an independent black state in Virginia. After other enslaved people shared details of his plot, Gabriel’s Rebellion was thwarted. He was later tried, found guilty and hanged.

As he approached the Brook Swamp beneath the city of Richmond, Va., Gabriel Prosser looked to the sky. Up above, the clouds coalesced into an impenetrable black, bringing on darkness and a storm the ferocity of which the region had scarcely seen. He may have cried and he may have prayed but the thing Gabriel did not do was turn back. He was expecting fire on this night and would make no concessions for the coming rain.

And he was not alone. A hundred men; 500 men; a thousand men had gathered from all over the state on this 30th day of August 1800. Black men, African men — men from the fields and men from the house, men from the church and the smithy — men who could be called many things but after this night would not be called slaves gathered in the flooding basin armed with scythes, swords, bayonets and smuggled guns.

One of the men tested the rising water, citing the Gospel of John: “For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.” But the water would not abate. As the night wore on and the storm persisted, Gabriel was overcome by a dawning truth: The Gospel would not save him. His army could not pass.

Gov. James Monroe was expecting them. Having returned from his appointment to France and built his sweeping Highland plantation on the periphery of Charlottesville, Monroe wrote to his mentor Thomas Jefferson seeking advice on his “fears of a negro insurrection.” When the Negroes Tom and Pharoah of the Sheppard plantation betrayed Gabriel’s plot on a Saturday morning, Monroe was not surprised. By virtue of the privilege bestowed upon him as his birthright, he was expecting them.

Gabriel Prosser was executed Oct. 10, 1800. Eighteen hundred; the year Denmark Vesey bought his freedom, the year of John Brown’s and Nat Turner’s births. As he awaited the gallows near the foot of the James River, Gabriel could see all that was not to be — the first wave of men tasked to set fire to the city perimeter, the second to fell a city weakened by the diversion; the governor’s mansion, James Monroe brought to heel and served a lash for every man, woman and child enslaved on his Highland plantation; the Quakers, Methodists, Frenchmen and poor whites who would take up with his army and create a more perfect union from which they would spread the infection of freedom — Gabriel saw it all.

He even saw Tom and Pharoah, manumitted by the government of Virginia, a thousand dollars to their master as recompense; a thousand dollars for the sabotage of Gabriel’s thousand men. He did not see the other 25 men in his party executed. Instead, he saw Monroe in an audience he wanted no part of and paid little notice to. For Gabriel Prosser the blacksmith, leader of men and accepting no master’s name, had stepped into the troubled water. To the very last, he was whole. He was free.

Barry Jenkins was born and raised in Miami. He is a director and writer known for his adaptation of James Baldwin’s “If Beale Street Could Talk” and “Moonlight,” which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Photo illustration by Jon Key. House: Sergey Golub via Wikimedia. Landscape, right: Peter Traub via Wikimedia.

⬤ Jan. 1, 1808

Fiction by Jesmyn Ward

In 1808, the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves went into effect, banning the importation of enslaved people from abroad. But more than one million enslaved people who could be bought and sold were already in the country, and the breaking up of black families continued.

The whisper run through the quarters like a river swelling to flood. We passed the story to each other in the night in our pallets, in the day over the well, in the fields as we pulled at the fallow earth. They ain’t stealing us from over the water no more. We dreamed of those we was stolen from: our mothers who oiled and braided our hair to our scalps, our fathers who cut our first staffs, our sisters and brothers who we pinched for tattling on us, and we felt a cool light wind move through us for one breath. Felt like ease to imagine they remained, had not been stolen, would never be.

That be a foolish thing. We thought this later when the first Georgia Man come and roped us. Grabbed a girl on her way for morning water. Snatched a boy running to the stables. A woman after she left her babies blinking awake in their sack blankets. A man sharpening a hoe. They always came before dawn for us chosen to be sold south.

We didn’t understand what it would be like, couldn’t think beyond the panic, the prying, the crying, the begging and the screaming, the endless screaming from the mouth and beyond. Sounding through the whole body, breaking the heart with its volume. A blood keen. But the ones that owned and sold us was deaf to it. Was unfeeling of the tugging the children did on their fathers’ arms or the glance of a sister’s palm over her sold sister’s face for the last time. But we was all feeling, all seeing, all hearing, all smelling: We felt it for the terrible dying it was. Knowed we was walking out of one life and into another. An afterlife in a burning place.

The farther we marched, the hotter it got. Our skin grew around the rope. Our muscles melted to nothing. Our fat to bone. The land rolled to a flat bog, and in the middle of it, a city called New Orleans. When we shuffled into that town of the dead, they put us in pens. Fattened us. Tried to disguise our limps, oiled the pallor of sickness out of our skins, raped us to assess our soft parts, then told us lies about ourselves to make us into easier sells. Was told to answer yes when they asked us if we were master seamstresses, blacksmiths or lady’s maids. Was told to disavow the wives we thought we heard calling our names when we first woke in the morning, the husbands we imagined lying with us, chest to back, while the night’s torches burned, the children whose eyelashes we thought we could still feel on our cheeks when the rain turned to a fine mist while we stood in lines outside the pens waiting for our next hell to take legs and seek us out.

Trade our past lives for new deaths.

Jesmyn Ward is the author of “Sing, Unburied, Sing,” which won a National Book Award. She was a 2017 MacArthur fellow. Photo illustration by Jon Key. Landscape: Peter Traub via Wikimedia.

⬤ July 27, 1816

A poem by Tyehimba Jess

In 1816, American troops attacked Negro Fort, a stockade in Spanish Florida established by the British and left to the Black Seminoles, a Native American nation of Creek refugees, free black people and fugitives from slavery. Nearly all the soldiers, women and children in the fort were killed.

They weren’t headed north to freedom —

They fled away from the North Star,

turned their back on the Mason-Dixon line,

put their feet to freedom by fleeing

further south to Florida.

Ran to where ’gator and viper roamed

free in the mosquito swarm of Suwannee.

They slipped out deep after sunset,

shadow to shadow, shoulder to shoulder,

stealthing southward, stealing themselves,

steeling their souls to run steel

through any slave catcher who’d dare

try stealing them back north.

They billeted in swamp mud,

saw grass and cypress —

they waded through waves

of water lily and duckweed.

They thinned themselves in thickets

and thorn bush hiding their young

from thieves of black skin marauding

under moonlight and cloud cover.

Many once knew another shore

an ocean away, whose language,

songs, stories were outlawed

on plantation ground. In swampland,

they raised flags of their native tongues

above whisper smoke

into billowing bonfires

of chant, drum and chatter.

They remembered themselves

with their own words

bleeding into English,

bonding into Spanish,

singing in Creek and Creole.

With their sweat

forging farms in

unforgiving heat,

never forgetting scars

of the lash, fighting

battle after battle

for generations.

Creeks called them Seminole

when they bonded with renegade Creeks.

Spaniards called them cimarrones,

runaways — escapees from Carolina

plantation death-prisons.

English simply called them maroons,

flattening the Spanish to make them

seem alone, abandoned, adrift —

but they were bonded,

side by side,

Black and Red,

in a blood red hue —

maroon.

Sovereignty soldiers,

Black refugees,

self-abolitionists, fighting

through America’s history,

marooned in a land

they made their own,

acre after acre,

plot after plot,

war after war,

life after life.

They fought only

for America to let them be

marooned — left alone —

in their own unchained,

singing,

worthy

blood.

Tyehimba Jess is a poet from Detroit who teaches at the College of Staten Island. He is the author of two books of poetry, “Leadbelly” and “Olio,” for which he received the 2017 Pulitzer Prize. Photo illustration by Jon Key. Cypress: Ron Clausen via Wikimedia

#african american history #american history #history #poetry #1619 #1619project

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batsandbloodmoons · 6 years ago

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Pagan Origins: Christmas

WARNING: LONG POST

So I’ve always had a love for knowing why we as people do certain things, it’s kind of a strange marriage between history and psychology. This really blossomed when I became a witch and started working on my craft. As part of developing my Sabbat traditions, and I plan on celebrating the pagan origins of Christmas as well as Yule, I figure I should learn about the history of them.

One of the things that baffled me were the major holidays that are celebrated in the United States. I was raised Roman Catholic, and have long since became disillusioned with the Church and ultimately switched to paganism. But I remember as a child, wondering about why we gave and received presents on Christmas when it was supposed to be Jesus’s birthday, why did we believe in a jolly fat man that delivered the presents, and why did we have a tree in the house? When I posed these questions to my family as a child, I never got a satisfactory answer... until now.

*Note* the following is for how Christmas is celebrated in the United States and are not universal to all cultures. Nor is it a hit at any religion.

❄️☀️🎄��🎅🎁🎄☀️❄️

GIFT-GIVING AND MERRYMENT

This custom started as far back as Ancient Rome and thier festival of Saturnalia. Originally, a farmers’ festival that was dedicated to Saturn, the god of agriculture and the harvest. According to Roman Mythology, Saturn was a titan and the father of Cronus, thus grandfather to Jupiter. Saturn was eventually overthrown by Cronus and moved west into the Italian peninsula. He then taught the people he meant there how to farm the land. In Greek Mythology, Saturn doesn’t have a name.

Saturnalia starts on December 17th and lasts until the 24th. Homes are decorated in wreaths and greenery. Feasts and parties werr thrown. People would overeat, overdrink and burst into songs in the streets (origin of caroling). Originally, the festival was only one day but grow longer and longer over time. By the time Rome converted to Christianity, Saturnalia now incorporated other festivals including Sigillaria, the day of gift giving which was on 12/23, and Died Natalie Solis Invicti, the birthday of the sun god Sol Invictus, which was on 12/25 because that is when it is noticeable that day is getting longer.

Saturnalia was so popular with the people that cancelling it was unthinkable when the Christian Coversion happened. So Saturnalia was transformed into a Christian holy day instead by replacing the sun god with baby Jesus. Despite the fact, that the Bible gave references to the time of Jesus’s birth being around the lambing season, in other words springtime. (bbc.co.uk)

SANTA CLAUS

Santa Claus has a number of origin stories and a number of different forms depending on the country in question. This will focus on the American version of Santa.

He can be traced back to a monk named Nicholas, later St. Nicholas by the Church, who was born around 280 A.D., in modern day Turkey. According to St. Nick’s legend, he was born into a wealthy family but gave away all of his possessions to travel the country and help the sick and the poor. One of his best know of these stories was when he raised enough money to cover the dowries of three sisters so they could marry instead of being sold into slavery or prostitution by thier father who couldn’t afford to care for them.

Over the course of the centuries, he became the protector of children and sailors. He died on December 6th, which became the day of his feast. It is also said to a lucky day for making a big purchase or getting married. By the time of Renaissance, he was the most popular saint in Europe and remained so during the Protestant Reformation, especially in Holland.

St. Nick was introduced into mainstream American culture at the end of the 18th century. In December 1773 and 1774, a New York newspaper reported that groups of Dutch families have gathered to celebrate St.Nick on the anniversary of his death.

The name Santa Claus evolved from his Dutch nickname, Sinster Klaad, which is a shortened form of Sint Nikolaas.

As his popularity grew, St. Nick was described as everything from a rascal with a blue three-cornered hat, red waistcoat, and yellow stockings to a man wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a “huge pair of Flemish Trunk hose.”

The Santa that most Americans know today didn’t emerge until 1822, when Clement Clarke Moore, an Episcopal minister, wrote a poem about Santa. He described Santa flying from house to house on Christmas Eve in a sleigh led by eight reindeer, leaving presents for deserving children. He gave Santa the ability to magically squeeze down the chimney and his love of milk and cookies.

In 1881, Santa got his iconic look from political cartoonist Thomas Nast, who used Moore’s poem as inspiration. His cartoon depicted Santa as rotund, cheerful man with a full, white beard, while holding a sack laden with toys. It was Nast who gave him his famous red suit trimmed with white fur, the Northpole workshop, the elves, and his wife, Mrs. Claus.

Other versions of St. Nicholas:

-Christkind or Kris Kringle was believed to deliver presents to well-behaved Swiss and German Children. Meaning “Christ Child”, Christkind is an angel-like often accompanied by St. Nick on Holiday missions.

- In Scandinavia, a jolly elf named Jultomten was thought to deliver gifts in a sleigh drawn by goats.

-English legend says that Fathrt Christmas visits each home on Christmas Eve to fill children’s stocking with treats.

-Pere Noel is responsible for filling the shoes of French children with treats that were left by the fireplace.

-In Russia, it is believed that an elderly woman named Babouschka purposely gave the three wise men the wrong directions to Bethlehem so that they couldn’t find Jesus. Later, she felt remorseful, but could not find the men to unto the damage. To this day on, 1/5, she visits Russian children leaving gifts at their bedsides in hope that one of them is the baby Jesus and she will be forgiven.

-In Italy, a woman called La Befana, a kindly witch who rides a broomstick down the chimneys of Italian homes to deliver toys into the stocking of lucky children. (History.com)

RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSE REINDEER

Rudolph was created over a hundred years after the other eight reindeer, in the 1920’s, by Robert L. May, a copywriter at the Montgomery Ward department store.

In 1939, May wrote a Christmas-themed story to bring holiday traffic into his store, which is the story Americans know today. In 1949, one of May’s friends, Johnny Marks, wrote a short song based on the poem. It was recorded by Gene Autry. The television movie, narrated by Burl Ives, was released in 1964. (History.com)

CHRISTMAS TREES

Plants and trees that remained green year had a special meaning for ancient people. One myth I heard, but couldn’t find a source for, for the reason Evergreens stay green was that. During the first winter, the sun spoke to the trees and told them that he would be resting for a few months and told them not to loose faith in his return. Months later the sun had not returned yet, many trees and plants began to lost faith and dropped thier leaves in thier despair. All except the Evergreens. When the Sun finally returned he saw what had happened, disappointed in those who lost faith, he cursed them to lose thier leaves every year while the Evergreens were allowed to keep their needles.

Another belief is that Evergreens would keep away witches, ghosts, evil spirits and illness when hung in the home.

In the Northern hemisphere, the winter solstice is the shortest day and longest night of the year, which falls on December 21st and 22nd. Many ancient people believed that the sun was a god and the winter came very year because the sun had become sick and weak. They celebrated the solstice because it meant that at last the sun would began to regain strength. Evergreens remind them of all the plants that would grow again when the sun was strong and summer would return.

Even ancient Egyptians worshipped the sun, in the form of Ra. At the solstice, when Ra began to recover from the illness, the Egyptians filled their homes with green palm rushes to symbolized the triumph of life over death.

Early Romans knew that the solstice meant that soon farms and orchards would be green and fruitful. They decorated their homes and temples with Evergreens. In Northern Europe, the Celtic Druids also decorated their temples with Evergreens as a symbol of everlasting life. Vikings would bring whole trees inside to preserve the spirit of nature.

However Germany is credited with starting the Christmas tree tradition as we know it. In the 16th century, Christians would build pyramids out of wood and decorate them with evergreens and candles. It was widely believed that Martin Luther, the 16th century Protestant reformer, first added lighted candles to a tree. The story goes that while walking home one winter evening, composing a sermon, he was awed by the brilliance of the stars twinkling amidst the evergreen trees. To recreate this for his family, he hung a tree’s branched with lighted candles.

In 1659 the General Court of Massachusettsenacted a law that made any observance of Christmas illegal because Christmas was too pagan in thier Puritan eyes. People were fined for hanging decorations, singing carols, decorating trees or any other joyful expression. That is until the 19th century when an influx of German and Irish immigrants came to America.

Before the then, Americans found Christmas trees to be an oddity m. The first record of one being on display was in the 1830’s by German immigrants in Pennsylvania, although the trees had already been a long standing tradition in German households. But as late as 1840’s, Christmas trees were still seen as pagan symbols and not accepted by most Americans.

That changed in 1846, when Queen Victoria and her German husband, Prince Albert were illustrated in a London newspaper, posing with thier children around a Christmas tree. Due to her popularity, Christmas trees became fashionable through out British and American societies.

By the 1890’s, Christmas ornaments were arriving from Germany and the tree’s popularity was on the rise in the U.S. It was noted that Europeans used small trees about, 4 feet in height, while Americans liked tall trees reaching from the ceiling to the floor.

The early 20th century saw Americans decorating their trees with homemade ornaments, while German-Americans continued to use apples, nuts, and marzipan cookies. The invention of electricity brought about Christmas lights, allowing trees to glow for days in end. With this, Christmas trees began to appear in town squares across the country and having a Christmas tree in the home became an American tradition. (History.com)

MISTLETOE

Mistletoe is actually a poisonous plant and its use as a peaceful symbol is rooted in Norse Mythology.

Baldr, the son of Frigg and Odin, was one of the most beloved of the gods. But he was plagued by dreams of his own death. So in an effort to protect her son, Frigg made everything: plant, animal, or rock, living in or growing in the earth, swear never to harm Baldr. As a result, he became invincible and the other gods began to use him for target practice because he always survived. But Loki, being his usual mischievous self, realize that mistletoe had been missed by Frigg, as it didn’t actually grow on the ground. He fashioned a weapon from some mistletoe. Whether that weapon was an arrow, dart, or spear depends on which version is told. But Loki persuades Hod, Baldr’s blind brother, to strike Baldr with the mistletoe weapon during a target practice session. This ensured that Hod took the immediate blame. Baldr died from a single wound and he was mourned deeply by all, especially his mother. Some versions say he was brought back to life, but most agree about what happened after his death, that Frigg‘ tears became mistletoe’s pearlescent berries, and in her grief, Frigg decreaded that mistletoe shall become a symbol of peace and love. Which is why now, people kiss under it today. (Mistletoe.org.uk)

HOLLY

Holly is another evergreen that is believed to ward off evil spirits when planted outside the house. When brought indoors, it increases fertility. Holly is believed to be linked with masculinity and most people use the holly bushes that produce red berries. But it is female holly bushes that produce said berries. Ivy is often the female equivalent to holly’s masculinity.

WREATH

It was difficult to find a definitive source about wreaths but the general consensus is that wreaths were made in a circle out of evergreens (holly, Laurel, or pine) to represent either the sun and life, or the wheel of the year. In fact the word Yule is believed to have stemmed from the Norse word “Jol” meaning wheel.

CANDY CANES

These are entirely Christian and were invented in 1670 when a German choirmaster at the Cologne Cathedral bent all white sugar sticks into canes for the children who attended the ceremonies. The shape is believe to represent a shepherd’s cane or the letter “J” for Jesus. After the advent of mass production, in the 1950’s, the red stripes were added. The red represented the blood of Jesus and the white was his purity. The three finer stripes were said to be the Holy Trinity (God, Jesus, and the Joly Spirit). The hardness is to symbolize the solid foundation of the Church. The peppermint flavor is supposed to stem from an herb called hyssop because, according to the Old Testament, hyssop was used to symbolize the purity of Jesus and his sacrifice. (Candyhistory.net)

ANGELS AND STARS

These refers to the debate of the tree toppers, angels or stars. The angel is represent the angel Gabriel, who came to Mary to ask her to bear God’s son, Jesus. The star refers to the Star of Bethlehem that wise men supposedly followed to find.

However since it was discussed above that Christmas lights are representations of the nighttime stars, then it could be argue that the star on top of the tree and being the largest, could be the sun, as it is the closest thus largest star to Earth.

🎄Please feel free to add to this as I tried to get most famous symbols of Christmas!! 🎄

#christmas #yule #witchcraft #witch #pagan #paganism #jesus christ #@nim-the-kitchen-cottage-witch

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malfoii · 7 years ago

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Hooked - Malfoy x Reader Pt 1

Description: First part of a five part series, which I promise to finish and upload asap!

Masterlist

“... And being alone — that's so hard. I was alone. And it sent me to a truly dark place. For a long time. Tom Riddle was also a lonely child. You may not understand that, Harry, but I do ..." - Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter and the Curse Child

The morning of June the fifth is one of gray and desolate nature, in which the skies are dark as pitch and the air is full of a quiet, lazy drizzle. It is on this particularly bleak morning, in a brick-stone mansion built large and grand as a wealthy King’s palace, that a baby boy is born into the world.

He is greeted by a sea of fond faces: doting Aunt, stern Father, an old midwife and the best surgeon that money can buy. His home is one of loud splendor: of high vaulted ceilings, marble and oak, of glass chandeliers that twinkle in the candlelight, of golden archways, and crystalline fountains. Upon opening his tiny hooded eyes, the baby lets out a peal of laughter, as if already aware that he’s played his hand in the lottery of birth, and come out with the winning ticket.

Despite, however, the apparent virtue of his disposition, the blond-headed child couldn’t have been born into a life more unfortunate and sorrowful - for both parents were loyalist Deatheaters, and as Draco Malfoy would later come to discover, this came with its fair share of heartbreaks.

For now, though, the boy would be raised well and happy, surrounded by the newest toys, the latest gadgets, submissive servants and elves. He was home-schooled, tutored by the great multitude of accomplished wizards and witches that looked unto his family with praise - and even though he could not legally cast his first spell until the age of twelve, he was expected to be a protege, a great master in his chosen crafts.

Note: The word “chosen” here is used lightly, as from the moment of his birth, Draco was already set upon the path of dark arts and nothing more. It was this fate, already inescapable, that consumed the majority of his childhood - everyday comprised of rigorous studies concerning the Dark Lord, the marvelous history of the purebloods, and of their obvious superiority. Even the most basic of subjects - maths, languages, etc. - were taught in such a way as to prepare him for his inevitable future as a new Death Eater.

Smart, talented and driven, Draco lacked only one thing – friends his own age, people to comfort and keep awake with him when the hours drew dark and young Draco (though he could never admit it) grew fearful of the very things he was raised to believe in. Visions of dementors, their sickly breath fogging the windowpane, would haunt his dreams for years to come.

Sometimes, in this specific nightmare, they would slip through the cracks of the walls and fill the darkness of his room, making horrible, grating noises. Malfoy strained to make out what they were saying. At first, it sounded like incoherent mumbling, like the buzzing of flies by his ears. But slowly, gradually, he began to understand what their raspy whispers, their angry chants: “One of us, one of us, one of us…”

Malfoy woke up in cold sweats.

At the age of eight, he confided in his mother: “My birthday wish? To have a friend - just one, please.”

To which Narcissa was forced to realize, that perhaps, perhaps her efforts to protect her son from all Muggle contact – though with good intention – had gone a bit too far. After all, a boy needed company of children his own age. But, with her family’s judgmental eye watching every action, there was not much that could be done.

And so, Draco’s eighth-year-birthday-wish dwindled into gradual disappointment, forgotten by everyone but the birthday boy himself. As a result, his last three years whilst living at home were increasingly bitter ones, spent in a never ending solitude that stung more and more with each passing day.

At the age of eleven, Draco Malfoy was admitted into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry - and yet, his hopes of finally meeting this ideal companion - someone who would make the world all right - fell short of reality.

Kindness and decency were not skills ever taught to Draco as a boy, and as result, his first years at Hogwarts were spent in a rather awkward way, with every attempt to make friends ending in quick rejection. The values that his family had imparted onto him - the importance of family names, of bloodlines, etc. - were not, as he soon discovered, the same values held by most other students. In fact, it was these very same values that made his peers believe him “snobbish”, “rude”, “arrogant”, and the very same values that lead to him being (perhaps hyperbolically) one of the most hated students in his year.

Even so, he eventually gained the acquaintanceship of Crabbe and Goyle, two other Slytherins of proper pureblood descent. Unlike most of Hogwarts, they respected his family, laughed at his jokes, and generally followed him around wherever he went. As much as he enjoyed their company, there was no denying that they were, at the very least, a little dull.

It wasn’t until his eleventh year that Draco would meet the person of his dreams, and be absolutely bowled over with how very perfect she was. It is here that the story begins, on a cold, wintry night, at a drunken dormitory party in the Gryffindor house, where the air is full of blasting music, flashing strobe, and the rising stench of alcohol.

It was, actually, this sort of party that Draco despised the most. Everywhere he looks is full of stupid, drunken teenagers, dancing against each other, sweaty skin sliding against sweaty skin. Everything is too loud – an overwhelming cacophony of bad music and high-pitched laughter pounded against his head, to the point where he could scarcely put his thoughts in order. Behind him, Crabbe and Goyle are making awful fools of themselves, guzzling beer from the keg, snorting and making the most sickening of noises as they chug, chug, chug. Not to mention, it’s a Gryffindor party, and Draco Malfoy is more than aware that he wasn’t welcome there. Students of every house and year shoot him dirty looks from time to time, their glares emboldened by the flashing lights.

“Malfoy!” He turns around, to where Goyle has finished his keg and is holding it victoriously above his head. “What’s the matter, man? Why are you just standing there?”

He belches, and tosses the keg away. “Come on, join the party!”

Malfoy winces and shakes his head. “In a moment. You’ll have to… excuse me for now.”

Goyle shrugs, and disappears into the hot tang of crowds, stranding Malfoy alone.

Well, fine. If they don’t want him here, then he has better places to be anyways.

Grabbing his coat from where he left it, Draco steals out of the dormitory and onto the school’s balcony, gasping for fresh air. The icy air strikes him like a knife to the flesh, and he shivers. In a lame attempt to warm himself, he rubs his palms against each other, blowing warm air into his cupped hands before tugging on the winter coat.

It’s frigid outside, and Draco almost re-considers leaving the warmth of the Gryffindor dormitory, when he suddenly catches sight of the silhouette at the railing. It’s a girl, and she stands alone, back towards him, her gaze entranced by the nighttime sky.

Walking closer, Draco recognizes her as (Y/L/n) from his potions class – another pureblood, whose parents are both prominent members of the Ministry. From what little he attention he pays her, Draco knows that she’s intelligent, a dangerous witch to anger, and following fast in her parents’ footsteps as a rising star of the wizarding world. And, what’s more, not so bad looking tonight, clad in a sleeveless red dress (much too short for this weather, he can’t help but notice), black stockings and heels. Maybe tonight won’t be so boring after all.

Hearing the sound of approaching footsteps, she glances over to see the newcomer. At the sight of the blond haired Slytherine, her face sours in a show of disgust. “Draco.” and turns back to gazing vacantly outwards. “The party’s inside, you know.” she gestures towards the door from which he came.

“True, it is.” He smiles coyly, and comes to stop by her side. “But you’re out here. So why would I want to be in there?”

Scoffing, she turns to direct her glare at him. “What do you think you’re doing, Draco?”

“Clearly, I’m standing out here, speaking to the most ravishing girl,” his lips quirk into a smirk, and he leans against the rails.

With a note of irritation, she sighs and moves away. “What do you want?”

“Your company.” His hand flies out to grab her wrist, and pulls her back towards him. “Is that too much to ask?”

For a second, (Y/n) purses her lips in a look of part amusement, part shock. Then, eyes blazing, she leans in until he can feel the heat of her breath upon his face. “You forget yourself.” she whispers, her voice snappish. “You had better remember who your family is, and who mine are. I will not be humiliated by some wannabe Death Eater.”

His grip tightens around her wrist, and he frowns. “I don’t appreciate being talked to that way,” he growls. “You had best show some respect, little girl, before I make you.”

Smirking, she strokes his cheek with her thumb. “And how will you do that? Send Daddy after me?”

Her fingers are ice cold, and Draco jolts at her touch. “Kitten, keep acting like that, and I’ll have to show you.”

Studying his face for any sign of sarcasm, her stare focuses on the dark lust of his eyes. A laugh escapes her lips, and she moves closer still, until she can feel the bulge of his pants against her thigh.

“With all due respect, Draco,” she hums against his ear, and his member quickly hardens, “You absolutely repulse me.”

And with that, she leaves him be, retreating back into the throng of the party.

Draco stands agape, watching her strut away, leaving him alone on the empty balcony.

His heart pounds mercilessly against his ribcage – and with that, Draco knows, he’s hooked.

#Draco Malfoy #malfoy #malfoy x reader #draco x reader #draco malfoy x reader #draco malfoy fic #malfoy fic #draco fic #harry potter #harry potter fanfiction #draco malfoy fanfiction

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kaitlynskpop · 6 years ago

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“where all is holy”

??? x reader [prologue]

2.5k words

seven deadly sins! au

There was no light streaming in through the stained glass picture of Mary, and that’s how you knew you were in trouble.

The church floorboards creak, and you sit on your haunches from your spot kneeling before the altar. A sudden chill fills the air, and you pull your jacket tighter around your form before bravely turning around to catch the culprit of the noise in the air.

“Father Bang?” you whisper, your eyes scanning the pews. However, the burly man was nowhere to be found. You were alone in the room. Swallowing, you turn back to the altar, when a chorus of beautiful laughter fills the room. You watch as the candles you had lit blew in a sudden wind that swept through the room, so harsh that your jacket rises away from your body and flies off of you. You try to reach out at the catch the fabric, only for it to violently slam against a desk in the corner of the room, causing a piece of paper, which caught the breeze shaking the room, to fly through the air.

The paper floats down in front of you, landing on the table which you had set up the candles on. You gasp as the piece of paper begins to burn at the corner, quickly rising to grasp the paper and blow on it to stop the firing from spreading. The paper, burnt in the corner, appeared old. It was yellow, and the writing on it was light gray instead of the dark black that was associated with newly written pieces. Gnawing on your lip, you skim over the paper.

Unfortunately, you didn’t recognize the prayer.

O Lord Jesus Christ, pattern of humility, who emptied yourself of your glory, and took upon the form of a servant: root out of us all pride and conceit of heart, that, owing ourselves miserable and guilty sinners, we may willingly bear contempt and reproaches for your sake, and glorying in nothing but you, may esteem ourselves lowly in your sight. Not unto us, O Lord, but to your name be the praise, for your loving mercy and for your truth’s sake.

Amen.

“Do you think she’ll get the hint now?” comes a new voice, quiet while swimming through your ears. It was deep, but seemed far away -- almost like people were talking while you were dozing.

You look up and yet again find no one.

Your hands tremble as they clutch the paper. Something was so wrong and you didn’t know what was going on. You swear you could hear voices as if they were in the room.

“Should we make ourselves visible to her?” It came from your far right, near the back of the sanctuary. The voice was deep and made you shiver. It held anything but good intentions, sensual in its delivering.

“I’m sure the poor thing would be frightened,” came a third voice, kind and upbeat. However, you knew better than to trust someone just because they seemed nice. This voice is perhaps the closest to you, so close you swear you hear breath against your ear.

“Maybe I should help her relax,” comes a purr from the second voice again.

“Maybe you should shut up,” comes a fourth voice, teasingly.

“And my handsome face is too much for this kid right now,” comes a fifth voice.

“I think she’s having trouble seeing us because she doesn’t want to believe this is happening, not because we’re necessarily blocking ourselves.” This is the sixth voice, seeming to come from the second pew down. Your head snaps in the direction. There was a certain intellectualism about the voice, like someone who knew what they were talking about.

“Aw, look at how she reaction to Greed’s voice,” coos a seventh voice. “Not fair! I want to have fun with her too!” You picture a young man pouting as he utters these words.

“Well, he is the leader,” comes a dry response from the first voice, the one that seemed like you were listening from underwater. Perhaps it was the lazy, biting drawl of it that made it vibrate within your ears.

“But Pride’s been doing this the longest out of all of us, and she didn’t react nearly as much as she did to Greed!” argues the seventh voice, a high-pitched whine.

“That’s because Pride only talks about his handsome face,” comes the same dry response.

“What else is there to talk about?” This interruption between the first and seventh voice comes from, who you assume is Pride. “My face is the reason girls like her fall for me.”

“Yeah, I’m sure they do,” comes the sarcastic response from the first voice.

“Geez,” barks the third voice with laughter rumbling throughout the church. “Sloth’s on a roll today.” This was the voice that had come from right next to you, and you could feel the warmth of a body next to you.

You gather your wits just enough to stammer out, “H-hello?”

Silence fills the sanctuary and you knew in that moment you were going crazy.

“Let’s show her us,” begs the second voice. There was a begging tone within his words. “God, I can’t wait to be inside of her. She’s so pure.”

“You’re fucking gross,” comes the fourth voice. “God, you’re stinking up this hellhole with your fucking horniness, Lust.”

“You’re the one that’s gross, Wrath,” retorts Lust. “We all know you’re just as eager to be inside that tight little body.”

There was a grunt of disgust as a reply. You can picture someone curling their lip in response to Lust’s words.

“Fine,” comes Greed, the one who seemed to have all the answers. “Let’s show her us.”

You feel your breath catch in your throat, and you close your eyes, shaking your head. “You’re all not real,” you cry out, placing your hands over your ears. “Oh my god, I need to get home.” Too bad you didn’t recognize your mistake.

“Who did you just say, little girl?” This was the originally happy seventh voice. This time, his voice was laced with darkness and a metallic taste that could only be associated with blood fills your mouth. “Did you really just say his name in front of us? You should know better, just from listening to us. We’re going to have to punish you, now.”

Murmurs and shouts and grunts of agreement rise from the faceless group. You fall to the ground, holding your head and rocking back and forth. You remember a time when you were punished by God through visions of what could only be a past life, and you feared the worst: that you were once again going to be punished with visions and voices. That’s the only logical reasoning behind the voices you hear within the church.

“Please, please, please pleasepleaseplease,” you beg. “God, don’t do this to me again. I’m begging you, Lord. I-I don’t know what I did wrong! I’ll pray every day for hours again!” At this point you’re rambling. “Not again, just please, not again, I’ve tried so so hard to please you so that they don’t pop up again-”

“Oi, this is really pissing me off,” comes the first voice. Sloth? “She keeps mentioning Him.”

Several footsteps ring in your eyes, and there was the creaking of the sanctuary’s wooden floor. You tremble, knowing that divine punishment was about to be delivered to you.

“Open your eyes, girl,” purrs Lust.

And when you do, you jump at seeing seven young men in front of you. What was more surprising was how beautiful each of them were.

Each of them had their own unique characteristics which made it very clear that although they could raise hell together, they were more than capable of doing so by themselves.

“I am Lust,” purrs a handsome man, oozing strength and sensuality. You noticed the slightest of all scars on his cheek. If anything, it contributed to his beauty.

“I’m Gluttony,” comes the distinct seventh voice, the one which rings like a bell. His soft cheeks made it appear as if he was constantly smiling -- which he was doing right now.

“Greed,” says another man. You once again shudder at his deep voice and peer at who it was. He was the tallest of the men around you, with silver hair.

“Wrath.” A man joins the introductions. His gorgeous blonde hair was taken back by a tie, his bangs sweeping the corners of his face. He had soft, round lips.

“Pride.” This man was perhaps the most otherworldly beautiful of them all, tall and thin as idealized by the world. He had pitch black hair, and appeared the oldest out of everyone. You remember vaguely, as you were enraptured by his beauty, that pride was the original sin, and the most serious. Another shudder runs through your body at the information your mind supplied.

“I’m Envy.” Following the voice, you encountered an ethereal man with blonde hair. He had the most round face out of all the members, his cheeks soft and almost -- if you were not being serious -- squishy. It reminded you of a child, and you would have guessed that he was the youngest if you had not first met Lust.

The quiet voice, the one which echoes as if underwater, finally speaks up. “Sloth,” he says, eyes flickering to you and away from you just as quick, as if he couldn’t bare to give anyone the time out of his day. There was a lazy quality about him, from his apathetic face to his crimped hair that made it appear as if he had just gotten out of bed.

You have slowly been piecing together all of the introduction. Oh, God. You felt like you were going to be sick. You hoped desperately that this was all a joke by God above. There was no way the Seven Sins themselves could appear before you.

“Yes, we are the Seven Sins,” Greed says, as if reading your mind. You startle, slowly crawling backwards until your back hit the altar. They edge closer to you, their red eyes sharp and all-seeing. You swear you hear Sloth snarl in annoyance, as if saying, This puny human made me move.

You still immediately, but you could feel your body shaking against the cold church ground. You were sure you were hallucinating, or that the visions were back again.

“You’re ours now,” says Lust, a smirk edging at the corner of his perfect lips. You’re an entranced as you are terrified by the motion.

“W-what do you mean?”

“(F/n) (L/n), you have been born to absolve the Seven Deadly Sins, the most serious of all sins, of their wrongdoings,” says Wrath unusually solemnly.

“You’re wrong!” you cry out, bringing your trembling hands to your face.

“Oh?” The temperature drops as much as Wrath’s voice. You are no longer quivering out of fear. No, it was if any hint of warmth had been completely ripped out of you in a single moment. You could feel your body beginning to freeze over, and you gasp. The air was so still, any dust in the air freezing in its place. The church is still, all at Wrath’s power. Your eyes frantically check the man’s face, and yet he seems calm. That had to be the most terrifying expression you had ever seen, not just because of his actions, but because of how little he cares about it. “Should we light this entire town on fire then? Would you like that? Maybe we can start with this little church you’ve been attending since before you were born.”

Fear, icy and cold, runs through your veins. You can physically feel the sweat collecting at the top of your head, under your bangs. You don’t think you’d ever been this terrified in your entire life.

“I’m sorry.” The words coming out of your mouth. “You-you just have to understand, this is hard to believe. That it’s happening.”

“We don’t have to understand shit,” sneers Envy, his unusually friendly face tight with disgust. His pouty lips were pursed in disgust. His hooded eyes are wide, red irises boring down into your very soul. You gasp as you see a vision: Envy ripping your heart from your body, holding the bloody organ in his hand as a cackle rings through your head. You shudder in fear, your bottom lip trembling and tears prickling into your eyes.

“Oh my --”

“Don’t you dare finish that!” snaps Gluttony, brow furrowing. “You really don’t want to piss me off, little girl.”

A murmur of agreement arises from the men. No, not men. Demons. Beings of higher power. Sins.

“So, what will be your choice?” This time it is Greed, perhaps the most collected and calculating of the bunch. “Will you help us or shall we kill you now?”

“I vote we kill her now,” muses Wrath. “She holds no use for me. Like this measly human could help me.”

Gluttony hums to acknowledge Wrath’s words, before turning back to give you a once-over. “I don’t know. She’s pretty cute when she’s petrified.” A wicked grin crosses his affable face.

“Oh, believe me, I know she’s cute,” says Lust. His honeyed tongue causes goosebumps to arise on your arms. “I’ve been enraptured with her beauty since we arrive. I wonder how humans feel when they’re under you.” The terrifying part was you couldn’t tell if he was talking about fucking you or slaughtering you, or doing both.

“Can we please get this over with?” snaps Sloth. “I don’t want to be here any longer than we have to be.”

“I agree,” says Pride. He turns his ethereal face towards you, his plump lips frowning. “So? What about it, human?”

You chew your lip, before blurting out, “What are my options? Help you and live, or refuse and die?”

“Look who’s finally catching on,” Sloth responds drily.

“Those aren’t options!”

“Yes, they are,” argues Envy. “So cast your vote!”

You grab on to the wall behind you and stand slowly, like an antelope arising in front of a lion. “I…”

“Any day now,” Sloth sighs.

“...will help.”

“Great!” cheers Gluttony, clasping his hands together to make a singular clap. “I knew you were smart!”

“I’m glad you agreed,” interrupts Greed. “Now tell me, which one would you like to absolve first?”

Knowing there was no way out of this, and that this was too long to be a hallucination or vision, you bite down on your lip before opening your mouth. You didn’t know the enormous impact your words would have on your life. Oh, if only you could stay this oblivious forever. “I think I’ll begin with --”

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adarlingfamily · 6 years ago

Text

THIS S I L E N C E ENDS NOW.

What has been done unto me, will be silenced no more.

I need to get this off my chest.

It has taken me years to get to a place where I feel safe enough to write these words. These are by the far the hardest that I've ever had to write, but now that I have children of my own their innocence gives me the strength to speak up and share what has happened to me. I hope my story can help others speak up who have been too afraid or ashamed to share in the past. No longer will I sit in silence letting these memories eat me up inside. If I can protect just one person from the abuse I suffered, then all of the pain will be worth it.

Let me start off by saying I'm not here to call out people and name the people who abused me. Karma takes care of that for me. I have spent enough time thinking about hurting those who hurt me. But what does that prove? That I am no better than they are!

Hurting someone needlessly is an act of weakness, not strength. No, I am here to heal, to share, and to support others who may feel like they are dealing with their own sexual abuses all alone.

You are not alone! You are so much stronger than you can even imagine! You are capable of healing! You are loved! You deserve to be loved in a caring and respectful way!

Growing up I had a wonderful early childhood. My family didn't have very much money and we moved around a lot but as a child it didn't matter that much to me. Playing outside, riding bikes, and soaking up the sunshine with my sister was what was important to me.

At a young age I became fascinated with ballet, theatre, and performing arts. Determined that I would become the next prima ballerina I begged my mom to enroll me in a dance school. Despite it being a stretch financially they could see my passion for dance. I loved ballet. It made my soul sing. I loved the colorful tutu's, the beautiful costumes, and the grace of the older dancers twirling around on pointe. It all seemed like magic to me. I just wanted to be part of that world so badly.

That is, until I turned 8 years old. I went from a Montessori school to a public school for the first time. That change might not have been so dramatic if my classmates had been different, who knows? In public school I stuck out like a sore thumb. I remember getting in trouble the first day of school for getting up to go to the bathroom during class. It didn't make sense to me that you had to ask to use the bathroom. I had always been trusted to take care of my own body. I thought to myself, “Where else would I be going?” Unfortunately that first day of school would not be the end of my bathroom torment.

Puberty was hitting us gals hard. Looking back on it all I wish I could just tell myself, "Who cares what she thinks!” “You are beautiful just the way you are!" She was being mean to me because she was jealous. But I considered her more beautiful than I was. She was so exotic and tan compared to my white flesh. She was different, like I was but somehow I thought her kind of different was so much better than mine. I felt all alone, even though she was my "best friend" at school. As my chest blossomed so did her jealously. She started to bully and verbally rip apart another A-Cup girl like myself. I felt her turning on me. I didn't want her to bully me too so I went into hiding. Okay not literally. I hid my body and started wearing baggy shirts and sweatpants all the time. Hoping and praying she wouldn't notice my growing chest I clung on terrorized by this beautiful nightmare.

Meanwhile what feels like every time I needed to go pee at school I am cornered, bullied, and verbally harassed in my bathroom stall. These two girls had it out for me. I was painfully shy already so even the thought of someone peeping in between the cracks of the stall was mortifying enough, but oh no, these two took it to the next level. Standing on each toilet of the opposite stalls these bullies surrounded me with their peering eyes and creepy comments like "nice ass" which was a lot for a kid straight out of a completely different world. My bubble had been shattered. Day after day I dreaded having to go to the bathroom. Trying to seek refuge I would pick the last stall so at least I would have one side of privacy while I looked up terrified that any minute their eyes would POP up! Waiting, staring, taunting and terrifying me. I stopped going to the bathroom at school. The walks back from school became long enough to feel like torture as I continued to hold it.

Don't forget. I'm still doing ballet and since puberty has hit I have put on a little bit of weight. I am really serious about ballet, still following my dream of becoming a prima ballerina! After years of performing Nutcracker, Peter Pan, and other various seasonal shows I was picked to do my own solo performance. My dance teacher whom I loved and admired like a mother, danced with me. Her belief in me kept me going. Our "Mother, Daughter" dance moved the crowd to tears. I remember feeling so alive in that moment like "I was born for this!" Soon I was paying for such an electric performance.

Yet another "friend", a girl I met in ballet class had started to bully me about my recent weight gain calling me a "fatty" and a "lard ass" talking about how my butt jiggled when I walked during our ballet class. I was already embarrassed enough having to squeeze into my snug leotard and tights in the changing room. At that point things escalated to a whole other level leaving me contemplating suicide. This friend of mine was 'fancy', they lived on the lake in this big house with a boat and bbq's, an entire room just filled with awesome toys, and plenty of summer fun. Or so I thought at first.

This one is a tough memory to write about because it hits so damn close to home. Everything is so connected, now as I piece these repressed memories together 19 years later.

Our moms were friends and they loved chatting so we would go over to their house often. Seemed like at least once a week. During that time the older neighbor boy took a liking to us girls and after going swimming we were upstairs in her mom's bathroom getting ready to wash up. The neighbor boy burst in the door right as we had taken off our stinky lake suits and were hopping into a huge bathtub filled with fun bubbles. Snapping pics in between our screams of protest "get out creep!" Finally after about a dozen or so nude photographs are captured he leaves.

But no hold on, it gets worse. Sleepover nights with that friend become a barrage of unwanted late night games of "playing doctor". I couldn't take it anymore. My own "best friend" bullied and molested me (all of this on top of being sexually harassed and bullied at my new school!) I quit ballet. Made up some lame ass excuse and quit. Threw it all away, years of practice and training. I needed to escape at least one bully in my life. I didn't feel like I had any choice. Finally after what feels like a century, the year of terror ends and I beg my mom to put me back in Montessori. Thankfully back at my old Montessori school I have a moment of calm from dealing with a bunch of sexual abuse at school. Sadly, because of what had happened to me I have a really hard time making new friends. I just couldn't trust anyone. I didn't want anyone close to me. I graduated from sixth grade feeling lonelier than ever, dreading what I knew was about to come.

Seventh grade. A new school...a public school. My worst nightmare was coming true again and this time their was no where to hide. No more Montessori. (With only a few Montessori schools back then, they only went to 6th grade)

Time to face my demons again. Deep breath.

A moment of calm and for a minute there I'm invisible. Everyone has already made friends with each other in 6th grade and no one wants to hang out with me. Which is okay for a little bit but it gets kinda lonely after a while. I finally make a friend and we are best buds! Going to the mall, watching movies together, laughing, giggling, and having a great time together.

Without this friend I wouldn't have known how to let happiness and love into my heart again. I know we haven't talked in a while but I want to thank you. Your friendship and kindness in my time of darkness saved me. But even during times of light, darkness still found me... this time during the bus ride home.

Deep down, I was still depressed and I wanted to be away from everyone and honestly just be left alone. This guy in my grade started getting really pushy and weird about sitting next to me. He insisted on sitting by the window and as I stand up to protest he pushes me down and rubs his crotch in my face, he sits down, looks out the window, then looks back at me with a look that would have turned water into ice. At this point everyone's getting in the bus, it's loud and chaotic...EVERY DAY he would seize his perfect moment to strike. I rode in fear. I was so painfully shy and honestly terrified of what this boy (a major bully) would do to me if he found out I reported him to anyone. Coming from Montessori school we didn't have much of these kinds of issues so I did not know how to respond. Instead I let my silence wash over me while I suffered the daily grind.

Eighth grade. At this point I'm so scared and confused about what love is. Despite moving all around town I've been madly in live with a childhood friend and finally I get the chance to go to the same school. Sadly because of all that has happened, I have all of this rage pent up inside of me. One day during a silly game of kickball I explode like a volcano, in a fit of rage I unleash all sorts of swear words and my friend floats away from me forever. After that day I've come to realize the true stinging power of the silent treatment. As far as he was concerned I was invisible and as he looked through me, not at me! I lost hold of one of the rare feelings of love in my childhood. He was one of the only constant joys in my life. If we were hanging out everything was groovy. Running around in the rain, playing tag amongst the plants in the garden, dripping paint all over my head as we paint your little play house. I can still feel the tears running down my cheeks after getting off the phone for the last time. You didn't want to be friends anymore. You were my rock, someone who knew me before all of this abuse happened. I had never felt more alone.

My depression worsens and I can't imagine what is about to happen in high school. Images on the TV tell me that all the girls wear high heels and looks much older than they are. I have my first day of school outfit picked out months in advance. A grey off the shoulder long sleeve shirt, skinny jeans, and a pair a red semi high heels. I felt so grown up, so mature, and yes finally so exotic and beautiful. I soon discover that actually pretty much no one wears high heels to school unless you are going to a dance. Oh so awkward. Thankfully my mom has literally forced me to do a sport and although I'm not into sports I really love to swim. (Thank you Mom!) Having the supportive comments from the older teammates really helped me overcome my paralyzing first day of school fear.

Picture this, its freshman year. The first day of school and I'm late to class after lunch because, well I'm not really sure where my class is. I don't have time to change as I burst through the door to my weight training class. It's warm up time and everyone's doing push ups. Without a word, high heels and all I join in, digging deep, cuz even though I'm a girl I want them to know I belong here.

What coach says next warns my heart to this day "Oh come on boys, this girl just showed up and she can do push ups better than half of yah AND SHE’S WEARING HIGH HEELS!" Even though I felt silly wearing those stupid shoes all day, it was all worth it for that one moment.

I am a strong women and that day I discovered my hidden power.

Through the greatest times of darkness my light still finds a way to shine. I'm focused on school and swimming and soon it's my sophomore year. Thanks to my moms initial push, I've realized how much I love swimming and being focused on that helps immensely with my depression. My swim coach rocks and is a serious influence on me finding my inner and outer strength.

I will soon need every ounce of that very thing. Evil takes on many different forms along this journey. He's my first "real official highschool boyfriend" and I'm really excited. At the time all the girls in my close circle were obsessed with him and I felt honored that out of everyone he chose me. Soon I would regret that very thought. Quickly things started to unravel, sexually he was all pent up, his mom went on every date with us, she was always there. I'm still a virgin at this point but the sharks are circling in the water, and boy oh boy do they smell blood. Now I need to take a moment.

I've been scared shitless to share this next part of my story for years. Silently suffering and distancing myself from my quite large family. I'm not afraid of what everyone will think. I regret not protecting my other family members. What happened to me was not okay and has taken me so long to stop blaming myself for what happened, finally to get it out and more forward in my healing work.

The Internet played its part in helping along this next development as I sped closer to my sweet sixteen. I had started chatting with an older family member on aim and soon things got sexual. I was seduced by the draw of being something that I wasn't through the Internet, I pretended like I was actually "cool" enough to have been to a couple party's (soo not true!) and things escalated from there. It seemed innocent at the time, he wasn't really touching me so I felt safe sitting at home and yeah eventually turned on. No one had ever talked to me like that and even though I wasn't attracted to my family member it felt nice to capture someone's attention. I just wanted to be loved. My family was falling apart, and as my parents turned on each other I tried to deal with that, all the while adding another huge load of baggage of my own. This family member was staying with my grandparents and my sister and I consistently spent the night during the weekends. He would often say "it's okay, we're not actually related" but even so I was not ready for what was about to come. First was the aim conversations, then he'd pin me down or pull me into him on the couch for a kiss. At first that was all it was, a tease. Lots of talk, some kissing and then the finale. He had been talking a lot about how he couldn't take away my virginity. I knew he wanted me badly but would not do anything until I wasn't a virgin. One night after staying out late at a party he came home, took a shower and then came into my room. More kissing. "Take off your panties" he demands Not happening. I just started my period and my panty liner is my only protection as he pulls me on top of him. He's kissing me and then putting something in my hand, suddenly with disgust I realize why it's growing. I had never even touched a penis before and was instantly revolted. His hands are everywhere and as his fingers find my panty liner and starts stroking, I shut down. All of my blood runs cold, thankfully my flight response kicks in and I am able to scramble away. (Thank you for not chasing me down. I think you knew what you were doing was wrong but couldn’t help yourself because of what trauma was going on in your life. Know this, I forgive you) Now don't forget I have a super sexual boyfriend constantly being repressed by his mother presence around us. It's summertime. He has his parents house to himself and he wants me to come over. My parents are away at a concert but thanks to aim I am able to get ahold of my family member (actively molesting me) to drive me over to my boyfriends house. I tell my sister I'm going for a walk and I get dropped off. I can still remember exactly what I was wearing. A t-shirt, jeans, and sandals, nothing scandalous. He leads me through the dark house from the back door to his bedroom. This is not what I pictured for such a sacred event. My boyfriend tells me to "take off my pants and get on top". It hurts! I say stop, instead he goes harder and a knife from his headboard falls on his head.

No romance, no candles, no passion or pleasure. In less then 15 minutes I'm calling my family member to come pick me up again. During the ride home my family member taunts me about how quick that was, and tells me how he could satisfy me, obviously unlike my boyfriend. My sisters mad at me when I get home, my walk was too long. I take a shower because I've been told to do so by my boyfriend. I don't realize the gravity of the situation right away. None of my close friends had lost their virginity, so I thought it happened like that for everyone. I had said yes initially to what my boyfriend was doing, my consent ended when he started to hurt me and did not stop. It isn't until senior year that I realize I had been raped.

Junior year I fall in love with someone who is not mine and I suffer the consequences. It's been years and I finally feel that warm fuzzy kind of love and am willing to see past all sorts of flaws in a person and situation that was not good for me. Yet again I can't go to the bathroom alone anymore because some older girls are "protecting" their friend. They've started pushing me around in the bathrooms, in the hallways, going to and from the parking lot and anywhere else they could at school. My body is constantly covered in bruises. It gets worse as things at home are in shambles. He quickly cheats on me and I spend all summer laying in bed dead to the world. I don't want to move, I'm crushed and I can't take it anymore. I'm numb. A zombie shell of a girl I used to be.

Where is the love? I focus on getting out of this "small ass town" I enjoy my senior year. I've reinvented myself. I fail math class the first half of the year and because of extra credits, I get to have 3 art classes. My art teacher rocks and boosts my confidence even more. I relax. I find an older guy (not from high school) that I'm really into. He protects me and shows great concern when this family member (who I've finally shared with someone has abused me) wants to hang out my more and more with other younger family members.

I start healing. I go to off college.

I face my demons. I try to drown them.

Not able to cope with my madness, I leave my boyfriend behind. I get used to the idea of being alone. And then my high school crush asks me out on a date. From those first nervous moments we blend together. Talking for hours, music's playing but I'm not really listening, our accents come out. I feel so comfortable. I welcome him into my home and slowly into my heart. We date and move in together. I graduate college. He ask for my hand in marriage, I say yes and we are engaged. We have kids together. I start to pursue another life long dream of being a Montessori teacher. It's been years since I've had to deal with any sort of serious sexual harassment but then suddenly it's all happening again. I very strongly believe that if you have been sexually abused you become venerable to this kind of trauma and it is easy to suffer the same abuses over and over again. It isn't easy work because during this time we must go to the root of our suffering in order to start to healing and realign with our true selves.

I am doing my thing. I love being a teacher. In only a year I've been promoted from assistant to lead teacher. I've found my passion again through Infant Montessori but soon my perfect world is shattered. I'd known my boss since I was little but it wasn't her that was the problem. It was her husband. He starts showing up to my classroom every day. Trapping me and talking with me while I'm trying to do my job taking care of 13 kiddos under the age of 3. These constant distractions became a everyday struggle. Then the comments start. I'm wearing my favorite maternity dress. Bending over a small sensory table I am starting my day in the classroom, helping the children explore our latest sensory experience. Parents are dropping off their kids and helping them remove and put away their boots and coats. My assistant teacher is an arms length away, reading stories to a couple other students in the reading corner He opens the door to the classroom. Wide eyed I stand straight up, knowing he would enjoy the view all too much. His hungry eyes ready to eat me up finally drift upwards. "Oh, don't get up on account of me!"

He proceeds to stay during the entire class period and peer at my chest some more as he towers over me while I attempt to help my little friends. Trapped in my classroom I have no where to hide. So many thoughts are running through my head. “What the hell! I'm an adult now, this should not be happening at my work of all places!” I'm sick of being treated like this, he stares longingly at my cleavage and I catch his eyes with mine and look into his very soul with a hatred that comes from years of abuse. I have everything set up to get a scholarship for my Montessori Certification. That Monday morning I'm struck with cramps so badly I nearly fall to the floor when they wash over me.

I couldn't take it anymore! Every day I had suffered but now I was pregnant with a daughter. I had to protect her. I had to get away from him. He wasn't going to stop. He had done this before. It was only going to get worse. I had to leave.

Once again I gave up on my dream, but this time it was to protect my daughter.

Every day I struggle with these memories. I've spent the last four years driving past the house where I was raped. I've tried to drown my sorrows and I've stared them soberly down. My children have saved me and shown me how strong I really am. To all of those sitting in silence letting it eat you up, just let it out. Write it down. Talk about it. Get that shit out! Cry your eyes out! Feel it for a final moment, let it have power, be afraid, focus on your breathe, then take back your power! You are alive! Spread your love Follow your dreams Never give up You are the change! A note to my abusers, you know who you are... I forgive you. I know something bad must have happened to you too. I love you, you can't rush your healing but talking to someone you trust sure does help :) This took me 11 years to write, don't make the same mistake that I did! If something bad is happening to you, SPEAK UP! You are not alone. If you don't have anyone you can trust to talk to, try chatting with me @ [email protected]

Authors Note: I found this video after finally drafting up my post. It moved me to tears and spoke to my soul, I think it is something that needs to be shared. THE QUOTES THAT TOUCHED MY HEART

“Depression comes as a gift asking that a woman recognize her own substance and trust it as the quiet, steady voice of her own truth. As she trusts it, hearkens to it, attends as it unfolds, she learns that of herself never allowed to develop when her allegiance was with the collective…” “Depression serves a woman is it presses down on her, forcing her to leave behind that which was not herself, which had influenced her to live a life alien to her own nature. Her suffering, now substantial, insists that she no longer deny its truth. " “For through her descent, she touches the power of the feminine, the power that comes of being, not doing… the power of wisdom in the face of a very old woman, a face on which one reads, ‘I know what I know.’ “A woman through her descent, touches a deeply feminine authority, as different from the authority of the masculine as is the moon from the sun. “It is an authority not of abstracted, rational, objective knowledge, but an authority which allows her to speak from her own unique experiencing of life, from her own deepest personal conviction.

http://www.mysticmamma.com/the-descent-in-the-feminine-process/ THE VIDEO The gift of depression aka the Feminine Descent by Stephanie Lin

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To all of those reading this, Thank you! Thank you for holding this space for me to share without shame or fear of judgement. I love and appreciate you Our time is now. No more playing small! We can no longer stay silent. Peace, Love and Light -Mama Bear

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quantumrpg · 6 years ago

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NAME: Eleanor “Elle” Logan AGE: 27 SPECIES: Witch PRIMARY POWER: Phosphoromancy SECONDARY POWERS: Astral Projection OCCUPATION: Elementary School Teacher YEAR OF ARRIVAL: 1973 RESIDENT FOR… one year. FACECLAIM: Stella Maeve

t i m e i s a n i l l u s i o n, b u t n o t o u r s t o r i e s…

Elle was born and raised in a normal, ordinary town in Colorado, among a very large and extended family of witches. Eleanor’s family always preached to her the duties she held as a witch. They were traditional in the sense that they believed, above all else, that they were Shepards to humanity and that their life’s purpose lied in that. Her mother and father spent their lives using their abilities to try to make the world a better place. Her father, a scholarly man that she remembered had perpetual laugh lines around his mouth, used to tell her that they did this not just for the world, but because they loved each other and her the most. As a child, she believed them for a time. She believed that using her magic for anything but herself was the way that she was supposed to be. But the older she got, the more her views changed and the more she splintered from her family’s beliefs.

Eventually, a life of selflessness and doing unto others sounded like her worst nightmare, a dream her parents wanted for her that she vehemently fought against. She wanted to be free to do what she wanted, when she wanted. If she had magic, this connection to everything, then why couldn’t it be her’s and her’s alone? Asking those kinds of questions built ostracization between she and her parents. She tried to pretend that when her family whispered whenever she was in the room, it wasn’t about her. When her aunts and uncles claimed she was a bad influence on her cousins, she liked to think that her parents argued the opposite. But deep down, she knew that they didn’t. They loved her, sure, but loving someone and trusting someone -even one’s own child- were two very different things.

She blamed creative differences on the wedge between she and her parents, but the reality was that her parents couldn’t control the rebellious and angry spirit that she had become. When she set off into the world on her own, practicing magic that her family would have shamed her for, she felt free for the first time in her life. But her cost for freedom was a loneliness that couldn’t be tempered. She lost her way for a time, spending her days in the worst places with the worst kinds of people. She lived selfishly, and with her magic, without consequences. But life caught up to her, bringing her to heel with an overdose and a stint in rehab. In the world of humans without her family, she was a lost cause. Her mother, beautiful and kind, had tried to usher her back into their fold, but she refused every time. Looking back, she couldn’t remember why. Maybe pride or stubbornness? She liked to think it was a smart decision. Of course, she liked to think many things back then to make herself feel better. That didn’t mean it ever really worked.

It was the news that her mother was dying that made her finally come back home. Her family, of course, shared their disappointment in her parents’ decision to let it happen, but they didn’t care. She’d never forget the happiness on her faces the day she knocked on their door. Just like she’d never forget her mother’s arms around her and her father’s voice welcoming her inside their home again. It was difficult, at first. Being home again, sleeping in her old room and stewing in memories of feeling like she didn’t belong in her own family. But her mother made the decision for all of them that her last days wouldn’t be spent at war with her own daughter. Honestly, the two years she spent with her parents during that time was the best that she ever had. She laughed and joked with her mother, practiced magic with her father and even began to warm up to her extended family even more. She got her degree, got a job, made friends. Her life was getting back on track with their support and for the first time, she felt wanted and loved. The bittersweet reality of it, however, was that her mother’s condition worsened as time went on.

She became skinnier and more visually ill. Every day seemed like some new symptom had sprung up to bring down the usually vibrant woman. Elle didn’t know how her mother still smiled so bright towards the end. She didn’t ask. She didn’t want anything to interrupt the little bit of time that she had with the woman who had given her life, accepted her again and forgave her for all that she had done. That year with her parents was bliss… until she got the call that her mother wasn’t going to make it through the day. She had been grocery shopping, picking up whatever the house needed. She had damned near dropped all of her groceries in an attempt to get to her mother’s side, but when she walked out of the grocery store, she found herself on the streets of New York among people in strange clothing and no sign of her small, Colorado town.

She panicked. of course, anybody would in her position. She tried whatever spell she could to get back to her family and her mother, but all of her attempts were futile. Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months and eventually, Elle gave up. She wasn’t in 1973, her family and everyone she knew were in the past and in another place. Her mother had died without her by her side and her father was alone to bear the grief. That alone almost brought her to the brink of using again. A group of witches she had met in her search to go home pulled her out of the hole that she was falling into. Witches looked out for each other, after all. With their help, she found a balance that she didn’t have back in her old life. A purpose, almost. She didn’t have to hide, she didn’t have to be selfish or selfless, she just had to be whatever she wanted to be. What that was, she had time and opportunity to figure that out. She still thinks about her parents and her family, wondering what became of her father and his life. But like her mother, she smiles through it and hopes that whatever happened to him, he ended up okay. She only hopes that she’ll be the same way.

t e l l m e, a r e w e a p r o d u c t o f w h o w e u s e d t o b e?

Elle is as stubborn as stubborn comes, but it’s offset by the warmth she tends to emit to those around her. She doesn’t immediately trust anyone -time in the gutter taught her that lesson hard- but once she warms up to you, she can be your best kind of ally. The kind that is willing to go the distance if she loves someone. Elle often suffers with morality issues, trying to consign what her parents taught her with what she learned and believed on her own terms. While in some instances her views may seem callous and cold, in others you realize she’s just trying to do the best thing based on the circumstances presented to her. She doesn’t want anyone to feel left out and alone like she was, which is part of the reason she became a teacher. Her intelligence is only negated by her recklessness. When she sets her mind to something, it’s hard to veer her off that path, even if it may hurt her.

#taken #witch #stella maeve #eleanor logan

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yukiwrites · 6 years ago

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The Path to a Perfect Family

Thank you for commissioning me again, @woomy-nah! I hope you like this fluff ;D

Summary: After their marriage, Tsubaki and Lumina are blessed with a wonderful daughter they’ve named Kokoro. Thinking their lives couldn’t get more wonderful than it already was, they’re hit with a reality check: Kasumi, Tsubaki’s mother and the one who pushed his concept of perfection on him, was about to visit. How will they adjust their happy family time to someone who brought so much anxiety to Tsubaki in the past?

Commission info HERE and HERE!

Adjusting to her new life in Hoshido turned out to be surprisingly easier than Lumina had initially thought. Since she was already used to most hoshidan customs from her time at the army, getting acquainted to their food, clothing and society in general was a piece of cake.

She and Tsubaki shared a traditional house at the noble side of the city, the closest one to Shirasagi Castle. They still worked under the crown: Tsubaki as Sakura's retainer and Lumina as part of the Sky Knights, tirelessly working to keep order at the capital.

After their marriage, Lumina discovered a much more touchy-feely side to Tsubaki. He loved to simply lay his head over her lap during lazy afternoons or to hug her as much as possible to keep her skin from going back to being cold. It was somewhat of a promise he made to himself and to his wife, to which she replied with a blushing mien and an adorable pout.

He would always find time to hug his wife and return her body temperature to warm, no matter what happened during the day. He would hug he throughout the night (a very good deal for both of them, since she would keep him cool and he would keep her warm) so she would wake up warm, then he would make sure to give her a long hug before they left to work and another one after they came back.

They also held hands more often as they walked through the streets during their days off.

Lumina always blushed profusely, especially at the beginning; not understanding how one could experience so much happiness all at once.

And yet, the day she found out she was pregnant, she couldn't believe the utter joy she felt. How could someone feel so utterly complete like that?

"A child!" Tsubaki couldn't contain himself and stole a kiss, tears falling unannounced from his eyes. He forgot all about the midwife's presence as well as her staff, seeing only his wonderfully beautiful wife, who now expected his wonderfully perfect child.

If Lumina could be frank, she never saw herself being a mother. Having growing up with parents such as hers, she had always thought that she would turn out to be a terrible mother: cold, expressionless and distant to her own blood, much like hers were to her.

She felt terrified yet elated to be expecting Tsubaki's child.

He had opened her heart so much more than she ever thought possible! He made her feel love, anxiety, joy, giddiness and so many feelings for the first time! He made her feel complete.

If she were with him... She knew they would be great parents to their little one.

Greater than the ones who had raised them both.

During the first few months, apart from being sick here and there, Lumina didn't feel much different, wondering if she would ever have that connecting moment so many mothers do with their babies during the pregnancy.

Every night would Tsubaki tell her and their baby how his day had been, always caressing her stomach with the least of strengths. Sometimes she would be overcome with emotion and sob in his arms, wondering if that was how she was supposed to feel.

Her emotions became more and more apparent with the passing of months, as did her stomach: the day she started feeling her bump grow and move, she cried for a whole hour. Not understanding what was going on, but too elated to put her thoughts in order, she simply cried in the presence of her child, wanting nothing more than to meet them and cover them with kisses and hugs.

Tsubaki became more and more protective as her belly grew, wanting her to take a break from work as soon as she could. He was so worried that Lady Sakura herself talked with the commander of the Sky Knights to release Lumina from duty earlier than intended, just so she could rest at home for longer.

"I told you, I'm not sick, Tsubaki!" Lumina complained, though her heart felt aflutter due to her husband's overflowing love.

"F-forgive me, my love. I'm just... so very nervous. I don't wish for anything bad to happen to you or to our child. And the thought of having you mount at such a critical moment of your pregnancy makes me ill in the stomach."

Lumina sighed, unable to stay mad at his adorable puppy face. "I was already doing more paperwork than patrols anyway; you knew that." She pinched his cheek, making him laugh.

"Haha, ow! Forgive me, I beg you!"

The falcon knight pouted adorably, just the way Tsubaki's always loved. "There's nothing to forgive, you silly man. It's already done, anyway. I'll be a housewife for a while."

Tsubaki bobbed his heads to the side, closing in for a kiss. "We do have servants, hm? I want you making as little effort as possible."

Lumina narrowed her eyes, biting his lower lip the moment it touched hers.

"Ow! Haha, a-alright, alright! You're free to do whatever you want... within reason!"

"Now we're talking," she smiled, wrapping both arms around his neck. "Where were we?"

"Ah, I have quite an idea..." He smirked, their breaths intertwining before the impending kiss.

Ah, how each other's tastes felt like home! No matter where they were, simply being in one another's warmth already made them feel like they belonged.

A few months later, their baby daughter was born: She had Tsubaki's hair and Lumina's eyes.

They named her 'Kokoro', so she would always make sure to listen to her heart and not be carried away by other people's expectations. She would be a different child than both of them had been: she would experience proper childhood without the constraints tangled onto them and with much more freedom.

They wouldn't let their family's 'traditional' way of raising (anxious) children to be carried on to their baby. No.

They would protect her. From their parents, from their traditions, from anyone who dared to push their ideals unto her.

Kokoro would be a child, first and foremost, before being someone who was bound to pursue perfection and other people's approval. She would make her own path. And if she chose to walk down the same way they did as children? Tsubaki and Lumina would be there for her, telling her that it was alright to fail and that practice isn't something to be ashamed of.

Sure, raising a baby was more exhausting than either Tsubaki or Lumina ever imagined, but they were so proud of their little girl. She was a fighter even while being so small; even her loud crying was a strong!

They took turns in waking up in the middle of the night to tend to her, always leaving the bare minimum for the milkmaid to do. They wanted to raise Kokoro themselves, not let some servant do it like it was done to them.

Kokoro would grow up in a warm and loving family.

... Or so they wanted.

The day an ominous letter arrived at their household, Tsubaki's heart fell immediately. "L-Lumina..."

"What's wrong?" The falcon knight tilted her head to the side, holding Kokoro in her arms. "You're pale!"

The letter fell from Tsubaki's limp fingers, and Lumina caught it in the air, before it reached the floor. She let out an exclamation of surprise. "It's... from your mother, Lady Kasumi."

"She's... coming to visit us in three days." He squeaked, his legs weak.

Lumina took the letter to cover her mouth in surprise, her heart growing cold. "I... must admit I don't remember much about her from our wedding day," my mind was occupied with something else, after all, "but from what you've told me... she's the reason you grew up to be so obsessed with perfection, right?"

"Hah..." Tsubaki sighed, resting his head on the wall. "Yes. I thought that I would feel better after being away from her and my house after marrying, but I suppose her influence won't just dissipate out of nowhere, huh?"

Lumina placed a comforting hand over her husband's shoulder, little Kokoro cooing as though she understood what was going on. "I know how you're feeling; I also felt awful after meeting my parents during our wedding, but everything turned out to be fine, didn't it? Besides, you told me that your relationship with her isn't THAT bad. 'Least not as bad as mine, anyway."

Tsubaki closed his eyes to enjoy his wife and child's voices, breathing in and out slowly. "Indeed. As long as she doesn't start talking about how inadequate I am, we can actually converse like normal human beings."

Lumina felt her heart sting, wanting to be more of a support for her husband. "It'll be fine, I say!" She slapped his back, making Kokoro laugh loudly and Tsubaki's head bonk on the wall. "We'll do everything we can so she can't even THINK about saying you're inadequate! You're the best husband in the world, after all- uhh, I mean," she blushed profusely, not realizing the lump on Tsubaki's forehead and looking down instead.

Despite his face throbbing, Tsubaki managed to smile and then laugh; the sight of his wife and little girl doing their bests to cheer him up already enough to bring joy back to his weary heart. "You're right, my love!" He wrapped both arms around her waist, lifting her from the ground.

"Whoa!" She grasped onto his shoulder with one hand, securely holding Kokoro with the other.

"As long as we're together, we can overcome anything!" He smiled brightly, making Lumina's heart skip a beat.

No matter for how long they were together, she would always feel as thought it was the first time she gazed upon his handsome mien. Ah, how much she loved her husband!

They shared a timid kiss under Kokoro's loud laughter, quickly covering her in kisses as well. Which, in turn, made her laugh even more.

Yes.

Everything would be alright.

Though, of course they were still beside themselves of worry, making sure the servants cleaned this or that spot and that their room was arranged in this or that manner. Lumina also did her best to wear her hoshidan clothing by herself (usually, Tsubaki helped her into the kimonos every morning), in the case she had to share a room with her mother-in-law during her stay. Which was highly probable.

They made sure the cuisine was adapted to Tsubaki's family's flavour, so Lady Kasumi would feel welcome in there.

All in all, they were still stressed for three full days, despite always telling each other that everything would be okay.

At last, when the day Lady Kasumi would visit arrived, they barely managed to sleep a wink, though they mostly had Kokoro to thank for that. The little girl had been feeling how anxious her parents had been for the past days and hadn't managed to relax. Babies were sensitive to their parent's feelings, after all, and being so small like that, so dependent on them like that, made her sensitive to the extreme.

Still, she wasn't old enough to be shy around strangers, so the moment Lady Kasumi crossed the door, Kokoro opened her arms widely, somehow recognizing the red hair over her grandmother's head.

"Abibuh!" She giggled even before Lumina and Tsubaki bowed in welcome to their Mother.

Kasumi walked in ready to look down on them and say something harsh, but the moment her eyes met her grandchild's, her expression softened. The red of her hair was present in another generation yet again. "Truly she carries our genes in her." She said with a gentle smile, leaving her bags by the side so she could pick Kokoro up.

The little girl had her mother's golden eyes, which went surprisingly well with Tsubaki's (or rather, Kasumi's) hair color.

Tsubaki and Lumina exchanged nervous glances, their shoulders slightly sagging. Thanks, Kokoro! They thought in unison as they signaled for the servants to put Kasumi's bags away at the guest room.

"A humble welcome, Lady Kasumi." Lumina gave her a slight head nod, accompanying as Kasumi walked inside without waiting for an invitation.

"Welcome, Mother. I hope you'll enjoy your stay." Tsubaki said with a constrained smile, his eyes focused on his mother, but his attention lying on the corner of his vision, wanting to check if there was anything out of place.

Kokoro bounced by Kasumi's arms, her big eyes enamored with her grandmother's hair piece. She reached out to grab it when Lumina swiftly blocked the little hand.

"Come now, Kokoro. Don't go on pulling Lady Kasumi's hair." She said softly, her heart thundering inside her chest.

The baby turned her head to the side, not understanding the words, but enjoying her mother's hand on hers.

"It is quite alright, Lady Lumina. It was my mistake to wear a long hairpin and pick up a child without thinking. They do so love to make a mess." She adjusted Kokoro in her arms, going towards the outer corridor so as to reach the open tea room.

Lumina gulped, glancing at her husband. Tsubaki had cold sweat streaming down his neck, but he managed to keep a poker face, his true feelings only visible to Lumina. She held his hand for support, behind Kasumi's back.

Immediately did a warm smile spring up by his lips.

"Mhm. Pleasant as always." Kasumi commented as she looked at the garden. "Our gardener is truly gifted, is he not? A treasure to have working under our household." She smiled, finally reaching the intended tea room.

However, instead of sitting, she suddenly turned around to Lumina and Tsubaki, making them quickly let go of each other's hands and look away.

"Guide me to my room, will you, daughter-in-law? I do so need to change clothes if I am to be in little Kokoro's company."

Lumina gulped, "Uh, of course, Lady Kasumi." She lifted her arms with uncertainty, wondering if she was going to be given Kokoro.

Instead, Kasumi gave the baby to Tsubaki, intent on being on her own with Lumina. "Well?" She urged, making Lumina once again exchange glances to Tsubaki.

"Of course." Lumina blinked, knowing that her own expression was hard to read and taking advantage of that so as to hide her nervousness. "Be right back, darling." She made a funny face to Kokoro, who giggled in response, and turned on her heel to leave.

Kasumi's room was on the same corridor as Lumina and Tsubaki's, it also had the same size. "I hope this is to your liking, Lady Kasumi."

"You treat me as though I am an outsider, daughter-in-law." Kasumi raised her chin, entering the room. It smelled like freshly made tea, making her smile. "We are family now, yes? You are now my daughter." She took off her haori.

Lumina quickly helped Kasumi out, her hands slightly trembling. "We've, uh, barely had chanced to meet, milady. I'm just being reserved, that is all."

"Make no reservations, then. Help me out of this, will you? I would so love to have you brush my hair, as well." Kasumi turned around, showing Lumina her intricate obi.

The falcon knight gulped. So there it was. The first test. Was she worthy of marrying a hoshidan? If so, taking out and putting on a kimono would be an easy task. Styling hair in a hoshidan fashion too, should be easy.

Kasumi never spoke these words, but Lumina understood the challenge and approached it calmly, as she did everything (but her husband, but he was a special case). "Of course... Mother-in-law."

"There, now." Kasumi chuckled, pleased. "Why do you not tell me about the village whence you came? Ice Tribe, was it?"

Without missing a beat, Lumina helped Kasumi out of her kimono. "There's not much to tell, Mother-in-law. We are born with the ability to control ice at will, that is all. Much like the Wind and Fire tribes from Hoshido."

"How intriguing. You must show such spectacle to me later."

Lumina narrowed her eyes, feeling the little stab of Kasumi's words, treating her powers as though they were something to be used as amusement. Nevertheless, she wasn't fazed by it in the slightest. "Of course. I will just make something now... and we can enjoy it later." Lumina concentrated, using her powers to envelop their house in a climate akin to winter.

From inside the room, neither of them felt anything, but a few minutes, later, a spooked servant knocked on the door as Lumina brushed Kasumi's hair.

"L-Lady Lumina? It's... snowing outside! We're in the middle of summer, and y-yet..."

"Oh, it already took effect?" Lumina said with a smirk, enjoying how Kasumi slightly frowned, looking from the door to her daughter-in-law. "Will you do me the honor to enjoy our own special winter, Mother?" Lumina gave out her hand, guiding Kasumi through the outer corridor door instead of the inner one.

"Oh my, what a convenient little power this is." Kasumi covered her mouth in surprise, though her expression didn't change much despite the sight in front of her: the beautiful garden that was full of green moments before, now was covered in snow, it's piercing white making anyone who gazed upon it to narrow their eyes.

"Indeed." Lumina looked at Kasumi under her bangs, closing her eyes to dissipate the cold. In a matter of seconds, the snow disappeared and sun once again shone over their garden.

Kasumi looked over her shoulder to her daughter-in-law, somehow liking her impudence. "I believe you were to lead me back to the tea room, daughter?"

"Of course, Mother. This way." Lumina exchanged smirks to her mother-in-law, somehow feeling that they would get along very well from then on.

Despite Tsubaki's initial anxiety, from suddenly seeing his wife's icy powers come and go in a matter of minutes, as well as seeing how his mother smiled with a piercing gaze, the days Kasumi stayed went by smoothly.

She didn't complain about anything, which made him feel an odd sense of pride. Had she finally accepted him, he wondered?

Neither did she make a scene whenever Kokoro pulled her hair or accidentally froze part of her face. The baby's powers were still wild, and only Lumina could control them by touching Kokoro and sealing her power.

Strangely, Kasumi's fake smile was replaced by a more genuine one as the days passed. She made sure to share the room with Lumina as expected, and the two spent quite a lot of time together. From brushing each other's hairs and helping dress one another, they had to find a lot of topics to talk about (despite 'talking' being one of Lumina's weak points).

They threw underhanded comments at one another, as though they were exchanging poison, and yet Kasumi never commented on it as a flaw. Instead, she felt that if this Lumina girl was someone who could hold her ground with Kasumi herself, then her son was in good hands. As was her little granddaughter.

An adorable one, that. Kasumi still intended on pushing her family's education on the little baby, but that was a matter for another time.

For now, she would enjoy throwing jabs at Lumina. It simply became her favorite past time, one that she would make sure to indulge.

On the last day of her stay, Kasumi was once again at the door, looking at her son and daughter-in-law from the shoe rack. "I truly enjoyed your hospitality, Tsubaki, Lumina. We should make these visits of mine an habit."

Lumina's and Tsubaki's expressions fell, their blood running away from their faces.

Kasumi pressed on. "I shall send you another letter regarding my return, but expect it soon, hm?" She turned on her heel and left, having the servants carry her bags outside.

The moment the door closed, Lumina and Tsubaki crumpled on the floor, the air they had been holding the only thing keeping them on their feet. "She's gonna... come back?!" Lumina exhaled, her entire body trembling.

"Oh, gods... did we survive simply the first trial?! Whenever will we rest?" Tsubaki almost cried, holding his wife's hand for support.

Lumina looked at her sorry husband and giggled. "Heehee... hahaha! Look at us! Barely out of the cage and already dreading going back to it!"

"Hah... hahaha! I suppose it can be funny, yes..." Tsubaki let out a nervous laugh, closing in on his wife. He rested his head on her shoulder. "Aaah, how I missed to be close to you, my love." He slowly intertwined their fingers, taking in on her fragrance.

Lumina felt her cheeks flushing in embarrassment, her husband's breath right over her chest. "I-I did too, Tsubaki. You barely warmed me up these few days..."

Tsubaki widened his eyes, feeling suddenly embarrassed. "L-Lumina, don't say things that'll make me misunders...tand..." He looked up to her, finding her embarrassed mien and adorable pout... and lump lips right there, waiting for him.

"What if it wasn't a misunderstanding?" She bit her lower lip, glancing from him to the floor, gripping on his shoulder. "Kokoro is sleeping, you know..."

"Oh, thank the gods for this perfect wife." He exhaled, stealing a kiss.

"Tsuba-mmph!" Lumina protested, looking at the door. The servants would come back at any moment!

"You started, dear wife. Now come, let me warm you up properly." He smirked, picking his tiny and light wife on his arms.

They still had many a hardship to come, but for now they would enjoy a pleasing after-battle in one another's arms. As it should be.

#fire emblem fates #subaki #fatesona #fanfic commissions #my writings #Yuki's Commissions

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pooma-bible · 3 years ago

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Sister. Savita Manwani

Greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Welcome you all for today’s word ministration.

Let us Pray: Heavenly father, we come to you in Jesus name asking you to awaken our hearts to hear and obey your word. Thank you for your indwelling Holy Spirit who is given to us to teach, guide and enable us in your word. Strengthen and equip us now. In Jesus name, I pray, Amen.

TOPIC: PRAYER OF JABEZ

SCRIPTURE TEXT: 1 CHRONICLES 4:9-10

1 Chronicles 4:9-10 - Now Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, “Because I bore him in pain.” 10 And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, “Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!” So God granted him what he requested.

The Bible does not tell us a lot about Jabez except in these two lines of 1 Chronicle 4. The author also does not give a complete background of Jabez but he just mentions a few important things about him. It does not tell us if Jabez was rich or poor, young or old. It just simply says that Jabez had a prayer. Jabez did not have an important role in those days. At the time of this text, Jabez was in the process of expelling the Canaanites from the Lord had promised Israel.

Father in Heaven, I come to you for your strength, courage and hope at the end of this tiring day. Thank you Lord, for gently leading me all the way. You have said o Lord, 'come to me who are weary and I will give you rest'. Humbly I come before you, o Lord, weary in need of rest, thirsty in need of living waters, sick in need of a healer, a sinner in need of a Redeemer.

Jesus, lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, behold me , an unworthy sinner in your presence. I bring unto you O Lord, all the lost oppurtunities, all my misgivings and negligences of the day. I have failed o Lord, in my thoughts, words and deeds, forgive me o Lord, I pray.

Shine your light in my heart this night o Lord, that I may no longer wander in the darkness. In your Mighty name o Lord, I rebuke the devourer in mylife. No longer will he have any dominion over me for I belong to you. No weapon that is formed against me shall prosper, every tongue that rises up against me shall be condemned.

For by your precious blood you have set me free, my conquerer and Saviour, my name you have carved on the palms of your hand; I am precious and beloved in your sight.

Thank you Lord, Praise you my Saviour and Redeemer. All glory be forever to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen

Now in this text, we know that Jabez was more honorable than his brethren were, Jabez was born into negative circumstances and that he had a prayer. His mother named him “Jabez” and in Hebrew language it means “Sorrow one”, because she said she bore him in sorrow and pain. So from birth Jabez was placed in some messed up circumstances. His very name meant “pain” and that name wasn’t just a name. In his day, it foretold your future and your nature. By naming her child Jabez she was already trying to predict Jabez’ future.

But Jabez kept on moving, he said, “I know that my name says my future is in sorrow but I refuse to live in sorrow”. He said, “I know that my circumstances don’t permit me to make it but I am going to make it whether I am supposed to make it or not.”

So like Jabez, don’t let your circumstances predict your future, don’t let your condition dictate the life that you live. And remember there is nothing you cannot do. The Bible says that “I can do all things through Christ Jesus who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13) So look at your circumstances and tell them to leave you alone, because you are going to make it.

First, consider the attitude of Jabez, he was honorable. Why he was more honorable than his brothers? We are not told, but it may have to do with the nature of his prayer. There are two characteristics that are needed for one to be honorable in prayer. One of them is being earnest, which means intense, zealous, sincere and determined. We are told that “the effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much” (James 5:16)

The second of these characteristics is humility.*“Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon him, for He cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:6-7)*. The earnest fervent prayer that is prayed in true humility is honorable before God.

There are 4 requests of Jabez that give us a better understanding of the blessings waiting for us if we offer up that same prayer.

Verse 10: And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, “Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!” So God granted him what he requested.

And Jabez called on the God of Israel - Another aspect of Jabez’s attitude is seen here and that is that he directed his prayer to God. Because we are to worship the lord our God and serve Him alone, Jesus taught us to address our prayers, saying, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” (Mathew4:10, 6:9).

To direct such a prayer to God demonstrate that one is trusting in and thus dependent on Him for everything that is needed. “Be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your request be known to God. (Philippians 4:6)

4 Requests of Jabez

1. Oh! That you would bless me indeed

2. Enlarge my territory

3. Let your hand be with me

4. Keep me from evil

1. Oh! That you would bless me indeed - Jabez was bolding asking God for His blessing – “Oh! That you would bless me indeed”

Coming right out and asking for God’s blessing seems like a selfish thing to us. But that’s not how Jabez saw it. Jabez knew what his name meant and how it predicted his future. But he turned to God and asked him to bless him and change his destiny. It’s important to note that Jabez didn’t specify what he wanted the blessings to be. He left that up to God. Blessing is not about getting more of what you want, but asking for God’s favor and trusting that he knows what’s really needed.

Jabez requested a personal blessing. To ask God’s blessing is to ask him to bestow divine favor. There is nothing wrong with requesting God to bless us specifically. The Psalmist did. He prayed; Save Your people, And bless Your inheritance; Shepherd them also, And bear them up forever (Psalm 28:9)

Jabez asked for God’s best – Jabez wanted the fullness of God’s blessing to be upon his life. Who among us does not want the same thing today? Friends, there is nothing wrong with wanting the best God has for you and there is nothing wrong with praying for God to place his richest of blessings upon your life.

2. Enlarge my territory

Jabez asked God to enlarge his borders. In praying for his borders to be expanded, Jabez is asking the Lord to help him to have more influence in the world. Jabez was asking for influence so he could make a bigger difference for God and that he could expand his territory in order to make a bigger impact for God on the world. It was about asking God to expand the opportunity of his life in a way of saying there has to be something more and something bigger to this life.

What can’t be missed is the spirit in which Jabez made the request for more influence. The whole purpose behind it was so that he could impact more lives for God, not just increase his own wealth or status.

It would seem that Jabez is not content to dwell in his comfort zone. He wants to break out and do more for the Lord. As believers, we must never be satisfied with the status quo. God wants us to get out of our comfort zone and reach out to a lost world. As long as we are satisfied where we are, we are going to be limited in our outreach, but when we allow the Lord to do move us out of the comfort zones of life, he can extend our borders and give us a greater influence into the world.

3. Let your hand be with me

Then Jabez beseeched that God’s hand would be with him, no doubt to provide protection and guidance. Jabez prayed for power, asked the Lord to put his hand into his life. He was not content to be like others when it came to the power of God. He wanted more!

Today, Christians do not have to be settled for weak, powerless lives! When we begin to live as the Lord desires, we can expect him to put his hand of power upon us. Jabez requested God’s favor would never leave him (that your hand would be with me). What he is asking for here is that throughout God’s blessings he would never leave Jabez’s side. That he would walk with him and bless his situation in a divine way.

Why is it that some people seem to have got all over their lives? Why is it that some people seem to be effective in whatever they do for the Lord? Why is it that some people seem to have power with God? Simply stated, they have refused to rest in their comfort zone, but they have willing paid the price before the Lord and as a consequence, he has blessed them with power in His work. E.g. Paul weak in body and contemptible in appearance (2 Cor.10:10), yet a power for God (Acts 14:8-12).

I fully believe that the awesome power of God is available to every Christian. God wants to fill you and to use you for His glory. Given a chance, God will amaze you with what he could do with you and your life. Example: D. L. Moody an uneducated, inarticulate, but a powerful weapon in the hand of God.

4. Keep me from evil

Jabez prayed for protection from sin and evil. He knew that when sin comes in, trouble soon follows.

Jabez simply asked the Lord to help him to live for God. This should be the attitude taken by every child of God. We ought to hate everything that brings dishonor to the name of the Lord. In Psalm 101:3, David says, “I will set nothing wicked before my eyes; I hate the work of those who fall away; it shall not cling to me”.

I believe every child of God ought to pray for this same thing. After all, God has promised to provide a means of deliverance from every temptation. Jesus also indicated that his disciples should pray for God’s preservation and deliverance, as he taught them to say, “And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” (Mathew 6:13)

Of course, God’s protection, guidance, preservation, and deliverance are all provided for us through the scriptures. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 - All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Jabez knew that success can make us feel selfish and self-sufficient. So he was asking for God to not only protect him from temptation, but to actually shield him from evil in the first place.

A. God heard the prayer of Jabez and answered him by giving him all the things for which he prayed. Why did the Lord do this? God did it because he honors prayer that honors Him – James 4:2-3

B. We serve a God today who has promised to hear and answer our prayers, Jeremiah 33:3; Mathew 7:7-8. Therefore, we can make our request in absolute confidence knowing that the Lord has heard and will give us that which we seek.

C. As we think about these things, let us look at our lives and at our praying and see whether or not we are asking for these things. If not, there is no better time than to start now.

Dear Friends, we should be willing to move out of our comfort zone then the Lord can and will hear our prayers and will give us the things we seek in life.

• Are you growing like you should or are you satisfied with where you are right now?

• Are you satisfied with what you are doing for the Lord?

• Are you happy with your level of spiritual growth?

If the answer to any of these questions is “NO”, then let me remind you that the Lord is waiting to make the necessary changes in your life. All that remains is for you to come to Jesus.

This prayer of Jabez will help us to move out of our comfort zones both as individuals and as a church.

Allow me to end here. God bless you!

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christianmenatwork · 4 years ago

Text

The Purpose of Freedom-Selah40-CMAW123

Recent election has me thinking about freedom.

I have a thing where I got through the list of countries in the world and share little factoids with my Mom each day as a way to share something new. It's been really informative for me and has really made me appreciate even more how unique and special our country is and how blessed we are to have both the freedoms and the financial abundance and opportunities we have. I thank God for that specifically nearly every day.

Having said that, I also believe there can be a danger of making an idol of freedom.

I saw so many Christians wondering what God was up to when Trump lost this past election, based on an assumption that God's will was for Trump to win. I have to admit at some level I was in that camp.

I have almost 100% tuned out of politics and news since the election, so much so that my friend told me the other day that Rush Limbaugh had died and that Trump had been adquitted in the impeachment trial, neither of which I was aware of several days after they had occurred.

You know what, it's been great being unplugged in this way. I've been less angry and devoted more time to more important things.

But back to earlier point, I truly believe we will suffer a big loss of freedoms with the regime change in Washington, particularly Christians. As Christians, our job and our motivations should not have changed with this election, nor should our clarity and confidence that God is in control.

It makes me think that we should not have the same of freedom as the rest of the world.

In Exodus 8, God releases the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th plagues on Egypt, but He also makes clear through Moses why He wants His people to come out of Egypt. The reason is so that they could sacrifice and worship God.

In John 8:31-32, "31 Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. 32 And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

Galations 5:1 says " Stand[a] fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage"

From these verses I get a picture of freedom that's not the same as the freedom we often think of in the United States. It is not a freedom to do what we want. That's the motto of Satanism, to do what you wilt. Rather freedom is to no longer be a slave to sin but rather be a slave to Christ.

John 8:34 "Jesus answered them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin."

Romans 6:16 "Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?"

Romans 6:22 "But now having been set free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life."

We may not like the term "slave of God" and it might sound a little to restrictive. When we have that thought we need to reject it in the name of Jesus, because when we boldly claim our personal freedom and exalt it above all other things ultimately is idolatry and leads to us trying to make ourselves god of our lives.

Notice the reward at the end of Romans, it says "you have your fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life."

Is this heaven after we die? Maybe, but don't forget John 17:3 "And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent."

For those of you can relate to me and were in bondage to sin in your past in ways that really hurt yourself and others, you can probably agree with me when I see that God's freedom rather than being "freedom for myself" is more like "freedom from myself.

You might be wondering what the application of this little message is to our work.

The world will tell you that work is a necessary evil, and you've got to go to work because of the golden handcuffs.

They'll tell you that you're serving a 45 year sentence and you'll only be "free" when you retire, only to be let down when you retire, perhaps filled with regrets and lacking purpose.

God's vision for our work is much different. He gave Adam and Even work as his first gift, and it's still a gift for us today and one for which we should thank him for daily.

When we're in relationship with Jesus, work is just a part of a joy-filled life fully submitted and devoted to Him.

When I got saved I went to a Promise Keeper's event and bought the CD for the music from that event and one of my favorite songs I would play over and over was "I am free".

here are the lyrics. I found these being attributed to Newsboys, I don't know if they originally wrote the song or not.

Through You the blind will see Through You the mute will sing Through You the dead will rise Through You all hearts will praise Through You the darkness flees Through You my heart sings

I am free I am free Let me hear you

And I am free to run (I am free to run) And I am free to dance (I am free to dance) And I am free to live for You (I am free to live for You) I am free (I am free) Yes I am free (yes, I am free) ...

Through You the kingdom comes Through You the battle's won Through You I'm not afraid Through You The price is paid Through You there's victory Because of You my soul sings I am free

From First Light - 2020-0112

Truth and Freedom

If you abide in my Word, you will truly be my disciples. And you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free

John 8:31-32

Jesus died on a cruel cross not only to save us eternally, but also to liberate us from bondage. Any bondage. Demonic, emotional, mental, family, physical or any other type that robs us of the life He desires for us. Anything that keeps us from experiencing the Christ life that comes through His Spirit, He wants to liberate us from. "Normal" for those in Christ should be defined as a life of peace, happiness, compassion, able to hear the Shepherd's voice, able to live free from fear, anxiety and pain from our past among a host of other "benefits" that we inherited at our salvation. However, everything Jesus died to give us doesn't fall on us like ripe cherries when we are born again! That's why Jesus spoke in John about truth and freedom. Genuine freedom can only come as truth gets down inside our hearts and that can only happen when we internalize His Word into our spirits. God's Word is like no other book. Hebrews says it is "alive and active and able to go beyond our souls into our spirits". Psalms says that "the entrance of thy Word gives light". Something takes place inside me as I meditate on the wonderful truths found in the Bible such as "if anyone is in Christ, he (or she) is a brand-new creation, old things are gone forever, and all things have been made new". What actually takes place is that as I read and think deeply (meditate) on the truth found in scripture the Holy Spirit of God takes that truth to the very core of my being, which is my heart and uses it to transform me at spirit level. He uses it to destroy the lies that cause me pain or bondage and replaces those lies with the liberating, life giving, joy inspiring truth from heaven! It is a true miracle! I have to do my part, "thy Word have I hid in my heart". He won't do it for me, but when I do my part then He does His part which is to do surgery in my heart and remove the cancer and replace it with life giving truth! That's why it is life or death for believers to let the light of His Word in their hearts constantly. To "abide" in His Word s to continually receive it. If you will be faithful to "attend unto my Word", He will be faithful change you from the inside out over time. For those who are tired of the same old same old it is time to dust off that Bible and get it into the heart so freedom can break loose!

Thank you for providing a way for me to be truly free from the junk that keeps robbing me of the life you died to give me!

Taking about former site leader, who passed away, knew name of everyone in the plant, if he saw you outside the plant he treated you like you were the most important employee in the company. but don't ever let him him touch any buttons

16��Therefore say, ‘Thus says the Lord God: “Although I have cast them far off among the Gentiles, and although I have scattered them among the countries, yet I shall be a little [a]sanctuary for them in the countries where they have gone.” ’ Ezekiel 11:16 NKJV

Passed my Ham exams, KO4MNF

Apologetics

Apologetics tip: 3 main worldviews

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