#wine barrel staves

[sagehaubitze]

hey you guys want more votive holders, because I.. made entirely too many votive holders (there's still more than this)

Wine barrel staves this time though! You gotta do *something* with stave end cutoffs though, and I wanted to play around with different designs, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[juliakremer]

Wine Cellar New York Mid-sized wine cellar with a rustic slate floor and a black floor. a wine cellar design idea with shelves

[migvintof]

Rustic Wine Cellar New York

An illustration of a medium-sized wine cellar with racks for storage that has a slate floor and a black floor.

[kappatea]

Wine Cellar Racks in New York Mid-sized mountain style slate floor and black floor wine cellar photo with storage racks

[dennisandjustin]

New York Wine Cellar Wine cellar - mid-sized rustic slate floor and black floor wine cellar idea with storage racks

[nomoremicrophones]

Racks Wine Cellar in New York An illustration of a medium-sized wine cellar with racks for storage that has a slate floor and a black floor.

[morghiesart]

Wine Cellar Large in Phoenix Large elegant brick floor wine cellar photo with storage racks

[louweetomlinson]

Wine Cellar Medium

[comfortless]

Only Other

chapter three of three.

content/warnings: 18+. minors do not interact. historical au (set around 350BC); potential inaccuracies as i am no historian!, König speaks some German here (as opposed to Gothic), mutual pining & worship, smut (piv), sliiiight breeding kink, violence, as always König is horribly in love and says ridiculously worrisome things, reader feigns ambivalence but is equally unhinged and smitten.

notes: eternally grateful to @wordsbyvani for reading over my shoulder and genuinely being the sweetest throughout every part. ^^ and again to @writersdrug for giving me the idea to begin with!

wc: 9k.

<- previous.

König’s men arrive sometime in the afternoon, a few hours behind but carrying hoards of supplies. There are weapons you recognize to be from your city stuffed into bags, pelts and silks and twinkling stones, meats and fruits. They had not forgotten to bring along wine, either: two barrels to either side of a gray mare led along behind one of their rugged steeds by a length of thick rope.

You don’t ask how they found her, let alone how they managed to actually tame her down enough to follow amidst the chaos that broke out the night prior. A weak string of “thank you”s leaves your lips when you press your nose to the horse's snout, sobbing into her silver fur. She seems less bothered, huffing impatiently as she’s tethered up with the others against broad trees.

You’re not convinced that here or anywhere is safe anymore, and you don’t assist when the men begin to set up their camp. They’ve enough supplies and arms to do it themselves, anyhow.

Guilt, trepidation and confusion, haunt you: cast out for all to see by your forlorn stares and the tremor of your lower lip as you continuously fight an internal battle to keep yourself sane. And how could you? You’ve only come to reason that this has all come to fruition because of you, because of the things that you could not help. Your curiosity, fascinations, and impiety had all led you to be here, now, while everyone you once knew sleeps eternally.

You have condemned yourself to the life of a slave girl, and later to the darkness of the Orcus when you do die.

Though… men do not give their slaves the looks that König gives to you. You haven’t spoken to him in hours, and you do your best to avoid his glances, shoot down his smiles with the curved arrow of your own sullen frowns. Still… amidst setting up the tents and gathering wood for the fire to stave off the chill of nightfall, you catch the very stars reflected over a sea in his eyes.

There is love there, a too-uncanny and harrowing love, but a great devotion nonetheless. It burns like a fire of its own in your chest, inescapable and rampant. You know it in the spaces behind your skull, your ribs, that what he feels is another cage: roomier, softer, but you will never be free of it either.

König does not follow you to the tent when the moon rises. He sits by the fire, watching as you go with the pelt drawn up over your shoulders and curled around you. When you sink into the bed of fur that has replaced the straw mattress from before you find yourself somehow even more fitful here than outside. Sleep is evasive, leaving you tossing and twisting amidst the smell of sweat and animal fur. Not even the crackling fire outside defeats the quiet or the cold in the air.

There’s a sickly pit in your stomach, thorn seedling threatening to take root and spread the longer you stare up at the blackened abyss of the tent ceiling. If you’re to live a life torn, at the very least you could be warm; you take to König’s side in moments, joining him by the slowly dwindling flame.

The brute isn’t sleeping, either, just… lost. Lost like you the day that you met him.

“I need to look at your wound.” Your excuse comes weak and puny, doe limbs and fragile glances when you do sit at his side and speak. You’ve never been anyone’s ‘Göttin’, you don’t know what you’re doing, what blessings to grant or judgments to cast. Avoiding him only seems a punishment for you both, and you’ve had your share of those.

König is anything but small: even amidst the turmoil your silence has gifted to him, he still seems himself, all ego and cruelly cut silver, softened only by your words, your touch.

“Richtig,” he mutters, reaches out to pull you in, and you let him. Straddling his lap with only the moon above awake to witness, cast her curious gaze down and illuminate the expanse of his chest whilst you work to pull away the bandages.

There isn’t much to tend to, it’s healing well. The flesh that once seemed inflamed has only drawn back its redness to simmer to the natural color of his skin. When you begin your careful prodding, it does not hurt him. He doesn’t so much as flinch or huff at your touch.

When you dab your index in the sweet honey that serves as a salve, he grasps at your hand and brings it up to his lips, presses a kiss to your index and middle without hesitation. And you see it then: a glimmer of hesitation in the way his lips pull and his eyes search your own, a silent plea for vindication.

You’ve never been cold to him, not even as he spoke with so much self-importance when you first met, not when he rutted his blade between your parted legs, not even now after all that he’s done. In his own way of thinking, these things have all been some display of courtship. There’s never cruelty toward you, not in his touch, the words that he speaks, and especially not in those somber eyes. These things break down the last fraying edge of your resolve.

You press your mouth to his, sharing the taste of honey pressed to his lips, everything sugary and warm. Over and over until the night begins to close its way in, plump clouds drifting over the pearl hanging in the sky when you finally find yourself tucked back into the tent with König curled at your side. He holds you closer than he ever has, not from a fear you’ll take off under the darkened sky, but in the honoring of something far greater. Some love comes quiet like flower blooms, his comes with fire.

“Wolves pair in winter,” he says quietly, burying his face into your hair. It’s shy, almost, as though the man has not already embedded his scent into your very skin and toyed with your most sensitive parts. It’s truer, more heartfelt, than even his confessions of love.

“Is that what you see us as being?” You laugh, a slow, gentle chime that aches your throat, face still puffy from tears and voice scratchy from those thick clouds of smoke.

“Ja…”

“You really…” The words get caught up someplace in the spaces between your lungs and tongue. You don’t want to cry, not anymore, but you find it difficult not to choke up after so much comfort with a lifetime of so very little. “You do care for me, don’t you?”

He answers your question in a grumble, a string of foreign words only meant for mountain caverns and creatures that walk on all fours and somehow they make sense. A resounding yes, in three gutteral sounding words. The frayed ends of guilt and anger finally drift off as you settle into his hold like a den of pure comfort, warm and buried in a world of fur and a man blessed by trees and the earth rather than gods and myth.

When the breeze picks up outside, rustling sprawling oak limbs, momentarily silencing the fire, its as if they answer him in your stead. You don’t cry, though it aches, but you let go of the memories of all your begging to those that never seemed to listen. Here, in the dark you’ve found the only person that seems to understand without even knowing.

You drag the pelts up over the both of you, clasp your hand over his where it rests beneath them, and fall into a haze of contentment. He draws you nearer, breath filtering through your hair from where his head lies just above your own.

The dreams that come are no longer of places you can not reach, but only of the memory of a city that was never meant to house your spirit.

You wake to König’s pawing. It begins along your sternum, hand placed flat there only to glide further up and push at your tit. It’s gentle and testing, pushes fire into your very veins when for the first time he doesn’t seem to remain entranced there. It drifts, further up to cup your jaw.

“You are awake?,” he rasps, propping himself up to inspect your face where you lie, weakened and warmed by sleep.

“Yes…”

“Are you still bereaved?,” König asks in such a hushed voice, reaching toward you again. His hand seems to tremble when it finds your face, thumb brushing over your mouth with such trepidation it seems misplaced for him.

“Partly.”

You consider your dreams again: the open street, devoid of people apart from those that face down at you with contempt building in hollow eye sockets. Where grass once sprung up beneath the cracks in the stones, there were only small flames. And you do still grieve for those that were innocent in the entire affair, those trampled by cattle when they had only just had a taste of escape. Your very mind begins to darken at the thoughts, your body only tensing further, a bowstring on the verge of snapping,

“Is that why I can not have you?”

“I never said…” Your voice only grows thin, detached almost from the way you purse your lips to kiss the digit toying with you. Your heart is only thunder, the sound of those wretched hooves: yearning was dangerous itself, your own only seemed to take further shape with each passing moment. Claws and a waiting maw, just like the wolves he speaks of.

König hums, a deep rumble from his chest as he gives a slow nod of acknowledgement.

It all becomes tree sap, a sticky confectionery bout. His mouth descends upon your own as though starved, hurried and longing as he samples you, the you who certainly yearned for the bathhouses to clean herself properly. All thought seems to dispel when his hand leaves your cheek and neck to begin its painfully slow descent between your legs, burrow between wax and honey to pull soft cries from your mouth.

He only stills his dismantling of you when you’re trembling and doughy, squeezing around his fingers so tightly you wonder how he can continue to bury them inside at all.

Just as the other gods, Sol is lost here when König crawls over you, all shadow and wretched, led here with the promise of a prey that you are not. Only another wolf… the flame in his winter eyes is the same that’s settled inside of you.

His head dips to kiss into your hair while your leg is pulled to settle over his hip. You feel a kiss, a different sort, when the pillar of his manhood reaches between your bodies to settle over your sex, probing at your slit that only seems to pulse and beg under his touch.

You had never found these silly metaphors enticing with the men of the city, even the entertainers with their pretty words could have never lured you this far down. Yet, here is different, here is cold and lonely and wild: a culmination of all that he is, incarnation of the earth and man and a desperate hunt.

“You are ready for me,” your god hums, pleased, as he coats himself in your arousal, sticky like warm sap. The sounds of his toying with you are something you should be accustomed to now, with him, but still makes your face warm. Not with shame, only a quiet desperation. “Beautiful little goddess...”

It’s summer here; winter tears its claws right out of your flesh when the sun itself sinks inside. The turning of seasons is natural, so dreadfully normal you’ve never bat an eye until you could physically feel it: the strip of your own apprehension tossed into a steaming sea, the dewy wetness all but drowning you entirely.

And it’s König who loses himself first, a sound so pitiful carving its way out of him you would almost believe him to be hurt if not for the way he throbs inside of you. He feeds it, a stuttering twitch of his hips as he slowly brings you toward him by your hips. Far too large to properly bottom out but encumbered and ecstatic by the sensation around him. Tighter than any sheath, but a weapon pushes through you all the same- inch by loving inch, until he manages to fully fill you with himself.

“I don’t want to hurt you, little one.“ Each word is torn from him, punctuated heavily by the shallow movement of his body and the drag of a demanding cock. Restraint is a peculiar thing hovering over him, his brow pinched as though forcing himself to concentrate on not ripping you apart where you lie.

“You’re not hurting me..,” you sigh as your hands find his shoulders, fingernails dimpling the skin there. If anything the urgency is only shared.

When your hips push back to meet him, the lead is dropped, another surrender. Too much trust for a man deserving of none of it.

His response is a breathy groan, mouth finding your shoulder as his hands drift to pull your hips upward to better meet him. Teeth find purchase along your flesh, gentle as he can be, but grinding and desperate to leave a mark, a piece of him behind.

It’s almost with a fury that he stuffs himself into you then, his jaw going slack and eyes wild, hands grasping at every inch of your pillowy flesh that he can reach.

Never could König have looked more beautiful than now, once starved and now tasked, for and now with you. His gaze trails from where your thighs tremble around him, to where the sap pools and nature builds up its own obscene choir at your togetherness… and then, to your face where his gaze only shatters into softness.

Something bubbles right against your lash line, a stray tear, overwhelmed by the feel of the giant ravishing you, pulling you down from your world of jewels and pillars to his own devoid of anything but need.

His head dips immediately, tongue running up the length of your cheek, a hand falling away to pry open your already parted thigh as he licks at and fucks into you like something truly feral. He coos his praises against your mouth, parted and whining, claims a new kingdom all for himself in you, of you.

You feel how the temples must, trodden through and left with gifts, blood and honey and fire as the muscles of your thighs begin to tense. Instinct spurs you to catch his lip between your teeth, push your hips back to laboriously furl around him.

His pace comes to a halt, settling to only grind himself so deeply within you that you feel the last of the stars begin to die out in the recesses of your skull, dim and dumbly smothered until they reignite in a blinding wave of white. König does not give you the time to settle, only spears into you with a renewed fervor as you cinch around him, furthering your rapture to a point that is almost agonizing.

He chases his own end with the same famished glare as before, stares right into your eyes as you pull iron from his lip and cast it into the fire of your waiting mouth. The sting, the bliss, only makes him whimper, a sound so small and choked its unfathomable to have come from a man who slams into you as though you were paid for.

You lick into his mouth in a way so tentative and fragile he immediately crashes down, blankets you in the strength of his arms and kisses you in turn: so soft and chaste it’s uncanny in this moment. His groan of defeat only comes when he stills fully, buried to the hilt, thrumming and shivering through his own release. Honey and seafoam, the rise of a tide touching earth to brim and spill past your joining.

He chases the feeling for several moments longer, bucking his hips sloppily as he lies atop your spent form, barely coherent when he mutters nonsensical praises into your hair, against your neck, the corner of your mouth- any place he can think to leave a kiss.

“… everything,” he mutters when he lies atop you fully, satisfied where he nestles his head into the fur below you both. “Everything I have ever wanted.”

The day passes on like this. Even as his men maneuver about camp, preparing to hunt or practice with their stolen weapons. The only thing König seems keen on doing is bringing you to ruin, repairing you with kisses pressed into your hair, along your cheek.

He leaves you only twice as the day drags onward. Once to gather you a meal of something meaty roasted over the fire, what remained of a boar, a gathering of dried fruit, and water from a small flask. You’re famished and exhausted by the thrill of being shoved down into the fur to tolerate him three times over already. The twinkle in his eye is nothing short of mischievous when you do finally tell him that you need to rest after eating.

After a bout of playfully shoving him away, you only find yourself on top of him, then. He seemed entirely unashamed, more hurried and desperate than before as he bucks at you like a wild horse, voicing his praises and spitting out such sugary sweet nonsense about how you would carry his son and only ever experience him, you almost felt shy. A curled finger hooks under your jaw to force you to look down at him, lose yourself in the vast, uneasy sea of his eyes while he floods you with his seed again. Finally, he seems sated, pulls you down to lie atop him.

König promises you that he will find your mother, that he will take care of you as no other has or ever could, while stroking along your back. He tells you of the mountains, the trees, the animals and the men who live amongst them and inside of them.

He tells you of the sea when you ask, how the sand is softer and sticks as if it never wants you to go. In turn, you tell him that he must be like the sea then, never fully parting from you, leaving his trace imprinted upon your skin with teeth rather than sand. A sea that loves instead of hungers, one that presses you onto your back to wash over you to steal the very breath from your chest and push it back with a kiss.

— — —

The wilderness is cruel. Wild things lurk in the brush and occasionally you pass by other settlements. Less friendly than the small band you have grown accustomed to. You’re always urged to shush, then have yourself tucked further against König while he speaks low and threatening to any would-be bandits. Only once has that resulted in a death, but not to one of König’s own. You didn’t watch when the man with the red hair carved a hole through the trespasser, just squeezed your eyes shut and buried your face into a waiting bicep.

Days pass on horseback, your legs feel stiff and clumsy, and there are no amount of pelts serving as makeshift saddles that could ever help the ache that shoots up from your pelvis. It serves no aid at all that, when riding ahead or too far behind the other men, König takes this newfound intimacy between you two to be a liberty. Regardless of your formation, he never ceases looking at you as though his only wish is to devour you whole.

Those times are often quick, palm pressed over your mouth as he dutifully breeds you beneath the sun, in the softest patch of withering wild grass or barren land available. You melt into him, part your legs like a wife rather than some skittish woman that he himself has whisked away. Each time, he whispers his praises, professes his love in more creative ways, covers you in so many kisses you feel a bit dazed by the time the ordeal is through.

Then, you’re righted back onto the horse with König at your back, the most horribly endearing smile plastered upon his face.

It’s not much of a surprise that his men do start their caterwauling at some point during the journey to wherever— past dormant trees and approaching the silhouettes of hills so tall and vast you’re certain that they must be the mountains you have heard of, even if you had yet to properly see them. König had made it perfectly clear just what you are to him in his coarse words to his companions, but never directly to you. They do not mock your union, but they do often give you strange looks, particularly at your tummy while they discuss you with their leader.

There’s nothing there, you’re sure of that much, but you shoot them your angriest glare anyway and raise your chin to look forward instead. Their talk of the possibility of a little “prinz” does not distract you from your own thoughts, drifting up to scrape the sky just like the peaks of the mountains.

“So that is where the gods live?,” you ask, mostly to yourself as you curl your fingers into the horse’s reins. There’s subdued laughter from either side of you, and you almost shrink at the thought of making a fool of yourself before these brutes. It wouldn’t be the last time, surely. You couldn’t even bring yourself to fully commit to the idea of there being any sort of vast and ethereal field awaiting you when you die anymore; it was already here before you, painted in the color of evergreen and winter blossoms.

König doesn’t laugh, at least. Only places his palm over the front of your neck and guides your head back to look up to him, gives a toothy grin when your eyes light up just from the sight. It was difficult not to when you’ve been fed and pleasured incessantly by him. You reason that your punishment for forsaking all that you once knew must assuredly be your own mind deteriorating to feel the way that you do.

“They are right here,” he says, so quiet and sweet, gesturing between the two of you. He had no interest in your former gods, of what he seems to view as stories for children, but he listens as you tell him the significance of such lofty places cloaked in fog, mist and trees.

His hand finds your cheek, savors in the feel of your skin against his thumb while you tell him of your misplaced belief in him being some son of a war god that he’s never even known, much less prayed to. He then reminds you of the woman he seems certain could have been your mother, says that surely she must have been wed to the shallow of a sparkling lake to birth something as lovely as you.

The men regroup after some time, stilling their horses and your rowdy mare still tethered behind one of the others to speak, access the distance from here and their destination while sipping wine from leather flasks and putting weapons back in their proper places. You listen on, picking up on the few words you did understand from their language, but ultimately gather nothing from it all.

“Where are you taking me?,” you hazard as you try to push yourself forward in a subtle reminder that yes, you were there too, and woman or not you had a right to know.

“Home,” König gruffs simply in response, gathering you back into his arms and taking the reins from your hands. His chin rests atop your head, the fingers of his free hand petting your side in an attempt to snuff out any further questioning. “You will like it.”

Home. Home to the place he had claimed you would find your mother; to foreign woods and wild downs, sprawling hills and little shacks covered in sticks and leather instead of the villas with their terracotta tiles.

You didn’t even know that you had a place to return to at all, not now. Your eyes catch his, though, and you know then just what it truly must feel like to belong someplace. Never had home been Gaius, reduced to smoldering ash in some divine reckoning, but it had always been with someone you truly believe you have wanted. Had you ever even been allowed to want before him..?

Your brow pinches as you shift to rest your head against the broad back behind you, held fast by the iron grip around your waist. The clouds drift by above, the sun casts a warmth over your face and you fall into comfort, into promise.

— — —

Barbarian settlements are strange.

There are no paved streets here crowded with people and decay, no hallowed and looming temples hungry and waiting for sacrifices. The columns are tree bark and very much alive with twisting limbs and growths of green that never seemed to dull even in the winter, not the stiff and lifeless marble you had grown accustomed to.

The homes are pieced together with wood, clay, anything that could be used with no clear rhyme or reason to their architecture. Goats wander about, bleating out for food or ramming into one another for play. The children don’t sit in houses studying or wander from stall to stall snatching and scurrying off, they play and work. There is a strange contentment here, too, something that feathers on the wind as it does the same on each face that you pass,

Everyone seems to have a place, a thing to be, and you feel like the world’s most delicate and forgotten pearl amidst these people who do not even seem to pay you any mind. If anything, they only seem pleased to see the man with his arm cloaked over your shoulders. They smile to him, greet him in their strange words and dip their heads as though he truly were some king.

Maybe he was, to them, to the wild people with no true reasoning to have any sort of monarchy. They barely had land to claim, much less rule over.

You’re not paraded around as a slave: he cups your jaw and lifts your head when your gaze falls to the dirt and dust below your feet, chides you in a rough whisper about how a Königin should present herself. The people do acknowledge you then, with looks of awe and offerings of dried flowers pressed into your palms and tucked behind your ear, Roman bronze dropped at your feet. You look the part of a proper queen too, when you flash them all your loveliest smile and nestle closer to your giant of flame and earth.

Thoughts of your past in the city come to mind when you note their lack of conveniences. Even the dread of forsaking your own gods briefly leaves you halting midstep before a firm hand urges you forward. König’s warmth comes as a comfort now more than ever when your thoughts do eventually circle back to a guilt, heavy and dreadful: the picture of Juno’s altar forgotten and burned away weeks of travel behind you.

“You will like it here,” he mumbles, trailing the same hand up to the back of your neck as he repeats the words he spoke only days prior on your journey. You could, you will, but it all feels so different that your pulse seems to triple its racing.

Your fingers graze over the dried flowers in your hand, sweet smelling as you trace over each petal to center yourself, take back that prideful smile that was in place just a moment ago.

If you’re to run amok, you may as well enjoy it.

You settle, regain your pace and that forced look of utter contentment at his side.

At least, until he begins to speak again.

“I will kill them all if you prefer we be alone,” König whispers into your ear, has the audacity to nip at your lobe, and does not even bother drawing back as if those words were meant to make you wet and pliant for him. All sense of reason must have left you entirely, because a shiver rips its way up each knob of your spine. “Would that please you?”

“No… Do not jest,” you grit out, staring only forward and not offering so much as a glance toward the beast at your side, even as his hand drifts down to palm at your breast.

“I am not.” He laughs, breathy and low when he finds your nipple already hard, thumb grazing over it as though this act of exhibitionism was as natural as any of the other things his madness compels him to do. “I will give you anything. Even blood, meine Göttin.”

Surely… you should be flattered that his loyalty is reserved only for you, but there’s no appeasement held in the glare that you shoot him as you pry his hand away from your chest. He gives you the look of a kicked stray then, even a pout so foreign on a face so scarred, you may have even chuckled if you were in better spirits, but he does relent. His hand drops back to his side and he detached from you after pressing a soft kiss to the corner of your mouth.

You’re led to a shack larger than the others, but more or less in the same state. It’s simple, built solidly with thick carved wood and packed to prevent weather seeping its way in. It’s humble in a way, far more humble than any ruler’s you’ve only imagined. A bench, a table, a mattress likely stolen away from some Roman soldier’s tent. There’s nothing particularly special about it, but it smells like König, like the trees and the earth in a way that is comforting.

It takes a moment for it to fully register that this is what he had meant by home, not the people and their affairs outside, only this place. Only him. A temple all your own that you imagine he must wish to fill with love and children and an abundance of gifts he may steal away all for you.

His men bring in what little of the supplies remained, stuffed away in a corner and voluntarily relinquished; even if it means they’ll be fending for themselves like the others in the village rather than feasting on stores, they only seem happy. The red-haired one even flashes you a contented look of admiration on his way out, as though you just being there was enough to soothe and patch some void here.

That may have been the case.

When the door is shut and all falls to silence, the barbarian king kneels before you. His hands find your hips, thumbs grinding gentle circles along them and further down to your thighs, your calves, to everywhere that aches. A gentle sort of worship that coaxes soft sighs and a buzzing of flesh from you.

König brings you to the mattress when your eyelids begin to flutter, exhaustion settling over you in full when you’re lifted and brought toward his chest. You could fall asleep in his hold alone, but you settle to only rest your head there and reach up along his vastness to rake your fingers through his wild hair.

Your voice tells him that you do like it here, with him, in this strange place circled by withering ferns and trees so infinite that you could never hope to find your way away without him taking your hand and navigating through. Your touch tells him the words that you dare not speak, a kiss to voice that you too would burn away everything if it only meant that you could share in this at his side, a mimicry of his massage along his own shoulder to whisper a great confession of adoration and boundless promises.

— — —

When the ferns and flowers begin to grow again throughout the spring and into the summer, you find yourself accustomed to everything. You aid the women in caring for their children, though you begrudgingly swear that it is not for practice whatsoever. The stitching and cooking that is done here feels far less harrowing— you do not put it off and leave it in a heap upon the floor as you would have in the city. There’s no looming dread of what’s to come when you perfect your work: you’re gifted only smiles, blessings and gifts.

Though the woman König had claimed to be your mother is not here, you ask him to recount the way she looked and spoke to you often on quiet nights, where his hands drift over you and his voice comes in a whisper. She may not have even existed at all, some lost spirit amidst the trees that wails and cries and leads men like him to their destinies. Your heart only tears when you begin to wonder if Juno herself had imparted such a quest to him. Save the lost woman that she favored so much, grant him some divine luck and intoxicating charm to ensure your safety and happiness.

He does not understand when you gather up honey and blossoms to pray over, but he does sit at your side and listen when you whisper your thanks to this new altar. Kisses the crown of your head when you’re through and lures you back into an embrace where he reminds you that he knew what he needed to do the moment that you met at the stream. No other woman could have swayed him the way that you have.

His offerings are only to you, even after such a length of time has passed. There’s no goddess that he kneels for other than the one that sleeps at his side and tells him of her dreams.

The day he gifts you his seax is one that resonates more than even the necklaces and gowns of silk and linen. It feels heavy in your hands, the blade almost as soft as gossamer when your fingers trail along it, though it does not yield. It’s only well polished and freshly sharpened. The handle bears a strange carving in it now, one of two wolves staring up at a broad moon. It breaks something inside to know that even he does find some things sacred: beasts, the glow of an untouched paradise and you.

“Why are you giving me this?,” you manage to whisper as your diligently ghost over the carvings in reverent repetition. “Don’t you need it? For hunting and fighting…”

“You like it?” It’s impossible not to notice the cocky expression on his face that tells you full well he’s recounting that experience. You liked it then, certainly, but it wasn’t as if you had any use for it in such a way when he kept you satisfied enough with himself.

“Yes… but it’s yours.”

He shrugs then, a great lift of his shoulders as you’re pulled to him with a careful grip to the wrist holding the weapon.

“Will keep you safe,” he huffs against your neck, leaving a kiss there when you sheath the seax at the strap you had also been gifted pulled taught along your hip.

You didn’t even know how to use the thing properly, and you were not quite fond of the idea of chasing down rabbits or puncturing another human with it. Your concerns fall on deaf ears when you’re led out into the surrounding forest to a thicket of wild raspberries. Your wrist is steadied by a firm hand as König diligently teaches you to carve away limbs heavy with fruit without actually bringing any real harm to the plant itself.

There are many things to forage this season, some you had never even heard of before he explains their significance to your wonder-filled face. You hadn’t thought him stupid, not truly, but it still comes as a surprise that he seems to know so very much.

When you find yourself seated beside a slow-moving stream, a ripe berry crushed between your teeth, you’re finally allowed to put your new blade away and set it aside on moss-covered stones.

“You should keep it close. A bear might want to eat you, hm?,” he playfully chides behind you, lifting your drab little gown up and over your head. As if to further his point, his teeth rake over your pulse, applying just enough pressure to draw a whine from your lips.

“You are not a bear,” you huff and turn to pull away his tunic, pressing a kiss over the scar he now dons just above his heart.

“Ja…” He lowers his head again to kiss along your neck, trailing a heat up to your ear as he maneuvers you into the water to bathe.

Your foraging and banter go forgotten, and a different sort of howling fills the air shrouded in tree limbs. There are no wolves or wind, only two so feverishly desperate and in love that any other with their dowries and arrangements would find it even more compelling than the Empire itself.

He sinks into you when you’re brought to your knees, bellows his contentment when he brushes your wet hair away from your face and dives forward to cover you fully, bury you in a world of love and sweetness. Even when the act is done, König does not pull away, only lies you back along to shore and tucks you further against him.

You remain chittering and laughing until the sky begins to reflect the very stars you see in his eyes, glittering constellations that seem to flicker and echo the steady beat of his own heart as you lie against his chest.

The summer wedding that the fortune-teller had once spoken of seemed to already take place here. There’s no need for a lectus or some grand display to reveal to others that you’ve united, it comes in the stillness and shared contentment when your voices begin to quiet, and at last you resign yourself to tell him that you belong to him just as much as he belongs to you.

The final flurry of surrender comes out as a soft whisper, one that only leaves you with your knees folded back to your chest and an insatiable giant hugging his gratitude and love into your ear with each graceless snap of his hips.

He drags you down to your own ruin, spells his own with haste and what comes as a twist between a dispatch of tears and a sigh. You can’t recall ever seeing him cry, not even now as he burrows against your neck and shakily breathes against your shoulder, muttering such nonsense about how he would still take you up and into the sky if only you would continue to let him stay with you like this.

“Always,” you murmur fondly, cradling him as closely as possible. Inside, outside, embedded into your very flesh you feel him near. He does not pull out from you this night, only falls asleep in your embrace, cloaks you from the breeze over the water with his own heat. You follow suit, petting at him as though he’s far smaller than his massive weight suggests. He shifts just enough to not fully crush you beneath him, just as you begin to drift off.

When morning does come, König is already stood at your side, staring off into the distance with an expression that only foretells of something you’re certain you will want no part in. He shushes you when you part your lips to speak, nervously scrounging up your gown and the strap holding your gifted weapon. There are no protests from you, and only the babbling of the stream and sounds of distant yelling break up the silence.

You don’t need to ask to know what’s occurring. Just as you had predicted before the Romans had come to dismantle the village just as they had many others before, take the women as slaves and force the children to learn and take up arms for their empire. You had never thought of the violence before when it occurred, when you saw the faces of those miserable women at the sides of people they could never afford to feel any fondness toward. You had always been lucky and blind.

König, however, must have only known wraith. His fingernails dig into his palms, nostrils flared and expression pensive.

“Wartet hier.”

He does not even hesitate as he begins to move, leaving you behind along the peaceful shore. As if to spur you forward, the shallow water rises to lap at your ankles, and still you do not budge. Your hands feel heavy, encumbered by the seax still set in its sheath, and only then does it dawn on you that König had not even had a weapon his person. What good would he even be without one? When so many men armed with sharpened swords and spears had come for his head…

Though fear creeps in, subdues your limbs with its stiffness, rakes fangs of pure ice along every pulsing vein held within you… you can not bring yourself to flee or stay put. You follow, quiet as a wood mouse as you walk along the forest with trembling hands clutching a weapon you almost hope is not too late to save your home, your heart.

There’s no clear trail, no sign of König, not even a shadow or a whisper that may belong to him. Instead there are shouts and the heavy smell of smoke. The gray billows up, more imposing than even the oaks and pines. The only comfort you will yourself to take is the fact that the words you can make out are Germanic, not Latin. Not all is lost, not yet.

You steel yourself and push your resolve to the forefront of your mind, creeping ever closer with careful but steps far more swift. You wind past throning brush and sprawling vine, past trees but familiar and not until you finally cross over from forest to the tall grass lining the edges of the village.

There lies chaos you expect, and that which you do not. Some of the cabins have gone up in flame, fire that coils and spreads to set your nerves alight with memory and dread. There are men fighting at the heart of it all, weapons slick with blood dripping down to the fallen at their feet. The women and children have all fled or have been taken captive, you couldn’t be certain amongst all that was already occurring around you and beyond. You couldn’t even count your enemies, a smaller army no doubt, the arrogance of the Empire knew no bounds. Twenty men to take down one was substantial enough when the others could be used for further conquests.

And there is no sign of König.

You feel numb when no matter where you look you can’t seem to catch sight of him, and how easy a task that should have been given his stature. The seax is pulled from its sheath when grief begins to settle, and the tears that threaten to spill are forced back with a grimace. There was still some hope, you knew. The village was not so small that you could map all of it from the small lump of a hill, but that desire to find him, bare your own teeth and fight at his side to protect what was yours brims up and chokes back the fear harbored in your chest.

Lady or wolf, you cared not. You would lose your titles just as he would if it came down to it. When the histories speak of how that city burned, how a king without a name brought the Empire to kneel if only for a moment before they sought revenge, you would be written in ink alongside it. A devotion so strong echoed in each page, as a barbarian queen that chose to keep her heart and lose her head.

But it doesn’t come to that. There’s another woman stood at König’s side when you do find him, wielding a stolen sword from one of the opposing soldiers as sweat and blood paint his face.

Unharmed and unknowing of the presence at his side, a mirage carved of smoke she was, his eyes stared out towards where the blade struck while her eyes only settled over you. Your breath catches when your gaze moves from König to her and you do find a resemblance: the way that her hair, the same color as your own frames her face, her frame, the way that her nose shapes, even the expression upon her face.

The mother he spoke of, the feral love and protectiveness outspoken and proud in her eyes. You do not recognize this woman, even amidst the cluster of sparse memories in your mind. Not until now had you ever seen her, but the feeling you’re gifted then… a roaring settling in your chest to extinguish all apprehension tells all.

As the last of the Romans is struck down by König himself, a blade sunk so deep into the other’s stomach as the other man spits out a gurgled wail, the woman only seems to fade out into nothing, replaced by the backdrop of the trees surrounding. Nothing left behind in the wake of the place she once walked apart from fallen soldiers and a trail of blood and König, safe as he could be.

When you come to him, teary-eyed and fretful, your roaming fingers do not catch on a single gash. The blood painted over his face, neck, chest is none of his own. He’s well, just as the other men from the village as they rush to snuff out the flames and clear away the bodies.

Though König pants heavily and his eyes are still wild, mind momentarily lost to the thrumming adrenaline in his veins, your touch seems to settle him greatly. The sword falls from his hands to clatter in the dust and muck, curling around you to pull you in. You think he should be angry that you hadn’t listened when he ordered you to stay, but he only seems as grateful as you to find his other half alive and longing still. Always.

You tell him of the woman as you sob into his chest, describe her and her vanishing as best you could in your own muffled voice. He grins, strokes your hair as though he truly believes every word even with how ridiculous it all sounds. There are things far more demanding to focus on now, and eventually you fall to silence as he holds you there.

Your home still stands, built just far enough off from the rest that its managed to avoid the battle entirely. Untouched, except from inside. The altar you had dedicated to Juno is gone, vanished just like the woman you had seen before. The scent of cinnamon hangs in the air, misplaced and unannounced, but a comfort all the same. You smile to yourself, bittersweet but comforting, with tears drying upon your face.

— — —

The village takes time to rebuild.

You lose time just as much as you lose sleep helping out with the endless tasks. König, thinking himself chivalrous, or perhaps hinting at what your future may entail if he continues to ravage you as though he would die without your warmth, never allows you to carry anything heavy. Even clay pots filled with water from the stream are swiftly taken from your hands. Gods forbid you even attempt to aid in cooking over the fires, either. He pulls you away with a hand clasped over your mouth and nose, delicately caressing your face and reminding you to be careful.

Something has changed. What you knew to be love before only seems to double with each passing day. He fusses and dotes over you endlessly, ensuring that you’re well fed, trailing behind you to bathe and it isn’t even just for the chance to sink into your cunt.

Often, he sits with you in his lap, guiding a wet cloth up to gently wash you, toys with your damp hair beneath his fingers, tells you stories of his own adventures and the people who traveled alongside him. Not of the hundred wives his men had boasted about him having, a ridiculous statement only meant to make you pine for him more than you already had, you supposed. He even tells you, sheepishly, that most women seemed afraid of him, but never you.

When you do make love, it’s an act of endless desperation. Along the bank of the stream, your shared bed, against any tree he deems fit enough to not budge beneath your shared weight, and even once in a field of wild blooms you two had found along a foraging trek. The floral aroma had kissed your skin each place he had, left you more doughy and sweet even as you took to conquer him, straddled over his hips with your head thrown back to the wind. You laughed with him when it was through, curled your hand beneath his chin to you with the rough feeling of his unshaven hair.

Everything— each new thing you learn and see with König as your guide only seems to melt away any wall you put up. Your life before only seems to fade from memory, that lonely bitterness consumed by the well of love he’s pushed you into.

When autumn comes and the trees begin to turn, each wealth of green faded and given way for yellow and red, your mare has finally become more docile and tame. You’re not even sure who to thank for it, for the way she struts about with giddy children on her back and doesn’t fuss when even you will yourself to settle over her saddle.

The saddle like all else in your life only seems softer, stitched together with leather, a cushion made of a rabbit’s pelt and stuffed full with straw and down so soft you don’t even dread the idea of the long ride to come.

The mountains, here, surrounding the valley and the village are wild and beautiful, still layered near to their peaks in abundant fields of late-blooming flowers. The stars still hang above, twinkling and glittering as if only to silently deliver their blessings for your coming journey. It is only the sea that you’ve yet to venture toward, the last on the list of honeyed promises König has made to you.

Your luggage is packed and spread between the two horses, your mare and his stallion. There are blankets and preserved food, light posts to set up a tent someplace a distance from the shore, even a pearl dangling from a thin chain that König dutifully places on your neck. It’s no exchange of rings, but you clutch the little gem tight as you will yourself not to cry. There was no need to be so sentimental not now, not after you’ve already shared so many moments far more tender.

The seax dangles at your hip, catching the glow of the sun above when you pull it free and polish it alongside König as he does with his pilfered sword. He shows you how to use a whetstone, delicately maneuvering your hand to sharpen the blade before dousing the thing in oil, makes you swear not to accidentally nick yourself when you’re inevitably dragged in the throes of some hunt at his side.

You’ve yet to use it for that purpose, but going alone means you’ve no choice but to offer your support… even with the knowledge that he wouldn’t actually allow you to do much at all, frustrating as that was.

When morning comes, you say your goodbyes to the village. You’re thrown flowers both pressed and new, petals latching to the fur of the pelt tied over your shoulders. König receives wine, far more useful than the delicate little blossoms that you brush away with shy smiles and glassy eyes.

The language is easier to understand now, when the others offer you great fortune on your travels, the women speaking greatly of your fertility despite the way it makes your nose scrunch in distaste. They call you Königin, only that, never any name you’ve offered for them to use. Perhaps even above the name the people of the city called you by it is more fitting.

You settle into the saddle with König atop his stallion next to you, reach for the reins when he flashes you a wary look, tells you that you will ride slow and he will keep you safe in case anything does happen to occur. You only think to remark the same, gesturing toward the weapon strapped to your hip, smirking when he snorts in amusement.

“Are you ready to depart?,” you ask him as you reach a hand out to trail along his arm, heart thumping wildly when his gaze only begins to further soften. You almost fear he may begin to cry, just as overwhelmed and sweetly pacified as you feel now. “We can stay a while longer if not.”

“Nein… we still need to plan for the stars after,” he whispers as he takes hold of your hand, interlocks your fingers and brushes against each knuckle with the pad of his thumb before bringing it toward his chest.

The moment is broken when the horses begin to huff in anticipation. You don’t get the chance to remind him that you still see each constellation he’s shown to you in the glimmer of his eyes, but you know well enough by now that he would only tell you the same in turn.

[sarahlizziewrites]

OC Kiss Week 2024 - Day 7 - "Dare"

In which Dr Williamson Jones chooses something other than a drink. (1054 words) WIP: Til Death Do Us Part (pre-canon) Characters: Dr Williamson Jones, Navraj Choudhury  taglist: @vacantgodling, @imsoveryveryconfusedatlife, @mrbexwrites, @hippiewrites (+/-) Content warning: alcoholism

Wine makes me warm and chatty: flushed cheeks and a purple tongue spouting purple little lies. Port makes my fingers and toes numb like they’ve been blissfully forgotten about. Whiskey makes me belligerent and sharp, a knife in the darkness.

Gin makes me all of those things, and messy and daring besides. 

Gin’s the thing to drink in India - oh yes, the quinine in the tonic is supposed to stave off malarial fever, and the proof of the spirit kills off the microorganisms in the drinking water the likes of which London has left behind - but that’s not why I drink it. I drink it because I like the way it makes me numb and chatty and warm and sharp all at once. I drink it because I’m hardly daring at all, otherwise.

I’ve tried to remember if I was drunk when I agreed to come to India in the first place, or when I first invited Mr Choudhury to stay late for another drink. I’m still not totally sure why he stays late chatting most nights. He must like the man I am when I’ve had a drink as much as I do. Almost as much as I like him, and the hot, daring thrill I get when he turns his attention on me. 

Tonight, that thrill is more like a torrent, the Ganges in violent flood, as I try to pay attention to the words he’s saying, rather than the shape of his lips as he says them. Tonight may finally be the night I decide to do something about this feeling that makes my skin burn and my tongue grow thick in my mouth. 

“Another drink, Mr Choudhury?”

“No, thank you,” he says, standing. Diluted disappointment fills me. “I had better go.”

It is late, after all. From the damp heat of the verandah, I follow him back through my bungalow, his sandals tapping out a rhythm on the tiles of the atrium, my own steps trudging a reluctant half-beat behind. Gas lighting gives this place an old-fashioned, amber look, which I’ve grown quite fond of. Mr Choudhury looks especially attractive in the light, giving the mahogany of his skin an undertone that gleams like gold. 

God, I’m wrecked.

As though I said that out loud, he turns abruptly, and my messy, numb brain takes a moment to catch up. I go barrelling into him, spilling gin and tonic and lemon all over his clothes.

My sharp, single-syllable expletive won’t un-spill the drink, and the handkerchief I pull from my pocket doesn’t do much better. But somewhere along the way, my hand ends up clenched in the front of his kurta, soaking up the alcohol, and the broad span of his arms are around me, holding me up. 

“Sorry–”

“You asked me earlier,” I begin, carefully loading my vowels with the armour of an English gentleman, “what I had to lose, in my life. Well…” I fill my lungs with something humid and gin-scented. “For a man like me, in my position, with my…tastes…” There can be no doubt of my implication in the heavy emphasis of the word. “It is like falling from the stars.”

“No lasting harm done,” he says, altogether too kindly. I dab uselessly still, enjoying lingering here, close to the heat of his body that somehow cuts through the muggy heat of the air around us. At a certain point, the pretence is all but gone, and we’re just standing in the atrium, far too close.

A miasma of boldness fills the small space between us, and I take a bet on the amber glimmer of his dark brown eyes.

Damn it all, I do want him. Enough to trust him, perhaps where I shouldn’t. He’s an intelligent man - he could easily ignore my emphasis and choose to listen to my words, leave all this behind us. But he doesn’t.

“Then, forgive me.”

Christ, but his hands are big. Big enough to cradle the back of my head and span the short hair at the back of it, pulling me to him. I’m pleasantly numb at the edges of my sensation, but the place on my jaw where he leans close and places his warm lips is urgently alight. 

I hardly realise I’m clinging to his thick arms like a maiden in passionate throes, or that I’m tilting my chin up to his lips, balancing on my tiptoes: certainly, this position is compromising, but I don’t care. 

“Mr Choudhury…”

“Call me Raj,” he mutters into my skin, mouthing slow, deliberate kisses down my jawline.

“Williamson.” It seems silly, now, to only lose the formality when his lips are on my neck and I’m burning with arousal. “Can I prevail upon you to stay a little longer?”

He halts, almost as though he’s only just realised he’s kissing my neck. He huffs out a small laugh, felt rather than heard. “You’re drunk,” he whispers, but he doesn’t let go. “You should go to bed.”

“You should come with me.”

Gin makes me daring, and I blame it for my messy words. He pulls back then, observing me with brown eyes a shade more sober than mine. Alright, a lot more sober. The burning arousal turns rapidly to burning shame.

“I’m sorry–”

“I would,” he says, eyes dark and serious. It’s a look that makes my pulse pound thickly, making the numb parts of me come alive again. “Only…not when you’re like this. Ask me again, on a different night.”

My head is bobbing in a nod before I know I’m even responding. He’s right. Tonight, it’s time for me to sleep off my drink and a good portion of my hangover, and hope he remembers his promise on a different night. Hope he stays, hope he likes the man I am when I’m not…like this.

Arms dropping to my sides, my heels find the ground again. Gaps fall, relatively cool, where we were touching, and slowly, we both walk to the front door. 

“Goodnight, Raj.”

“Goodnight, Williamson.”

—

Gin makes me messy and numb and daring and belligerent. So tonight, I keep the drinks cabinet closed. 

Raj is sharper in the amber light tonight, and when he shakes my hand in greeting, no part of me is numb.

“Evening, Raj. Can I pour you a cup of tea?”

[she-posts-nerdy-stuff]

Don't Go Blindly Into the Dark

Summary:

To hide that he can't read, Jan Van Eck has been forcing his son to pretend he's blind since he was eight years old. Wylan is now attending Ketterdam University, and meeting Jesper Fahey may very well be about to change his life. But is he safe to tell Jesper the truth? And what will Jesper say if he does?

Jesper is struggling to weigh up his life in the Barrel and his life at the University of Ketterdam, and there's a good chance that his growing debt is about to make the decision for him. He hasn't attended class consecutively for months, but maybe that will change when his newest project includes partnering up with Wylan Van Eck. But can he really leave the Barrel behind him? And how long can he keep up the pretence of who he thinks Wylan wants him to be?

Meanwhile there is a darkness growing in Ketterdam, and it seems a killer may be stalking the streets of West Stave. An unknown evil is closing its jaws over the city, and it’s starting to feel like nowhere is safe.

Tags: @justalunaticfangirl @lunarthecorvus @i-need-help-this-is-my-obsession

If anyone else would like to be tagged let me know :)

Content warnings for this chapter: ptsd, trafficking references, separation from family/loved ones

AO3 link

Chapter 48 - Nina

Nina was sitting alone in her room, sipping a steaming cup of tea and listening to the rain that had not long since begun to pour as though the entire sky was weeping, when her window was opened from the outside. Too quiet came her intruder for Nina to immediately realise they were there; it was only when someone whispered her name that she whirled onto her feet to face the window, heart racing, hands raised - 

She almost laughed as the relief poured through her; she felt like a decanter soaked in wine. 

“Inej,” she pressed a hand briefly over her chest, fidgeting with the collar of her dressing gown, “Saints, you scared the life out of me, I… Inej, are you okay?”

Inej was just standing there, shaking. She was wet from the storm but Nina didn’t think it was just the cold causing these shivers; Inej’s eyes were rimmed with red, her breaths loud and shuddering. 

“I’ve just been to the Willow Switch,” she whispered and, like she’d cast an incantation, it was then that the dams burst open. 

Inej’s knees buckled and she sank to the floor in such a fluid moment she may as well have been water tipped from a jug. Nina hurried down after her far less gracefully, wrapping her arms over her shoulders and clutching her close against her chest as she began to sob. 

“You’re okay,” Nina murmured, lifting a hand to cradle the back of Inej’s head as she settled on her knees, the hand on Inej’s back moving up and down in slow rhythm, “Just breathe. I’ve got you,”

Inej sniffled, shaking her head against Nina’s shoulder. 

“Do you want to take your jacket off?” Nina asked gently, “You’re soaked through; I can lend you something-”

“No, thank you, I…” she gasped a little as she tried to level her breaths, wriggling a little away from Nina. 

Nina released her from the embrace and let her settle, studying the thick tear tracks down the Suli girl’s cheeks. 

“I need to get back to the Slat, I’m already late to see Kaz. I just… I couldn’t…”

Nina nodded, slowly, slipping her fingers around Inej’s hand; a loose enough hold that she could pull away at any moment if she needed to. She clutched at Nina’s hand so tightly that her fingers might have turned white. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, “I couldn’t… I didn’t know where else to go,”

“You can always come here,” Nina promised her, “You can burst through the window and tell my clients to piss off if you want to. You come find me, okay? Always,”

A deep sob burst from Inej’s throat and she collapsed back into Nina’s shoulder. 

What day of the week was it? Nina added it up quickly in her head, trying to remember what dates Inej had given her last month.

“You need a warm drink,” said Nina, gently encouraging Inej off her as she stood and offered the girl her hands to rise, “And probably some cake,”

Inej smiled through her tears, shaking her head again as she took hold of Nina. She placed more of her weight into Nina to lever herself onto her feet than Nina had expected, and she found herself drifting focus to her knee. 

“I have to go,” she said, “Kaz is waiting-”

“He can wait a little longer, sit down,” she led Inej to the settee and began to root through her wardrobe for the blanket she’d shoved in there when she woke up that morning, “I got a message from Anika earlier, apparently he needs me at the Crow Club for something tonight,”

She had a busy night ahead; a client had not long since left and was due to be followed by a two hour appointment with a merchant whose wife had recently passed away - he should be arriving in about half an hour but Nina didn’t want to tell Inej that and make her feel like an inconvenience - after that an hour with a lawyer from the Zelvar District, and later into the night at least three more appointments. She had also been invited - or rather requested, she supposed - to return to the Van Eck house. She would not be attending. 

Nina still had not shared with anyone the entire nature of her most recent meeting with the wretched man, and it had been so long since that she’d begun to think he’d given up on trying to pull her back. Or hoped, maybe. She’d been planning on instead dedicating that time to her search for Wylan’s missing friend. Anya. The name felt distantly familiar the more she thought about it, but Nina wasn’t sure if that was for any real reason or just because the idea of her had been populating her thoughts all afternoon. Anya would have to wait another night though, it seemed, because Kaz wanted Nina to be at the Crow Club for eleven bells. Personally she deemed it completely stupid to start important card games at midnight, but what did she know? 

She encouraged Inej to at least temporarily shed her sopping hood and jacket, giving her the blanket to pull around her shoulders, and rang for a maid as she made a harried job of clearing her own recently discarded plate back onto a little tray. When Petra appeared at the door Nina slipped outside to meet her, asking for another cup of tea and a plate of cakes and hoping that Petra would not notice the very wet, very frightened girl curled up on her chaise. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked quietly, when she was back in the room and sitting down next to Inej. 

Inej rested her head on Nina’s shoulder. 

“No,”

“Do you want to talk about something else?”

There was a long silence, before Inej whispered: 

“I’m running out of something elses,”

They spent a good while curled together on the settee in the closest thing that they could find to resemble easy quiet, hot mugs of tea cupped between their palms, the blanket pulled over both their laps. 

“How’s your leg?”

“Not bad,”

“You do know I can tell if you’re lying or not, right?”

“Nina, please…” 

“Hush,” Nina stood up, lifting the blanket and tossing it over the back of the sofa and taking Inej’s empty mug from her so she could deposit both onto the table before tapping the seat with her palm, “Up,”

Inej begrudgingly stretched her leg out across the cushions and let Nina kneel in front of her. She raised her hands over Inej’s knee, choosing slow, deliberate movements to find the place where her ligament had severed. It was far better than it had been when she’d finally relinquished her attempts to keep Inej on bedrest, and the progression made it far easier to see, in the places she guessed were still causing Inej’s pain, what needed to be done to fix them. 

“When did you last sleep?” she asked, keeping her voice calm and casual as she laced her fingers over Inej’s leg. 

“Why is that relevant?”

Nina raised an eyebrow. 

“If you avoid the question, Inej, it’s definitely relevant. Come on, you’re exhausted. Are you working tonight?”

“Not for long. I was going to-”

“Sleep,” Nina finished, ignoring Inej’s second attempt at finishing the sentence, “You are going to go to sleep, or I’m going to lower your heart rate and keep you unconscious until such time as I think you’ll have enough energy to function,”

Inej muttered something in Suli that was mostly too quiet for Nina to catch, but she did hear the edge of shevrati in the comment and couldn’t help but almost laugh. 

“Gracious, what on earth would we call you then?” she asked in Suli, smiling, “Because I definitely know more than you do,”

Inej glared at her playfully, then after a moment - and keeping the language the same - ventured: 

“Why don’t we ever speak Suli?”

Nina considered. For the most part they conversed in Ravkan, at least when alone, and had been doing so today, but it was true that there was no real reason they couldn’t speak in Suli instead. Nina could admit she’d had little experience in using the language with a native speaker and did not trust her knowledge of it as much as she did Kaelish and Kerch, but she also knew that if she never practised that she would lose what she did know of it quickly. There was a block in her head that she had not passed, something that had prevented her from daring to step over an invisible line - one that she had constructed herself. She was realising now, hit by the real confrontation of it, that on the few occasions she and Inej had spoken in Suli it was Inej who initiated it, not her. She swallowed. 

“You thought it would be hard for me,” Inej whispered, nodding slowly, “I noticed,”

Nina opened her mouth, closed it again. When she first came to Ketterdam she’d been offered a contract to join the Dime Lions and set up her business at the Sweet Shoppe by Pekka Rollins, a deal that, as a frightened stranger to the city with no other options before her, she’d very nearly accepted - and would have done, if it weren’t for Inej crawling through her window that night. She still didn’t know, nor did she ever hope to understand, how Inej had managed to scale the Emerald Palace and slip in through the barred upstairs window, but she was endlessly glad of it. And upon that first meeting, when the perfect candidate to convince her - she was practically sure Kaz had found some kind of personnel file on her and specifically selected Inej based on the details - that she should take a deal with the Dregs, she had spoken to Inej in Suli. She hadn’t really thought about it. Inej had told her, without detail and yet somehow without sparing it either, that there was a pretty important difference between the contract she’d been considering signing and the one Kaz would have drawn up for her. And after that, whether it had been a conscious decision or not, Nina had avoided speaking to her in Suli. 

“I don’t…”

“I understand,” Inej said, her voice gentle, “But you don’t have to do that. I - well, I don’t know anyone else I can speak it to, here. It’s… it can be, when…” she paused, clearly trying to choose the right words, “I can’t always, but… maybe I could tell you when it’s a day not to do it, instead of when it is?” 

“Of course,” Nina managed, nodding, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed-”

“You didn’t do anything wrong. But if it’s something we can talk about… is that okay?”

“Always,” Nina closed her hand over Inej’s, “Anything, okay? You can talk to me about anything, and you can tell me anything - though, maybe later?” her eyes had fallen on the clock, hanging on the wall behind Inej’s head, “I don’t want to kick you out, but I have about ten minutes until my next client gets here,”

Inej leant forwards and pressed her forehead against Nina’s for a moment, squeezing her fingers as she pulled away. 

“You’ve done more for me today than you ever needed to, Nina Zenik. Can I…” she hesitated, “Can I tell you something, quickly?”

Nina nodded. 

“I’m sixteen,” Inej whispered, and as she spoke she laid her hand against one of her knives, “As of this morning. It doesn’t feel very different,”

“No,” Nina murmured, thoughts drifting to turning seventeen in Ketterdam. She would turn eighteen here, almost definitely, and maybe nineteen too. But what after that? Would she be able to go home again, even after her debt to Per Haskell was paid? Would she be able to find the strength within herself to do so? Would she tell them the truth of it all if she did? “No, it doesn’t,”

She drew a picture of Inej’s parents in her head, on their daughter’s sixteenth birthday, and almost immediately wished she could erase it again. She wondered if Zoya had thought about her, when she turned seventeen. 

“May you have a blessed year,” she whispered in Suli, doing her best to recall the traditional phrase, “May each be better than the last,”

[jackwolfes]

would you like to post a snippet of sugar baby au?🥺🌹 if tha's still a thing

oh man i definitely still want to finish and post it but it's 98,000 words or something obscence like that 😂 all it needs is a rewrite of one of the final scenes and then i can line edit & finish it off!!! so it's the next SOC fic on my list after regency wesper au gets finished, probably, with a break in between because im doing a big bang for a different fandom?? so. end of the year maybe hopefully which is what i said this time last year but shhh anyway, here's a fairly long lil bit from early on in the fic:

Jesper doesn’t plan to tell his friends until after his first trip with Wylan is out of the way, but the email he gets sent two weeks before he’s meant to fly throws that plan out of the window. 

Wylan has sent him a contract. 

“The damn Kerch and their fucking contracts,” he complains, slouched in a leather booth with a clean plate in front of him. 

Nina snorts. She is currently investigating a pile of red tights to see which she can wear without putting a line of ladders on show, but Jesper doesn’t think she’s going to have any luck with it. If anything he thinks she’s more at risk of getting waffle syrup on them, given the way she haphazardly chucks them half a foot above her plate of breakfast. Around them, the terminal diner bustles with the usual chatter of families and tourists readying themselves for a flight. Airport food is rarely ever good, but the waffles at this joint — Saints, they’re something else. 

“It’s standard,” Kaz says dryly, not deigning to look any of them in the eye. “You can file them at every bank in Ketterdam.”

“Because sugar babies are a dime a dozen on the West Stave,” Jesper replies. “Wylan Van Eck isn’t exactly a regular in that end of town.” 

“As far as you know,” Inej points out.

“Have you ever had a conversation with him?” 

“I’ve only ever served him wine,” Nina says, “and I can tell you he is not your typical Barrel clientele.” 

Jesper gestures to her smugly. Nina, of all people, would be qualified to know, but it does make Jesper wonder. All Wylan had asked for was company. Jesper can only assume they’ll hash out the specifics in person, but he isn’t stupid. There’s already a list in his head of how far he’ll go — and it’s pretty far, with a man as pretty as Wylan Van Eck — but he still wonders what exactly Wylan will push for. He’d have clocked him as somewhat vanilla, but vanilla doesn’t usually include adopting a sugar baby. 

It’s always the quiet ones, he supposes.

[sagehaubitze]

I'm working on about 2,038,566 different projects, which isn't a complaint, it's been a lot of (exhausting) fun. But I can't stop thinking about that one post on here that's like... you don't know what kind of work goes into a craft/product, and can't appreciate the level of work, until you make it yourself.

I'm not new to (small) woodworking projects, which is to say I'm also not new to people going "oh.. neat.." when I show them something I've made as they privately think to themselves how easy it'd obviously be to crank out. Usually it's about smoking pipe restoration. Same with leatherworking projects. But, right now I'm working on a bunch of votive holders from cut off ends of whiskey and wine barrel staves (from more projects). No one wants to think about having to fight like hell with a forstner bit biting into the wood and cutting like shit and destroying everything because I don't own a huge fuck-off drill press. Or all the sanding, which thankfully I like sanding. Or all the oiling, and oiling, and resanding, and oiling again, and oil. more oil. every coat of oil. Luckily (again) applying finishes is my favorite part. Also the leather accents, cutting the straps (every stave is a slightly different fucking size! can't make a template!), burnishing and conditioning the leather. All the shit! Yeah it'd be easy if you just.. didn't do all that and slapped a hole in a piece of wood I guess, unfinished.

anyway idk, I needed to ramble for a second. I need to find that post again, preemptively, before I show anyone the things I've been working on.

[illyaoakheart]

House Oakheart and The Castle of Old Oak

The castle of Old Oak can be found amongst the ancient oaks of The Endless Forest, several days' horse ride east of The Sunset Sea and south of Crakehall and the border of The Westerlands. The expansive forest provides natural protection, as well as valuable resources. Old Oak is one of the oldest castles in the Seven Kingdoms, known for its impressive size and strength, and is the seat of House Oakheart. One of the wealthiest families in The Reach, House Oakheart is sworn (begrudgingly, after Ruling Lord Joseph attempted to play both sides of The Reach Civil War, which was quietly discovered and put to rest) to House Tyrell, and are practitioners of The Old Way. They share familial roots primarily with House Rowan and House Meadows, but are still closely associated with the other Old Way Houses.

The advantageous location of Old Oak has made House Oakheart one of the power players in The Reach’s lumber trade. Within the expansive oaks, House Oakheart's woodsmen carefully select mature oak trees for harvesting. These oak trees are felled and prepared for processing, with their trunks cut into logs and beams. They are transported via The Ocean Road to be processed and stored on the coast of The Sunset Sea, where they are later moved by ship to trade locations such as The Shield Islands, The Mouth of The Mander, and The Trout’s Mouth Canal to The River Market. The oak wood harvested from this region is known for its outstanding quality. 

In addition to raw timber, Old Oak and its surrounding villages are well known for several industries pertaining to the famous oak trees: 

Parchment Production

The tanneries and parchment makers of The Reach rely on oak bark, a byproduct of the timber industry within the sprawling forest, for their craft. Oak bark's tannin-rich properties are essential in transforming raw animal hides into fine parchment and leather, prized by scholars, maesters, and scribes who venture to the heart of this ancient forest.

Woodworking Guilds

Old Way master woodworkers harness the abundant oak timber from the forest to create exquisite furniture, intricate carvings, and ornate paneling. Their creations adorn the halls of noble houses. Woodworking guilds flourish within the woodlands surrounding Old Oak, merging craftsmanship with the timeless oak's nobility.

Shipbuilding

House Oakheart’s shipyards along the Sunset Sea benefit greatly from the oak timber harvested within the ancient forest. This prized wood is used to construct magnificent vessels renowned for their strength and seaworthiness, supporting the maritime might and trade dominance of House Tyrell and the Reach.  While House Oakheart does have their own ships, they are not widely known for navy or military presence. They focus on the building and selling of ships, not the using of them. Lord Joseph has made House Oakheart very money and appearance focused — he has always intended to fund wars, not fight in them. 

Apothecary Supplies

Alchemists and apothecaries in the region make use of oak bark and acorns from the ancient forest for their herbal concoctions and potions. Oak bark's medicinal properties are harnessed for remedies, while acorns become essential ingredients for various elixirs and tinctures.

Oakwood Cooperage

Though Old Old has no signature beverage of its own, coopers transform oak staves from The Endless Forest into barrels and casks used for aging and storing wines, ales, and spirits. The tight grain of oak wood imparts unique flavors to these beverages, enhancing their quality. The cooperage industry helps support the production of some of the many libations within The Reach.

(ooc: most of this is home brewed and not canon and ive tweaked things &lt;3)

[rabbitcruiser]

Bodegas Muga, Spain (No. 5)

From a production point of view, they are one of the most traditional wineries in the world, as every aspect of the winemaking process is still carried out in oak barrels and vats. Furthermore, every single barrel and vat is made at the winery by the cooperage team. Bodegas Muga is the only winery in Spain that employs their own master cooper, who is assisted by a team of three barrel makers. The master cooper’s son also works at the winery, and is studying to become a master cooper himself. The Mugas travel in the late fall and early winter every year to France and elsewhere to purchase oak for the year. They inspect every single tree and select one by one. The trees are fashioned into staves at the winery, and are seasoned and aged for several years at the winery’s facilities. The winery even has 50,000L vats that were assembled by the master cooper’s own hands.

The winemaking process is carried out with 100% indigenous yeasts. The winery’s barrel room is enormous and Muga employs a crew of six men just for barrel management and rackings. The racking process is completed by gravity in order to maintain the integrity of the wine. During the rackings, the wine is inspected by candlelight to watch for sediments. This way, the wines are effectively filtered naturally without the use of harmful pumps or filters that would otherwise strip the wine of its character. The red wines are fined naturally with egg whites.

Although the Mugas have maintained all aspects of traditional Rioja winemaking, what makes the family great is their vision for the future and adaptability, while always holding true to their philosophy.

Source

[hottakehoulihan]

Eating animals

I owned a book--twice (I don't know why I keep giving it away and haven't had it on hand for years)--called "Unmentionable Cuisine".

Because food is good. And there were some recipes in it that sounded amazing.

Two that especially spring to mind:

1: You catch the mice in your winery that have been eating the musty grapes and lapping up spilled wine and chewing on fragments of claret-soaked wood, and you carefully clean them and roast them over a small fire made of smashed well-used wine barrel staves, and serve them with a wine reduction sauce maybe? Sounds fiddly and not super likely to work well, but the recipe is itself pretty.

2: You remove a few bricks from your kitchen's cinderblock floor and put a wire grate over it, and you put any veggie trimmings down there that you don't want and also some water and you keep a guinea pig or two down there. Eventually, when it's grown, you add the shredded meat to a dish; a full-size specimen is a meal for two, properly stretched.

I know intellectually that people would recoil from these dishes like I might recoil from a wichetty grub, a seagull, or an otter. (And I would eat those things, I'd just have to overcome an illogical resistance) (for all I know, they're super delicious. I think pigeon is delicious.)

I know intellectually that I shouldn't be surprised when I encounter someone who recoils at the idea of eating sheep.

But mostly it's a WTF moment for me, that anyone who is as a general rule okay with eating animal flesh would decide that somehow dogs and cats are specialler than cows and pigs? Horses are sacred in a way that sheep aren't? Bird flesh may be eaten only if it is chicken or turkey?

People pretend to believe absurd things all the time--even to themselves--and that's just a fact of modern life we have to cope with when pussyfooting around folk who are scared--say--of having their receipt have three sixes on it in a row, or of acknowledging any validity in the evolutionary record.

I can only assume it's the same sort of thing. The disgust at not-our-culture notional or actual dietary differences is real.

But it's not because of the food.

Its just bog standard picky eating and willful insularity.

I will try to have charity towards people who have illogical taboos,

but only to the extent they have charity toward those who don't share them.

That sounds like a good general rule, actually.