#winter sycamore

[crystalelemental]

Unit Teambuilding - Winter Sycamore

DID YOU GUYS KNOW ABOUT GRASS HIGH SCORE?!  THERE'S A HIGH SCORE EVENT!  FOR GRASS!  NEXT MONTH!  HEY, DID YOU HEAR?

General Overview Sycamore's one of the funniest kits ever, man.  So, it's Sycamore and Gogoat.  Bit bummed at Ramos losing his ace, but hey, I bet that won't happen to anyone else, right?  The specific reason I find Sycamore so funny is that his entire life hinges on this Grass-type High Score event.

Sycamore is the first to utilize rebuffs as a team buff.  When he attacks, he debuffs the Grass rebuff of all foes by 1, then boosts his team's Grass rebuff by 1, reducing incoming Grass damage 30%.  He even gets another +1 rebuff for himself on entry, and packs Team Grassy Guard for a 40% reduction in damage.  Which is a lot of reduction of Grass damage, very specifically designed for this upcoming Grass High Score event.  And nothing else.

Look, how often is Grass the primary damage type?  Tapu Bulu is the only stage with consistent Grass pressure, and it's the second-easiest Gauntlet stage after Latios.  Though I personally think Latios is often harder when not considering potential solo counts.  Meanwhile, CS rarely has Grass damage.  Blue and Will have Exeggutor, Hau has Decidueye, and I think Marshal has Breloom?  That's it.  Outside of those very few situations, Grass-type damage is a rare occurrence.  Meaning Sycamore here...has no job.  He relies on his other tools entirely, and when you put so much into being a Grass counter, turns out you have less to work with.

That's not to say his kit is bad.  1MP trainer move for +4 to both defenses and +2 speed is quite nice. He's got Potion and some nice consistent passive recovery, so there's a lot of staying power.  Dire Hit All+ gives some crit rate in there too, so he's got utility.  When you really stop and look at his kit...he's SS Morty but Grass. No really, look at this. High defenses, good speed injection, caps crit without MPR, similar Potion support, but instead of Sun as a short-lived effect, you get Grass Rebuff as a permanent fixture for damage. Sycamore is insanely good for those who can handle their own Atk/Sp Atk needs. Even outside of Grass, having the speed control he has alongside crit rate makes him a standout among the rapidly growing number of defensive supports we're getting. Sycamore's good.

EX, Role, and Move Level? Support, so my usual insistence on 3/5 EX applies.  His role is Strike, and it is dogshit, please do not.  But his grid is also...fairly unimportant?  Like okay, Potion MPR, always a classic, and there's Endurance.  But by and large, Sycamore is not one of those pairs whose 3/5 grids are transformative.  He gets little.

Team 1: W!Sycamore, SS Lyra, SC Rosa/Brendan I'm going in kinda hard at the outset for a reason.  Sycamore, as a defensive support, works best with the offensively self-sufficient.  As someone with good gauge management, he works at picking up the pace of slower partners, and those who need Speed boosts.  And that fits SC Rosa and Brendan perfectly.  No, listen to me.  SC Rosa's a 4-bar spam who needs a lot of help to dish out her DPS, while Brendan needs Speed buffs he otherwise can't acquire.  Sycamore handles both of them well, because both are offensively autonomous.  With Lyra to pop Terrain and a sure-flinch, they effectively can't lose, but you can go for like...base Erika's debuffs for Rosa and Blaine for Brendan on sun.

Team 2: W!Sycamore, Maxie, Silver Just a fun thing.  I like the idea of secondary DPS as an approach to clears, and Sycamore actually has some nice tools for this.  Defensive backbone with some speed boosting to manage gauge, crit rate so Maxie can use his own TM, Maxie supplying Sun so both can spam Solarbeam.  It works out.

Team 3: W!Sycamore, Zinniquaza, Winona Do you all have any idea how hard it is to final a general solution for Sycamore?  How few options there are that are self-sufficient on Atk/Sp Atk, but desperately need crit?  In almost every scenario, crit is the easier one.  Ever since they figured out crit rate is the most important part of this game, everyone's got it in spades.  The only one I could find that had good offensive-self sufficiency was Zinniquaza.  Who also cuts her defenses, ruining Sycamore's TM!  I tell ya, there's no winning.  But the idea should at least be clear.  Sycamore's generalist practices are defensive boosts with some speed, and crit rate.  He could, in theory, help anyone who needs those traits, provided they can handle the needed offensive stat, in a way that's not just X Atk/X Sp Atk.  But as you've probably gathered, such pairs are a dying breed, and I have almost nothing in the way of suggestions.

Final Thoughts Initially, I very much undersold Sycamore. I half stand by it. Listen, I like defensive supports, I've been a fan from the beginning, actively starting what I do with this game over H!Caitlin being good. I do think Sycamore is very, very good at what he wants to do, with the speed in particular being what sets him apart. But. Like many of these defensive supports, they cater to the top. This kind of alt is fantastic for a Brendan or SC Rosa or Adaman, who don't have any issues setting up. But for an Erika? A Mallow? Hell, a Selene? We're running into problems. And I tend to favor supports that work well with the lower tiers too. Sycamore doesn't have the best bang for your buck if you're largely F2P and looking for someone to carry you to victory with weaker pairs. He's here to support the strong ones in clearing the extra hard bullshit content. And if I get him, he's going to get Adaman and SC Rosa to beat Thorton, mark my words.

[duxuebing]

Photography by Xuebing Du

Instagram: xuebing.du

[uxbridge]

Frozen pond

[rinibayphoto]

[tanyaluca]

February Self Portrait…

Tanya Luca

[dsco-kjs]

Winter chore time!

Greetings to all! This is my small contribution for December 24, I hope that you and your families are having a good time on this day, and that you have a better time next year, I wish you the best of the luck and Merry Christmas!!

[ruffles23]

“The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady” January: Part 1

[epochhistorymagazine]

Issue 14 is live!

EPOCH's December issue just released - check it out for articles about Soviet Studies, Sycamore Gap, and the Great Fire of London!

[sharpedgedfool]

The first line up of fae! Some extra rambles under the cut:

Had to keep these guys together of course, they're all spring-waking and fall-sleeping fae. Usually the first thing they do when they wake up is find each other again, they pretty much spend all their seasons together.

Wild Cherry likes exploring, adventuring, racing and discovering new hide-outs. They've out-flied every other fae in the waking seasons, their current goal is to wake up early enough to spend a few days in the Winter - to challenge their fastest fae to a race to prove they're the fastest out of anyone.

Sycamore loves inventing and building, they make gear and knick-knacks for everyone. Fae from all over know to seek them out for any assistance building something, they built Rose's hammer for instance! Most fae without wings can't fly, but the Sycamore's helicopter seeds have the unique ability to grant him limited flight!

English Rose loves dresses, gowns, flower crowns, everything fashion-related in the fae world - they love celebrations and usually go a bit overboard decorating - but being extra is a good thing for fae. They have a bit of a temper, but are exceptionally generous and often willing to lend a hand.

Jack O' Lantern likes exploring too, and normally digs around animals burrows and fallen logs to find things Cherry overlooks in the sky. They are wingless but are able to glide on the wind (like spores) and have fashioned some rose thorns to his gloves to climb easily. He often goes off on his own, but always comes back around to hang with the group.

All four of them are well known, well respected Fae, but have a bit of a reputation of getting into trouble. They have a strong sense of morals and will not back down from a fight - if a fairy decides to stir up trouble these four will usually have something to say about it.

(Also shout out to the person who recognised the exact bug species of Sonic's wings like immediately when I posted the wip ur a real one jkhdfgdgf)

[emperornorton47]

Winter leaves

[uxbridge]

Winter used to be a sore point for me, dark days, long nights, cloudy skies, once beautiful greenery withered away, dead and decaying, overcome by the cold; but while I still sometimes feel that sense of despair creep back in, I know there is beauty to be found; branching in trees, mosses on rocks, snow covered fields; I tried reliving summer moments like childhood dreams, grappling with the passing seasons, only to realize the tranquility of dormancy, patiently waiting for what comes next

[headspace-hotel]

There, in the sunlit forest on a high ridgeline, was a tree I had never seen before.

I spend a lot of time looking at trees. I know my beech, sourwood, tulip poplar, sassafras and shagbark hickory. Appalachian forests have such a diverse tree community that for those who grew up in or around the ancient mountains, forests in other places feel curiously simple and flat.

Oaks: red, white, black, bur, scarlet, post, overcup, pin, chestnut, willow, chinkapin, and likely a few others I forgot. Shellbark, shagbark and pignut hickories. Sweetgum, serviceberry, hackberry, sycamore, holly, black walnut, white walnut, persimmon, Eastern redcedar, sugar maple, red maple, silver maple, striped maple, boxelder maple, black locust, stewartia, silverbell, Kentucky yellowwood, blackgum, black cherry, cucumber magnolia, umbrella magnolia, big-leaf magnolia, white pine, scrub pine, Eastern hemlock, redbud, flowering dogwood, yellow buckeye, white ash, witch hazel, pawpaw, linden, hornbeam, and I could continue, but y'all would never get free!

And yet, this tree is different.

We gather around the tree as though surrounding the feet of a prophet. Among the couple dozen of us, only a few are much younger than forty. Even one of the younger men, who smiles approvingly and compliments my sharp eye when I identify herbs along the trail, has gray streaking his beard. One older gentleman scales the steep ridge slowly, relying on a cane for support.

The older folks talk to us young folks with enthusiasm. They brighten when we can call plants and trees by name and list their virtues and importance. "You're right! That's Smilax." "Good eye!" "Do you know what this is?—Yes, Eupatorium, that's a pollinator's paradise." "Are you planning to study botany?"

The tree we have come to see is not like the tall and pillar-like oaks that surround us. It is still young, barely the diameter of a fence post. Its bark is gray and forms broad stripes like rivulets of water down smooth rock. Its smooth leaves are long, with thin pointed teeth along their edges. Some of the group carefully examine the bark down to the ground, but the tree is healthy and flourishing, for now.

This tree is among the last of its kind.

The wood of the American Chestnut was once used to craft both cradles and coffins, and thus it was known as the "cradle-to-grave tree." The tree that would hold you in entering this world and in leaving it would also sustain your body throughout your life: each tree produced a hundred pounds of edible nuts every winter, feeding humans and all the other creatures of the mountains. In the Appalachian Mountains, massive chestnut trees formed a third of the overstory of the forest, sometimes growing larger than six feet in diameter.

They are a keystone species, and this is my first time seeing one alive in the wild.

It's a sad story. But I have to tell you so you will understand.

At the turn of the 20th century, the chestnut trees of Appalachia were fundamental to life in this ecosystem, but something sinister had taken hold, accidentally imported from Asia. Cryphonectria parasitica is a pathogenic fungus that infects chestnut trees. It co-evolved with the Chinese chestnut, and therefore the Chinese chestnut is not bothered much by the fungus.

The American chestnut, unlike its Chinese sister, had no resistance whatsoever.

They showed us slides with photos of trees infected with the chestnut blight earlier. It looks like sickly orange insulation foam oozing through the bark of the trees. It looks like that orange powder that comes in boxes of Kraft mac and cheese. It looks wrong. It means death.

The chestnut plague was one of the worst ecological disasters ever to occur in this place—which is saying something. And almost no one is alive who remembers it. By the end of the 1940's, by the time my grandparents were born, approximately three to four billion American chestnut trees were dead.

The Queen of the Forest was functionally extinct. With her, at least seven moth species dependent on her as a host plant were lost forever, and no one knows how much else. She is a keystone species, and when the keystone that holds a structure in place is removed, everything falls.

Appalachia is still falling.

Now, in some places, mostly-dead trees tried to put up new sprouts. It was only a matter of time for those lingering sprouts of life.

But life, however weak, means hope.

I learned that once in a rare while, one of the surviving sprouts got lucky enough to successfully flower and produce a chestnut. And from that seed, a new tree could be grown. People searched for the still-living sprouts and gathered what few chestnuts could be produced, and began growing and breeding the trees.

Some people tried hybridizing American and Chinese chestnuts and then crossing the hybrids to produce purer American strains that might have some resistance to the disease. They did this for decades.

And yet, it wasn't enough. The hybrid trees were stronger, but not strong enough.

Extinction is inevitable. It's natural. There have been at least five mass extinctions in Earth's history, and the sixth is coming fast. Many people accepted that the American chestnut was gone forever. There had been an intensive breeding program, summoning all the natural forces of evolution to produce a tree that could survive the plague, and it wasn't enough.

This has happened to more species than can possibly be counted or mourned. And every species is forced to accept this reality.

Except one.

We are a difficult motherfucker of a species, aren't we? If every letter of the genome's book of life spelled doom for the Queen of the Forest, then we would write a new ending ourselves. Research teams worked to extract a gene from wheat and implant it in the American chestnut, in hopes of creating an American chestnut tree that could survive.

This project led to the Darling 58, the world's first genetically modified organism to be created for the purpose of release into the wild.

The Darling 58 chestnut is not immune, the presenters warned us. It does become infected with the blight. And some trees die. But some live.

And life means hope.

In isolated areas, some surviving American Chestnut trees have been discovered, most of them still very young. The researchers hope it is possible that some of these trees may have been spared not because of pure luck, but because they carry something in their genes that slows the blight in doing its deadly work, and that possibly this small bit of innate resistance can be shaped and combined with other efforts to create a tree that can live to grow old.

This long, desperate, multi-decade quest is what has brought us here. The tree before me is one such tree: a rare survivor. In this clearing, a number of other baby chestnut trees have been planted by human hands. They are hybrids of the Darling 58 and the best of the best Chinese/American hybrids. The little trees are as prepared for the blight as we can possibly make them at this time. It is still very possible that I will watch them die. Almost certainly, I will watch this tree die, the one that shades us with her young, stately limbs.

Some of the people standing around me are in their 70's or 80's, and yet, they have no memory of a world where the Queen of the Forest was at her full majesty. The oldest remember the haunting shapes of the colossal dead trees looming as if in silent judgment.

I am shaken by this realization. They will not live to see the baby trees grow old. The people who began the effort to save the American chestnut devoted decades of their lives to these little trees, knowing all the while they likely never would see them grow tall. Knowing they would not see the work finished. Knowing they wouldn't be able to be there to finish it. Knowing they wouldn't be certain if it could be finished.

When the work began, the technology to complete it did not exist. In the first decades after the great old trees were dead, genetic engineering was a fantasy.

But those that came before me had to imagine that there was some hope of a future. Hope set the foundation. Now that little spark of hope is a fragile flame, and the torch is being passed to the next generation.

When a keystone is removed, everything suffers. What happens when a keystone is put back into place? The caretakers of the American chestnut hope that when the Queen is restored, all of Appalachia will become more resilient and able to adapt to climate change.

Not only that, but this experiment in changing the course of evolution is teaching us lessons and skills that may be able to help us save other species.

It's just one tree—but it's never just one tree. It's a bear successfully raising cubs, chestnut bread being served at a Cherokee festival, carbon being removed from the atmosphere and returned to the Earth, a wealth of nectar being produced for pollinators, scientific insights into how to save a species from a deadly pathogen, a baby cradle being shaped in the skilled hands of an Appalachian crafter. It's everything.

Despair is individual; hope is an ecosystem. Despair is a wall that shuts out everything; hope is seeing through a crack in that wall and catching a glimpse of a single tree, and devoting your life to chiseling through the wall towards that tree, even if you know you will never reach it yourself.

An old man points to a shaft of light through the darkness we are both in, toward a crack in the wall. "Do you see it too?" he says. I look, and on the other side I see a young forest full of sunlight, with limber, pole-size chestnut trees growing toward the canopy among the old oaks and hickories. The chestnut trees are in bloom with fuzzy spikes of creamy white, and bumblebees heavy with pollen move among them. I tell the man what I see, and he smiles.

"When I was your age, that crack was so narrow, all I could see was a single little sapling on the forest floor," he says. "I've been chipping away at it all my life. Maybe your generation will be the one to finally reach the other side."

Hope is a great work that takes a lifetime. It is the hardest thing we are asked to do, and the most essential.

I am trying to show you a glimpse of the other side. Do you see it too?

[rinibayphoto]

[extinctionstories]

There are certain traits that come to mind when a person hears the word “parrot”. Bright plumage. A hooked beak. A brazen voice. And, of course, their habitat: through history, the image of the parrot has functioned as a kind of visual shorthand for the idea of the exotic and tropical.

The association makes sense: of the roughly 400 species of parrots known to have existed in modern times, only four have been found outside of tropical climes. Three of these reside in mountainous pockets of otherwise typical parrot-country, like the Kea of New Zealand. Once, though, there was a parrot that dwelt amongst the familiar elms and sycamores of eastern North America.

Despite its name, the Carolina Parakeet’s natural range stretched from Florida to Colorado, with northern borders extending up to Virginia and Wisconsin; birds were even known to have been sighted as far afield as New York and Canada. Some of the most striking accounts of parakeet flocks describe them in winter, their bright feathers glowing against bare tree branches and snow.

A winter parrot; a snow parrot—it’s practically a contradiction in terms. Maybe that’s what makes it so wonderful.

If only wonder, and uniqueness, were enough to protect and preserve an animal, instead of a mere whetstone to its loss. I think the world would be a brighter place, if parakeets still flew in the snow.

This is the fourth piece in my series about the extinct Carolina Parakeet. The title of the painting is ‘The Warmth of a Living Breath’, and it is gouache on 18x24 inch watercolor paper.

[aloysiavirgata]

How about some middle-aged reflections on the early days of their (romantic/sexual) relationship?

They’re spreading mulch around the trees, tucking flowerbeds in for winter. The air is crisp and dry, sharpened by the pungent smell of the mulch.

“Got the Stanford alumni newsletter yesterday,” Scully says. “Guess who their new entomology professor is.”

He frowns back, puzzled. Her tone indicates that the answer is one he should get. Does he know any entomologists?

Mulder starts to shake his head. “I have no-“

He sees her face, the smirk she’s trying hide, and then he remembers. “Nooooo,” he says, drawing the word out with a laugh. “Bambi?”

“Bambi,” she confirms, grinning now. “Did you sleep with her? I honestly can’t remember.”

“No!” He’s a bit shocked that she thought this. He’d kind of wanted to though, he recalls. Little khaki shorts.

Scully rolls her eyes. “Oh, sorry to impugn your virtue.”

Mulder offers her a petulant look. “You make it sound like I was Wilt Chamberlain-ing my way through every case.”

She leans against the big sycamore, scoffs. “You’re mighty defensive there, Marty.”

He grins back. “Judge away. You weren’t putting out yet. Not to me, anyway.”

Scully laughs. “We were so young.”

“We were so young.”

She rolls her palms around the rake handle, her beautiful slim fingers with oval nails like the inside of a seashell. She’d been pretty back then, he thinks. Lovely. But now she’s ethereal, refined to some radiant essence.

“I think….hmm. I think some part of me really felt that if you and I followed the rules then everyone else had to as well, you know?” Her expression is a little wistful. A little sad.

He does know. “I like to think it made it that much sweeter in the end.”

“It did. I loved you so…so….purely. I remember when you made it to that Congressional hearing. I think I was done then. The rest was just waiting to happen.” She laughs, a little shy even now.

“You were like Beatrice,” he says to her, adoringly, in the honeyed light. “Come to lead me into Paradise.”

Scully drops the rake, walks over to take his hands in hers. “Is this heaven?” she asks, gazing up.

Mulder smiles back, squeezes her cool little fingers. The wind chimes on the deck ripple like harp strings. The sun makes a halo on her tawny head.

[storiesbyrhi]

Witch!Reader x Bat/Vampire!Eddie Munson Series Masterlist The Grimoire The Timeline

Warnings: canon typical violence, horror genre typical violence/some infrequent gore, swearing, animal death, no beta, death in childbirth (mentioned, not described), abusive parents, suicide, spiders/bugs, grief/mourning; light smut; warnings updated each chapter.

Synopsis: No witch has stepped foot in Hawkins since 1845, but when Vecna opens the ground and poisons the town, a voice begins to call to you. Have you been brought back to this cursed place to heal the townspeople’s wounds, to save a hexed bat that always finds its way to you, or to redefine your history with a reunion 150 years in the making?

Chapter Summary: To build a home. 2888 words.

1986

When the temperature dropped and a near-constant fog hung low over Hawkins, you were glad, being more of a winter witch than summer. You stood on the peak of a hillside and looked over the vast plains surrounding the town. The mist made everything look ghostly and romantic.

The land had been returned to the descendants of the original Native American peoples who once lived there, but with no immediate plans to reoccupy the space, your new coven had been granted permission to make home on the condition you would oversee its protection.

For the moment, you were alone on the hill. Eddie was hiding from solar rays in the trailer, listening to the radio and writing in a journal he had recently started.

There was a lot to do before your sisters arrived and you wanted it all done by then. You wanted everything to be perfect. The first dwelling of a new coven would set the tone for centuries to come. It was time to build.

The advantages of being magically blessed were many, but you’d always thought enchanted seeds had to be right up there in the top ten. You’d had seven seeds soaking in seven jars over the past seven days.

You’d lined them up and filled them to halfway with moon water. In went a seed each, apple slices, and petals. In Ash’s jar went dahlia petals, while Hailey’s had peonies. Purple mums for Meg. Foxglove for Ev. Mel’s had snapdragons and lucky last, Kelsey’s was filled with delphinium.

Now, you’d fished each seed out and planted it where their cabins, cottages, and homes were to be.

“I plant these seeds,

Where homes will grow,

By moonlight

And good intentions.

In this time,

And in this place,

A coven new

Offers protection.”

You laid on the grass in the shade of an old sycamore tree. Closing your eyes, you let yourself melt into the natural world. Bones became tree roots. Blood swapped for mud. Total harmony. Infinite peace.

The air grew cooler and the shade expanded outwards. Darkness enveloped you and your body slowed as if you were in your final resting place. That’s how he found you; not asleep but not awake.

Eddie surveyed your work. The seeds had already sprouted, grew, and bloomed. Magical in their speed. He picked one of the snapdragon flowers and squeezed the base, like you’d shown him. It opened the flower’s mouth, a tiny floral puppet. Eddie smiled to himself.

You felt their heartbeats before you saw Eddie. Sitting up, you watched the deer and her fawn meander in from the forest. She’d looked at you, poised in question. What is he? Is he safe? Given a witch’s blessing, she let her baby approach Eddie.

He too had heard their heartbeats. Eddie had remained where he was, mindful not to scare them. When the fawn appeared at his feet, he slowly opened his hand to the animal and let it eat the snapdragon from his palm.

“You would know if it was poison, right?” he asked in a quiet voice. The fawn looked up at him, long eyelashes and soft whiskers.

Eddie turned to find you standing close behind him. You were getting very good at sneaking up on him.

“Hi,” he greeted.

“Making friends?”

Eddie nodded.

“Feeding my flowers to them?”

There was an overwhelming feeling that the moment was beautifully preordained – and really, knowing fate, it probably was.

Eddie turned back to the flowers. “I thought you said they would grow into homes?”

“They will. They just need some time alone with the moon… Shall we?” You held your hand out to Eddie.

…

While you appreciated Walmart’s late night hours, their range of Halloween costumes was less than ideal. You stared at the row of wigs for a while before drifting away in search of decorations. October was a good time to find homewares you’d use all year round.

You were shaking a snow globe filled with little black bats when Eddie appeared in front of you, holding up a vampire costume. “It comes with plastic teeth,” he pointed out. “And a cape,”

You snorted. “Is that your pick? Because generic vampire would be very meta of you.”

He smiled but shook his head. “I don’t think this would put the humans at ease,”

“Probably not. So… something more friendly?”

“Yes. More… normal,” he said in a way that made ‘normal’ sound taboo. Eddie’s gaze wandered from you over to the back corner of the store. He handed you the vampire costume then walked away without further explanation.

You frowned, watching him go. Looking down at the costume in your hands, an idea sprung to mind. The red cape. You returned to the wigs.

A little later, Eddie was waiting for you when you came out of the fitting room with a white dress. You glanced at the jeans and long-sleeved blue polo top he was holding.

“I need a cat,” he told you seriously. “The children in the toy aisle are…”

“You’re afraid of them?”

“No. I’m afraid I’ll eat them. Come. Restrain me if you must,” he announced dramatically, loudly. The Walmart employee at the fitting room door gave you a concerned look as Eddie grabbed your hand and dragged you away.

Both your endeavours were successful; Eddie found the necessary prop in the plush toy bin, and you raided the craft section. With a few other odds and ends in the basket, you were ready to head home, arriving at Forest Hills just before midnight.

Eddie carried the shopping inside, leaving you to unpack and get started on your project while he brewed tea for you. He had been practicing with flavour combinations and brewing times, constantly requesting feedback since he himself could not drink the tea without immediately throwing it back up. The best he could do was let it linger on his tongue and capture the taste in the few seconds before his dead mouth killed it.

“You should sleep soon,” he insisted, albeit softly.

You took the mug of tea he held out and smiled at him. “I will. I just want to organise this stuff,”

“Why are you making it? Could you not cast some sort of illusion spell? Or magically will all the pieces into the shapes you want?”

“I could. But where’s the Halloween spirit in that?”

Eddie nodded and began to go through his costume pieces. “Could you possibly spare a spell for a pair of my boots? They need to be brown, I believe,”

“Didn’t want to just buy some brown boots?”

His frown was bordering on pout. “I’d never wear them again.”

You laughed.  Eddie had been developing his own sense of style. If style was beat-up combat boots and a ratty denim jacket he probably stole from someone in the city. Consistently though, he wore a lot of black.

“I’ll work on it,” you agreed with a nod.

An hour later, when you kept pausing mid-sentence to yawn, Eddie whisked you off to bed, tucking you in and wishing you sweet dreams.

“You going to sleep too?” you asked, meaning ‘do you need the bat spell?’

“No, my love. I’m hungry,”

“Walmart kids wet your appetite?”

He chuckled, always amused when you made dark jokes. He kissed your forehead and watched you fall asleep, then left Hawkins in search of violence.

…

The next day, Eddie waited for the last of the light to leave the porch before he stirred. He’d spent hours curled up in one of the many nests you’d built for him around the trailer. The nest on the porch was as soft as his fur and perfectly positioned so he could sleep in the sun all day.

When night fell, cool and calm, he flew inside and found you in the bath. You said the words with your eyes closed, letting a human-shaped Eddie settle on the tiles.

“You’ve been gone for hours,”

“I was just outside. These may be the last fine days we see this year,”

“My baby sunshine bat,” you cooed with a smile, waking yourself up to look at him.

You had woken that morning to Eddie curled around you, satiated and happy. He asked to be battified, then disappeared outside. You’d spent the day working on your costume.

Eddie rested his chin on the edge of the bath, shamelessly raking his eyes over your body. “I miss you when I’m not near you,” he said suddenly.

“I thought you were just outside,”

“I was. Even then. Even sleeping. It’s too far.”

You held a hand up for him to take. Tangled fingers. A warm pulse against cold skin.

“Maybe we should stitch our bodies together,” you whispered.

Eddie’s lips curled into a devilish grin. “I could just bite down and never let you go,”

“I could cut you up into itty bitty pieces and consume you entirely,”

“You’re starting something you cannot finish,” Eddie warned, his eyes growing dark. He untangled one of your fingers and held it between his teeth.

“I’d let you eat me whole.”

Eddie dropped your hand abruptly, pulled you from the lukewarm bathwater, and had you wrapped around him like a koala before you even registered movement.

“I will reach my hand into my throat and tear down until I find what is left of my unbeating heart. I will serve it to you and you will feast and we will become one.” His voice was earnest and emphatic.

Teeth clenched, you smashed your forehead to his and pulled hard on his hair. Maybe you said what you needed him to do out loud, maybe he read your mind. Either way, you were facedown on a mattress within a second, Eddie’s teeth and tongue scraping and licking up the backs of your legs.

“I…” he started.

“Want…”

Words separated by kisses.

“To…”

By bites.

“Eat…”

Like a recited spell.

“All…”

Well timed magic.

“The…”

He was at your hips.

“Love…”

Pushing beneath you.

“Out of you.”

…

Little witch…

Little witch…

His voice was in your head.

In your dreams.

Then, real.

“Little witch, my love? You wanted to check on your flower houses before the night is through,” Eddie said. He was right. That had been the plan. But the sun had set, he’d taken you to bed, and you’d lost hours with him. When did you fall asleep?

Slowly, you crawled from bed and checked the time. Midnight had only just left you. Heavy, sluggish movements. Weighed down by an unscheduled nap. You flopped back onto the bed.

“Do you need help?” Eddie asked as he came to stand in front of you.

Pouting, you nodded.

You watched him collect fresh clothes, ruminating over what he wanted to see you in. Eddie pulled you by the ankles to the edge of the bed, hooking underwear on and sliding them up. Still foggy with sleep, you felt like you were still rolling through a dreamscape. Eddie worked slowly. Sensually. With tenderness. It almost brought you to tears.

With your shoes laced up, there was no reason left to delay. You twinkled your fingers at Eddie, asking to be lifted off the bed. He acquiesced, leading you out of the bedroom and through the trailer.

On the car ride to the new coven, with your Moody Midnight mix tape playing loud, you watched Eddie out of the corner of your eye. He wound down the window and glided his hand through the fall wind.

As the flowerbeds came into view, Eddie’s mouth dropped open and an expression of pure delight lit up his face. He was out of the car before you cut the engine.

The seedlings had gone. In their places, beautiful buildings set apart from each other with enough space to grow gardens and vegetable patches, yet close enough to wave through windows.

Kelsey’s cottage was the first on the street, a warm welcome with shutters the shade of delphinium blue. It seemed small, unassuming, but you knew as soon as she moved in, she would charm it so it grew bigger and bigger on the inside, never changing on the outside. Eventually, as the coven embraced new members, Kelsey would take on housemates, her little cabin becoming the heart of the sisterhood.

Across from the cottage were Ash and Hailey’s cute tiny homes, their dahlia and peonies growing strong out front already. Down the way sat Ev’s Victorian style house. It was grand and gothic, and undoubtedly filled with secret nooks and spaces that Ev would hide all sorts of weird things in. Both Meg and Mel had dwellings on the far side of the field. Meg’s thatched roof a bright purple, and Mel’s garden already sprouting with plants she could feed her turtle.

“This is… It feels…” Eddie didn’t know what to say. Truthfully, he couldn’t believe this type of magic was allowed. It seemed too immense, too obvious.

“I know,” you told him. “We don’t always build like this. But I want them to feel at home, you know? I want this all to feel… right.”

Eddie nodded, finally stopping his awestruck pacing, and focussing on you. “They will love it,” he assured you. “I love it… It’s…” Still, not a single adjective would form. He looked over the buildings again. “Wait… There is not… You have not grown a home for yourself?”

“For us,” you corrected.

“For us… Please don’t tell me you intend on dragging that trailer across town?” Eddie joked. Half joked. There was clear apprehension in his tone. A little fear in his eyes.

You laughed. “No. I don’t intend on doing that… It’s just, you know, we haven’t talked about what kind of home we want.”

He couldn’t maintain eye contact, turned back to the houses, watching them as if they were going to continue to grow. They wouldn’t, of course. Not with an audience.

You let Eddie ponder while you walked the perimeter of the field. The land the coven would care for extended far beyond the little neighbourhood you’d grown from petals, but the air was already crackling with magic. Out in the forest over the hill, a family of red foxes were jumping and playing. Bats swooped through the sky and fireflies carved patterns through the dark.

Eddie sat on the doorstep of Ev’s Victorian. He listened to your heartbeat. How, when other living things came close to you, their breathing synced to yours. Leaves twisted in your direction like you were the sun. The center of everything. Definitely his.

You were almost out of his eyeline, crouched down scratching the belly of a fox cub, when you went still. For a moment Eddie thought you’d sensed or seen danger, but quickly you were up and turned to him. “You do want a home, right?”

In an instant, he was in front of you, the breadth of the field nothing to him. “Why would you ask that?”

“Because. Like I said. We’ve never talked about it.”

Eddie’s brows pulled together and his expression so sharp it could have been mistaken as anger, rather than the abject confusion it was. “Everything I have ever said has been about you. Loving you. Getting this far,”

“Yes. Yeah. But logistically… Vampires are nomadic. And all the time taken from you. You don’t want to see how the world has changed?”

The foxes had gone, unnerved by the thing that wasn’t human or witch. The breeze had settled, the trees providing a windbreak. Eddie saw through your line of questioning, tracing it back to the niggle of anxious thought settling in your brain. His face softened, then the beginning of his trademark smirk.

Eddie threw himself onto his knees at your feet, twisting his hands in the layers of your long, black skirt. “I am bound to you. Where you are, is where I am.”

You couldn’t help but grin. His dramatics wouldn’t distract you though. Dropping to your knees you looked at him seriously. He laughed.

“Eddie. You have been trapped in Hawkins for a hundred years. I’m not going to be the next witch to keep you here,”

“You want to know what I desire, in the deep, dark, catacombs of my soul?”

It was rhetorical, but you nodded.

“What do you picture me having done between 1586 and… well, you? 250 years of stillness? No, my love. I have seen the world. I know what is out there. It may have changed, but it will change again and again. I don’t want the world. I want you. I want to know you when you’re happy. I want to see you build this coven. Grow plants. Heal human ailment and cast witch magic…” Eddie tipped his head to the side a little, cocky as ever. “Logistically we should consider blackout blinds and room for books, not international travel.”

You wore that glazed-over look, drunk on the articulation of Eddie’s love. “You want a library?” you asked, voice coming out in a dumb whisper. Eddie nodded. “Me too. Maybe two… One for fiction and one for non-fiction,”

“Maybe three. Fiction. Non-fiction. Then, one for grimoires and other craft books.”

The foxes watched on from burrow doors. They still didn’t know what he was, but as long as he was with you, they’d leave him be.

End Note: Thank you to @jo-harrington for, well, the cannibalism.

There is a short playlist linked in this, little witch's Moody Midnight mix tape. I hope you like it.

There are a lot of people on the tag list that I have no idea if they read this story anymore. Feedback and love are deeply appreciated. xo Rhi

P.S. I hope you love your witchy homes @vintagehellfire @courtingchaos @pastel-pillows @ghost-proofbaby @kookygranger @toomanyacorns

Fic Taglist:  @paranoidmunson  @idkidknemore @paprikaquinn @stardustworlds @loz-brooke @wyverntatty @vintagehellfire @dark-academia-slut @scarletwitchwhore @becks1002 @mrsdollardog @heyndrix @luceneraium @rosaline-black @devilinthepalemoonlite @goldencherriess @iamwhisperingstars @wiltedwonderland @blueywrites @breezybeesposts @jadehowlettthewolf @spikesvamp79 @foreveranexpatsposts @tortoiseshellspells @wingedpeachjudgegiant @stardustmunson @live-love-be-unique @fangirling-4-ever @reanimated-alice @b-irock @gh0stlybunnie @myown-worstenemy-2003 @woozzz @cyberxlust @hiscrimsonangel @buckysbarne @m00nlight101 @word-wytch @spicysix @briasnow-blog @goth-cowgirl-03

All Eddie Taglist: @solomons-finest-rum @ruinedbythehobbit @sweetpeapod @thorfemmes  @corrodedhawkins @grungegrrrl @lilzabob  @averagemisfit03 @ches-86 @ilovecupcakesandtea @onehotgreasymechanic @hazydespair @mel-the-fangirl @eddies-hid3out @siren-lungs @aheadfullofsteverogers @hiscrimsonangel @dashingdeb16 @cultish-corner