#wip: eigengrau

[chrismerle]

2. 🛏️ BED: What do your OCs dream about?

(le meme)

Shai is still very Failbetter-y, for as much as they're largely an original fiction character now, so a lot of their dreams are supernatural, depending on what world they're in at any given moment. They suspect their dreams are why their appearance has gradually changed, and they sort of morbidly want to track how far it goes. However, they also get about 8 hours of sleep in a week because they also frequently dream about going home and they collect stimulants. They don't want to go home.

Ash dreams of his dad. Mostly his dad's shadow, flying overhead.

Amity, Saoirse, Roman, and Garen all have almost methodically average dreams. Saoirse makes potions to guarantee it, because otherwise what goes on in Roman's head in endless screaming and he wakes up the whole house, and it seemed rude to not let everyone else have benignly pleasant dreams.

Adrian dreams of the sea. Sometimes this is good. Sometimes it's bad. Edge dreams of fire and of his family; these things are related more often than he would like them to be. And occasionally, rather than dreaming, he just talks to Eigengrau. Or talks at Eigengrau. Eigengrau doesn't speak if Eigengrau has nothing to say.

this isn't all of my OCs obviously, but that would take a while so I just picked a handful of them.

[eigengrauzilant]

Ahh okok

Intro blog post thing or WHATEVER this is lmao-- Ok! Hi! I'm Eigengrau (Or Eig or Eigen or Zilant idk it doesnt really matter)! I've recently gotten really into Limbus Company and by extension other PMoon games! I'm pretty much using this account to do pmoon stuff and as a tumblr for my fanfics (Same name on ao3)

You should also maybe check out my friend cardinalsglade perhapsssss

My tagging system is very rudimentary but basically i'll prolly tag like this: #eigengrau posting - That's just my general tag! Like if a post comes from me it WILL have this (so anything i reblog wont lol) #zilant update - Fanfic chapter or oneshot posted! (Will probably also have a link as well for convenience)

#zilant wip - Any sort of progress update or screenshot or anything relating to my own works #eigenglade wip - Any sort of screenshot or work in progress update that pertains to me or cardinalsglade (probably going to be mostly dumb comments we leave for one another)

Other than that I'll probably just be minding my business reblogging and posting stuff I like about... well... about stuff I like! You're free to interact, and I'd love to interact back as soon as I see ya!

oh yeah and

my friend code is O941393813 :3

[practically-an-x-man]

3, 10, 17, 23

thank you!!

Writer's ask game

3. Talk about the first character you made

I think my first character was Mira Hart, though she went through a lot of changes before she ended up on the page. I created her wayyy back when I watched X-Men Apocalypse for the first time, before I even really knew what fandom was. Originally, she didn't have many of her final physical traits, just the wings. And originally, she ended up partially controlled by Apocalypse as a sort of tertiary Horseman, since he thought he could enhance and utilize her healing ability. And she was paired to Warren, not Hank as she would eventually be.

Strangely, in a way, the original Mira idea ended up not quite getting scrapped, but sort of splitting into two other ideas: the final version of Mira, and another OC of mine called Rae. Both ideas ended up getting very much edited and polished before I wrote them, but there's pieces of the original idea still present in both of the final fics that became of it.

10. Which genre do you hate to write and why?

Romance. And I know this sounds a little strange, given I have over a million words of fanfic published on AO3, but let me explain. I write romantic stories, but I do not write romance stories. I can't stand reading or writing stories where the one and only plot point is two characters getting together, or splitting apart, or whatever else. There's got to be something else going on for it to hold my attention. So I write action with romance, or comedy with romance, or drama with romance, but I could never write just romance.

17. Assign colours/ colour palettes to your WIPs

Ooh, man, okay, I've got a lot of WIPs. Here we go!

A Love Once New: silver, green, warm rose-pink

Smoke and Mirrors: coral, cardinal red, smoky green-gray

Catch and Release: steel blue, royal blue, black

Who Waits Forever Anyway?: gold, mocha brown, sandy tan

Desert Song (Previously Unreleased): spring green, hot pink, black

Symphony in Silver: silver (duh), warm red, dark green

Heartstrings: gold-orange (like sunlight), deep brown, teal

Taking Flight: ginger-orange, slate gray, gold-green

Ruin (upcoming Prometheus fic): eigengrau, ember-orange, cornflower blue

(I have reasoning behind each of these, but in the interest of brevity I won't spell it all out here)

23. How do you stay on track story-wise?

I tend to keep it mostly contained within my head, but I've been outlining my stories more lately. Mainly I just have the idea of where I want it to go, and I outline the individual chapters as they come.

[itsgoldleaf]

3-2-1 challenge

I was tagged by @alienfuckeronmain to share - thank you, I love these! 

This is how it works:

The theme for this weekend is Good Vibes! 😎 So we’re going to 3-2-1 style with your WIPs! What does that mean? For the number of WIPs you have, you’re going to start with sharing that number of sentences for the first one, drop by one for the next one, etc.

So FOR EXAMPLE: If I have 5 WIPs, then I’m going to share 5 sentences out of one of them, 4 sentences out of the next, 3 sentences out of the next, etc. GIVE US THOSE GOOD VIBES WITH ALL YOUR WIPs!

Only have 1 WIP? Share that 1 sentence and be proud! Tag all your writing friends to send them lots of Good Vibes! ***  Mine are all SGA at the moment and I got WAY too carried away with this but please understand, I am incapable of making meaningful progress on any of these so I suffer with you XD 6. My Tao of Rodney coda wherein John has a crisis and there are way too many hyphenated words: As a child, bored, in the Tampa house where the air was humid and sugared with the earthiness of horse manure (because with every house came horses, and with horses came the comfort of their hot sighs on your cheek, the dark chocolate-leather scent of their skin, the bristle-brush tickle against your fingertips when your hands ran the wrong way across their coats) John would let his legs dangle from walls and his face point at the sun, closing his eyes and watching the blob-like after-images coalescing in the eigengrau. If he blinked real fast, he could watch everything flash by in jerk-limbed stop-motion. His father crossing the yard in on-off zoetrope strides. Here, then there, then gone. Blink at the right time and a galloping horse’s feet will never touch the ground. Pegasus. 5. The sequel to my Pacific Rim fic!:

John snaps back to reality, sees the HUD calm down again, sees the corresponding colours on McKay’s side sooth back into the green and pleasant. The kaiju is a rotten sport, elbow deep in the riptide and digging, hurling reef with abandon. Another meteor, and they’re both with the programme this time, and duck.

“Goddamnit, is it digging back down to the Breach?” McKay fumes, annoyed. 

Laughter burbles up like the roil of magma, and John loses his grip again but this time they stay in sync, shoulders burning, legs pumping as they coax the Daedalus into a jog, let’s get some distance, let’s test this motherfucker’s aim.

4. This is a Teyla/Kanaan & Rodney/John story that has become very precious to me and subsequently will take me about 40 years to write:

John says, “C’mon Kanaan, lemme show you what we do for fun on Earth,” a remark that is normally a prelude to chaos, but when Teyla passes by the rec-room an hour or so later, they're watching a movie that seems reassuringly free of explosions. John is in the midst of an explanation so concentration-hungry that he’s got his beer bottle held between his knees so his hands can sketch diagrams in the air, eyebrows in a knot as he tries to untangle things called boundary layers and wake turbulence. “He likes to show off the fact he knows a thing or two about aerodynamics,” Rodney says at her shoulder. “It’s mostly bunk, so I wouldn't worry.” 3. A McKay visits the Millers story (for Fictober, oops!) in which he has both luggage and baggage: His thumb hovers over the send key for four minutes, and then he taps it, closes his eyes, and is on the cusp of actual sleep when the answering ping jolts him awake again. He’s almost afraid to look, and wishes he hadn’t once he does. 02:30: me too.

2. Another Fictober prompt that will hopefully also be posted ASAP. A mission goes south and John has a Bad Moment: None of them are dead but they could be, sitting like four dangle-legged ghosts on four beds, draped head to foot in shawls of volcanic dust, hair matted with it, lungs clogged, the exposed skin of faces and hands still cooking beneath the patina of disaster. McKay is right there, talking and talking, but he doesn’t reach out in case it happens again, in case - like on the planet where the sky turned from blue to black in the blink of an eye, and their ears became hot with blood as the explosion shattered eardrum and earth alike - his fingers pass through air where McKay should be, where he was, and won’t be again. 

1. Yet another belated Fictober fic, Rodney gets into a time loop and he is not best pleased: “Rodney,” says Elizabeth, and oh, he could self-ignite, he really could just go up when her eyes crease in the way she thinks is beseeching but comes across as maudlin sympathy. *** Tagging @avi17 @tofadeawayagain @a-storm-of-roses and @chaos-monkeyy and anyone else who’d like to do this! No obligation :)

[roseforthethorns]

007 Fest Fic Recs: WIPs

My personal rules used to be that I never EVER read WIPs because I was afraid the babies would be abandoned and my curiosity would forever go unsated. HOWEVER- with my discovery of Only_1_Truth’s works in the last year or two, I have discovered that waiting for WIPs to update can be a freaking BLAST. Every email update is like a present.

1. Tales from Q Branch (Rating:E)

This delightful collection of EVERYTHING is a wild ride with each new installment. Truth tackles about every conceivable genre over the course of the current 21 chapters. Each one is a new scenario or AU, some fluffy, some smutty, all some of the most wonderful 00Q out there. My personal favorite is Chapter 11: Deer Prince Q, where Q is fae and escapes to our world only to run into a rather handsome, rugged hunter living in the north of Scotland

2. The Last Jedi, 00Q Edition (Rating: T)

WHAT IF: James Bond were a storm trooper recruited by MI6 as a double agent and Q were a Jedi-in-training and they both end up running from the First Order? And Bond is a smart mouth and really sexy and Q is super excited about tech to the point of helping out random droids? Oh- and Bond has a mechanical arm.

3. Schiamachy (Rating: M)

The crossover to end ALL crossovers. Seriously. This combines just about every fandom you can imagine, throws them all on a remote island, oh and then Moriarty decides to cause general anarchy and mayhem, putting everyone’s favorite Boffin at risk and forcing him to team up with 007, one of the most dangerous Hounds in all of Eigengrau.

[3vocatio]

@zhonglis-tea-cup ah, i'm so grateful that you think so! i'll drop an excerpt from one of my wips for you :] the entirety of the wip needs heavy editing but i thought you might enjoy~

[...] a hushed response of a blink. "do you remember," two. "when barbatos said that your time is wasted amongst demons?" pupils drop down like a coins met with a riverbed, your head steadily bobbing down with them in thought. the eigengrau is nostalgic, like a swallow riding along the sea's heavy waves. "yes." silken tufts of hair slip through solomon's forefinger as he draws contemplative circles on the nape of his neck; his expression is focused, ruminative. "it would be selfish of me to think that you agree with him. you are anything--everything--but selfish," unspoken words threaten to fumble off his tongue, but he straightens himself upon seeing your attentive form, [...]

is there ANYTHING more pure than a friend sharing their wip novel or their comic idea or literally any creative project of theirs with you……NO. you made that with your own two hands and if i could eat it i would (out of love respect and admiration obviously)

[sooesthetic]

masterlist

OTHER LINKS.

inspiration / ideas. writings tag. wips.

LEGEND.

☼ - personal favorites.  ✧ - new. ♡ - fluff. ✩ - angst. ☽ - general. ✕ - violence/horror.  ✐ - in progress. ✔ - completed.

XIUMIN | KIM MINSEOK.

➳ Coffee Shop Crush | ♡ | coffee shop! au.

➳ EXODUS - Berlin 05:06 | ☽ | mamaverse/ exodus! au, super powers! au.

➳ Blizzard | ✕ | mafia! au.

➳ Death on Our Doorstep | ☼ ✩ ✕ | apocalypse! au, zombie! au.

SUHO | KIM JUNMYEON.

➳ Believe Me, I’m a Fairy (The Believer & the Non-Believer) | ☼ ♡ | fairy! au

➳ Orphic | ♡ | time travel! au

➳ Proud of You | ♡ ✕ | mafia! au

➳ Unbeleafable | ♡ | mafia! au

LAY | ZHANG YIXING.

➳ Bad Boy | ☼ ♡ | bad boy! au, gang! au

➳ Epiphany | ♡ | angel! au

BAEKHYUN | BYUN BAEKHYUN.

➳ Found You Again | ♡ |  mamaverse/ exodus! au, super powers! au

➳ Mistake | ☼ ♡ ✩ ✕ | mafia! au

➳ Times | ☼ ♡ | mafia! au

➳ Possessive Cat | ♡ | cat hybrid! au

➳ Childhood Love | ♡ | childhood! au, friends to lovers! au

➳ Ineffable | ♡ | ghost! au

➳ Transparent | ♡ | ghost! au

➳ Beginnings: Amaranthine | ☼ ♡ ✩ | soulmate! au, reincarnation! au

CHEN | KIM JONGDAE.

➳ Deal with the Devil | ☼ ✩ | demon! au

➳ Pay | ✩ ✕ | mafia! au

CHANYEOL | PARK CHANYEOL.

➳ Secret | ♡ | werewolf! au

➳ My Shy Desk Neighbor | ♡ | high school! au

➳ Sense of Direction | ☼ ♡ | college! au, enemies to lovers

➳ Greasy Cat | ♡ | cat hybrid! au

➳ Overprotective Brother | ♡ | mafia! au

➳ Colors | ☼ ♡ | soulmate! au, reincarnation! au

D.O. | DO KYUNGSOO.

➳ Eigengrau | ♡ ✩ | greek myth! au, hades & persephone! au (REWRITING!)

➳ Winter | ♡ ✩ | established relationship! au

➳ Bite | ♡ | vampire! au

➳ Charmed | ♡ | witch! au

➳ Flowers Between Bones | ♡ ✩ ✧ | greek myth! au, hades & persephone! au

KAI | KIM JONGIN.

➳ I’d Die for You | ♡ ✩ ✕ | mafia! au

➳ Does it Matter if I’m Different? | ♡ | vampire! au

➳ Blood | ♡ | vampire! au

➳ Shot in the Heart with the Love Bullet | ♡ ✩ ✕ | mafia! au

➳ Don’t Make Fun of My Relationship! | ♡ | high school! au

➳ Some Nights | ♡ | mamaverse/ exodus! au, super powers! au

➳ Red | ✕ | vampire! au

➳ Curiosity | ♡ ✩ | demon! au

➳ Broken Promises | ✩ ✕ | established relationship! au, horror! au?, ??? au

➳ Snow | ♡ ✩ | angel! au

➳ Sabaism | ☼ ♡ ✩ | angel! au

SEHUN | OH SEHUN.

➳ Roommates | ♡ ✩ | roommates! au

➳ Muse | ♡ | photographer! au

➳ Mellifluous | ♡ | mermaid! au

➳ Gingerbread House | ♡ | established relationship! au

➳ Selcouth | ☼ ✩ ✕ | demon! au

➳ The Chase | ✩ ✕ | mafia! au

SERIES.

➳ Shadows | ✩ ✕ ✐ | mafia! au | exo x reader | 1/? 

➳ Limerence | ♡ ✩ ✐ | fairy! au | jongin x reader | 2/? 

     ↳ 1 | 2

➳ Nyctophilia | ♡ ✩ ✕ ✐ | mafia! au | jongin x reader | 2/?

     ↳1 | 2

➳ Love Me Right | ♡ ✩ ✐ | alice in wonderland! au | exo x reader | 1/?

     ↳ the alice.

JIN | KIM SEOKJIN.

➳ coming soon.

SUGA | MIN YOONGI.

 ➳ Time | ♡ | in time! au, mafia! au (kind of)

J-HOPE | JUNG HOSEOK.

➳ coming soon.

RM | KIM NAMJOON.

➳ coming soon.

JIMIN | PARK JIMIN.

➳ coming soon.

V | KIM TAEHYUNG.

➳ Autumn | ☼ ♡ ✩ | angel! au

➳ Flour and Flowers | ✧ ♡ ☽ | florist! au, baker! au

JUNGKOOK | JEON JEONGGUK.

➳ coming soon.

KRIS | WU YI FAN.

➳ Fairy Lies | ☼ ♡ | fairy! au

LUHAN.

➳ Surprise Kiss on the Hogwarts Express | ☼ ♡ | hogwarts! au

TAO | HUANG ZITAO.

➳ Needy for Affection | ♡ | cat hybrid! au

➳ First Encounter | ♡ | cat hybrid! au

[chrismerle]

Well hello there

Hey, hi, hello. I'm Elspeth. Elsa or Els work, too. Or Chrismerle if you just wanna stick with usernames. There have been a few iterations of my pinned post, but I figured it was about time to put together a new one.

I'm in my 30s. Greyromantic asexual. Nonbinary. I prefer they/them but honestly I'll take whatever pronouns you lob at me. I crochet. I make jewelry. I do tarot readings. I write (mostly ghostwriting lately, but sometimes I have time to write something I can actually share on tumblr). I edit. I do a bunch of things.

This blog is mostly a mishmash of fandom stuff, art stuff, some political stuff, and cute animals. I don't try to stick to any one theme in particular. Theoretically, I'm a writeblr blog, and I'm open to tag games or answering questions about my WIPs, but I'm very inactive as a writeblr because of work. My queue spits out 30 posts a day and is generally loaded for at least 10 to 15 days out, and I also periodically reblog random shit on the spot.

My WIPs:

#wip: threshold: Portal fantasy of mixed/indeterminate subgenre, wherein a bunch of young adults from the regular world get lured through a portal and stranded, and need to be guided back home. Complications occur. (Smells a bit like Fallen London.)

#wip: brothers: Short story exploring what it means to find your own identity when you've only ever been part of a package deal before.

#wip: eigengrau: Vaguely European low(-ish) fantasy dealing with gods and fae being fickle, zombies, cults, and a zombie cult.

#wip: ties that bind: Honestly I don't even fucking know. I've started it over twice and haven't liked it either time. It's vaguely about people finally getting to tell their own story after the world has silenced them and made up a story for them, but the story itself keeps falling to shit.

#series: rags 'n' addy: It's an oddball series of one shots primarily following the characters Ragnarok and Adam. Sort of horror, sort of fantasy, sort of rustic sci-fi. Happy to accept one shot prompts if you want to give one.

Most of my original, non-reblogged posts:

#actual journaling: Mostly me yammering on about my day or my pets.

#elsa liveblogs nonsense: My running commentary on whatever I am watching, playing, or reading at the moment.

#writeblr: All of my original fiction writing stuff, including my WIPs and some things that otherwise weren't tagged.

#jewelry drop: Stuff I've made for my Etsy shop. Not all of it is actually jewelry, but I didn't want too many tags just for the shop.

Support me:

Writing commissions

Editing commissions

Crochet commissions

Tarot readings

Etsy shop

Ko-Fi

PayPal: t.elspeth.williams@gmail.com

Venmo: @Taylor-Williams-1105

Or tip this post!

Other places to find me:

AO3 (currently locked to members only; I have extra invites if you need one)

Discord (DM me first)

[chrismerle]

Three Facts Tag

thanks for the tag, @ryns-ramblings!

Rules: Post three facts about yourself or your ocs/characters.

Absolutely zero pressure, but I'll tagggg ... @emelkae, @talesofsorrowandofruin, @kittensartswriting, and whoever else wants to play along.

wip: Threshold

The cast of Over the Threshold has been cobbled together from many places, but Shai in particular (and their posse) came from Fallen London. They were my first Fallen London character. I've tried to disguise it a bit, but the Failbetter-y DNA is probably still pretty evident in places.

Ivan was originally a bog standard medieval fantasy character. I used him to RP on GaiaOnline. He was angsty and boring and he used to have a horse. For a while I replaced his archery gear with assorted tactical and camping gear and I replaced his horse with a unicorn. He still has the mix-n-matched tactical gear and camping gear, but I decided the unicorn was unnecessary.

The exact lineup of characters got shuffled a lot in early days. Originally Shai was shepherding ALL of the ducklings, but then I realized it wasn't really in-character for them to just ... do that voluntarily. They've got way more interesting shit to do. At that point, Ivan had been a sort of ... contractor? who was going to help them. Their roles got swapped, so Ivan was the lead, but then Shai refused to be just a side character. So, I decided splitting the party was the best bet, since Shai's not going to volunteer to babysit, but they're also not gonna just leave Jayne stranded.

wip: Eigengrau

Surprising no one, Edge was originally a concept for a D&D character, in the unlikely event I ever actually played D&D with anyone. That's not actually why they look like a tiefling. They look like a tiefling because I've been creating tieflings since before I ever even heard of tieflings.

In my head, Adrian looks a bit like D'artagnan from the BBC Musketeers series.

Eventually, there are going to be zombies. And a cult.

wip: NaNo Project

There are four main characters, kind of. Three of them are out and about doing stuff, and the fourth is the reason the plot is happening but is also not in favor of doing fieldwork.

One of the main characters just gets called Stranger. They introduce themself by their ... title, I guess? And it's very pretentious, and two of the others just kind of go 'lol nah, we're not calling you that,' and by the time the fourth one meets them, the other two are introducing them as Stranger.

Two them are recycled from an older WIP that had WAY too big of a cast for me to reliably keep track of and not enough plot to actually carry it (I also recycled the setting, or parts of it). They both have names, but they don't use them. One of them goes by Oleander; he's a mercenary, technically, but more commonly an assassin. One of them goes by Jackdaw; he's a Frankensteinian healer-meets-necromancer. They're married. Ride, die, or reanimate.

wip: Ties That Bind

Honestly the biggest fact about Ties That Bind is that it's a fucking mess. I've restarted it from scratch twice and I'm probably going to restart it again because I can never figure out WHERE THEY'RE GOING. There's a starting bit, and parts of a middle bit, but the ending bit never really clears up.

Werewolves are a thing, though it's not spread by biting. They used to just be people, but then many generations back a mage cursed everyone on the peninsula and then split the peninsula off from the main land. So, werewolf island. There are several islands, actually, since the splitting wasn't a very precise process. They're called the Arthric Isles. They're kind of magical Australia, when it comes to fauna.

One of the only consistent bits is that Amity is a mimic who usually takes the humanoid form of the unicorn who raised them, partially for sentimental reasons and partially for practical reasons. Mimics also take on the "intrinsic" magic of the creatures they copy, and unicorns have absurdly deep mana pools.

wip: Brothers

It was supposed to be like 3k words long. It's over 6k. It's still not done.

I showed it to a friend who I'm no longer friends with (for unrelated reasons) and he said he liked it but the timeline was hard to keep track of, and I sat there thinking 'Ash keeps track of events in relation to his own age. The timeline is literally spelled out.' But I did not say that, or it would have been A Thing.

Their dad will show up. Everyone's going to wish he just stayed gone. Not everyone who steps out for a gallon of milk needs to come back.

[chrismerle]

Heads Up 7 Up

Finally looking at the tag games I got tagged in ages ago! Thanks for the tag, @emelkae

Rules: Post the last 7 lines you're written. Then tag 7 people.

From Eigengrau:

Magnus’s horse lifts its head to watch him leave, but it doesn’t make a move to stop him or wake the others, and it goes back to sleep in a moment. Edge leaves his boots at the campsite to avoid stepping on anything too loudly, and he makes his way to the spring. It seems he’s made a seamless escape. And not ten minutes after he’s stripped and slipped into the water, Adrian steps carefully out of the trees. “Really?” He hunkers down to a crouch at the side of the spring, his expression wry. “Just going to abandon me to my fate at the bottom of the heap?” “You all seemed comfy,” Edge replies, not even trying to defend himself.

do I actually know seven people to tag???

Uh ... taggiiiiiing ... @cedar-west, @mercarimari, @talesofsorrowandofruin, @lanawritesalittle, @garthcelyn, @emberravenwrites, and @ryns-ramblings. So pressure if you don't feel like playing.

[chrismerle]

stilllll trying to catch up on @writersmonth maybe this doesn't perfectly fit the prompt, but I wanted it to be a sort of 'they're very comfortable with each other's space' vibe Day Fifteen: Comfort

Personal space is a luxury they have all long since lost track of.

Edge sorts through the laundry hanging on the rope between tree branches, and Adrian hurriedly reaches past him, still shirtless and only partially into his trousers. “That one’s mine.” He snatches the tunic from Edge’s grasp.

Edge pouts at him, and instead steals one of Magnus’s tunics. Magnus watches with the impassive resignation of one who has known Edge for objectively too long. He doesn’t even say anything about it before he resumes reorganizing his pack.

Vega leans away from the pan over the fire just long enough to grouse, “Your hair, Magnus, honestly,” and sweep his hair out of his face and back into its usual topknot. He simply hums in acknowledgment and Vega returns to stirring breakfast before it burns in the pan.

They’re going to be in town today. They’re maybe a fifteen minute walk from reaching a proper road. Considering that, Adrian sees no problem in stealing Edge’s walking boots once he’s got his undershirt and tunic on; his own are still waterlogged from last night and he knows Edge is going to be wearing his nice boots.

Once he has the boots on, Vega hands him the spoon and nudges him towards the fire. Dutifully, he prods the contents of the pan around so she can finally actually get ready to hit the road. Usually its Magnus’s job to play sous chef, but he’s since moved on to negotiating with his horse and no one ever really knows how long that’s going to take. Once upon a time, Adrian was the least morning-person-ish of the group, and then Magnus’s horse showed up.

Really, it’s all part and parcel of a pretty average morning.

[chrismerle]

another for @writersmonth finally a glimpse at Adrian's backstory tw: shipwreck. thunder storm. implied/mentioned death. implied/mentioned animal death. Day Fourteen: On a ship

There are some things that can overpower nature, or at least withstand it. A sturdy building. A cliff, for a while. A mountain, for a time. Maybe even Adrian’s denial, as he stares down the clouds that have turned midday nearly to night.

The nails of one hand dig into the railing at the bow of the ship. In his other hand, he clutches a lodestone to his chest. It grows brittle as he speaks, flaking apart as energy seeps out of it to feed what has long since become one very long, unbroken spell as Adrian keeps murmuring.

He cannot calm the storm. All the fully charged lodestones in the world would not give him enough energy for that sort of spell. He has to keep his focus small. Just the water. Only ever the water directly in front of the ship.

Be calm stay calm let the water be calm let our ship pass smoothly

On and on, words unbroken, looping back on each other.

The lodestone crumbles into pieces, and Adrian plunges a hand into his pocket and pulls out another one. The spell remains unbroken.

The crew is shouting. Adrian can hear them, but he can’t parse any of what they’re saying. Their voices fade into the waves and the wind and the thunder.

The lodestone crumbles apart between his fingers. He pulls another from inside of his coat.

Someone shouts. There’s a thud. The ship’s foxes are yowling. Adrian ignores them.

Calm calm please calm

The stone flakes and breaks and crumbles. Adrian reaches into his coat.

He comes up empty-handed. There is nothing left.

Adrian has only a few seconds to really process what it means before the water surges. A wave crashes over the deck, and he slams down to his knees, spitting seawater and clutching at the railing. Dimly, he can hear someone shouting, “Man overboard!” He already knows there is nothing they can do as the ship bucks and tips.

The air seems to crackle. Slowly, Adrian turns, slumping back against the railing and looking up. Lightning arcs through the air and strikes the main mast, and it shatters in a spray of splinters as it collapses. Someone screams as they fail to get out of its path. The only saving grace is that it cannot burn in the rain.

The ship rocks and dips, and Adrian goes sprawling and latches onto the nearest rope. Only the bow tries to right itself. There is a rumbling, reverberating rush from below deck, and then a snap like a god’s neck breaking as the hull begins to splinter.

The captain has finally abandoned the helm—there’s no point now—to usher what is left of the crew towards the life boats while there are still life boats to get to.

Adrian slides across the deck as it tips and tips and tips, until his shoulder slams into one of the smaller masts. He scrambles halfway upright when the quartermaster scruffs him like a kitten and hauls him back to his feet almost in passing, and Adrian trips after him.

The ship has three foxes. Had three foxes. Adrian can only see one of them. Towhee. The gray and silver one with the one floppy ear. He’s barely even aware he’s spotted the fox when he’s scooping the critter up and bolting for the nearest life boat.

The deck shudders and the bow plunges back towards the water as the hull finally snaps.

[chrismerle]

I'M STILL TRYIN'! just very far behind for @writersmonth does Edge think he's being nice here? yes, he does. does Adrian appreciate the thought? sort of. does Adrian also feel kind of condescended to? yes. like a little purse yorkie. (is this supposed to be a vaguely-medieval-fantasy setting? yes. do they all talk like disgruntled millennials regardless? also yes. can't stop, won't stop.) Day Thirteen: Knot

Adrian tugs his fingers through his hair, only half-heartedly paying mind to the knots that had turned it into something like a bird’s nest over the last few days of camping.

Edge is eyeing him, only vaguely paying attention to the pan in the fire he’s supposed to be stirring the contents of.

Adrian can’t quite decide if he’s embarrassed, offended, or just uneasy at the attention.

Embarrassed, probably. Edge is bizarrely well-groomed for someone who seems to primarily live out of a travel pack, and Adrian can only imagine how much worse he looks from that perspective.

This continues for a couple more minutes, until Vega shoos Edge away from the fire and snatches the pan and the spoon from him, grumbling, “Can’t even trust you to do the simplest fucking things sometimes, I swear…” as she does.

Hands now free, Edge scrounges his comb out of his pack and scuttles his way over to Adrian. He doesn’t even bother to swat Adrian’s hands out of the way before he starts brushing. Adrian lets his hands fall to his lap.

Edge is at least sort of careful about it, so there’s a minimal amount of cringing on Adrian’s part. Even so, Edge wonders, “We found you, like, two days ago. How is this two days worth of tangling?”

“I have been out here for longer than just the two days you’ve known me,” Adrian points out, fidgeting awkwardly on his knees.

Edge grunts in acknowledgment. If he wants to know why Adrian hasn’t bothered brushing it—or even just whacking it off—then he makes no mention of it. “Stop wiggling,” is all he says.

The next ten minutes pass in a surprisingly pain-free fashion, and finally Edge withdraws, smiling bright and announcing, “There we go. Pretty as a portrait.”

Adrian can’t help but to return the smile with his own, albeit smaller and considerably more bewildered.

[chrismerle]

I have not yet fallen off the wagon for @writersmonth. amazing. Day Three: Gold

It’s not even a particularly bad fall. The hill wasn’t that tall or steep. It was mud, not rocks or anything particularly treacherous. But Adrian is so goddamn tired and it feels like the tumble down the hill is the first time he’s stopped moving since the ship went down.

So when he comes to a halt at the bottom of the hill, he just … stays there, blinking fuzzily at the canopy. Towhee snuffles worriedly at his face for a few moments, and part of Adrian wants to assure the fox that he’s fine—and he is, it really wasn’t a bad fall—but part of him also wants to just stay there in the mud and the grass and never move again.

Adrian doesn’t recall closing his eyes, but when he opens them again, Towhee is gone, and that figures. Everyone else is gone. Why not the fox, too?

He should probably get up off the ground.

When he opens his eyes again, it’s because someone is patting his cheek. He stirs and hears a low, “Theeeere he is,” and he opens his eyes.

He blinks up into molten gold, and it takes a moment for the rest of the newcomer’s features to swim into focus. His immediate thought is ‘not human,’ but no, that’s not exactly right. Fae-touched, more like.

“And we have life!” the stranger declares, sitting back on his heels. “Your friend was very concerned, I’ll have you know.”

As if summoned, Towhee scurries out from behind the stranger and clambers onto Adrian’s chest, staring down directly at Adrian’s face.

“Hey, buddy,” Adrian mumbles.

The stranger snorts and scoops Towhee up, finally getting to his feet. He looks away, calling over his shoulder, “How’s the fire coming?”

A woman’s voice calls back, “You’ll have your dinner when you get it!”

There’s a bark of laughter and a fanged, toothy grin, before the stranger turns his attention back to Adrian and his expression eases to a softer sort of amusement.

“Right, well.” He tucks Towhee under one arm and offers a hand, and the world see-saws a bit as Adrian is hauled back to his feet. Gold eyes glance over him, quick and efficient.

“You are filthy,” the stranger informs Adrian pleasantly, setting Towhee back down and straightening back up. “Come on, then. There’s a stream this way. Cold as tits, but you could probably do with the wake-up call anyway.”

The stranger is walking as if it’s already decided that that’s that, and evidently it is, as Adrian stumbles after him without any protest.

It’s true, after all. He is filthy. And he could probably do with a wake-up call. Maybe it’s kismet.

[chrismerle]

Word Find Tag

thank you, @emelkae! the words are pain, confuse, stay, and thick.

pain || from Brothers

“In pain?” he asks eventually. He catches Archer shrugging from the corner of his eye and figures it’s a ‘I’ll live.’ He’s used to interpreting him. It’s not that Archer didn’t talk; clearly he did. He just preferred to only do so when he had something to say. They had all gotten used to him grunting and gesticulating at them growing up.

confuse || from Threshold

"Shaicarus Ilthanuel," they answer dryly, and Mercy can feel her expression twisting into a complicated mixture of disbelief and confusion, her eyebrows raising and drawing together as her mouth pinches. They grin at her, shark-like and gleaming. "But you may call me Shai, though I doubt you'll be in my company long enough to call me much of anything."

stay || from Brothers (the first paragraph, in fact)

They had grown up happy, or at least he had always assumed they had. Dad had crafted them—“From Earth and my own stubborn willpower,” he used to say—and raised them, and though they had moved too often and stayed too far away from people to have friends, they had always had each other. Maybe it hadn’t been a normal life, but it had been a good one. They had been happy.

thick || from Eigengrau

He smells the smoke first, and then he sees it. Dark and thick, drifting out of the woods to the north, close enough to be visible but too far away to be in town. For a moment, Edge simply stares.

And then he drops his pack and breaks into a sprint.

honestly ‘confuse’ took me like 87 years to find. anyway! my words are veil, arrow, blank, and short.

I am tentatively (no pressure) tagging @ryns-ramblings, @nicxan, @theglitchywriterboi and whoever else wants to yoink it i need to get more write-y mutuals

[chrismerle]

whoops, finally ran out of backlog for @writersmonth

Day Ten: Kiss

After six days of sleeping in puppy piles and being joined at the hip while awake, Edge hits his limit. He peels his way out of the pile that night, slowly and carefully, and he’s so sure he’s made a clean escape. Magnus’s horse lifts its head to watch him leave, but it doesn’t make a move to stop him or wake the others, and it goes back to sleep in a moment.

Edge leaves his boots at the campsite to avoid stepping on anything too loudly, and he makes his way to the spring. It seems he’s made a seamless escape.

And not ten minutes after he’s stripped and slipped into the water, Adrian steps carefully out of the trees.

“Really?” He hunkers down to a crouch at the side of the spring, his expression wry. “Just going to abandon me to my fate at the bottom of the heap?”

“You all seemed comfy,” Edge replies, not even trying to defend himself.

Adrian rolls his eyes good-naturedly and sits back on his backside, evidently settling in for at least a moment. He tugs his boots off and rolls his trousers up, and he scoots forward to let his legs hang in the water.

Edge sighs and ducks under the water for a second, slicking his hair back and out of his face once he emerges. He leans back against the bank of the spring, elbows on the grass. He nudges Adrian’s knee with one elbow.

“Swim with me.”

There’s a breath of laughter, but Adrian doesn’t protest. He strips his clothing off and slips into the water, leaning back against the bank beside Edge, shoulders still several inches apart. There isn’t any actual swimming involved.

For a moment, they are quiet.

“I understand the—you know, the clinginess, relative to usual.” Edge breaks the quiet. “And I’m glad everyone’s alright. Ish.”

“I know,” Adrian replies, watching him side-long.

“Just—you know that feeling where you love someone, really, but if they don’t back the fuck up then you’re gonna chew a hole in the wall to get some space?”

“Uh-huh.”

“But there are no walls to chew through out here, most of the time.”

“I’m pretty sure the walls are supposed to be metaphorical, anyway.”

Edge snorts and shoves Adrian’s arm with his elbow before carrying on.

“So if I can find a moment where I can escape the pile without hurting any feelings, then I think my ingenuity needs to be praised.”

“I mean, I don’t think you would hurt their feelings regardless, but if you wanna just keep waiting for me to say something disapproving, you’re free to keep going.” Adrian folds his arms over his chest and settles his shoulders more comfortably against the bank, as if settling in for the long haul.

Edge scowls at him and, just to spite the invitation, stays silent.

Adrian waits, his expression pleasantly expectant.

Edge groans and slides down deeper into the water, so his head can thump back against the grass.

“Don’t give me that look,” he grumbles, closing his eyes.

Adrian laughs, and the water shifts as he moves.

“Whatever you say.”

He presses a kiss to Edge’s forehead and nudges his chin against the top of Edge’s head before retreating, hefting himself out of the water.

Edge cracks an eye open as Adrian half-heartedly pulls his trousers back on, but otherwise doesn’t bother putting the rest of his clothes back on.

“When you’re done re-centering yourself,” Adrian says as he gathers up his clothes and boots, “then you know the way back to camp. Pretty sure the others won’t have even noticed we left.”