#wisp feels a little strange with these wings but not horrible

[lynx-doodles-indie-games]

Okay, here's a silly drawing request

The duo... with wings! And/ or any other animalistic traits you want to give them.

Thank you in advance!

well this ended up being angstier than anticipated

neither of them are quite happy with the burden of wings

[luthienne]

Hi dear, do you have any good words on emotional courage?

hi my love, you can check out this post and this post; here are a few more:

“I know a lot about pain… and I know it is bad for people, eats away the spirit, but how about courage, what is it for if not to use when needed?”

Martha Gellhorn, Selected Letters 

“This is in the end the only kind of courage that is required of us: the courage to face the strangest, most unusual, most inexplicable experiences that can meet us.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet 

“You don’t realize it, perhaps, but you are turning these delusions and illusions of the past into criminal things. Relinquish everything. Stay in bed until you feel so shock full of energy, hope, courage that you bounce out of abed. You can only aid the world–if you still believe the world needs our individual aid–by retaining your faith in life. Your body may be weak, but I know you still have wings.”

Henry Miller, A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller

“I… want to inherit the witch in my women ancestors—the willfulness, the passion, ay, the passion where all good art comes from as women, the perseverance, the survivor skills, the courage, the strength of las mujeres bravas, peleoneras, necias, berrrinchudas. I want to be una brava, una peleonera, necia, nerrinchuda. I want to be bad if bad means I must go against society—el Papá, el Pápa, the boyfriend, lover, husband, girlfriend, comadres—and listen to my own heart, that incredible witch’s broom that will take me where I need to go.”

Sandra Cisneros, A House of My Own

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Many people seem to think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better. And it is true that in winter it is sometimes so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, ‘What do I care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now.’ Yes, evil often seems to surpass good. But then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. One morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. And so I must still have hope.”

Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

“In the winter I am writing about, there was much darkness. Darkness of nature, darkness of event, darkness of the spirit. The sprawling darkness of not knowing. We speak of the light of reason. I would speak here of the darkness of the world, and the light of———. But I don’t know what to call it. Maybe hope. Maybe faith, but not a shaped faith—only, say, a gesture, or a continuum of gestures. But probably it is closer to hope, that is more active, and far messier than faith must be. Faith, as I imagine it, is tensile, and cool, and has no need of words. Hope, I know is a fighter and a screamer.”

Mary Oliver, Winter Hours: Prose, Poems, and Prose Poems

“There is always some miracle left; and though miracles do not happen, they might happen. Who knows? Perhaps our intelligence, our instinct, our senses, in spite of their daylight clearness, are leading us astray. Perhaps the one thing needful is just that unreasoning courage which follows hope’s will-o’-the-wisp as it burns…”

Jens Peter Jacobsen, Niels Lyhne

“But if the deepest loss, […] / can be, not just survived, but made into the matter / of hope, made into song, not into a hatchet / to cut off the offending parts, made into poems / then blessed be the end of things, the loss of whatever / secures us blindly and mutely to our lives.”

Julia Alvarez, The Other Side/El Otro Lado

“I run / stumbling, expectant. / Impatience is hopelessly / desperate. Hope / takes time.”

Marie Ponsot, Springing: New and Selected Poems

“How lightly we learn to hold hope, / as if it were an animal that could turn around / and bite your hand. And still we carry it / the way a mother would, carefully, / from one day to the next.”

Danusha Laméris, The Moons of August

“Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”

Representative John Lewis

“Where does such a force come from? What does it mean? A voice very faint, and inside me, offers a possibility: how shall there be redemption and resurrection unless there has been a great sorrow? And isn’t struggle and rising the real work of our lives?”

Mary Oliver, Winter Hours: Prose, Poems, and Prose Poems

“Don’t forget that apparent impossibility of something is the first sign of its naturalness—in a different world, obviously.

Marina Tsvetaeva, from a letter to Anatoly Steiger

“Grieve. Have / hope.”

Jorie Graham, Swarm

John Berryman, “The Heart is Strange”

“Skin had hope, that what’s skin does. / Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.”

Naomi Shihab Nye, “Two Countries”

“I am quite troubled in the depths of my soul. But that will pass,”

George Sand, in a letter to Gustave Flaubert

“Let’s dance a little before we go home to hell.”

Muriel Rukeyser, A Muriel Rukeyser Reader

Hélène Cixous, Hyperdream (tr. Beverly Bie Brahic)

“That most moments were substantially the same did not detract at all from the possibility that the next moment might be utterly different.”

Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

Ada Limón, “Dead Stars”

“Listen, everyone has a chance. Is it spring, is it morning? Are there trees near you, and does your own soul need comforting? Quick, then — open the door and fly on your heavy feet…”

Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems

“Get to the bottom of this intensity and have faith in what is most horrible, instead of fighting it off—it reveals itself for those who can trust it, in spite of its overwhelming and dire appearance, as a kind of initiation. By way of loss, by way of such vast and immeasurable experiences of loss, we are quite powerfully introduced to the whole.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, from a letter to Countess Alexandrine Schwerin, June 16, 1922

“…only one thing is urgently needed: to attach oneself with unconditional purpose somewhere to nature, to what is strong, striving and bright, and to move forward without guile, even if that means in the least important, daily matters. Each time we tackle something with joy, each time we open our eyes toward a yet untouched distance we transform not only this and the next moment, but we also rearrange and gradually assimilate the past inside of us.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, from a letter to Adelheid von der Marwitz, September 11, 1919

“Continue to believe that with your feeling and with your work you take part in what is the greatest. The more strongly you cultivate this belief inside of you, the more it will give rise to reality and world.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, from a letter to Elisabeth Freiin Schenk zu Schweinsberg, September 23, 1908

“…I have known with certainty that the worst things, and even despair, are only a kind of abundance and an onslaught of existence that one decision of the heart could turn into its opposite. Where things become truly difficult and unbearable, we find ourselves in a place already very close to its transformation.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, from a letter to Anita Forrer, February 14, 1920

“…he says, it will be all right.

“It is not the saying of an oracle or a prophet. They are words you might speak to a child ... and somehow I am comforted. He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does not mean that we are not frightened. Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive.”

Madeline Miller, Circe

“Right then she knows herself even less than she knows the sea. Her courage comes from not knowing herself, but going ahead nevertheless. Not knowing yourself is inevitable, and not knowing yourself demands courage.

Clarice Lispector, Complete Stories; “The Waters of the World”

“Recovery (which includes return and renewal of health) is a re-gaining—regaining of a clear view. I do not say “seeing things as they are” and involve myself with the philosophers, though I might venture to say “seeing things as we are (or were) meant to see them”—as things apart from ourselves. We need, in any case, to clean our windows; so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity—from possessiveness. Of all faces those of our familiares are the ones both most difficult to play fantastic tricks with, and most difficult really to see with fresh attention, perceiving their likeness and unlikeness: that they are faces, and yet unique faces.”

J.R.R. Tolkien, from his essay On Fairy-Stories

Camille Norton, Corruption: Poems

“Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.”

May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

“I have the fervour of myself for a presence / and my own spirit for light; / and my spirit with its loss / knows this; though small against the black, / small against the formless rocks, / hell must break before I am lost;”

H.D. from Collected Poems; “Eurydice”

Denise Levertov, “Epilogue”

“The days go numb, the wind / sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves. // Through the empty branches the sky remains. / It is what you have. / Be earth now, and evensong. / Be the ground lying under that sky. / Be modest now, like a thing / ripened until it is real…”

Rainer Maria Rilke, from Rilke’s Book of Hours (tr. Anita Barrows, Joanna Macy)

“I know your sorrow and I know that for the likes of us there is not ease for the heart to be had from words of reason and that in the very assurance of sorrow’s fading there is more sorrow. So I offer you only my deeply affectionate and compassionate thoughts and wish for you only that the strange thing may never fail you, whatever it is, that gives us the strength to live on and on with our wounds.”

Samuel Beckett’s words of consolation to his friend, Alan Schneider

“What matters is not to allow my whole life to be dominated by what is going on inside me. That has to be kept subordinate one way or another. What I mean is: one must not let oneself be completely disabled by just one thing, however bad; don’t let it impede the great stream of life that flows through you. I have the feeling of something secret deep inside me that no one knows about.”

Etty Hillesum, from a diary entry featured in An Interrupted Life

“You have been told that, even like a chain, you are as weak as your weakest link. / This is but half the truth. You are also as strong as your strongest link. / To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of the ocean by the frailty of its foam. / To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconstancy.”

Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“Try to keep what is beautiful to you and what you can use for today and now — You must not let things you cannot help destroy you —”

Georgia O’Keeffe, from Georgia O’Keeffe: Art and Letters

“What we love, shapely and pure, / is not to be held, / but to be believed in.”

Mary Oliver, from Evidence; “Swans”

“In time of the crises of the spirit, we are aware of all our need, our need for each other and our need for ourselves. We call up, with all the strength of summoning we have, our fullness. And then we turn; for it is a turning that we have prepared; and act. The time of turning may be very long. It may hardly exist.”

Muriel Rukeyser, from A Muriel Rukeyser Reader, “The Life of Poetry”

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.” 

Howard Zinn, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress

“But don’t lose heart, dear ones—don’t lose heart. Don’t let it make you bitter. Try to understand. Try to understand. The world’s already bitter enough, we got to try to be better than the world.”

James Baldwin, from Another Country

“You do not have to be good. / You do not have to walk on your knees / for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. / You only have to let the soft animal of your body / love what it loves. / Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. / Meanwhile, the world goes on.”

Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”

[lissy-strata]

Three Times Vicki Used Fire For Good and One Time She Didn’t

This is my Secret Santa gift for @austerlitzborodinoleipzig, who asked for Vicki being awesome. (I’ll post this to AO3 as soon as I can.) Merry Christmas! :D

1. Light

The cave was only marginally warmer than the outside, which was so cold one could toss out a pitcher of boiling water and it would freeze before it hit the ground. Like a dangerously enthusiastic snow globe, the wind blew the snow fiercely, making it almost impossible to see more than a few feet in any direction. What little light could penetrate the thick clouds slipped inside the cave opening, waiting out the storm with the two shivering travelers inside.

Vicki’s fingers shook as she tried to tie the end of a string to a bow-shaped stick. The string wrapped around another stick once, then joined the other end of the bow. “There!” she said, succeeding in her task. “Now I just n-n-need some sort of f-f-f-flat rock or s-something for the t-t-top.” Feeling around on the ground, she found a small piece of bark.

Beside her, the Doctor was fumbling around in his pockets for something to use as kindling. Miraculously, they had wood. The cave was filled with bits of branches and sticks that had one way or another come in. Some of it was even dry enough to burn.

“Hmm...” He peered through his spectacles at a few crumpled sheets of paper. “No, not this one...must remember to return that to Mr. Jefferson. Ah, yes! This should do nicely.” He handed her one of the pages. It was brown with age.

Vicki looked at it. “S-symphony No. 10....is this Beethoven?”

The Doctor pocketed his glasses. “Only a fragment. Nobody will miss it. Besides, I told him the second movement needs tweaking...” he trailed off before seeming to remember the urgency of the task at hand. “Are we going to sit around chattering all day or are we going to make a fire?”

She tore the paper into tiny shreds and piled them up in a heap. The Doctor reached for the bow. “C-can’t I do it?” she asked.

“What do you know about fire starting?”

“I know enough. Ian s-s-showed me. B-back on J-J-Juno.” She put the end of the stick in the middle of the paper, held the bark between her palm and the top of the stick, and began moving the bow back and forth. “See? T-the string moves the st-st-stick faster and it should heat up the p-paper.”

The rapid movement also helped warm her up a bit. The Doctor didn’t seem to feel the cold the way she did.

He sat back and watched her in silence for a few seconds. “Chesterson saves us all with fire again...” he mused.

“What?”

“Hmm? Oh, nothing child. Nothing. I was just thinking about another fire in another cave...”

“Was that with Susan?”

Silence.

“...How did you know that?” he whispered, almost hoarsely.

“Ian told me about it when he was showing me how to do this.” The tiniest wisp of smoke wafted up from below. “He said it was when he and Barbara first met you.”

“He did, did he?” The Doctor’s tone was defensive.

Vicki decided not to pursue that line of conversation. Instead, she said, “He told me about Susan.” More silence. The paper started to smolder slightly. “Was she really your granddaughter?”

There was a long pause. Silence, save for the sound of scraping wood. Her arm was starting to tire, but she was sure the paper would catch soon.

“Yes,” said the Doctor.

For an instant, she saw a look of terrible sadness flicker across his face. He quickly hid it away.

“Barbara said she fell in love.”

“Yes. She did. With a young man on Earth. And I...” the words hung in the air.

The paper caught fire.

Together, they carefully fed the little flames until they had a decent blaze going. Vicki pulled her mittens back on and huddled next to the Doctor, letting the much-needed warmth wash over them.

He sat staring into the fire thoughtfully, occasionally adding another stick. Vicki couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but she didn’t need to be telepathic to guess that he was lost in a memory.

“Doctor,” she began. He turned to look at her. “She sounds like a wonderful person. Do you think...” She hesitated. “I mean, maybe the Tardis... Maybe one day I could meet her?”

For a second, she was afraid she’d crossed a line. An unspoken boundary. But then a small smile played around his lips. “Maybe someday we will,” he said as he put an arm around her shoulders. “Maybe someday...”

2. Baked

“They’re coming through the windows!” screamed Barbara.

Ian rushed to the window where a seven foot tall gingerbread man was trying to break through and beat it savagely with a candy cane. The monster cookie roared and fell back, and Barbara grabbed a giant gumdrop off the floor and stuffed it into the broken window. It wiggled at bit as the gingerbread man pounded on it, but held firm.

“How many more are there?” Ian asked breathlessly.

“At least half a dozen,” said Barbara. “I’ve locked all the doors and windows, but the whole place is made of sweets, it won’t hold for long!”

Ian put the end of his sharpened candy cane down and leaned on it. “Where’s the Doctor?”

“With the mayor. He’s trying to get the attraction shut down.”

The attraction in question was the gingerbread mansion they were currently standing in. Every year, the humans on New Saturn built a new Christmas wonderland- a forest of ice sculptures, a maze of Christmas trees, a replica elf village. The tourism did wonders for the local economy. However, this year their elaborate gingerbread mansion hadn’t panned out the way anyone expected.

For example, nobody had expected the gingerbread men to come to life and start attacking people.

Outside the parlour, there came a loud crash, followed by a scream and the sound of someone running. Vicki burst into the room, wielding a long stick with the remains of a marshmallow on one end. Behind her, wearing the rest of the molten marshmallow, was an on-fire gingerbread man, waving its arms madly and roaring.

“I think I’ve found their weakness!” shouted Vicki. “They don’t like fire!”

“You just made it angrier!” Ian grabbed a nearby chair and threw it in the path of the rampaging cookie. It tripped and fell to the ground, still burning. As it tried to flip itself over, Barbara pushed Vicki behind her.

“It’s between us and the door,” she said.

Ian hefted his candy cane. “I’ll hold it off. You and Vicki make a run for it.” The gingerbread man managed to roll itself over, smothering the flames. “Run!”

“Wait!” said the cookie.

They stared in astonishment as the gingerbread man stood up and brushed itself off. “Wait,” it said again. “I...I’m done.”

“Done?” asked Barbara.

The cookie scratched the back of its head. “I’m done. Finished. Completed.” When the humans still didn’t seem to understand, it said, “The process is complete. My insides have hardened.”

“Are you saying,” said Vicki, “that you’re finished cooking?”

“Yes.” The cookie smiled.

“Now hang on a minute,” Ian said as he lowered his candy weapon. “You’re telling us that all the gingerbread men out there are on a rampage because they’re only half-baked?”

“Yes.”

“So all we need to do is finish baking them?” asked Barbara. “Vicki, can you get more marshmallows?”

Twenty minutes later, they were on the roof with bags of giant marshmallows, a small bonfire, and an improvised slingshot.

It was going to be a very eventful Christmas.

3. Explode

“Who are you?” asked Vicki.

The girl who had unlocked the cell door wasn’t at all who Vicki who had been expecting. She looked just a little older than Vicki, and she wore a black bomber jacket decorated with an eclectic assortment of pins and badges.

“I’m Ace. C’mon, we’re getting out of here.” Ace took Vicki’s hand and pulled her out of the cell and down the corridor with all the confidence of someone who either knew what they were doing, or who was really good at pretending.

“But my friends-”

“They’re fine. You just got stuck in a time slip. You’re something like fifty-seven years ahead of them.”

Vicki stopped short, jerking her hand out of Ace’s. “Wait! I’m in the future? Well, compared to them.”

She must have looked pretty distressed, because Ace threw an arm around her. “Don’t worry, kid. The Professor sent me to get you and send you back to the right timeline.”

“Who’s the Professor?”

“Don’t worry about it. Let’s go!”

She allowed Ace to lead her through the twisted corridors of the research station. It looked so different from when she had come in with Steven and the Doctor. Newer, obviously, but also when they came in it had been an ancient castle. Now, it had been modernised- kitted out with new lights, new furniture, more computers, and a whole new wing dedicated to deep space telescopes.

“See, what happened is there’s a buildup of tachyon energy and if you happen to walk through the right place at the right time, you get zapped to the other end of the timestream.”

“I see,” said Vicki. That certainly explained the sudden dizziness and waking up alone. And the-

There was a bang from somewhere in the distance.

“Cybermen!” they exclaimed. Ace looked at her.

“I see you’ve met them.”

“Well, I didn’t lock myself in a cell!” snapped Vicki.

“All right,” said Ace. “And I’m not looking forward to a reunion. Let’s go!” She motioned for Vicki to follow her toward an alcove containing a stone spiral staircase.

“But the front door’s right there,” said Vicki, pointing. “We can escape.”

Ace stopped on the stairs. “Well, you know how I said we’re in the future?” Vicki nodded. “Okay, so it’s not the future future. Not the real one. It’s like a chunk of future but a bit to the left. All closed off from the rest of time.”

“Like a bubble?”

“Yeah, exactly! And we need to get to the focal point so we can get back to our own timelines and trap the Cybermen here. At least, that’s what the Professor said.”

A horrible electronic screech echoed from a nearby corridor. Three Cybermen entered the great hall somewhat shakily. A strange foaming substance oozed from various heads and chests. The one in front pointed at them and screeched again.

“Move!” shouted Ace. Vicki didn’t need to be told twice. The two of them scrambled up the steps as fast as they could go. At the top, Vicki watched as Ace pulled a silver canister out of her rucksack and fiddled with the top.

“Just giving them something to think about,” she said, grinning. From below, they could hear the Cybermen ascending the steps behind them. Ace tossed the canister down the stairs. It bounced out of sight and then there was a loud explosion that shook the walls.

Three more corridors and another set of stairs later, they found one of the newer rooms, filled with futuristic computers and equipment and tangled wires weaving haphazardly through it all.

“What do we do?” asked Vicki.

Ace powered up the computer. “I think...yeah, they didn’t change the coordinates. It looks like they just unplugged everything.” She tapped a few commands into the computer. “Okay, that should send us back to where we need to be. Help me reconnect all this...”

It wasn’t difficult to plug all the wires back in. Most of them were even helpfully color-coded. It was just that they were tangled and there was a lot of them. They were almost finished when they heard another strangled electronic screech. Ace swore. She was halfway underneath one of the machines, up to her elbows in cables. “Hey, kid! Get another can of Nitro-9 out of my bag!”

Vicki dropped the tangle of wires she was working on and dove for the bag. She pulled out another silver canister while Ace shouted directions.

“Just don’t use it until you actually see a Cyberman,” she said. “Don’t want to give away our location.”

“Okay.” Vicki slid open the door to reveal a Cyberman standing right outside.

It was still scorched from the first explosion.

“Here!” Vicki quickly thrust the can of Nitro-9 into its outstretched hand, slammed the door shut, and threw the bolt home.

The following boom shook bits of rock and debris from the ceiling.

“Ace!” said Ace.

The machine, when fully assembled, looked an awful lot like three old-fashioned television cameras arranged in a triangle around a raised platform on top of a nest of cables.

Vicki stood on the platform, holding a remote control, and watched as Ace carefully fiddled with her last canisters, placing them strategically around the room.

“Why..?”

“So after we’re gone, those things can’t follow. Don’t looks so worried, it’s a long fuse. I’m like, 93% sure of it. We’ve got about a minute before they blow up.”

She ran to join Vicki on the platform. “Ready, kid?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be.” Vicki hit the button.

Thirty seconds later, the now empty room exploded.

4. Tradition

“Are you sure this is all right,” Steven asked as he peered around the corner at the city square. A fresh blanket of snow covered the previous blanket of snow, giving their target a festive winter coat.

“Of course it is. Lars said it was.” Vicki fumbled with the lighter. “And we’re just in time to be the ones to do it this year if we hurry.”

“But why would people go through the trouble of building a giant straw goat just for someone to burn it down?”

Vicki handed him a lit torch and began lighting the other one. “It’s tradition. It doesn’t have to make sense. It’s probably some ancient religious thing that nobody knows the meaning of anymore.”

“Yeah, but wouldn’t they pick someone to burn down the goat? Why leave it up to chance?”

“That’s probably part of the tradition.” She tucked the lighter into her pocket and held her torch in front of her and grinned. “If you’re lucky, the goat survives. And if you’re not, the goat burns down and you get six more weeks of winter.”

“That’s Groundhog’s Day.”

“Oh, who cares? It’ll be fun!” She went to the end of the alley and checked to see if the coast was clear. “Ready?”

Steven shrugged. “I guess. What do we do?”

“Follow me!”

Vicki burst out of the alley and ran at top speed toward the huge straw goat, whooping and hollering and waving her torch. Steven ran after her, with much less noise, and together they circled the enormous legs, touching the fire to the straw until the flames grew and the goat was completely alight.

They stood back, panting, watching the structure burn.

“It’s gorgeous,” said Vicki.

“I have to admit,” said Steven, “it does look pretty spectacular.”

They only had a few moments to admire their handiwork when they heard sirens and an angry voice yelling, “Hey, you!” They turned to see Swedish police officers running towards them.

“...maybe this isn’t really a tradition...” Vicki said softly.

“Yeah. And if we’re lucky, we’ll avoid jail time. Run!”

[equalstrashflavoredtrash]

When your muse permits, please write a super smutty Roman/plus sized reader fic where the reader totally rocks his world!!!

warning: there be smut ahead

word count: 2,668

@@captstefanbrandt @peaky-yamyam @sheepishdove @captstefanbrandt @lunaschild2016 @lostinthebeans @ariwolff14

Once you had finished making formal introductions with your father, you stole away from the main ballroom where the annual Gala was being hosted, choosing instead to wander aimlessly through the empty halls of the Godfrey Mansion. You couldn’t help but smile as you meandered past the various parlors and sitting rooms, it had been at least ten years since you had last stepped foot on the marble tiles and yet they still felt familiar. With each stride you took you remembered more, the map of the floor plan becoming clearer in your mind as the obscuring dust was blown away.

Reaching the end of the west wing, you came upon a very familiar staircase. Gently, you laid your palm on the oak banister, taking careful steps so that the click of your shoes did not disturb the quiet that engulfed you so far away from the merriment. You always felt more comfortable alone in the dark, crowds had a way of grating on your nerves.

Sipping at the flute of champagne you couldn’t help but laugh at the juxtaposition. Last time you had climbed these stairs you were still a child, sobbing and covered in mud, screaming for your father. Now you moved with the poise and grace of a civil woman. Before you had been in jeans and a t-shirt, smeared with dirt from playing outside. Now you wore a custom fitted dress, designed for your figure. The scoop neckline accentuated your bust while the floral bodice cinched at your waist, leading into the skirt made of taffeta that bounced around you, light as air.

You were well aware your body was not model standard, but you never let that stop you, and it helped that your father’s wallet and status could insure you got whatever you wanted. You paired the dress with black tights with subtle heels, choosing to forgo any statement jewelry, and wearing your hair down in it’s natural waves.

Unconsciously you clicked your nails against the crystal flute, still not used to the length. Your father had suggested you get them done for the Gala, insisting on something other than your usual, short, bitten nails. Still getting used to the sensation of the acrylics though, you couldn’t help but constantly fidget and scratch, playing with the nails until they didn’t pinch. You did like the almost-black burgundy color you’d chosen though.

You were nearly halfway down the hall when you spied the door you were looking for. Stepping close, you did a double take of your surroundings, trying to see past the shadows of the long hallway, before twisting the knob and crossing the threshold.

Flicking on the lights, you took a final gulp of your drink before striding forward, taking in every detail of the bedroom. You could not abate the curiosity you had. The insatiable inkling to know what he’d been up to while you were gone, living outside of the country with your family, without directly asking him, and the best solution you could find was going through his personal things.

Giving a sigh, you tried to relax. The Gala was in full swing, there was no way that anyone would be up here on the third floor, you had the place to yourself. Placing the empty glass on the desk, you dug into your small bag, pulling out the cigarette tin. Never having been one with a taste for tobacco, you released the the latch, letting the lid pop open before pulling out one of the joints you had rolled in preparation for the boring evening of polite small talk.

You lit the end and inhaled while carefully maneuvering around the the mess of laundry on the floor, trying your hardest not to upset the landscape as you moved towards the bookshelf. Letting out a scoff, you couldn’t help but judge his personal collection.

Puffing on the joint, you weren’t surprised by finding innumerable amounts of Ayn Rand’s writing. Of Course the spoiled son of a rich tycoon would be interested in objectivism, you mused to yourself as you traced a finger over the shelf. You couldn’t help noticing his extensive collection of books on Medieval society and technology.

A familiar title caught your eye, the gold embossed lettering on the spine glinting in the low light reading, La Sorcière. Lifting your hand to your mouth, you held the paper crutch of the joint with your lips before removing the curious volume. Letting the book fall open in your palm, you thumbed through the pages, too engulfed to notice any movement in your surroundings.

“What are you doing in here?” a strange voice asked.

You yelped in surprise, nearly dropping the book. “What the fuck,” you breathed coughing slightly as you grabbed the rolled paper, keeping it from falling to the ground and igniting the carpet. Clutching a hand to your chest, you turned around to face the owner of the room you were perusing.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Going through your stuff, obviously,” you stated with a roll of your eyes, emboldened by the alcohol as you fidgeted, flicking the end of the joint so the spent ash fell away.

“Who do you think you are?” he seethed, stepping closer before ensnaring your wrist with his fingers. He tugged at your arm, jerking your body to face him and drop the book.

“Really, you don’t recognize me?” you teased, your voice dripping with disdain. “After all the time you spent pulling on my hair and pushing me in the mud when we were kids?” You spoke with a bitter tone, barely touching on the way he’d torment you, while watching the realization wash over his features.

He mumbled your name under his breath before releasing his grip on your hand.

“And how’ve you been, Roman?” you asked in a mockingly saccharin tone, turning away to grab the fallen book and return it to the proper place on the shelf oh-so carefully before facing him.

You couldn’t help when your eyes went wide as you finally got a good look at him. It was more than obvious that he’d grown since you’d seen him last. He must’ve sprouted like bamboo when puberty finally hit. Before you’d left, you and he had been about eye-level, now he loomed over you, easily a foot taller than your small stature.

“Better now,” he murmured, blantaly eyeing your form. You rolled your eyes again, bringing the joint back to your lips as you tried to sidestep him.

He was faster, blocking your way and plucking the joint from your fingers. He held it between the pads of his thumb and index finger and lifted the end to his lips, taking a long drag before letting the exhaled smoke snake into his nostrils. You cursed yourself as you felt a weight drop in your abdomen, watching the wisps of white dance over the pink of his lips. You had promise you would not let these feelings arise.

“You still into weird shit like insects?” he asked, quirking his brow, watching for your response.

Letting out an exasperated scoff, you shot him an incredulous look. “You seem the same as ever. You were always awful.” Shifting to the other direction you tried to push past him but he quickly boxed you in, keeping you against the bookshelf.

“You really hated me when we were little, huh?” he asked, a smirk dancing at the corner of his mouth as his fingers slowly drifted to your hip.

“Yes, and I still hate you now,” you admonished, your hand flying to press against his chest, trying to keep some distance between you as he stepped closer.

Roman held your gaze for a moment before dropping his head. He bent forward, hunching into you as his lips brushed against the side of your neck. You couldn’t help your gasp at the first fluttering touches, his warm breath preemptively ghosting over the sensitive skin before his soft lips made contact.

“Tell me,” he said, his voice husky, humming over your neck, so close to your ear while you curled your fingers into the cotton of his shirt, trying not to moan. “Tell me why you hate me. Tell me how much.”

“You were horrible and cruel,” you began, fighting to keep the whine from your voice, digging your nails ever deeper into the muscles of his arm, though it only served to encourage him. “Y-you constantly teased me and broke my toys. You killed my pet–,”

Roman abruptly pulled back, his blue eyes instantly connecting with yours, “That wasn’t a pet, it was a fucking bug. And it wouldn’t stop making that stupid noise.”

“He was a hissing cockroach! That’s what they DO,” you challenged, leaning back so your palms rested flat on his chest. “And you killed it because you’re an asshole and you could! You did it just to upset me!”

You could see the smolder in his fair eyes, but were unsure of what his next move would be. You knew he was volatile and yet you chose to speak your mind as you always had.

“Yeah that’s true, I was only mean to you so you’d pay attention to me.” His admission caught you off guard. Before you had a chance to think and process what he’d confessed, Roman dove forward, capturing your lips in a heated kiss.

It was futile to fight the instinct to respond, so you eagerly returned his aggressive affections while sliding your hands to his clavicle, closer to his shirt collar. You dug your fingers into his shoulders, feeling the pressure on your long nails as they jabbed into the skin under his oxford cloth shirt.

Roman pulled at your lips, biting the soft flesh before his tongue found its way past your teeth. You met his challenge, pushing back at the intrusion and wrestling with him. His hands dropped from the bookshelf next to your head to rest on your waist, tugging you harder against to him.

It took a moment for you mind to actually click that you were furiously making out with Roman Godfrey. Yes, you hated him, but those feelings weren’t as pure and concise as they once were. Going through puberty you found that you had a weird recurring dream of being intimate with him, the subject matter only growing more risque with your age. These dreams only served to confuse your emotions without curving your animosity for him. But here you were, actually pressed between him and bookcase as you had so often dreamt. He pulled back for a breath, smirking at the sight of your swollen lips.

If tonight was an evening for dreams, then you were going to reenact all of them, even your daydreams. Pushing against his chest, you reared one hand back before quickly dropping your palm to his cheek. The crack of skin meeting skin radiated to your core. You couldn’t hide your grin as you watched the pink begin to bloom under his pale flesh, imagining the prickles of pain he felt as he kept his head to the side. Slowly, he lifted one hand from your waist, the other staying firm, to touch at his lip, testing to see how profusely the cut on his inner cheek was bleeding. You could see the bulge of his tongue through the soft muscle as it ran along the hidden wound.

Grabbing your bicep, he flung you on to the bed with more ease than you expected. With a swift motion he was on top of you, pinning your wrists into the mattress. You couldn’t shake the feeling of vulnerability. Lying there underneath him, you felt like an upturn beetle stuck, immobile on its back with a carnivorous praying mantis looming above, readying to feast, just waiting to take advantage of your position.

He recaptured your lips in a hungry kiss before dropping his hands to creep under your skirt. You could taste the blood in his mouth before trailing your tongue along the injury as you kissed.

Eagerly he pulled down your underwear and pantyhose, though only so far to reveal your heat to the brisk air with the elastic band taught around your thighs, keeping your legs together. He slid his fingers over your skin before coming to tease at your lips. He pushed your knees to his right so you were laying on your side.

“You know,” he hummed lifting his head away a fraction of an inch so his lips still brushed yours as his fingers pushed past your folds, testing your wetness. “I still want to pull your hair.” You tried to fight back the shudder that coursed through you at the idea but it was useless, he could surely feel the flood that came with his words. “And I’m pretty certain you want me to.”

You let out a raspy moan as he lowered his mouth to your neck, nipping along your jugular while lacing his long fingers into the roots of your hair and tugged. Fisting the sheets, you wriggled against him as he hurried to release himself from his trousers before impatiently pushing into you. The sounds caught in your throat as he settled, revelling your warmth. The way he held you, with your legs together created a tight tension you’d never expected as his fist jerked at your follicles with each shove.

Releasing a hiss, Roman pulled his hips back and thrust into you hard, drawing a gasp from your throat. He slowly picked up his pace, leaning over you so he could study your blissful expression, they way your eyes fluttered shut while you kept one hand curled into his shirt, holding him close.

Letting his tongue dance across the small laceration in his mouth, he tasted the blood and tumbled unexpectedly over the edge. You could feel as he twitched and released inside of you, the sensations of his orgasm spurring on your own. Your walls spasmed around his length as his name spilt past your lips like a garbled mantra.

With a last sigh of relief, Roman pulled out and dropped to lay next to you on the mattress. He loosened his grip but still kept his fingers buried in your hair as he gazed at you, his expression bathed in a post-orgasm eurphoria. Cautiously you smiled back, biting at your lip as you slid your hand to his cheek, stroking the aggravated mark you’d left.

The pair of you laid in silence, taking deep breaths of the same air for what felt like eons, but was truly minutes. You were yanked back to reality by the sound of your cell phone ringing from your purse, discarded somewhere on the floor.

Awkwardly shuffling from the bed you hurried to answer, knowing it was your father calling, “Hello? Daddy? Hey,” you greet, holding the device to your ear. Roman could hear the muffled sound of your father on the other end. “No I didn’t go home, I ran into Roman. We’ve been, uh– catching up that’s all. Mhmm, ok, I’ll meet you in the main hall in a moment.” Returning your phone back into the bag, you stood up, grabbing the elastic waistbands around your thighs and shimmying them back up to your waist.

Turning back towards the bed, you found Roman sitting up watching you. He’d tucked himself into his boxers but his zipper remained loose as he studied you through half lidded eyes. “How long are you in town for?” he asked in a placid voice, a flat tone you could draw no meaning from.

“Another six weeks,” you replied cautiously, eyeing him as you straightened your skirt and gathered your things. He merely nodded in response and you left the room without further conversation.

You easily kept a cheery face as you joined your father, alluding that you and Roman had done nothing more than chat though you could still feel his seed dripping from you into your underwear with every step you took.

[jugandbettsdetectiveagency]

@devilinhighheels:  How about a fic where Cheryl dares Betty to spend a weekend at a haunted house where she falls in love with ghost Jughead? Or Jughead tries to save her from an evil ghost with some angst but also lots of fluff? 

Ok, so this isn’t as developed as I wanted because this was supposed to be a short one shot but I seem to have forgotten how to do those so... I guess you can use your imaginations. It’s not exactly in keeping with the prompt because I was trying to keep it short, but then it got away from me just like this explanation is and I’m rambling, yeah, have this half-assed fic.

accepting halloween-y vibed prompts

“My turn,” Cheryl piped up, a sly grin planting itself firmly across her lips as she let go of Dilton Doiley’s sweater, allowing him to fall back in a post-make out daze, wiping at the corners of her mouth to remove any lipstick smudges. Somehow she seemed to be the only woman alive that managed to keep her makeup intact despite a multitude of spit swapping. Betty often wondered if the cherry red stain wasn’t lipstick at all, but that the colour just naturally deepened every time Cheryl managed to slay one of her enemies.

“Betty.” She jumped at the clipped sound of her name. Cheryl’s pupils had turned a menacingly dark shade as she focused her attention on her next victim. “Truth or dare?”

She hadn’t wanted to play this game. In fact, the only reason she was even at the Blossom’s Halloween bash in the first place was because Archie had looked at her with that liquid chocolate, puppy dog expression of his and practically begged her to come with him; she had melted just like his eyes. Betty cursed her inability to deny Archie Andrews anything as she watched him sliding closer to her best friend, Veronica Lodge, by the second. She bit the inside of her cheek as the corners of her eyes began to sting.

“Aren’t we a little too old for truth or dare?” she had protested weakly when Cheryl suggested the game earlier in the evening, noting the way the redhead kept flicking her gaze between the three of them, a mischievous glint appearing in her eyes. Betty could just picture how this was going to go.

“Betty, tell the truth. Are you in love with Archie?”

“Archie, I dare you to make out with Veronica.”

Whatever schemes Cheryl was currently plotting, Betty didn’t want any part of it. She’d been outvoted, nevertheless.

“It’s a time honoured tradition, Betty,” Cheryl stated evenly as she sat down on the crimson upholstered chaise lounge. The way she moved, with such grace and precision, never moving a muscle that need not be moved, only served to further cement Betty’s suspicions that she was actually the living dead.

“Yeah, B, come on! It’ll be fun,” Veronica insisted, barely having finished her sentence before she was glancing over adoringly at Archie, who’d come up behind her baring a red solo cup and a winning smile, guiding her to sit with a warm hand on her lower back.

“Betty, we’re waiting,” Cheryl demanded impatiently, snapping her out of her daze. All eyes were on her as she glanced nervously around the circle, like a cornered animal searching for a way out. Well, if she had to go with the least horrible option she’d pick…

“Dare,” Betty squeaked, clearing her throat a little. The joy in Cheryl’s expression faltered only for a minute before she rallied, glancing around the room for something to torture her with. In fact, she wouldn’t put it past the Blossom mansion to have some kind of secret torture chamber hidden away in its depths…

“Fine,” Cheryl sighed, “I dare you to…” She paused, her eyes looked on something just outside the window over Betty’s shoulder, corners of her mouth turning up in a devilish smirk. “I dare you to spend ten minutes in the abandoned Jones Mansion across the street,” she finished smugly.

Betty cringed, letting her eyes slide closed slowly in defeat as a hum of excitement filled the air. She’d been so focused on her prays that Bluebeard’s chamber wasn’t an additional feature to the gothic horror show that was Thornhill, that she’d completely forgotten that the Blossom’s home came complete with its own creepy, abandoned house just a few feet away.

“That place is totally haunted, dude,” Reggie announced with glee, practically bouncing in his seat. He didn’t notice the withering look Betty shot his way. “One time me and Jase kicked our football over there when we were kids and when we went over to get it I swear we saw someone moving about through one of the blown out windows,” he said solemnly, eyes wide.

“You’re freaking her out!” Jason chastised, throwing a concerned glance towards a rapidly paling Betty. Her fingers began a familiar twitch inwards towards the meat of her palms, hovering just above the surface of the delicate skin.

“You don’t have to do it, B,” Veronica consoled, resting a hand on her forearm in what she imagined what supposed to be a comforting gesture.

“Um, yes she does. She picked dare, she has to do the deed – those are the rules,” Cheryl cut in haughtily.

“Betty, you don’t have to if you’re not up to it,” Archie spoke over her, voice laced with pity.

That was it. She was done being babied.

“I’ll do it!” she burst out, instantly blushing at the sound of her unexpectedly loud voice echoing through the high ceilings. “It’s not a big deal, guys, it’s just a house,” Betty murmured quietly, unable to deny the slight tremor in her voice to even herself.

“Excellent!” Cheryl beamed, rising from her seat like Carmilla from her coffin. “Shall we?” she asked, motioning towards the door.

The group piled out, both tripping over each other with eagerness and reserve as they tried to get closer but not be the one closest to the house that haunted all of their childhood ghost stories.

The Jones mansion had sat, decrepit and decaying, for as long as any of them had known. None of them really knew who had truly lived there, only that the Jones family had been one of the founding families of the town of Riverdale, and that there were many stories surrounding their demise, spanning from debauchery to insanity. Either way, there were very few people willing to venture inside the old house that sat untouched at the other end of the Blossom’s driveway.

“Oh, and would you look at that,” Cheryl said coyly, holding up her phone that they were using as a flashlight to pick their way across the overgrown yard. “It’s almost midnight.”

“Ooh, the witching hour,” Reggie giggled, rubbing his hands together. A muffled ‘oomph’ rang out after Veronica elbowed him in the stomach, her usually highly arched eyebrows drawn low over her eyes.

“Are you sure about this?” she asked, turning her worried gaze to Betty, searching her face for signs of hesitation. “I mean, we literally just walked past so many signs saying to keep out. No one has been inside here since before Gabrielle Chanel started going by ‘Coco’. It’s just waiting to fall down,” she shivered, wrapping her Red Riding Hood’s cloak tightly around her exposed arms as the fall wind picked up ominously around them.

Betty ran a hand down the cheap costume satin of her Marie Antoinette outfit, suddenly feeling like the thin, red ribbon choker tied around her neck (her attempt at backhanded humour) was too tight, watching as she leaned back into Archie’s embrace while he rubbed some warmth into her skin. Maybe she should have worn something a little more risqué, Betty thought dejectedly, glimpsing the exposed thigh between Veronica’s short skirt and knee socks. Steeling her shoulders, she turned away from the group.

“It’s just a house,” she repeated, more to herself than her friends. Really, it was. “I’ll be in and out,” she reassured, flicking an unsteady smile over her shoulder.

“Ten minutes,” Cheryl reminded her, clearly enjoying this far too much.

“Yeah, I got it,” Betty bit out. The shadow of the house loomed before her as she sucked in one last deep breath, the full moon just emerging from behind dark wisps of late night clouds while she reached out and grasped the handle, pushing open the rotted wooden door with a creak.

Something dark and fast scuttled along the edge of what Betty assumed used to be the grand foyer, and she swallowed the bubble of a scream that threatened to burst free, well aware that she was still within earshot of the teens waiting for her re-emergence with anticipation. The door swung shut with a solid bang causing her to flinch in surprise, hairs on the back of her neck standing to attention. Betty conjured the page of the text book she’d read in her mind that explained why this reaction happened – something about the fight or flight response triggered by the rush of adrenaline in a fearful situation causing goose bumps, thus tightening the hair follicles and making the hairs stand on end. If she thought about that she didn’t have enough energy left to consider what might be casting the strange looking shadow on the wall to her left, while making her way towards the heart of the house.

A small yelp escaped her as a flurry of wings erupted above her head, coupled with the sharp snap of the bannister giving way under her sudden weight against it. Betty stumbled back, managing to keep herself upright just in time to watch an ornately carved section of the staircase creak and crash to the floor.

“Betty?” she heard Archie’s voice call out in concern. Her hand was on her chest, feeling the erratic thud of her heart beneath her palm.

“I’m fine!” she yelled back as loud as she dared. She couldn’t help but be overcome with the uneasy feeling that she was disturbing something here.

She reached the second story landing, eyes darting about in search of god knows what; she was sure she was just hoping not to see anything at all. It was clear by the mouldings this house was once a lavish structure, the height of upper-class society, now reduced to rot and rubble.

A soft laugh drifted by her ear and Betty whipped round, breath caught in her throat as her palms began to sweat. She was sure she’d heard it – it was so clear. A light breeze trailed its fingers over her shoulders, rustling her skirts as they went, carrying with it the distant sound of violins, glasses clinking, footsteps thudding. Betty spun around in continuous circles, head all of a suddenly becoming dizzy, as the noises overwhelmed her senses.

“Liza!” The voice was coated in sheer panic, growing in volume with each passing second. “Liza, my love, where are you?!” Betty turned, the air getting knocked out of her as she took in the sight that met her. A man was heading straight for her, his dark curls dishevelled, haunted eyes round with fear, his feet not touching the ground as he ran. Betty watched the moon disappear into the clouds, once more, out of the window behind his head, the flood of light pouring right through his sheer features.

It didn’t make sense, there was nothing here, there was nothing… She thundered down the hallway, the house’s foundations moaning underneath her, awakening from decade’s old slumber with each pound of her boots. The chime of a clock striking midnight reverberated through her skull and Betty cried out, falling back against a door that gave way beneath her.

She landed with a soft thud on a plush, paisley rug, the ringing in her ears abruptly ceasing. Her chest shuddered with each fear-filled breath, her eyes clenched tightly, too afraid to open them.

“What are you doing?” She knew that voice. He wasn’t real, he wasn’t real, he wasn’t real…

The warm weight of a cautious hand on her shoulder was very real.

Betty’s eyes flew open with a gasp. Her vision with filled with a lake of quivering blue, peering out from behind a simple, black mask, those curls partly obstructing the view. “Are you alright…”

“Liza?” Betty whispered, still coming down from whatever trip she’d just taken.

“Liza, are you alright?” he asked again, mistaking her questioning tone.

“No, that’s not…” she trailed off, lifting a shaking hand to her throbbing forehead, pinching her brows to try and quell the pain. She met his eyes again. Why was she trying to explain herself to a ghost? He wasn’t real anyway, none of this was. “Yeah, I think so,” she mumbled instead, finding herself flushing as he swiped a gentle thumb over her cheek.

“Then I’ll ask again, what are you doing?” he smirked, clearly trying to hide his laughter. Betty looked down at her sprawled out position on the carpet, her blush intensifying as she scrabbled to stand, his hand supporting under her elbow.

“I… tripped,” she supplied lamely, unable to meet his piercing eyes.

“Came here for some peace?” he guessed, raising a dark brow. “Me too. I’m not adept at dealing with the types that come to these kind of things. My father insists upon my attendance unfortunately,” he lamented, raking a hand through his hair in exasperation.

Betty watched him intently, waiting for him to disappear before her eyes. The man cleared his throat, straightening slightly. “My manners, forgive me. I’m Jughead Jones.”

“Jones?” she repeated, unable to keep the tone of incredulity from her voice.

“Yes,” Jughead replied, narrowing his eyes. “Are you sure you didn’t hit your head?” he asked slowly, reaching up as if to cup her cheek before aborting the movement. “How can you be at a ball without knowing the host?” That secret smile was once again playing about his lips.

Betty pulled her lower lip between her teeth, feeling warm all over. She peeked up at the dream man from beneath her lashes, hoping her silence would appease him. It took her a moment to take in her surroundings, having been so focused on Jughead. The room was filled with a soft, yellow candlelight from the lanterns scattered about. The carpets were clean and untorn, the wood freshly varnished, and the walls filled with shelves upon shelves of neatly filed books.

It wasn’t possible, but somehow she just knew… This was the same house she’d stepped foot into, but it wasn’t the same time. The grandfather clock in the corner of the room read just gone eleven.

“I should re-join the party before my mother sends out a search party. Would you… care to join me, Liza?” Jughead asked, a hint of bashfulness creeping into his request. Betty smiled, looping her hand through his crooked elbow.

“Wait, I don’t have a mask,” she fretted as they reached the top of the staircase. She glanced quickly towards the chunk that had given way beneath her body just moments before, finding it securely in place and perfectly polished.

“Here,” Jughead said, reaching for one of the decorative ones on the cabinet behind them. She stood as still as possible while he tied it in place, his fingertips brushing along the slope of her neck, raising goose bumps for the second time that night.

“Thank you.”

The sounds that filled the air were once again familiar as they descended into the ball below. Clinking glasses, cheerful chatter, the soothing lull of violins playing. Betty was in awe as she took it all in, still not quite sure this wasn’t a dream and her lifeless body was lying somewhere beneath collapsed shingles back in the broken version of this house. But, then again, she didn’t have as much stock in her imagination to believe that she could have made up something this beautiful. And the weight of Jughead’s hand on the small of her back felt so impossibly real.

“Forsythe, dear! Ethel’s saved you this dance!” A high-pitched voice called over the noise and Jughead groaned, ducking his head while simultaneously quickening their pace so they became lost in the crowd.

“Forsythe?” Betty giggled – her imagination definitely didn’t make that up. He shot her a disdainful glare as he peered over her shoulder nervously.

“Yet another family curse,” he murmured distractedly, turning back to her once he was seemingly satisfied that they’d evaded whoever was trying to accost him. “I didn’t get your last name,” he said with an adorable tilt of his head.

“Cooper,” Betty replied, regretting her response as soon as she saw the colour drain from his face. “What?” she asked, apprehension causing her skin to tingle.

“You’re a Cooper?” The way he emphasised her name suddenly made her feel as if it were the worst thing to be right now. “What in the hell are you doing here?! How– Do they know you’re here? Jesus, I hope my parents don’t…” Betty couldn’t help but be transfixed by the way he rolled his lower lip through his teeth in frustration, the colour flooding back in when he let it go with a barely audible pop.

“No, I– I’m just here,” she stammered, because it was the truth. Jughead blew an exasperated breath out of his nostrils, appraising her with caution. Eventually he sighed, shaking his head as a small chuckle fell from his lips. The sound was deep and throaty, and not entirely displeasing to the ear.

“Well, I have to admit you’re braver than I. I like it,” he grinned and Betty felt herself preening a little at the compliment. Jughead’s gaze was drawn to something over her shoulder again, smile vanishing. “Shit. Um… Liza, will you do me the honour of letting me have this dance?” he asked, holding out his hand. Betty took it before she could think. Liza was definitely braver.

“Who are you avoiding?” Betty questioned as they began to glide across the dancefloor. She wasn’t wholly sure what she was doing (she’d only taken ballet for a few years before her mother told her she was too big boned to continue with any amount of grace), but she found that if she didn’t focus too much on her feet it wasn’t so hard.

“My mother. She’s been trying to match me with every eligible woman here,” he grumbled, a look of genuine pain crossing his face. Betty pressed her lips together to avoid laughing at him.

“Sounds terrible,” she murmured with teasing sympathy.

“It is!” he insisted, flexing his fingers against the small of her waist. “Everyone here is intolerable. I think,” he added as an afterthought, his eyes swimming again. Betty, not for the first time, began to feel lightheaded.

She lost herself in the dance, in the feeling of his body pressed against hers. She forgot that this was a dream, or that it was impossible, or that she was probably bleeding out somewhere with no one around. She hoped her friends would find her before any permanent damage was done. Instead, she chose to focus on the way Jughead looked at her with a fire she’d only ever dreamed of being on the receiving end of before. Well, it made sense…

“Why did you come here, Liza?” Jughead asked some time later, as their second dance of the evening was drawing to a close. “It could end so badly, our families despise each other,” he whispered. Betty shrugged.

“I don’t know. Maybe it was fate,” she quipped jokingly. When he didn’t reply she looked up to find him pulling his mask off. He really was beautiful. All strong lines and soft-looking lips. Something in the back of her mind reminded her that dreams had no consequences.

“Fate rarely works in my favour,” he muttered, cupping the back of her neck. Betty’s tongue came out to wet her lips in anticipation, seconds before they were pressed against his.

In the darkened corner of the room his mouth moved against hers slowly, steadily, working up a rhythm that sucked all of the oxygen from Betty’s lungs. He groaned quietly when she let out a small whimper at the way his tongue ran over the inside of her lower lip. Jughead pulled back, resting his forehead against hers when the chime of the clock bellowed, trying to regain their breaths.

“Come with me,” he whispered, pulling her from her place against the wall. Betty followed willingly, weaving through the crowd while a storm of butterflies tried to escape the confines of her stomach.

She tripped through the door at the back of the ballroom, the weight of Jughead’s hand disappearing, the cold wind winding its way into her bones.

“Jughead?” she whispered into the night, tears ridiculously pooling along her waterline. The decomposing floorboards once against creaked beneath her feet.

“Betty! Oh my, god, Betty! We’ve been calling you for ages; we heard a crash and thought something awful had happened,” Veronica sighed, pulling her in for a brief, but tight, hug.

“Something awful did,” Betty whispered, too low to be heard.

“Look what we found though,” Archie cut in excitedly, thrusting a weathered piece of paper into her hand. Betty felt the ground fall away from beneath her feet as she stared down at the figures in the picture. “She looks so much like you, maybe you’re related, isn’t that awesome?” Archie guessed with a shrug.

Betty knew they were more than just related. The woman in the picture stood next to Jughead Jones, bouquet in hand, swathed in the delicate lace of a wedding dress. Around her neck was a thin line of ribbon, tied in exactly the same way as hers was now.

She was reeling. She knew this was her, she knew it must have been real. But now, more than anything, she knew that she must make it back to him.

[thesecretsantaofdoriangray]

Two Birds in Flight

My (@thisblogislit-erature) gift is for @queersandcommies! One of the things you wanted was “Something in London where Dorian is nice to Basil,” so I wrote this. I had a lot of fun writing it, and I hope you like it!

Word count: 2,007

Sunlight streamed into the studio through the open window, illuminating the pages of the, admittedly, rather dull novel that Dorian Gray was only pretending to be interested in while his friend worked on his newest masterpiece.

Dorian raised his head and watched as Basil Hallward delicately swept his brush across his canvas, an entire forest sprouting from the tip of the paintbrush. Despite only knowing him for a couple of weeks, Basil had begun to invite Dorian over nearly every day while he was painting, and even though Dorian had come to admire Basil’s skills immensely, he still had not grown completely comfortable with basically doing nothing in the studio while Basil worked. But as long as his company made him happy, Dorian did not mind too much.

Dorian stood, placing the book down, and crossed to the piano. He passed his hand over the smooth ivory keys, sat down, and began to sift through Basil’s collection of music, finally settling on a selection of Liszt’s compositions.

He started off quiet, so as not to startle Basil, watching to see if he had any reaction to the music. Basil’s concentration did not break from his work, as Dorian expected. He never understood why Basil was always so insistent on his presence while he was working, since he never paid attention to anything other than his art. Perhaps he really did enjoy Dorian’s company as much as he said he did. His adoration was still something Dorian had not quite gotten used to. His grandfather had been distant at best, cruel at worst, the Radleys, his current guardians, left him to his own devices, and everyone else he considered himself close to really did not know much about him besides any of the awful, twisted rumors about his mother that they might have heard and foolishly believed. Basil’s attention was unprecedented, but not entirely off-putting. Even, perhaps, a bit … pleasant. Yes, Dorian admitted to himself, he really did like Basil’s friendship towards him. It was definitely something he could get used to.

He played the final notes of Liszt’s piece, the soft ending chord fading as he reached to turn the page for the next song.

“That was beautiful, Dorian.”

Dorian turned and saw Basil looking at him, a smile on his face. “I am not used to music being played while I paint, but it was quite lovely. Almost as lovely as yourself.”

Dorian laughed, stood, and strode over to Basil. “Stop, that cannot possibly be true. Have you finished your picture yet? As much as you like my being here, I cannot entertain myself by reading dusty old novels and playing piano for hours at a time when I know there is someone perfectly capable of entertaining me himself right here in the room.” He sat down on the bench next to the artist.

Basil shook his head at Dorian. “It is the truth, Dorian, and you should know it.” He turned back to his picture, brushing the most delicate leaves onto the top of a tree. “And you know I have to get this painting finished by the end of the week. I have no time to entertain anyone, even you, despite how much I want to. I do want you here, however, because you … inspire me, shall I say. You give life to my art. Without you, my art would be nothing. I would be nothing. I apologize for boring you, but please know that I need you here, or else … I might as well be dead.”

Dorian hesitated, then laughed. “You are so dramatic Basil! Sometimes I think you would have suited the theatre better than painting. Then I remember that, in a way, are they not the same thing? Or, at the very least, closely connected?”

“How do you mean?” Basil asked, most of his focus still on the picture.

“Well, they are both art, despite being different kinds of art. Still, in painting you act out a life you want to live through a stagnant medium, and in acting you paint the life you are told to live through a wandering medium,” Dorian rambled, not fully aware of what he was saying, transfixed by the small strokes of the brush against the canvas.

Basil stopped and looked at Dorian, his usually warm copper eyes darkened with … was that suspicion?

“What?” Dorian asked, suddenly defensive, that horrible feeling he used to always get when his grandfather would accuse him of something he had nothing to do with creeping back into his chest. That tight, hot feeling of indignation mixed with shame.

“Nothing, it is just … that sounds so much like something another friend of mine would say,” Basil said, his voice hesitant.

“Oh? Who is this other friend of yours?”

Basil scoffed, turning his head back to the picture. “No one you should ever concern yourself with, Dorian. You are too good to associate with him.”

“And you are not?”

“I am used to his poisonous personality and theories. Someone like you, someone so pure, should not even be in the same room as him, let alone start a friendship. I am sorry I spoke of this friend, and I ask that you forget I ever so much as mentioned him. Can you do that for me? Please?”

Dorian, a bit disappointed at Basil’s insistency, but trusting nonetheless, replied, “Yes, yes, of course, if you are so adamant about it. My curiosity is piqued, however. If I ever do get the chance to meet this mysterious friend of yours, I am not sure if I would be able to turn down the opportunity.” At that, Basil furrowed his brow and tightened his lips. “Oh come now, dear Basil, I am not being serious. Since you don’t want me to meet him, I won’t.”

“Thank you.” Basil took his brush away from the picture and contemplated it for a moment. “What do you think of it so far?” he asked, swirling his brush in a glass of water and cleaning it off on a paint-stained cloth.

Dorian gazed at the painting. The limbs of the trees stretched out, tangling together and reaching towards the heavens. The verdant grass was swept to one side, pushed down by a breeze frozen forever in the paint. The sky was the color of a shining aquamarine, dotted with wisps of clouds. He pointed to the top right corner of the canvas.

“I think you could add something right here.”

Basil stared at the spot for a moment, then dipped his brush in the same dark brown he had used for the trees. In a couple of short, precise strokes, he had given life to two birds, flying above the treetops.

“Is that the right ‘something’?” he asked.

Dorian smiled. “It is the perfect something. Why only two, though?”

“Well,” Basil said, turning to meet Dorian’s clear azure eyes, the same color as the painting’s sky, “there are only two of us, are there not?”

Dorian’s face grew warm and he ducked his head, trying to hide his smile, his heart fluttering like the birds’ wings would have, if they had been real. “Is that what you think of us as? Two birds in flight?”

“Yes,” Basil nodded, “and I hope neither of us ever lands.”

~~~

Two weeks later, Dorian arrived outside of Basil’s door, a near daily tradition now. As he waited for Parker to let him in, he drummed his fingers on the package he held impatiently.

Ever since that day when Basil added the two birds to his painting, Dorian had been consumed with the desire to get the perfect gift for him. After all the kindness Basil had given him, he felt like he had to give some back in the slightest way. He had agonized for days over what would be the perfect item, and as soon as he had decided on it, he felt as if the day it was ready could not have come soon enough. He had scoured London for the best person to make it, and would not accept it until it was the perfect embodiment of what Basil’s kindness had felt like to him.

Parker opened the door and led Dorian to the studio, like usual. Once he entered, Basil stood up to greet him as he took off his hat, his gilded curls falling over his forehead.

“Good afternoon, Dorian,” Basil said with a smile. “Parker brought our drinks just before you arrived. Would you like to go out to the garden?”

“That would be wonderful,” Dorian replied, taking the drink Basil handed him.

Once outside, they sat on the bench on the opposite end of the garden from the giant flowering lilac bush, the heady scent drifting towards them on a soft breeze. After taking a sip of his drink, Basil commented, “I finally got someone to come down and hang up that landscape in my room. I am glad I did not give it to Agnew. I needed something on the wall in there. It is strange how, despite being an artist, I have very little art on the walls of my own home.”

“Why didn’t you give it to Agnew? You were offered a great sum of money for it.”

Basil shrugged. “The money is not what is most important to me anymore. I am paid now in memories, most of which contain you.” A red blush crept into Basil’s cheeks as Dorian tried to fight back his smile. “You were what made that painting good. I didn’t want to give it up for something I already have.” The two looked at each other and smiled. Basil’s eyes drifted down to the package sitting in Dorian’s lap. “May I ask what you have there?”

Dorian’s smile grew wider. “It is interesting that you brought up that painting, because … well, I had wanted to get you something … to thank you for being a wonderful friend … anyway, here you go.” He placed the package in Basil’s hands.

Basil slowly tore open the paper and slid out a leather-bound book. He turned it over and gasped lightly.

“Two birds in flight!” he exclaimed softly. He lifted the cover and flipped through. Each page was an empty white sheet, ready to be filled with drawings.

“Oh, Dorian, it is the most beautiful thing anyone has ever given me. Thank you so much,” Basil sighed, clasping the book to his chest and smiling at Dorian.

Dorian smiled back. “I am happy you like it. I just hope you know how much our friendship means to me.”

Basil’s smile softened, and he placed his hand on top of Dorian’s “I certainly hope it does. It means more to me than you will ever know.”

“What do you think will be the first thing you will draw in here?” Dorian asked, tracing the wing of one of the birds.

Basil’s eyes followed Dorian’s finger, then traveled up his arm and finally rested on his face, taking in each detail, as elegant as a Greek sculpture. His mouth curled in a small smile. “I think I have an idea.” He looked back down at the sketchbook. Images of Dorian dressed in the costumes of the ancients filled his mind, and he longed to spill them onto the pages. “Yes, I have some ideas. But for today, all I want to do is be with you.”

“I like that plan very much,” Dorian assented. Across the yard, the lilac bush rustled, and two birds burst from the top of it and soared into the sky. Dorian leapt up from the bench. “Just like us!” he cried, nearly spilling his drink in his excitement.

Basil laughed, clutching the book and watching Dorian’s sparkling eyes and flushed, happy countenance. Dorian turned to Basil, beaming at his friend’s joy. No, he thought, I don’t believe either of us will ever land.

[imagines-tmr]

imagine #15

character - Gally

words - 2062

warnings - n/a

description - You cherish the promise ring Gally made for you back in the Glade.

a/n – requested anonymously ; I changed the request slightly as I tend to go by book events, but I hope you still like it!

“What’s up, shank?”

You brushed off Gally’s attempt to start a conversation and slumped down beside him, resting your head on his shoulder. The two of you sat quietly like that for a while; you couldn’t find it in you to say anything and he didn’t push. Eventually, you took his hand in yours and kissed it.

“I’m so tired,” you said. “All the time. I feel like sleeping for a year.”

Gally scoffed. “Getting lazy, (Y/N)? Nick and Alby will shuck you up if they hear you spouting crap like that.” The thought of dealing with those two made your skin crawl. While you had no problem with Nick as a leader – he was generous and fair and way nicer to you than most – you still didn’t want to get on his bad side and have him think you weren’t doing your share in the Glade. And Alby didn’t tolerate nearly as much of your crap as Nick did, so to piss him off was even worse.

“It’s not like I’m not working,” you defended. There was a small pause. “It just feels so exhausting to do the same thing over and over again. The only memories I have are about the Glade. I don’t know anything about who I was before or what kind of stuff I was into, and it sucks.”

“Yeah, that’s how we all feel.”

“Dumbass, you don’t get it.” Sometimes, Gally irked you so much that it made you question why you were with him the first place. He had a one-track mind, which wasn’t that much of a surprise considering he was a Builder. Newt had warned you Builders weren’t exactly thinkers. “I hate it here. I’d give anything to get out. I’m sick and tired of waking up to these four giant walls every single day.”

Gally shook his head. “Nice to know you find being here with me so horrible.” He got up and walked back to the other Builders, his break clearly over. You hated it; he always did that whenever things got tough between you two. Walked away like it was unimportant. Like the problem would go away if he ignored it.

You absentmindedly played with the ring on your finger – and stopped when you realized what you’d been doing. Gally had made that ring for you – wooden with a thin band of white in the middle. You could even remember his words when he’d given it to you.

“When we get out someday,” he’d said, “I’ll put a real ring on your finger, diamonds and all.”

It sounded too good to be true, and it only made you feel worse about your situation. You loved Gally with all your heart, but the Glade didn’t have much of a life to offer the two of you. You wanted him to keep his promise more than anything, but with the way things were, that seemed damn near impossible.

“Thomas. Find… my mom. Tell her—”

But Chuck couldn’t finish. His eyes slid shut, every last wisp of life gone. He was dead – and Gally had killed him.

Gally, the boy you fell in love with in the Glade; the boy who took you under his wing when you showed up in the Box; the boy who wept at the thought of losing you when you and Thomas ran out into the Maze to save Alby and Minho; the boy who promised to put a real ring on your finger and start a life with you someday; the boy who was capable of cold-blooded murder.

Thomas snapped. Like a rabid dog, he jumped on Gally and knocked him to the ground. With every punch, your chest tightened until you could no longer breathe. You were beside them in an instant, screaming and begging, trying to pry Thomas off Gally, but it was like every ounce of strength in your body died with Chuck.

Killed by Gally.

It took both Minho and Newt to take Thomas away; they dragged him to the side where he flailed and kicked at the air desperately. You kneeled beside Gally and swallowed down the bile that had risen in your throat. His face was barely recognizable through all the blood, and his nose was beyond broken. His eyes – murky green – were so swollen that he could barely keep them open. You searched them for any sign of the affection they once held for you, and found nothing.

WICKED had broken Gally and Gally had broken you.

When the rescuers came, you let them take you. Not once did you look back on Gally. That part of you would stay behind.

“I’ve told you enough,” Gally said. “You want more, you come back. I’ll be here.”

His eyes stayed on yours a little longer than they should have, and then he and Thomas shook hands. It felt strange to see them working together instead of hating each other, but then again, everything felt strange to you in that small Denver apartment.

Finding out Gally was alive and willing to help was a big enough shock as it was. And when Brenda and Jorge told you about how he went crazy after what he’d done to Chuck, it was like someone had taken a hot knife and plunged it into your chest.

You’d left him. You’d left him when it mattered most, and he would never forgive you for it. You could only imagine how betrayed he must have felt after waking up in the infirmary and realizing that the person who was supposed to love him and stick by him had abandoned him like a stray dog.

And here you were, in the same room, only a few feet apart. It was a miracle you hadn’t started crying.

Everyone was getting ready to leave, promising that they’ll be back to discuss their situation more, when Gally finally spoke to you.

“Can I have a few minutes with you?” he said. “Alone?”

Brenda gave you a wary look and then pushed the others out of the apartment. “We’ll be downstairs,” she said. You knew Minho would say something smart about it as soon as they were outside. The door closed behind them as you and Gally were left alone.

The tension around the two of you was so thick that it was beginning to suffocate you. His eyes never left yours; they were darker than you remembered them to be, more worn out, like they’d seen things no one should ever see. In a way, it was probably true. No one could argue that Gally hadn’t suffered more than most.

He was first to break the silence.

“How’ve you been?” Gally asked. You couldn’t stop a laugh from escaping your mouth at how ridiculous his question was. Gally’s eyebrows knitted in confusion, almost offended by your reaction. “What?”

“Gally, after everything, do you really need to ask?”

He sighed, shoulders relaxing. “No, I guess not.” He hesitantly moved closer, as if afraid of what would happen if he came too near. “I really am sorry.”

“You’re not the one who should be apologizing,” you said. “I’m the one who should be groveling at your feet.”

“Don’t ever do that.”

“You know what I mean.”

Gally nodded. “Yeah, I do.” He shook his head and gave you a smile, though it didn’t seem to suit him anymore. “If you’re worried about me hating you, don’t be. You know I couldn’t even if I tried.”

You gritted your teeth, feeling your eyes sting painfully. You tried to swallow the knot in your throat but couldn’t.

“I don’t care if you hate me,” you told him. “I’ve stopped caring a long time ago.”

His gaze flickered from your face to your hand. “Then why are you still wearing that?”

Your ring. The one he’d made for you in the Glade. The one he’d promised to replace when the two of you got out. You’d forgotten about it over the past few weeks, and who could blame you with everything that had gone down in the Scorch? But you were suddenly very aware of how snug it felt on your finger and how it had always been there for you when Gally couldn’t be.

“I still love you, (Y/N).”

“Yeah? The feeling’s not mutual, Gally.”

You slammed the door behind you.

Paradise wasn’t really what you’d expected.

It took a while for things to gain back a sense of normalcy, and even when they did, you still couldn’t shake off the things that had happened to you. You’d have given anything to have your memories taken from you again; remembering what you’ve had to endure was the worst torture imaginable.

Some, like Minho, had no problem starting over. He’d quickly settled in as the leader of the group of Immunes that had made it, creating a building committee and everything else necessary to run your new community. You didn’t want anything to do with it. You were perfectly fine with sitting by the ocean all day and doing absolutely nothing. For days, that was all your schedule consisted of – long walks up and down the beach, followed by the occasional nap. You didn’t want to see anyone or talk to anyone, or even be near anyone.

Especially not Gally. Not after what you’d told him the last time you two had a one-on-one conversation.

Yet as you were waking up from one of your beach naps, you noticed him sitting beside you. He looked different; though he had the same scars and the same crooked nose, he seemed younger, like he’d gained back all the years that had been stolen from him by WICKED. The sea breeze blew back his dark hair, making him look almost handsome. And in a different time and place, he could have been.

“Sleep well?” he asked.

You brushed the sand out of your hair and shrugged. “Not really.”

He squared his shoulders. “Can we talk or do you want me to come back later?”

“No, we can talk.”

“Okay. Then I’ll say what I have to say and be done with it.” Gally paused as if collecting his thoughts. “I miss you. I miss you so much it shucking hurts. And I get that I’ve done things that have hurt you too.” He jerked his chin towards your hand. “But you wouldn’t still be wearing that ring if you didn’t give a damn about us.”

He was right. The ring had stayed on because it was the only little bit of hope you had left to cling to. The idea that one day, things would be good enough for the two of you to forgive each other and put the past behind you and start a new life together was the only thing that had kept you going.

“I’m sorry about what I said in Denver,” you told him. “I didn’t mean it.”

“I know.”

Gally cupped your cheeks and kissed you until you couldn’t breathe. Your whole world settled into place under his touch; there was no fiber of doubt in your body that this was where you belonged – with Gally.

Then, he took something shiny out of his pocket, and when you realized what it was, your eyes widened in surprise.

“Are you serious?”

Gally smiled, and this time it seemed to suit him. “I did promise you I’d get you the real thing one day, didn’t I?”

He was holding a ring, more beautiful than you’d ever seen – white gold with inset diamonds that sparkled brilliantly under the sun.

“How the hell did you even get this?” you asked incredulously.

“I nicked it back in Denver.”

There it was, the Gally you fell in love with. Everything the two of you had been through suddenly didn’t seem so bad anymore. You’d found each other every time, both in the Maze and out. If the suffering you’d gone through was the price you’d been required to pay for that, then it was worth it.

Gally slipped the ring on your finger, settling it right beside the wooden one he’d made for you, and then kissed the top of your hand. Neither of you said anything for a while, because there was nothing that could express how you felt. He’d handed you his heart and you’d taken it.

It was as simple as that.

[cruciferousjex]

CH 1 & 2 of Where She Sleeps because I feel like it

Tigress and Tai Lung find themselves stranded far from home, so they must learn to work together - before they tear each other apart. Takes place during the first movie. Adult! Content! Rated M!

ffn for the rest: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12440459/1/Where-She-Sleeps

Where She Sleeps

"It is not your destiny to defeat Tai Lung, it is his!"

-Master Shifu

Tigress regained movement in a sticker bush. Her muscles flickered to life twitch by twitch, until she felt her chest unlock and she drew breath through a freshly loosened jaw. She rolled over and hacked. She had landed face down, with her mouth open, so she'd spent the next three hours inhaling dust.

She rose and stumbled up the side of ledge where Tai Lung's strike sent her flying. At the last possible moment of the fight she'd lunged for him without an endgame in mind. In the three hours since she'd chastised herself harshly for this. Leaping without a plan directly into the strike range of a murderous giant was effectively suicide. Adrenaline and the desire to protect her friends caused her to act without thinking.

He tossed her above him. She flipped in the air and landed on his back, claws out. She sank them into his flesh and tore them out again, trying to do as much damage as possible before he murdered her. He roared - that sound, so close, shook her to the floor of her being. He tore her off him and jabbed his fingertip in her lower chest, hard. The next thing she knew she was flying frozen through the air, flung away from the ledge where her friends were surely dying.

She stumbled back to them. Her heart plunged into her stomach. She imagined having to tell Shifu the team was dead. The heartbreak in his eyes would destroy her - ah, but why worry about that when Tai Lung would kill her Master in the midst of destroying the Valley of Peace. If she didn't stop Tai Lung, instead of being destroyed by heartbreak in her Master's eyes she would be destroyed by having to bury him.

She stumbled faster towards her friends, her chest burning. Crane was a white pile of fluttering movement, his feathers jostled by the breeze - it was just the breeze, that was all, she was sure, but suddenly there was a larger movement and his wing lifted, then his head.

"Crane!" she tried to shout, but her lungs were full of dust. She sprinted and dropped to her knees beside him. "Are you all right?"

"I'll recover," he said. "They're alive."

"Are you sure?" Tigress checked on them. Frozen, but alive. "Do you know how to undo this?"

"I don't. Mantis might, but…" he gestured to Mantis, fraught with rictus.

"Can you fly?"

"Um. Yeah, nothing broken. Give me a minute." He gingerly put his hat back on.

"Take them home and warn Shifu. I'm going after Tai Lung."

He looked taken aback. "Tigress - "

"Crane, don't argue with me!" she snapped. "He must be stopped. Take them home."

She took off on all fours without looking back.

o

He was not hard to track, being so huge, but he was incredibly fast and had a three hour lead on her. She ran at speed, so if she did not find him soon she'd have to stop and rest for the night. No use finding him if she was too exhausted to fight him. As she ran she played endless scenarios in her head on how to exploit what few of his weakness Shifu had named.

Having finally fought him her terror for her home and her Master was magnified. She'd expected Tai Lung to be huge, fast, and strong, but she hadn't expected him to be that huge, that fast, that strong. When he leaned so casually on the broken bridge her insides went cold.

I cannot defeat him.

There was no use arguing the point. In the best of circumstances she might get close, but she was no match for his hitting power. One solid strike and the battle would turn from a real fight to a slow and sorry death spiral on her part. Her only chance for victory would be a surprise claw across the windpipe, if she could jump onto his back and execute the move with enough speed. It was a mercenary tactic with very little honor. She decided to be at peace with that.

After a long time she leapt up a tree to get a better view of the surrounds. Her brain saw him before she did, and she did a double take. Tai Lung, surveying the terrain on a nearby treetop of his own, looking as surprised as she felt. His surprise gave way to a smug grin. He gestured for her to follow and backflipped off the branch.

"Oh, you son of a -" Tigress said under her breath. Her heart pounded as she leapt to the ground.

He ran ahead of her - fast, so fast. He paused briefly before a cool white mist that obscured everything. He turned to glance at her and vanished into it.

That's right, run, Tigress thought, growling.

All sound stopped when she entered the mist. Her fur stood on end. The silence was so complete that her ears felt full, as they sometimes felt when she climbed a mountain. After another second sound returned to normal and she emerged into a green, rolling valley which she did not recognize, with lush fruiting trees and the beginnings of a beautiful sunset.

She scanned for Tai Lung. Nothing. Suddenly she was flying through the air. She crashed through a wooden fence and rolled into a vegetable garden. On the way her head hit a rock hard enough to stun her useless.

She hadn't even seen him. He snuck up on her before she'd gotten anywhere near him, much less his throat. That was a bad plan to follow through with considering her element of surprise was lost and the execution depended on it entirely. The day's exhaustion compromised her judgement, so now she would die in a bed of cabbage feeling stupid.

"How did you do it?" Tai Lung asked in a jarringly conversational tone. He leaned against a broken fence post and examined his claws.

"How did I do what?" Tigress muttered. There were two of him.

"How did you recover so quickly from my nerve attack? You should have been immobilized until Shifu released you."

She tried get into a defensive posture but her body refused to cooperate. A sharp ache cut through her skull and with it came a wave of nausea. She didn't reply.

He gave her a bored look.

"Perhaps it was my mistake. I'm out of practice. It's been twenty years, you see." He crouched down next to her, close enough for her to smell his fur, to look directly into his eyes. "Remind Shifu of that, will you? Twenty years." He gave a low, rumbling chuckle and lifted her chin with his index finger. "Have you even been alive that long, little thing?"

She knocked his hand away. "Don't toy with me," she spat. "Get it over with, you arrogant coward."

He growled. Rose his great paw to strike.

"Excuse me," came a pleasant voice.

Tigress and Tai Lung turned. The voice belonged to a tiny white lizard wearing a green and red checkered robe. It carried a small gold staff. The look in its gold eyes was both curious and disappointed.

"Who are you?" Tai Lung demanded.

"I am the owner of this vegetable patch you've wrecked," it said. "Couldn't have had your lover's spat elsewhere?"

Tai Lung chuckled. "Lover's spat? She's trying to kill - "

"Quiet," the lizard said softly and made a cutting gesture towards Tai Lung.

Tai Lung's voice stopped as though torn from his lungs. His hand rose gingerly to his throat.

"Thank you," the lizard said. "Now sit down, please. Not on a cabbage."

Tai Lung took two puppet-like steps away from a cabbage and fell soundly onto his behind, a look of bewildered horror on his face.

"What - what are you?" Tigress croaked at the creature, trying to back away.

The little lizard smiled as wisps of white light suddenly snaked around it, solidifying into the great golden crest and long tail of a dragon.

"I am a god," it said. "And you've destroyed my cabbages."

o

It dawned on Tigress that she might already be dead, seeing as what was happening here could not possibly be happening. Dragons did not exist. They could not drop a warrior like Tai Lung with a mere word, and they certainly did not grow cabbages or speak to her. Everything in her wanted to run, but her limbs were numb and heavy.

"These are my prize cabbages," the dragon said. "Thirteen hundred years I've been growing these! And now you've gone and torn them up. You, Spots, why are you picking on her?" He pointed at Tai Lung. "You ought to be nice to her, she's a nice girl.”

Tai Lung blinked, seemingly unsure if the dragon actually wanted an answer. He opened his mouth but his voice was still absent.

"You! Stripes!" it said, shaking its finger at Tigress. "Why do you chase him? Hm? You don't chase boys, they chase you. And what in the world are the two of you fighting about? This ridiculous - some sort of - scroll?" He cocked his head, as though listening through the ether for their history. After a moment he gave a dismissive wave of his hand. "Bunch of nonsense. You're willing to die for this? Mortals, always blithely throwing about that which should be most precious to them. I've never seen a sillier pair of cats," he tutted. "Now then."

It strolled between them, tapping its chin like a parent making a big show of deciding how to punish his naughty children. It considered them each in turn, and deeply. Tigress had the singular and violating sensation of her entire heart and mind being examined without her consent. She winced, her guts going cold.

Please don't hurt us, Tigress thought meekly.

The god glanced at her, hearing her thoughts. Smirked.

"Stop hurting each other," it commanded.

As it spoke bright white lines of energy crept out of their chests and crawled into it's upturned palm. As the energies reached it's hand they mingled together.

"You grow gardens, you do not destroy them. Understand?" It closed its palm and the glowing energy dissipated. It bent down and picked a dandelion. "Ugh, weeds. You do everything and they keep coming back. Now," it said to the two of them. "Be gone."

The god blew on the dandelion. Tigress felt a horrible tingling strangeness overcome her. Something hooked into her chest and yanked her into the wind, and into the black.

CH2

When she opened her eyes she lay on her back in a dense, snowy, and unfamiliar forest.

Wasn't it summer?

To her near left Tai Lung crouched. He looked up at the trees and gave a brief growl of disapproval. She shifted as she woke, crackling leaves under her. Tai Lung snarled and hit her with a nerve strike directly in the center of her chest. She seized up and froze.

Tai Lung followed suit.

He tipped over like a wooden doll, arm still extended, landing with a puff in the snow next to her. They stared at each other, physically unable to look away. His eyes were baffled and incredibly angry.

Tigress's mind raced. What happened? How did he freeze himself? Had the strike ricocheted somehow?

Did he know how to get out of this stasis? Surely he must, Shifu never taught anything less than complete technique. But how long would it take? And what would he do to her all alone in this forest? When he recovered he was sure to be very very upset. If she was lucky, he would just kill her quickly. If she wasn't her fate could be much, much worse.

After a few hours Tai Lung made a sound. It was deep, guttural, and distressing, especially coming from his frozen face. His chest stuttered. Movement rippled up his into his neck and muzzle. With an agonized groan he rolled his jaw open and slowly began to unclench himself. It looked painful, as though he was in a battle with his own musculature. He stopped to pant and curse a few times before finally regaining movement.

He shook it off then turned to look at her with a dark gaze that made her heart pound. He was deciding what to do with her. She wondered how many times she would be forced to ponder her fate today. He leaned into her with a low growl.

"Listen to me," he rumbled, close to her face. Tigress shuddered. "I'm going to release you now. Do not continue to be a pain. Are we clear?"

She could not speak or nod, but he accepted whatever was in her eyes. Quick as lightning he tapped a few points on her body. She came unclenched and rolled on her side, dry heaving into the snow.

"There's no way Shifu taught you nerve attacks, you're not nearly advanced enough," he said. "How did you reflect the strike back at me?"

"I didn't," Tigress croaked.

"You clearly did," Tai Lung said, growing impatient. "Tell me how!" he growled, grabbing her vest and baring his teeth in her face. Tigress gasped and smacked him hard across the mouth. To her confusion she felt a bright pain bloom in her jaw, tasted blood in her mouth.

Tai Lung roared and drew his arm back to strike her, his teeth stained red.

"Wait!" Tigress shouted, putting her hands up. He startled long enough for her to keep talking. "Just - just wait. Something's wrong."

He gave a brief questioning growl, arm still drawn back.

She gingerly extended her arm to him. "Scratch me."

"What?"

"Just do it."

Looking skeptical, he gave her a quick slice across the forearm. They both flinched. There were bright red cuts on both their arms.

"Wh- wh - what?" Tai Lung flustered. "What in the -?"

They looked at each other, equally baffled.

"What is this?" Tai Lung asked softly. "The work of that -that -"

"Dragon?"

"Dragon!" Tai Lung sputtered. "The - that wasn't -that couldn't have been - dragons aren't real!"

She grabbed at his wrist gauntlet. "Let me go."

"I told you not to be a pain," he snarled, giving her a hard jerk by her vest. "Are you ready to behave?"

She showed him the scratch on her forearm. "What choice do I have?"

He grunted, dropped her on the ground, and began to pace. They started at each other. When he looked at her she could see wheels turning in his head and she didn't like that.

"What do you suggest we do?" she asked.

"We? What's this 'we?' I'm returning to the Jade Palace to collect my scroll. You can feel free to do whatever it is you do."

She straightened. "What I do is stop you. You will not return to the Valley of Peace, Tai Lung."

Tai Lung rolled his eyes. "Do you have a death wish? Stop throwing yourself into my teeth!"

"Only now you cannot bite me."

Tai Lung's eyes widened.

"Anything you inflict on me will be inflicted on you. But I will not stop pursuing you."

"Fine! Chase me all you like! Who are you trying to impress?" he asked. His eyebrows raised. "No need to explain, I know all too well who you're trying to impress. I wonder what lies Shifu filled your head with, hm? The same lies he told me? Or did he cook up a new batch for my replacement?"

Tigress gave a low, warning growl.

"Oh what a sweet little rumble you make," he said, chuckling. "My dear, it's been a pleasure, but I must be on my way. Pursue me if you wish, but really, don't - I can tolerate a lot of pain and keep moving. Don't make me inflict it on the both of us. In the meantime - "

He poked her shoulders and breastbone. She immediately felt drippy and relaxed.

"That will slow both of us down," Tai Lung said, yawning. "But it will slow you down more. Happy hunting, little kitten."

Angered rippled through her. She hated being called kitten.

He gave a curt bow, then dashed off into the strange forest on all fours.

Tigress rose, wobbled a bit, and followed.

He was right. The strike did slow her down. She tried to keep up with him but she was soon overcome with the desire to find somewhere to curl up and nap. That compounded with the exhaustion she'd fairly earned meant Tai Lung gained ground and was quickly out of her sight. When she could run no more she climbed into a tree to rest. The stars burst into life above the canopy as she dusted snow off the thick branch she selected to sleep upon.

She got a look at her surroundings. There was not much to see. The forest gave way to a flat snowy plane, broken only by a road, forever off into the horizon. Far in the distance were flickering campfire lights. Nothing looked remotely family to her, not even the trees. She knew of no place anywhere near the Valley of Peace this unending and flat.

And snowing. In summer.

She moaned softly and rubbed her eyes. She was exhausted and this was more than she could properly consider. In the morning she would continue to pursue her insufferable quarry. He also had to rest and it was unlikely he was far. She put her head down on her arms to sleep.

When she woke it was still dark and she knew with every inch of her body that Tai Lung was two and a half miles directly southeast. She felt him the way one feels an oncoming storm. In a sort of fugue, without stopping to think about it, she leapt down from her branch and began walking towards him. Her footsteps were loud in the snow. He would hear her coming. But he already knew she was coming. She felt him know it. She felt him turn to come meet her.

She came to a clearing just as he stepped out of the opposite side. As soon as she saw him her fugue evaporated and she didn't remember making the conscious choice to seek him out. Yet here she was.

He was a hulking silhouette, lit only by moonlight and the glowing gold of his eyes. They stared one another down, but the intimidation was tinged with mutual bafflement. To her surprise Tai Lung spoke first.

"Why are you here?"

"Why are you?"

They were both silent for a long moment, Neither of them knew.

"Well," he said. "What now?"

"What?"

"What's your end game, dear?"

"My end game is stopping you."

"Yes you've told me," he said, rolling his eyes. "I'm curious how. You can't strike me without inflicting pain on yourself, and apparently you can't sneak up on me. So what's your plan?"

"I can kill you painlessly," Tigress said. "Silently."

"No you can't."

"How do you know?"

"Try," he replied darkly.

Tigress growled.

"Don't growl at me, you're the one making threats."

"Fine. Since you are so wise, what's your end game?"

"I'm going back to the Jade Palace for my scroll."

"It will never be your scroll."

"That remains to be seen," he said smoothly. "But it's certainly not yours. You're no Dragon Warrior."

Tigress took a sharp breath. Growled.

He chuckled. "I'm bored with growls. What else have you got?"

She clenched her fists and began to circle him. He watched her, amused.

"I see," he said. "Yes yes, get yourself a nice good view. I don't mind. I'll even help you." He lifted his arms slightly and turned for her, flicking his tail. "Any ideas?"

Tigress was quiet.

He smirked over his shoulder. "I'm waiting."

She did not answer. He faced her and looked her up and down.

"What's your name?" he asked. "Or shall I keep calling you little kitten?"

She turned on her heel and stalked off into the dark forest.

"Giving up already?" he called after her, laughing. "Very wise, little kitten! Very wise."

o

She kept walking for a long time. She eventually stopped at another sleeping tree but could never sleep for all her seething. Instead of climbing into it she punched the base of it, flipped and kicked at it, tore at the bark with her claws. Everything she would have liked to do to his stupid smug insufferable princely face.

I'll smack that underbite right back into place, Tigress thought, punching the tree. I'll be your dentist.

She thought suddenly of the panda.

She punched the tree hard.

He was pointing at me, Tigress broiled. Oogway was pointing at me. I know it. Shifu knows it.

She turned and kicked the tree with the back of her heel.

If I defeated Tai Lung I would PROVE it.

Swiped her claws across the trunk, digging deep trenches in the wood.

But instead I'm stuck out here - wherever THIS is -

She took a few steps back, panting, clenching her fists. She flew at the tree, extended her leg in midair -

With HIM!

She hit the tree. It wobbled for a moment, creaked, and with a great crash came down. Tai Lung probably heard it. Good! She hoped he heard it. Maybe if she kicked down a tree on top of his big flat head she could kill him that way.

Not knowing what else to do she started walking in the direction of the road she'd seen. Throughout the night she kept walking until she hit that same boundary of two and a half miles, then she suddenly knew Tai Lung's location and felt compelled to turn around and head back to him.

"Stupid dragon curse," Tigress muttered, and forced herself to stand still. She may not be able to move forward but she could wrest enough control of herself to not walk all the way back to him every time she pinged off his aura. Once she no longer felt him she rose to her feet and got on her way.

Eventually she hit a wall she could not pass. He must have stopped to rest. She turned in his direction. Perhaps she could creep back to him and deliver that painless silent death in his sleep?

She sighed. Her shoulders sagged. She simply did not have the energy, and truth be told she had no clue how she would do it.

"Goodnight, you dumb beast," she muttered, found a branch, and slept.

o

The next morning they both emerged from the forest onto the windy plain at the same time. He was perhaps a mile away, a hulking figure the size of her pinkie. He gradually grew larger as he came towards her.

"Good morning!" he called.

Tigress didn't return the greeting. She stood with her side to him, a defensive posture. He stopped about ten feet from her.

"Do you have any food?" he asked politely.

Tigress was taken aback. "Where would I be keeping food?"

Tai Lung shrugged. "You look like a girl who might have some cookies on her."

She blinked. "Are you…calling me fat?" she asked incredulously.

"No!" Tai Lung replied. He grinned toothily. "I'm calling you sweet."

She crossed her arms and furrowed her brow.

Tai Lung frowned.

"Now listen, there's some sort of walled fortress in that direction," he pointed towards the horizon. "It's a few hour's walk down the road. That's the best bet for food. I'm hungry, you're hungry, we're hungry, we'll both go there, we'll walk together. Come on," he said. He gestured for her to follow and stalked off.

"I'm not sure who you think you are barking orders at me," Tigress replied.

"I don't think I'm anyone!" he snapped. "Did you plan on heading somewhere else?" he asked, gesturing to the barren white plain. "We're going the same direction. We both need food and there is food!" He jabbed his hand at the horizon. "We can walk together or we can walk two and a half miles apart. Your choice."

"I'll take two and a half miles apart," Tigress growled. She turned to walk away from him.

"Oh, come on!" Tai Lung cried.

She kept walking.

"What are we going to do, walk at a distance all the way back to the Jade Palace?"

She shook her head. He started following her.

"I'm not asking much," he said. "Do you know what it's like to go twenty years without speaking to anyone?"

Tigress spun to face him. "If you are so concerned about speaking to people then perhaps you should have thought about that before you destroyed the Valley of Peace!" she snapped. "I have nothing to say to you! My only purpose is to stop you!"

"Stop me from what?"

"From taking the dragon scroll!" she shouted.

"Well I don't see any dragon scrolls out here, do you?" he shouted back.

They stared at one another. After a long moment Tigress sighed heavily and started walking towards the road.

"Fine!" she said. "Fine. Walk where you want. But I don't want to talk to you."

Tai Lung made an exasperated sound but remained quiet. They crunched through the snow.

"At least tell me your name."

"You made it a whole three minutes!"

"Well what am I supposed to call you?"

"Nothing! You aren't going to speak to me!"

Tai Lung raised his chin, crossed his arms and fluttered his eyelids, imitating her. "I'm not sure who you think you are barking orders at me," he said.

"Seriously?"

"That's how you sound."

"Yes. I understood what you were doing there."

"Oh, have a sense of humor!"

"Stop telling me not to have - or to have - or - just stop talking to me!" She stalked off ahead of him, frustrated at how easily he made her lose her composure.

"Goodness, what splendid company you are. Maybe it would be better if we did kill each other. Only we can't."

"Maybe I'll hire someone."

He gave her a withering look. "Oh. Oh right, little kitten. Who are you going to hire to kill me? Oogway? Here, Oogway. Here's ten gold and a picture of the guy."

"I - " Tigress began a retort, but found herself distracted by the image he painted of Oogway as a hitman. She cracked a tiny bit, gave the smallest breath of a laugh. His expression brightened upon seeing this.

She shook off her amusement. "Don't call me little kitten," she said.

"If you'd tell me your name - "

"Quiet!" she shouted, and sped up her pace. To her relief he respected her wishes and did not speak to her the rest of the morning, though she felt his eyes on her constantly. Finally they approached the fortress.

"The gates are open," Tai Lung remarked. "That's good. Probably a peaceful place."

Carriages and traders, most of which came from the opposite direction, entered and exited freely. Tigress and Tai Lung strolled in without incident, and with no one stopping them. The fortress walls encircled a long low hill, on which was a huge city of yurts. Yaks walked by with embroidered coats, along with goats and long haired sheep. A bear or two. They faced a long row of traders and cook-shops, beyond which more yurts rose up on the small hill, at the top of which was a huge tent bearing differently colored flags. The smells of foreign food and the sounds of a foreign language drifted in the air.

"This is Mongolia," Tai Lung said softly. "We're in Mongolia."

Tigress's heart, which until that moment was full of fury and hope, fizzled down into her stomach like a feather in a rainstorm.

"We're in Mongolia!" Tai Lung growled through clenched teeth. The fur on his shoulders bristled. Tigress could feel anger pouring off of him.

"Tai Lung," she said warningly.

"Do you know what that means?" he seethed at Tigress.

She put her hands up in a calming gesture. "Tai Lung."

"That means - that means - " he sputtered and panted. "That means it'll take years - YEARS! - to get back to the Valley of Peace!" he roared. Startled passerby scurried away. He heaved and snarled. His pupils went narrow and his claws came out. It was like seeing a bomb seconds before detonating. Tigress nearly took a step back. She began to grow afraid that, in his rage, he might destroy this yurt city the same way he destroyed the Valley of Peace.

"Tai Lung -"

He gave a snarling growl. Her eyes widened. She thought suddenly of Shifu.

"Tai Lung, FOCUS!" she barked.

"I am focused!" he barked back, but in turning his attention to her his emotional momentum broke. He began to stalk back and forth but at least he breathed, and some sort of selfhood returned to his eyes. He shook his head, growling softly.

"Listen. Tai Lung, listen." Tigress said. "Let's eat something."

"I don't want to eat something," he grumbled, sounding like a petulant child.

"I'm not happy about this either. But we both need food, and there is food," she said, jabbing her hand at the lane of cook-shops.

He closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. Then another.

"I don't have any money," he mumbled.

"What?"

"I don't have any money!"

"Fine!" Tigress said. "I do. Now come on," she said. She started towards a noodle stand and gestured for him to follow.

"If I ever find that dragon again I'll kill him," Tai Lung seethed.

"You can't kill a god," Tigress replied.

"I absolutely can kill a god. I am the Dragon Warrior."

Tigress rolled her eyes. "How about you kill a bowl of noodles first?"

"I will murder a bowl of noodles," he grumbled.

o

They ate in silence. Tigress finally began to process her shock. It might be years until she saw her Master or her friends again. She was stuck in Mongolia - Mongolia! - with a huge psychotic hellbeast she could neither kill, maim, nor abandon. Her fate suddenly seemed very grim indeed. She watched him as he ate, feeling surreal.

Tai Lung finished his noodles and stared down into his empty bowl.

"Thank you for the meal," he said, calmer now that he was fed. "I was very hungry."

She nodded. They sat in silence for a long time, watching the city's people go abut their daily business. Her mind raced.

"You know, some very strange things have happened in my life," Tai Lung said quietly. "But nothing like this."

She shook her head.

"Were you aware that there's a god living off the Thread of Hope?" he asked.

"A god that grows cabbages," Tigress replied. "What kind of god grows cabbages?"

"And he was a tiny god! When I think of a god, I think big. Imposing."

"He was imposing," Tigress said quietly.

They sat in silence for another while, watching families stroll by and traders do business.

"Shall l I be the bigger man, then?" Tai Lung finally asked.

"What?"

"We've broken bread together. I propose a truce."

She crossed her arms. "I don't know how much of a truce I can have with someone like you."

"Someone like me? You don't know a thing about me."

"I know enough."

"I'm sure you think you do. I'm sure Shifu told you plenty."

"Oh he did," Tigress lied.

"Whatever he said, I promise you it was only half the story."

"Your half of the story ends in mass murder and the destruction of my home," Tigress said. "Why would I want to hear it?"

He scowled at her. "Because in it are some things you might be interested to know about the man you call your Master."

"I know enough. I know you aren't fit to speak his name."

"I'll speak his name all I like. But that is beside the point."

"Then what's the point?"

"The point is, without a truce, we'll just end up going in a two and a half mile wide circle hoping the other gets caught in an avalanche or dies in battle," he said.

"An avalanche?" she asked. "On a plain?"

"I -" Tai Lung began. He shook his head. "No - I mean - you know what I mean."

"I really don't. How would that happen?"

"Stranger things have happened. Stranger things happened yesterday. Stranger things may very well continue to happen, and we are best off facing them together. We should at least attempt to be friendly."

"Oh I'm sure you'd like that," she replied. "I'm sure you'd like to be friendly with me after twenty years in prison."

He rolled his eyes. "Why do pretty women always think so highly of themselves? Don't be deluded, little kitten. I in no way desire this or you. This is a very unwanted setback and you are sour company for such a long journey. But we don't have to like each other. All we need to do is cooperate and we can both manage to get back to the Valley of Peace one day."

She bristled. "The Valley of Peace? Try Chorch-Gom."

Tai Lung shut his eyes and took a deep, steadying breath.

"If you can think of a better plan, given the current…" he gestured back and forth between them "…whatever this is, I'd like to hear it."

Tigress looked down at her empty bowl.

"No," she admitted softly. "I don't see any way around it."

"Then it's agreed." He extended his hand. "Truce."

She paused for a moment. She did not take his hand. Instead she saluted him, fist to palm, as they did at the Jade Palace. He accepted this and returned the salute.

"Thank you. Now will you please tell me your name?"

"My name is Tigress."

"Your given name, not your rank title."

She scowled. "Tigress is my given name."

"Your parents named you Tigress? How unoriginal."

"No, the matrons at Bao Gu named me Tigress."

"The orphanage?"

"Yes."

"Oh I see!" Tai Lung huffed. "So I'm off to prison and Shifu immediately starts trawling the Valley of Peace for his next Dragon Warrior orphan! Got right back to it, did he?"

"No. It didn't happen that way at all."

"Fine, then how did it happen?"

"None of your business!" she snapped.

He growled at her. She growled back. All the people in their immediate surrounds grew quiet and scampered away, giving a wide berth to the two clawed and fanged killing machines that may or may not be about to fight in their presence. The proprietor of the noodle stand scolded them loudly in Mongol. He pointed away from his store.

"We're off to a splendid start," Tai Lung muttered.

"We don't have to like each other, all we have to do is cooperate," Tigress said, standing. "Don't get used too used to me buying you lunch. I didn't bring enough money to cover being blasted into Mongolia by a dragon. We'll need a lot of supplies for a journey this long."

He looked skeptical. "You're suggesting we stay here? And … what? Find jobs? Should I ask the noodle man if he's hiring?"

"I'm not sure how else one gets money."

Tai Lung rolled his eyes. "In such circumstances as these, one doesn't bother with money. One silently takes what one needs in the night and leaves quickly."

Tigress looked at him with disgust. "You can't just resort to theft every time things don't go your way."

"Yes, in fact, I can," Tai Lung said. "No one here can stop me. Or you, for that matter."

"'Because they can't stop me' is not a good reason to rob innocent people."

"No, getting back home within our lifetimes is a good reason to rob innocent people. Do you have any idea how long it will take to earn the kind of money you're talking about?"

"Do you have a better suggestion?"

"Yes. I just made it."

"No. If you want to be a lazy coward go right ahead. I'll let the entire city know what you're up and then sit right down like an anchor. All you'll be able to do with the supplies you steal is orbit this place as a criminal. With that kind of visibility I'm certain a decent Mongolian archer can get an arrow through your eye eventually. So go ahead. Please. Rob the city and take yourself out for me. It would be the first good thing that's happened since we met."

Tai Lung stared at her. He slowly rose to his feet and came close to her, his eyes never leaving hers. When she was sure he would stop he kept walking, stepping directly into her space. He came close enough that she could hear him breathe, hear the air fill his massive chest. 

She could smell him. He smelled like wind and fur and something else. 

Something delicious.

This threw her entirely.

"What - what are you doing?" she demanded.

He reached behind her. She heard a piece of parchment ripped off a post. Tai Lung wordlessly held it up for her to see.

"What is it?" she asked, still startled by his scent, his closeness.

"It's a flyer for a prizefighting tournament," he said, pointing to a pair of figures depicted battling in a ring.

Tigress rolled her eyes. "You're just determined to do this by underhanded means, aren't you?"

"What's underhanded about it? It's an honest competition."

"A master of your level fighting total amateurs is not an honest competition. Oogway always held that it's an affront to the spirit of kung fu to fight for money at all."

"I could not care less for Oogway's opinion on the matter," he growled. "That turtle has been senile for at least three hundred years. You are being irrational. If you want to spend the next year cleaning yurts so we can afford to leave Mongolia, be my guest. In a few hours I'll have more money than we can carry out of here."

She crossed her arms. "Will you? Have you ever competed in a prizefighting tournament before?"

"Of course not! I was a good boy. No prizefights, no wine, no gambling, no girls. To earn the Dragon Scroll one must be utterly perfect. So I was utterly perfect."

"Except that one time."

He cast her a dark look. He leaned in close, close enough that with a mere jerk of his chin he could kiss her.

"You have a smart mouth," he said softly. "Did Shifu train you to have a smart mouth?"

She lifted her chin and met his eyes, defiant. She did not give a reply, though she knew she had a good one. Something about the combination of his eyes and closeness and scent thickened the air between them so much she could barely breathe.

His gaze fell to her mouth. Something flashed in his eyes.

Desire.

Her eyes widened. It was unmistakable and filled her with … something. Like fear but … not quite.

Tai Lung shut his eyes and shook his head. Straightened and stepped away.

"Do as you wish," he said. He shook the flyer at her, raised his eyebrows, and stalked off into the city.

"All right," Tigress replied absently, but he couldn't hear her. She couldn't quite think straight. It was though her head had floated away from her body. She shook the haze off, came back to herself. What strange thing overcame her when she saw the look of hunger in his eyes?

Tigress startled. That desire should have been an awful thing to see. She should have found it repellent. But she didn't.

She wanted to see it again.

o

CH 3

She put the notion firmly out of her mind and attempted to locate the tournament hall. It took her over an hour and a half to find. It was not, as she assumed, taking place at the huge tent in the center of the fortress. It seemed that was a residence, and an opulent one at that - at least what little she saw before the barely clad, bejeweled womanservant, a sleek black panther, sent her on her way.

Her near-nakedness startled Tigress. She rang with it as she scurried away down the lane. People in China were proper, they didn't just flash themselves about all … openly. She'd just seen more of that woman than she'd likely ever seen of anyone. How in the world did she move around in an outfit like that?

She's not there to fight, Tigress thought, but the thought came in Tai Lung's voice. She winced and kept moving....

more ch3: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12440459/3/Where-She-Sleeps

[feynites]

FEY that last abom au fic was so good it watered my crops and cleared my skin and paid my mortgage??? Could we plese see a followup where Fear/Uthvir react to Love/Thenvunin? What are Uthvir's feelings on Thenv becoming an abom? Also how does Thenv react to losing Screecher and does he remember what merged with him when he wakes up? :x

Thenvunin wakes up.

For the first few moments, he feels so strange that he’s notreally sure if he has, though. His eyes are open. He finds himself looking atan unfamiliar ceiling, caught up by a mess of uncertain feelings andsensations. His skin feels hot. His heart feels heavy. The nest…

What nest?

Bestest Nest.

Thenvunin blinks, and stills as he remembers. Light and painand the children-

He sits bolt upright, and feels something smack against hisback. There’s a clatter, a rush of dizzying sensation, but there are also twowarm bodies on the bed beside him. He knows them even before he looks. He canfeel them. Kel and Irenan. He can feel Uthvir, too, lying close, but there’smore. Lines that run, further and further away. For one panicked moment he isconvinced that he has more than two children, that he has missing children, and there is a horrible jumble of thoughts as hetries to sit up and tries to fly and thinks he needs to find them all and getthem safely squared away in…

In…

Best Nest.

…Which is, admittedly, absurd.

His heart trembles, and he looks down at himself.

Arms. Wings. Feathers. He remembers… something flew intohim? Something bright, and familiar, it flew to him and Kel was going to die,those people were going to hurt herand Irenan and there was nothing Thenvunin could do; until he could. I will help. That was what it had said,or… no, it hadn’t been words, exactly. Just. A sentiment. And he had known thefeeling of it so well that he had trusted it.

A spirit?

A spirit like… like a bird.

Like his bird.

Uthvir had always told him that Screecher was more than itseemed, but it takes a long moment for Thenvunin to actually process what healready knows has happened. He can feel it. The more he wakes up, the more hisown sense seems to return. But the rest of it is still there. He can feel thememories. Flying and roosting, catching little animals and alighting onto hisown shoulder. Seeing himself, in… a lot of places. More than his own mind canrecall.

Husband.

He’s Uthvir’shusband. But these aren’t Uthvir’s memories, and even as he thinks it, he feelsthe rush of… of feeling. For himself. A nebulous intensity that’s not easilydescribed with any better appellation. Husband, mate, partner, lifelongconnection. For birds it’s all the same category.  But he can hardly be his own husband, and he’s already married, and the voice inside him iswoven in with him like the threads of a scarf, now. It causes a moment ofintense internal disorientation, as feelings and senses clash, before thestrange distortion in his chest finally seems to relent.

He still has his partner, after all.

The thought draws him up from the deep self-absorption whichhad consumed him, and he realizes that the others have moved, now. That Kel andIrenan are sitting at the edge of the bed, as Uthvir looks at him intently.Their hand moves to his chin, and tilts it upwards. Makes him look into theireyes.

Oh, he loves theireyes. They are so warm and beautiful, that almost-red brown that looks coolwhen the light is cool, and fiery when the day is bright. Thenvunin gets lostin them for a moment. How many times has he looked into those eyes? More thanhe can recall, he knows. His own start to itch as he thinks of it. He lovesthem so much, and they came, they came for him and thechildren, because of course they did, they are Uthvir. Not even death hasstopped them from finding Thenvunin, again and again.

“Thenvunin?” they say. “How do you feel?”

He feels like he’s drowning and he’s not sure if it’s goodor bad.

His face falls, and something clatters and his wing smacksagainst the wall a little, a disorienting jolt even as he lurches forward andwraps his arms around them.

Uthvir.

“I love you so much,” he tells them.

They smell like sweat and their crumpled leather jacket,like exhaustion, though he’s not sure how he knows that. They stiffen insurprise, but he just pulls them closer, and buries his nose against theirtemple before the mattress shifts and another rush of feeling overcomes him.

Oh, the children!

Uthvir is alright. Tired, but alright. But what about thechildren? Kel! Kel’s fingers! And Irenan, Irenan was handcuffed, he wraps a wing around Uthvir, knocking them gentlyonto the bed as he gathers both of his children up. Irenan looks more uncertainthan Kel, who just stares at his wings and then crumples into his reaching arm.He counts her fingers, checking for injuries on her, and then on her brother,as Irenan finally relents and folds against the other side of his chest. His children.Oh, oh. His son, who used to be sosmall, with his nubby horns and chubby hands and big, watery eyes. Growing sobig and so strong, so brave and yet so insightful. More and more each year. Andhis daughter. His little Kel, with Uthvir’s eyes and her own warm, dark skin,her sweet smile and sunny eagerness to always be helping, always be doing,always be solving problems and seeking her own path.

He peppers kisses over the tops of their heads. Over hornsand messy hair, and that won’t do, no, his children are a mess, they need warm baths and fresh braids and clean pyjamas, softsheets and blankets and so does Uthvir, probably. He noses at the top of Irenan’shead before he realizes that he’s trying to use a beak he doesn’t have, and thehe lets out a frustrated huff, looking around for a brush, before he starts tofeel dizzy. The room tilts a little, and Uthvir closes an arm around his waist.

“Babe,” they say. “I need you to put your wings away. It’staking a lot out of you to keep them, and you don’t need them right now.”

Thenvunin frowns.

Of course he needs them, how else can he fly?

Uthvir lifts up a hand, and runs it carefully down themiddle of his back. Between taught muscles and sore joints, tingling a little.

“You’re not flying anywhere today,” they tell him. “You haveto rest.”

“But… I need a brush…” he murmurs. He needs to find a brush,so he can start straightening out his childlings. Children.

All disorderlyplumage. Uncomfortable. Poor hatchlings, poor Small Red. Must be fixed.

“I will find one,” Uthvir tells him. “Put your wings away,vhenan, and I’ll go get one.”

Something in Thenvunin settles, but he’s not sure how to doaway with his wings. He feels another lurching rush of confusion,disorientation, before Uthvir’s magic tingles over him again, and seems to tellhim, somehow, what the map of his back should really be like. It’s easier,then, to just follow the guide, and after several minutes his feathers recedeand his shape diminishes. Wings folding away, into wisps of magic; leavingbehind just his elf-shape.

It feels almost like the biggest sigh of his life. He sagsbackwards, leaning into Uthvir’s arms and pulling the children along with him.

“Deep breaths,” Uthvir tells him, and after a moment hemanages a few. Kel clings to his side, and Irenan pats his shoulder, staring athis face with worried eyes.

“We’re alright,” he says. “We’re alright.”

Need SpeckledHatchling. And Youngest. Need to find.

“Where are they?” Thenvunin murmurs.

“Shh,” Uthvir says. “We will go and find them. Just as soonas you get your strength back.”

The world is started to slip away again, but this exhaustionfeels different, now. More like regular quietness. The voice inside of him isgetting less persistent; less loud. He settles, bit by bit. Of course heshouldn’t be concerned with brushing hair right now, what was he thinking? It’senough that they’re safe and sound for the moment, that they’ve escaped thatawful place, and everyone is in one piece. There will be fears to assuage andnightmares to soothe, traumas to heal, and Thenvunin still doesn’t think he’sreally processing it all. But they are alive,Uthvir’s gotten them someplace safe.

They need to catch their breath.

“Who’s he talking about?” Irenan asks Uthvir.

“Eda, for one,” Uthvir says, and that sounds right. Yes.They need to find Eda, and… and someone else, although Thenvunin’s not quitesure. But he gets the impression of her. Another girl, fair-haired and with hisown eyes, and… more. There are more. There are holes, gaps, people missing froma tapestry that he feels oddly certain of, for all that he doesn’t think he couldever describe it.

But he missesthem, somehow.

Still, tiredness is winning. The light coming through thewindows is dim, and Uthvir’s eyes are sunken, and Kel seems like she’s fallingback asleep in his grasp. He lets Uthvir settle them back down, and Irenansquirms away just enough to get onto the opposite pillow of the bed.

“Are they coming back?” Kel asks, softly, and he feels asurge of protectiveness that almost has him shooting back upwards again.

“No,” Uthvir says, reaching over to brush her head. “Ikilled them all.”

Thenvunin thinks he should object to that kind of astatement, for some reason. But all he feelsis a rush of relief.

Kel cries, and he soothes her. And then Irenan starts tocry, too, trying to hide it in his pillow, but Uthvir moves around to him andpulls him to their own side. Comforting, both of them comforting, as Thenvunin’sheart alternately sinks and swells and he feels a fresh pang as he realizeswhere his wings have come from. Who else is missing, in the holes he canperceive.

Screecher.

His bird is here and not here, and the realization dredgesup another confused mess of emotions. Grief and attachment, reassurance andconfusion, until finally he just sags against the pillows, and does his best toget his arms around everyone; and finally falls asleep again.

[duskowithapen]

Day Eight: Eight

Fandom: How To Train Your Dragon

Pairings: Platonic Hiccup and Original Dragons, Hiccup and Toothless

Eight Times Hiccup Was Adopted

Read on AO3

Read on Fanfiction

Age One: Eye-Of-The-Storm the StormCutter

Eye-Of-The-Storm snuck through the human village during the dark of the moon. Her nest-brother (who now insisted on being referred to as Cloudjumper, rather than Leaping-Over-Dark-Clouds) had sounded so happy when speaking of the mate-of-his-heart that she needed to see this strange human for herself. This human female had a life-mate of her own and a hatchling, which were the only reasons Clever-Paws hadn’t left the humans to join their flock.

Her nest-brother could think too often with his heart, rather than his head, so Eye-Of-The-Storm took it upon herself to check on Clever-Paws in her own den. It was large and wooden, with a single open hole towards the top. She hrrred a little in thought. Smart humans, not leaving their den open to the elements and predators, but how were they to escape if something set the wood on fire? This seemed to be a common failing among the squishy two-legs.

She could smell Clever-Paws and CloudJumper, so Eye-Of-The-Storm carefully climbed the side of the den to the hole. She could be quite stealthy when she wanted to be, despite her size and four wings.

When she pushed her head against the hole, she was surprised. There was no Clever-Paws, just her tiny hatchling! She let out an involuntary coo at the sight of pudgy pale forepaws emerging from a squirming bundle and the rounded softness of his head. While much different from a dragon hatchling, which was sturdier and capable of independent movement from the moment of birth, the human hatchling was similarly adorable. If not more vulnerable.

She cooed again, for the pleasure of it, and was shocked when the hatchling cooed back. He had rolled over in the padded nest, and bright green eyes were staring at her over a gummy smile (a smile being something humans did to show happiness). Eye-Of-The-Storm tilted her head to one side. The hatchling gurgled and waved a paw. Clear fluid dribbled from his mouth.

The den-hole wasn’t very big, but there was enough space for Eye-Of-The-Storm to slide her head and neck in, if she tucked in her wings and twisted her head enough to fit in her crest. This brought her close enough to the hatchling to touch. Despite seeing his paw coming, the StormCutter couldn’t help but flinch at the soft, slightly damp contact against her crest. She had never been touched by a human before. The hatchling gurgled again and came back with both paws. She shifted a little and nudged the hatchling in the stomach with as much gentleness as she could muster. This brought out the loudest gurgles yet. The scent of his happiness permeated the air.

Sniffing at the furs and nudging them away, Eye-Of-The-Storm couldn’t find her nest-brother’s scent.

He hasn’t claimed you as kin yet? She asked the hatchling incredulously. The tiny being cooed and blew a bubble.

Eye-Of-The-Storm shook her crest slowly. Too much heart, not enough head, she grumbled wearily. That was just like CloudJumper. He was probably too smitten with his mate-of-his-heart to consider what such a claiming meant to Clever-Hands hatchling. So she’d just do it for him.

Her tongue rasped roughly over the hatchling’s shoulder. A thin coat of saliva and more importantly, her scent, covered the soft skin. There, she hummed, you’re a part of the flock now, hatchling. I’ll make sure my nest-brother doesn’t infect you with his stupidity – you can be fast and smart like me.

The hatchling cooed like it understood her, shoved both hands into his mouth, and pulled them out to drag along her crest. She blinked. Are you claiming me too, little one? Wet hands moved underneath one of her eyes and patted.

Eye-Of-The-Storm huffed a light, warm breath over the hatchling, who sneeze once before settling. Tiny, delicate eyelids blinked closed over those bright eyes. His hands still pressed against her scales, and she was loathe to move and disturb the hatchling. But the sun would be rising soon, and she needed to be out of the human village by then.

Shifting backwards a little, Eye-Of-The-Storm grasped the furs and dragged them over the tiny creature. On her way out, she hrrred another warm breath over the hatchling.

There. That will keep him warm.

(She regretted, years afterwards, not going back to the human-village after her nest-brother took the hatchling’s dam away. The hatchling deserved better than a flock-claim so quickly ignored)

Age Three: Mist-At-Dusk the RainCutter

Mist-At-Dusk was enjoying the storm. Far above and away he could hear a flock of Skrill’s roaring, booming, letting their inner lightning mingle with the storm. He was perfectly content chasing raindrops, shattering them and admiring the shine, slicing them to test the edges of his wings.

Of course, that’s when he heard it.

Something was crying in the rain.

It was coming from deeper in the forest, near a basin he could remember finding during the last storm. It was beautiful, but too close to the human village to visit regularly. Normally he wouldn’t be able to tear himself away from playing in the rain, but something in that cry cut something in his chest like another RainCutter had sliced past without knowing he was in the way. It wasn’t until he got closer that he realised just what was wrong with that cry.

It wasn’t of a lost hatchling, crying for its mother. It wasn’t scared. It was lonely, and hurt, and sad. It sounded like his Dam, after his nest-sister got taken by Red-Queen-Alpha – like the dragon she was crying for was never going to come back.

Mist-At-Dusk flapped harder, sending raindrops scattering in a way that would normally amuse him. Now? Now he was scared.

He pulled to a stop at the edge of the basin and stared around wildly. Where was the other dragon? Because it had to be a dragon. No other creature could sound so – sound so mournful. But there was no flash of scales, no wisp of fire or grind of talons into rock. Just a rippling lake, and a wet, shuddering form crouched by the edge of it. Mist-At-Dusk dropped down onto a rock outcrop and stared.

A – A hatchling?! A human hatchling?!  He growled. Another glance around saw no other living creature. Where is its dam? Its sire? Mist-At-Dusk didn’t care very much for humans – too sharp, too angry, too greedy – but hatchlings of any kind are to be treasured. He had only just left hatchling-hood behind himself. He couldn’t image his dam leaving him out alone, especially not if he were crying like that.

And the hatchling was still crying. It – he, he realised after a moment of scenting the air – turned his pale face towards the storm and cried out once more. He was tiny and shuddering.

Mist-At-Dusk made up his mind. He leapt off the rock and swung towards the lake. When he dipped and twisted, the wave he created in the water was magnificent. The hatchling’s cries stopped. He swung around again and sliced at some of the larger raindrops. They scattered beautifully around his blue-speckled scales, and the deep green underneath looked bright compared to the dark clouds around him. Glancing at the hatchling – who was standing now, with jaw wide open -- Mist-At-Dusk flew high above the lake before curling his wings around himself as he dived. Spinning rapidly made the splash from his entry even more dramatic, water flying out of the lake in a large spiral. It looked even better from above, but the hatchling seemed to like it if his cries – happy, excited – were anything to go by.

He huffed as he swam to the lakes edge. He still wasn’t strong enough to take off directly from the water like the larger RainCutters. The hatchling stumbled over his feet when Mist-At-Dusk came closer.

Did you like it? He hrrred.

Much to his surprise, the hatchling waved his forepaws around as he jumped up and down. He ran closer to Mist-At-Dusk, making him take a step back, before swinging around with both forepaws outstretched. He’s copying me, he realised after a moment, as skinny forepaws made sparkles out of raindrops.

The hatchling was acting like a RainCutter, using his ‘wings’ to slash at the water near the lake’s edge and send it into the air in mini arcs.

Huffing, Mist-At-Dusk decided to show the hatchling how it was really done.

Together, dragon and human splashed at the water, slashed at raindrops, stomped in the mud, and just generally made a mess of themselves and each other.

Once the hatchling started to shiver, Mist-At-Dusk called a stop to their game. He ducked under the water for a moment to rinse off the last of the grim before carefully herding the human towards a cave.

You need to warm up, he hrrred. Little humans shouldn’t get so cold.

After everything they just did, the only thing that made the human smell of fear was when Mist-At-Dusk tried to nudge at his side. Then he smelt pain and growled. Why do you hurt, hatchling? He nudged at the hatchling’s forepaws, which stopped that horrible fear smell, before hooking the damp furs with his nose-spike and tearing. As the hatchling grabbed the furs, he was able to pull back far enough to see it. A dark mark, similar in colour to Mist-At-Dusk’s scales, curved over his shoulder. It looked like a human paw.

He growled again. No one hurts a hatchling.

Said hatchling cooed shakily and pet gently at his nose spike.

Silly hatchling, he hrrred, shaking his head slowly. I’m not angry at you.

Mist-At-Dusk curled up around the hatchling, resting his head beside the shivering body and drawing his wing over them both. This close, he could smell the fading claim of a StormCutter. Interesting.

We should play in the rain again, he cooed lowly. Mist-At-Dusk was feeling warm and content now. Maybe I can show you what the rain clouds look like when you slice them really, really quickly…

Age Five: Tides-At-Waning-Moon the ThunderDrum

The ThunderDrum, who called herself Tides-At-Waning-Moon, was not expecting to come across a human hatchling this far away from human settlements. After all, how can any human slip through the cracks that connect this cave with the island above, or swim up the deep underwater passage?

But nevertheless, a hatchling was making curious noises in the shallows of the cave, tiny despite the fur pelts wrapped around him.

Tides-At-Waning-Moon tilted her head. She was well hidden in the shadows, mouth closed and flattening her head till only her eyes and head-spikes were visible above the water. He didn’t seem scared. Was his sire around? Sniffing the air, she could detect fish (both fresh and dead), sea week, tepid water, the unique scent of the hatchling (like embers and molten metal, ashes and earth), RainCutter, wet fur – wait, another dragon?

Being a water dragon, Tides-At-Waning-Moon wasn’t as adept as her brethren in deciphering the nuances of scents. She never really had to. But she could distinctly smell a RainCutter – over the scent of the hatchling’s own sire, which meant that he had to be spending quite some time with another dragon.

This realisation shadowed any wariness the ThunderDrum might have (a human is still a human, no matter how tiny) and she moved closer to the creature poking at the water’s edge. The cave wasn’t very large, made up predominately of the deep pool leading to the underwater passage. Large, skinny rocks hung down from the roof and poked up from the ground, like her teeth. In between some of the roof-rocks were cracks – too small for anything substantial to pass through – that steadily dripped water. They connected to a rocky bay some distance from the human settlement. The hatchling must have fallen from the largest crack, barely a Terror’s wingspan wide at its largest point.

He was trying to climb back up to it.

The hatchling was huffing as he clawed his way up the nearest rock. It was slow progress, given his lack of size and strength, but the hatchling managed to get halfway up (a considerable distance) before losing his grip and sliding. The sharp tang of human-blood spread through the cave as he hit the ground with a ringing cry.

That cry called to something inside the ThunderDrum. She was reminded of her own hatchlings – gone for many moons now, fully grown and searching for their own hunting grounds – and the sounds they would make after losing a fight with other dragons or mistaking a predator for prey. It was hurt and scared and I’m alone. It was a sound the hatchling was trying to stifle, hiding his mouth behind his paws.

Salt water, different from that which lay around Tides-At-Waning-Moon, wafted from the hatchling. His cries had stopped, but his body still shuddered.

She cooed. Where’s your sire, hatchling? Where’s your dam?

Shockingly, the hatchling swung around immediately, bright eyes meeting hers despite the shadows. He let out another noise – shock surprise curious – and started to crawl to the water’s edge.

And edge which had gotten a lot closer to him. The tide was rising.

The hatchling cooed in her direction, without any kind of message behind it. When she swam closer, he gurgled in glee. Lifting her head fully out of the water, almost beaching herself in the shallows, Tides-At-Waning-Moon was surprised to not smell any fear. Instead, the hatchling looked excited.

He began to babble in human words. When that didn’t garner any reaction from her, he switched to short, melodic hrrrs. Pretty, he said haltingly. Big strong, water glinting off scales, pretty.

Tides-At-Waning-Moon couldn’t help but preen, twisting her body to better show off her deep blue scales and spotless spikes. He’d definitely been spending time with a RainCutter – those speckled dragons didn’t miss a chance to admire water droplets and had dozens of compliments regarding such things. The hatchling reached out with a bloodied paw to touch her nose spike and despite herself, she snarled.

The hatchling immediately threw himself backwards and curled up into a ball, paws cradling his head. The stench of his fear made her nose itch.

She sneezed.

The hatchling made a chuffing sound, the bitter smell cut through with a happier scent. He glanced out of the protective circle of his forepaws, mouth twitching.

You liked that? Tides-At-Waning-Moon cooed. She sniffed, hard, and forced another sneeze. The hatchling responded with another chuff and she couldn’t help but melt. You are quite adorable, she told the hatchling, I’m not going to hurt something so precious.

He must have understood some of what she said, because the hatchling slowly uncurled his forepaws and came closer, back paws disappearing into the water. He didn’t reach out again.

Tides-At-Waning-Moon huffed and scrambled at the soft sand and rock that made up the caves base. This pushed her far enough into the shallows to brush against the hatchling’s middle with her nose spike. He chuffed again before petting the ThunderDrum with the soft skin on the back of his paws, curling the longer appendages protectively over the bloody insides. She cooed sadly. Unlike other dragons, ThunderDrums didn’t have tongues due to their expansive jaws and ability to release waves of sound. She would have liked to soothe his wounds.

They stayed like that for some time, Tides-At-Waning-Moon closing her eyes and hrrring at the gentle sensation. It was interrupted by a warbling cry – a RainCutter was trying to force his head through the roof-crack.

Little-Ember! He cried. Are you here tiny one? Little-Ember! The RainCutter was barely out of hatchling-hood himself, Tides-At-Waning-Moon noticed as he shoved his snout into the crack. There was still evidence of an egg-beak, if mostly gone, and a patch of soft-scales.

Mist-At-Dusk! The hatchling cried in return. Here! Safe! He scrambled out of the water – which had shifted to his middle without her noticing – and ran closer to the crack. The sounds of crumbing rock stopped as the hatchling came into the RainCutter’s view.

Can’t leave you along for a moment, troublesome Little-Ember! The fellow dragon grumbled. Wander into a Nadder’s nest, and then who’ll play in the rain with me?

Tides-At-Waning-Moon shivered a little in amusement. All hatchlings find trouble, she cooed, they are attracted to it like Terrible Terrors to shiny lights.

An acrid, fearful scent wafted from the crack. Who has Little-Ember! The RainCutter growled. Give me back the tiny one or I’ll cut you! I’ll slice you and cut you and slash you and –

Her growl was louder, especially given the echo of the cave. You shall do no such thing hatchling! Tides-At-Waning-Moon hauled herself closer to the crack, stubby legs scrabbling at the ground. Calm yourself!

The hatchling pulled away from the crack to pet at the underside of her jaw. At the same time, he started cooing soothingly – calm calm, raindrops on lake, no fighting, all safe here, calm calm.

The RainCutter hrrred back. Silly tiny one – get out of the way!

Tides-At-Waning-Moon was amused to see the hatchling growl in response – it wasn’t very intimidating, but quite adorable. No no no. Calm down. No fighting.

No fighting, she cooed soothingly. Brushing past the hatchling, Tides-At-Waning-Moon looked up at the RainCutter. From here, she could see the colours now – bright blue nose spike, fading into deep green along the snout and jaw. When the other dragon pulled back a little, she saw its eyes.

A ThunderDrum? He cooed questioningly. Lucky Little-Ember wasn’t eaten!

Hatchling is too tiny, Tides-At-Waning-Moon grumbled back. Lots of bones, not enough meat. And too adorable, she added as an afterthought.

The RainCutter released a gravelly chortle in agreement.

The hatchling snarled. Not tiny!

Two sets of eyes met and rolled in unison. Hatchlings.

The comforting sensation of water swirling around her paws drew her attention back to the rising tide. The hatchling shivered beside her, where the water had risen to his waist once more. They had to get him out.

The hatchling must have noticed the same thing, because he wrapped his forepaws around her nose spike, pressing his face fearlessly against her teeth. Thank you, he hrrred haltingly. Gratitude swirled with sadness, muddying the clear notes of embers, ashes and heated metal in his scent.

I shall see you again, hatchling, Tides-At-Waning-Moon hummed in the depths of her throat. She wasn’t going to leave a clearly accident-prone hatchling to the care of another hatchling.

Be ready to catch, she growled up to the RainCutter, who nodded with a confused hum.

The yelp the hatchling made as she caught his furs in her teeth was sharp. His squeal as she tossed him into the air was excited. It banished the lingering tones of sadness. The RainCutter caught him with his nose spike, hooding the furs neatly and drawing the hatchling out of sight.

After a moment, his pale face appeared. Play again soon!

Tides-At-Waning-Moon huffed. Play again soon. That hatchling really was quite adorable, she mused as the rising tide prompted a return under the water.

Age Eight: Sparks-In-Forest the Terrible Terror

Sparks-In-Forest grumbled as he struggled against the net. No salty mutton-meat is worth this, he snarled. Silly Flash-In-Rocks can find her own treat next time, stupid nest-sister spoiling the hatchlings, too old to be sneaking into human dens, don’t even like mutton –

Something slipped through the den-door.

The Terror froze as a hatchling – tiny, twiggy, frail, unlike all the other human hatchlings – leant against the den-door. He was panting, great rushing breaths, as someone else banged on the wood. Sniffing the air, Sparks-In-Forest could smell other hatchlings. He could also smell RainCutter and ThunderDrum, which was strange.

The hatchling sighed when the noise stopped. He walked through the messy human den with ease despite the lack of light (all the den-openings were covered) and sat on the floor beside Sparks-In-Forest.

When their eyes met, he growled. Just because he was trapped in the tiniest, finest, best-made net he’d ever seen, didn’t mean he’d hesitate to claw someone’s eyes out. Even if it was a hatchling. But the hatchling didn’t touch, just blinked.

Stuck? He hrrred.

Sparks-In-Forest didn’t think, given his age, that anything could ever surprise him again. Wrong.

Stuck need help? The hatchling hrrred haltingly. His body wasn’t built for such noises.

The offer of help stuck in his scales. No, he growled, don’t need help from a hatchling like you!

There was some confusion muddying the hatchling’s scent, but he nodded and turned away, grabbing more string and a skinny piece of wood. AS Sparks-In-Forest watched and struggled, the hatchling made more of the same net he was caught in. Skinny soft-not-claws twisted and tied the string in complicated patterns. Fishing, the hatchling cooed, for sire water-den, not dragon-catch.

Sparks-In-Forest had to give it to whoever had been teaching the tiny thing – he was very fluent in their language, for a human.

Impressive work for a hatchling, he grumbled, caught old-long-tooth like me.

The hatchling shook his head in distress. Not to dragon-catch, never never never, he cooed in increasing pitch. Not gonna, not hurt dragon-kin-flock. He took a deep breath and released it, like he was trying to breath flame like the Nightmares. Fishing. Fishing only, the hatchling growled decisively.

Sparks-In-Forest wriggled a little in his confinement, snarling a little as one of the loops caught on his horn as he tugged. The hatchling turned at the sound. Okay long-tooth?

Not long-tooth, he growled at the hatchling’s audacity. Sparks-In-Forest, hatchling.

Little-Ember, the human snarled back. Not hatchling.

The Terror huffed. That’s a hatchling name, hatchling. But appropriate – this den must belong to Little-Ember, given that the smell of melting metal had permanently imprinted onto his scent, alongside the ashes and embers.

The hatchling growled, a wordless expression of distaste, before glancing over. Trouble Sparks-In-Forest? Just little help, little little.

He looked, as best as he could, at his own body. His bright yellow wings were pinned awkwardly to his sides, the soft webbing chaffing between coarse string and bright red scales. There was a definite, possibly permanent, kink in his tail from how it had become twisted up on itself. His head was tilted to one side due to the loop of string around one horn, and one forepaw was tangled up beside the other. His back legs were free, but of no help. He stared mournfully at the shiny metal hooks (dull, thankfully) that started this whole mess. He hadn’t been a hatchling for almost sixty winters! He shouldn’t still be falling for shiny objects!

Sparks-In-Forest grumbled for a moment before agreeing. Little-Ember made the net. Little-Ember fix the net.

The pleased hum the hatchling made helped him feel a little less humiliated. His paws were gentle as he untwisted the string around his tail. The stroking he gave the scales afterwards was nice too. The rest of the net was removed like that – piece by piece, with a soothing rub to each caught section. By the end, Sparks-In-Forest was a limp pool of red and yellow Terror under the hatchling’s hands. He didn’t even notice when he was moved to the softer surface of the hatchling’s back paws.

Then there was stomping at the den-entrance, and a sudden intrusion of sunlight. Little-Ember hissed, tucked Sparks-In-Forest underneath his furs and turned around. Human-words were shared – he didn’t understand the language very well, but he understood ‘dragon’ and ‘Terror’. He let out a low grumble, hidden easily by the louder human. Someone must have seen him enter the den.

When the hatchling moved, paw coming up to cradle him, Sparks-In-Forest got a glimpse of the other human. He was large, with long pale-yellow fur coming from his head and above his mouth. A strange piece of wood and metal replaced one of his forepaws, and glancing down, he saw a similar object on his opposite back paw. The human waved his real paw and walked away with the den-door closing behind him. There was darkness.

Little-Ember sighed. Close, he hrrred, metal-rust-Gobber saw you, Alpha-sire-scary laughed.

Sparks-In-Forest hummed a little. Metal-rust-Gobber makes tasty salty-mutton-meat, he hrred after a moment. Nest-sister-Flash-In-Rocks wanted some.

The hatchling laughed and sat the Terror beside a cold ember-pot. “Jerky,” he said in the human tongue. Get some – work first. Little-Ember ran back and forth in the den, filling up the ember-pot with wood after setting aside the net pieces. Big pieces of metal-rock were laid out beside it, along with moulded-metal things.

Seeing his interest, the hatchling began to name them in the human tongue. “Tongs,” he said, pointing to a joined pair of silvery sticks. “Hammer” was a lump of metal attached to a wooden stick. “Bellows” was a strange wood and leather thing that almost looked like his wings, with leather webbing and sticks going up and down. He sneezed when the hatchling pointed it at him and pressed down – air rushed out of the ‘bellows’ and almost pushed him into the ember-pot!

Fire in pot now, Little-Ember huffed collecting everything. He started to fiddle with some sticks when Sparks-In-Forest blew a fireball at the dry-kindling-wood in the bottom of the pot. After a moment, there was a fire sparkling and crackling.

The hatchling released a happy coo-whistle. Gratitude flooded his scent as he rubbed the nice spot between his horns. Sparks-In-Forest hrrred in contentment. A long-tooth could get used to this.

And the hatchling wasn’t too bad either.

Age Ten: Silver-In-The-Trees the RazorWhip

Silver-In-The-Trees had seen the RainCutter before. They had played in the rain once, many winters ago, when they were both hatchlings and clumsy.

But she had never seen him with a hatchling. And not even a normal hatching, but a human hatchling.

She stared from her perch, concealed behind leafy branches. Mist-At-Dusk was darting around tree trunks, staying a whole wingspan away from the ground, as a hatchling chased him. The reason for the chase? Mist-At-Dusk was carrying a human weapon in one forepaw. He would cut just close enough for the hatchling to touch, before swerving around a rock or tree or branch and getting away. Despite not being able to catch up, the hatchling looked like he was enjoying himself. The scent of his excitement permeated the area to the exclusion of almost everything else.

So it’s no surprise that she didn’t notice the Terror until he was climbing her forepaw.

What do you want hatchling, the Terror growled in that frustrating way of all long-tooth dragons – anyone under fifty winters was a hatchling, no matter what.

Smelled Mist-At-Dusk, she hrrred in reply, didn’t expect the hatchling. Did he try to hurt Mist-At-Dusk? That was the only reason she could think of for the other dragon to be playing with a human like this. He never did have the sense to stay away from human settlements.

The Terror gurgled in amusement. Little-Ember would never hurt Mist-At-Dusk. He was feeling sad-hurt-lonely. Mist-At-Dusk decided to make him feel better.

Silver-In-The-Trees nodded. That sounded right. Wait. Little-Ember? You named the hatchling?

Mist-At-Dusk named him. Little-Ember needed a proper name, not silly… and here the Terror made a strange sound, like a cough-gurgle-choke that made his chest jump. Human-sire stupid and doesn’t care for his hatchling. He was about to continue, when the hatchling cried out. They both looked up.

He hadn’t been looking where he was going and had caught his back paw on a root. He was curled over the limb now, shuddering but no longer crying. The acrid scent of hurt-pain-fear smothered the excitement. Mist-At-Dusk had landed now, nudging at the tiny form with his nose spike. He was cooing reassuringly.

Little-Ember let me see. The Terror had moved without her noticing, leaping from the branch and diving towards the crumpled form. He easily pushed past the curved forepaws and disappeared.

Silver-In-The-Trees landed beside the hatchling a moment later and he looked up. Salty-water run down his face. He cooed haltingly. There were no words behind it, just wow. She flared her wings proudly. There was a reason she was known as Silver-In-The-Trees – her scales shone like human-glass when she cleaned them, and more than once she had blinded human-hunters when they stumbled upon her.

For a moment, Little-Ember was calm, and then he cried out again. Sparks-In-Forest that hurts! He hrrred, don’t touch!

The Terror pushed aside the hatchling’s forepaws to reveal a back paw turning various sickly colours. Silly hatchling, not looking where he was going, Sparks-In-Forest huffed. You’re not going to be playing any more. He started to lick at the injury, surprising Silver-In-The-Trees. The Terror must really care for the hatchling, to claim him as flock like that.

Mist-At-Dusk pushed at her side. What are you doing here? He hrrred questioningly.

Hunting, Silver-In-The-Trees answered after a moment. Why are you playing with a human hatchling?

There was a huff of air, tinged with enough heat to make nearby leaves wilt. Little-Ember is flock and kin, he growled. And more like a dragon in human skin. Sparks-In-Forest hrrred in agreement.

After a moment, Silver-In-The-Trees shrugged. He had been quite fast for a human, not to mention being able to understand them.

Said hatchling pushed Sparks-In-Forest away and started to stand. He received a nip to the uninjured back paw.

What do you think you’re doing? The Terror snarled.

Alpha-sire-scary said I needed to collect wood for the fire-metal-den, Little-Ember growled. If I don’t, he’ll get angry. I’ve already taken too long. And ignoring the burn he received from the irate long-tooth, the hatchling started cutting at the nearby fallen tree branches with his weapon. There was pain drenching his natural scent with every step.

Mist-At-Dusk reached out to take the weapon, and the hatchling danced away. The snarl he released as almost scary – if it wasn’t coming from a tiny twig of a human.

Silver-In-The-Trees sighed. Little-Ember is stubborn.

Little-Ember is stupid, Mist-At-Dusk corrected, and is going to make his paw worse if he doesn’t stop!

But the hatchling kept moving, looking for more branches to cut and collect.

So Silver-In-The-Trees decided to do it first. Unlike the TimberJacks, RazorWhips had sharp tails that were more precise and cleaner in their cuts. It was easy for her to snatch the branch out from under the hatchling and slice it into four even pieces.

Maybe you should let your flock help, she cooed, rather than hurt yourself more.

The hatchling stared at her with wide green eyes. His whistle was long and high. That was so fast!

RazorWhips were also very vain.

Silver-In-The-Trees flared her wings at the praise, even as she sliced another branch. Mist-At-Dusk decided to help, dragging the pieces over to where Sparks-In-Forest had bullied the hatchling into sitting.

It only took another eight branches for Little-Ember to be satisfied, tying all the wood together with a net that made the Terror hiss.

Mist-At-Dust gurgled. Sparks-in-Forest got caught in that net, he explained, and he keeps trying to light it on fire, but Little-Ember won’t let him.

And indeed, the Terror was staring at the next distrustfully from his perch on the hatchling’s shoulder. He hissed again as Little-Ember went to pick the bundle up. Don’t you dare hatchling.

I need to get it back to the human-village, he hrrred. Alpha-sire-scary wants it!

Mist-At-Dusk pushed himself into the air, swooping down to scoop up the bundle before shooting through the trees. I’ll leave it at the rocks! He cried back as he disappeared.

Little-Ember sighed. He’s going to be seen.

Sparks-In-Forest just shrugged as he hrrred, he’s fast. He’ll be fine.

The hatching waved a paw in her direction. Thank you for helping, he cooed, that went a lot faster than me doing it on my own.

She hummed. It was easier than cutting up rocks, which her nest-brother’s preferred. The hatchling must have taken that as a goodbye, because he began to limp in the direction of the human-village, pain-scent spiking each time his foot hit the ground. Sparks-In-Forest snarled, tiny embers flashing between his teeth, but didn’t say anything.

Well, if a long-tooth trusts him…

Silver-In-The-Trees launched herself into the air in much the same fashion as Mist-At-Dusk did. Except this time, when she swooped down, she wasn’t picking up wood.

Little-Ember’s scent flared in excitement. His cries rang through the forest, mingling with those of Sparks-In-Forest, who climbed to a more secure perch among her back-spikes. Another call rang out, with Mist-At-Dusk appearing from behind a moment later. The hatchling was fearless in her claws, despite the fact that, at any moment, she could drop him.

Even when they broke the tree line.

By the time they reached the rock pile, just out of sight and hearing of the human-village, it almost would have been faster for the hatchling to walk.  

Age Twelve: After-Shocks the Skrill

After-Shocks had seen the human many times. It seemed that during every lightning storm the reckless hatchling could be found on the same cliff, paws swinging off the edge, drenched with rain, awe and exhilaration mixing with his ember and molten metal scent.

One time, After-Shocks had swung close enough to make the hatchling’s fur stand on edge. The very tips of his tail-spikes brushed the hatchling’s covered back-paws before pulling away. Other passes hadn’t been quite as close. Sometimes he was joined by other dragons – a long-tooth Terror who snarled at him when they locked eyes, a protective RazorWhip who held the hatchling away from the edge, a playful RainCutter who swirled around him before returning to whatever game he’d been playing, even a ThunderDrum who shielded the hatchling from the rain with her own wing.

But this time, the hatchling had been alone.

And this time, the Skrill’s wings failed him.

After-Shocks knew he was getting too old to keep up with the younglings. Too old to race the thunder and ride the lightning. His scales were becoming faded – no longer deep purple like the storm clouds, but pale like the flowers. But the storm had called him. The winds were perfect, wild and unpredictable. The waves were threatening to pull them out of the sky if they dipped too low. Static charged the clouds.

The winds were too much. The sea spray blinded him. A stray lightning bolt zapped his open, panting mouth – shocking him just enough to stop flapping.

After-Shocks dropped like a stone.

The last thing he heard was the hatchling’s cry as he collided with the cliff, tail whipping around and hitting something soft.

Then the storm ended.

When After-Shocks opened his eyes, the sky was clear, even if his head wasn’t. The moon shone brightly. There were steady paws stroking his side. When one brushed a rib that flared with pain, he couldn’t help but snarl. The paws left. The paws came back. They avoided that rib, and all others that made him snarl or growl, and instead began to rub at his wing joint. Both wings were then stretched out, with gentle paws pressing at the webbing and bones. No pain, except for a twinge on the wing he must have rolled over when he crashed.

The fuzzy feeling in After-Shocks head lessened, and he carefully turned. The hatchling was rubbing at his backpaw now, stretching out the claws and stroking gently at their curve. He looked up at the movement. You’re awake!

I am, After-Shocks hrrred. Why are you touching me?

The paws moved immediately, and he mourned their loss. You had a bad fall, the hatchling explained, and I was just trying to see where you were hurt.

There was pain in the air. After-Shocks didn’t think it was all his. He thought back to the crash – the pressure of the ground against his sensitive stomach, the hasty scramble to roll, relieve the pressure, relieve the pain, the twist of his tail as he thrashed, the soft-hardness of a collision.

Thankfully, he couldn’t smell any blood.

Did I hit you, hatchling? He cooed carefully.

There was a twist in the hatchling’s scent, and his forepaw wrapped slowly around his middle. Yes, he cooed in response, but you didn’t mean to. I tried to get out of your way, but I wasn’t fast enough.

After-Shocks would have been surprised if he was. Very few dragons were faster than a Skrill – the elusive Night-Fury hatching who’d been flying around recently being one of them. He cooed reassuringly at the hatchling. Not your fault, hatchling. I am not as young as I used to be, and the storm was too strong.

Not a hatchling… was growled lowly, and After-Shocks restrained a mirthful gurgle. Said like a true hatchling.

What do you call yourself then? I am After-Shocks.

Little-Ember, the hatchling hrrred after a moment. That’s what my flock-kin call me. Alpha-sire-scary uses a different name.

After-Shocks scented Little-Ember as he came closer to his snout. The scent of his sire was very faint – almost complately smothered by the scent of other dragons. What kind of sire doesn’t spend time with his hatchling?

He hadn’t realised Little-Ember had picked up on his anger until a soft paw was rubbing at the nice spot under his crest. It smelled of sadness and resignation.

Alpha-sire-scary is always busy, the hatchling cooed quietly, I spend most of my time in metal-rust-Gobber’s fire-metal-den so that I don’t get in his way.

After-Shock’s huffed. Silly sire. But that salty smell didn’t leave, so he decided to change the subject. Thank you for checking on me, hatchling.

I was really worried when you fell. You’re the most graceful of the Skrill, Little-Ember cooed. His paw moved to rub the front of his crest, and he melted into the ground. That felt really nice…

Not so graceful anymore… After-Shock’s hrrred weakly. It’s the younglings’ place in the sky now… oooh, scratch right there, that’s nice… a little bit higher…

Little-Ember stretched up and over to reach and hissed.

After-Shocks’ raised his head. You’re hurt! He nosed at the hatchling’s fur till he lifted it out of the way – a dark mark stretched across a thin ribcage. When he pressed against it lightly, the hatchling whimpered. Carefully, mindful of his chin-spikes, After-Shocks coated the mark with his saliva.

There. That will help. Humans were so much more fragile than dragons. It was incredible that they lived past hatchling-hood.

The wind rushed past and Little-Ember shivered. After-Shocks shuffled into a more comfortable position and raised a wing. Sit with me, hatchling. Tell me about your flock-kin.

Little-Ember pressed as close to his scales as he could, sighing as the wind was blocked by the curl of the Skrill’s wing. He might not run as hot as his fire-breathing brethren, but the riders of lightning were anything but cold.

Mist-At-Dusk loves to show me how to cut the rain drops. He carried me up to the clouds, one day. Dropped me so that I could try to cut the cloud like he did. Tides-At-Waning-Moon snarled at him for ages when she found out! And Silver-In-The-Trees chased him down and sat on him as punishment! Sparks-In-Forest had said it was okay though – he talked to Mist-At-Dusk’s dam, and she agreed to keep an eye on us in case…

Age Thirteen: Last-Breath-of-Autumn the Sentinel

Last-Breath-Of-Autumn knew what to expect when he followed the scent of the dying Skrill to the basin near the human-village. He had helped many dragons pass on – some of them from age, but most from injuries caused by human-weapons.

He wasn’t expecting a human to be cuddling the dying Skrill.

The human – barely out of the hatchling age, if not still one – was fearlessly wrapped around the Skrill’s neck and side, forepaw slotted between spikes. He was warbling, great cries that echoed in the basin, and the scent of his grief was strong.

The Skrill was warbling in kind, trying to soothe.

Don’t want you to go, stay with me, please stay…

It’s okay hatchling, all will be well, don’t cry…

The Sentinel landed heavily beside the pair. His scales – strong, thick, larger than most dragons – didn’t allow for graceful movement. He also wasn’t the most graceful of Sentinels in the first place.

The hatchling looked up at his arrival and snarled. No! You can’t have him!

He wasn’t even given a moment to be surprised at the vehemence before the hatchling was on him, scratching at his eyes with metal claws attached to his own paws, surprisingly strong back limbs latching onto his neck and squeezing, roaring out a war cry that seemed too big for such a thin frame.

Last-Breath-Of-Autumn fell backwards with a squawk, wings flapping uselessly.

After a moment of this assault, a pale purple wing swatted the hatchling off. Little-Ember! Calm yourself! The Skrill snarled.

The hatchling – Little-Ember? – snarled back. No! I’m not going to let you just give up! Apparently forgetting about the Sentinel, the hatchling threw himself at the dying Skrill. He was quickly trapped under a paw that had lost none of its strength.

The Skrill screeched. There was a crackle of lightning running down the whip-like tail. Sparks snapped around the open jaw. You will calm yourself.

Little-Ember squirmed once. Claws clenched threateningly. The stifling heat of anger and confusion and loss faded away into sadness. Salt-water ran down the hatchling’s face. Don’t want you to go, After-Shocks. Only known you for a few moons.

The Skrill crooned. I’m tired, Little-Ember. I can’t fly like I used to. You can’t change that.

But why?! The hatchling’s cry rang in Last-Breath-Of-Autumn’s ears. He felt his heart turn to stone in his chest.

That’s the life of a dragon, he hrrred slowly, dragging himself forward with his wing-claws. But leaving does not mean he’s gone. That was a lesson he had struggled to learn as a hatchling.

Little-Ember craned his head to see him. But he’s leaving.

After-Shocks’ let the hatchling up and immediately curled a wing around him, tucking him against the wing joint. You are part of my flock, Little-Ember. Death cannot change that.

But your scent will fade, like my dam’s! The poor little hatchling was distraught. Last-Breath-Of-Autumn hated this part.

Scent will fade. But you’ll remember. The mulish tinge to the hatchling’s scent – the precursor to angry, the sharpening of the ember tang – made him rush on. It’s not fair to After-Shocks, to keep him here.

That stopped the hatchling short.

You are tired, aren’t you? Last-Breath-Of-Autumn directed this at the Skrill. You have raced your storms and raised your hatchlings. You have lived a long life.

After-Shocks bowed his head. I have. I am tired. Will you help me?

The hatchling began to keen and turned his face into the Skrill’s side.

I will, he cooed. This was his duty, and his honour. To help dragons pass onto the Great Hunting Grounds.

I have one final request. I ask that you watch over the hatchling, until such time as your duty takes you away. The tone of After-Shocks’ hrrr did not leave any room for argument.

This must not have been discussed with the hatchling, because shock ran through his scent.

If this is what you wish, Last-Breath-Of-Autumn cooed numbly. He had never watched over a hatchling before. And a human hatchling…

After-Shocks’ nudged Little-Ember closer, licking a long line up his face before pulling away. Goodbye, tiny one. I shall meet you at the Great Hunting Grounds.

Little-Ember shuffled to Last-Breath-Of-Autumn’s side, face downturned. Quiet keens escaped his jaw. Goodbye After-Shocks. Good hunting.

Last-Breath-Of-Autumn unhinged his jaw. The fire grew in his belly. When it passed his teeth, they tingled. When it collided with After-Shocks’ body, he threw his head to the sky and gave one final screech. Last-Breath-Of-Autumn didn’t stop until even the Skrill’s bones were burnt to ash.

The hatchling stayed by his side. The keening did not falter, only growing in pitch and volume. When the Sentinel closed his jaw, he slumped to the ground.

After-Shocks… he crooned. I’m gonna miss you…

Awkwardly, Last-Breath-Of-Autumn crouched beside the hatchling and wrapped a wing loosely around him. You… did not know him for long, he hrrred hesitantly. Why are you so… distraught?

He was kind to me, the hatchling cooed. Him and Sparks-In-Forest, and Tides-At-Waning-Moon, and Mist-At-Dusk, and Silver-Through-The-Trees. They are my flock. After-Shocks acts – acted – more like my sire than my sire does. He was proud of me.

Last-Breath-Of-Autumn thought of the hatchling’s fury, the strength of his attacks, the ferocity in which he tried to defend others. He had a lot to be proud of.

Maybe watching over this hatchling wouldn’t be too bad.

Age Fifteen: Toothless the NightFury

In another life, Toothless would let the hatchling go in return for a life spared. He would fly away and try not to think about the tiny creature with scared eyes.

In this life, Toothless was struck so dumb by the conflicting scents – RainCutter, Sentinel, Terror, ThunderDrum, RazorWhip – that he didn’t move when the ropes released. When the hatchling cooed in apology for a creation misused, keened in shared pain for the torn tailfin. He would only move when soft paws brushed under his chin. Hrrr when the fearless little hatchling pulled at his claws and wings and head-flaps to check for injury. Coo about sires and dams who must be worried sick at how reckless their hatchling is. Gurgle in amusement at the annoyed snarl of not a hatchling.

Green eyes met green eyes.

Turns out not all dragons wear scales

[thedemonandthedetective-blog]

No Longer Me, An Introduction

A cool, autumn breeze causes a commotion among the leaves that still cling to the brittle branches that spread angularly from the trees. I tug my jacket tighter around my thin frame as I sit on a park bench waiting for my twin sister to return from whatever it is she said she needed to do. She had sworn this would take five minutes or less, and now it was quarter after six in the evening.

“If she isn’t back in five minutes, I’m leaving her ass here…” I huff under my breath, chilled air groping my bared skin with tiny pointed fingers, my cheeks and nose now pink from their undesirable, unwanted touch. I zip up the dark, leather jacket that rests on my shoulders, shielding what skin I can, and I cross my arms after pulling my beanie back down over my ears. Checking the dimly lit screen of my cell, I see that my sister’s time is up, and I stand. My shoulders hunched, my arms crossed and I keep my head down so no one will talk to me.

Nathan~

A strange voice echoes through the clattering dance of branches that the trees perform as I walk through a dimming evening path. I roll my eyes in utter annoyance and continue my walk home through the more scenic route of the path I always take home.

Nathan~? Come on. Follow my voice~

I look around, hearing the voice all around me. It does not sound human, but then again, I could just be hearing things, so I continue walking sighing deeply as I go. My breath appears before me in a cloud of eerie white wisps, and now, instead of nipping at my flesh, the cold air bites with needle-like teeth.

The voice, high-pitched and raspy suddenly takes a direction against the breeze and I follow it, my curiosity taking hold of me. Leaves flutter like feathered wings around my body as the wind carries them to their next temporary destination, some of which claim that place as my jacket or my hair. Some whips across my face, stinging the skin and causing it to become red.

I emerge from the tightly grouped trees into a small clearing, the voice still whispering my name.  

“Who are you? What the fuck do you want from me?” I call to the empty, dark nothing before me, my heart beginning to race faster. The sun tucks itself in behind the horizon, snatching away the faint, golden glow that helped me see and let cold, unrelenting midnight soak into the world instead. I don’t fear the concept of the dark. I fear the concept of the unknown in the dark, so when I hear the voice whispering around my head, I immediately panic a little and fumble with my pockets trying to retrieve my phone for its flashlight.

The device jumps from my hand as my anxiety spikes, landing among the leaves, stones, and branches that litter the forested floor. “Oh, come on, stupid piece of shit…” I grumble, frantically scooping it up and wiping the dirt and small shards of leave on my ripped black jeans. I hear the voice cackling around my head, my heart racing, and blood pumping. I no longer feel cold.

The voice taunts me, gets close to me, I even feel something very sharp drag across my cheek as I finally open the fucking app. I point my flashlight and I am suddenly surprised by, confronted by, presented with…

Nothing. There is nothing here.

NATHAN!

I jump out of my skin, screaming loudly as the voice shouts my name into my ear, and I whip around to see… myself?

Except, it isn’t me, is it? He’s bulkier and taller than I am, skin paler, lipless, eyes dull with a metaphorical “No Vacancy” sign hanging in them; however, his face shape, his hairstyle, the way he holds himself… It’s all me. No, it cannot be me. This thing has six inky arms erupting out of his back, wields a bat and a knife… But wait, I have my knife on me and I keep a bat in the trunk of my car in case someone tries to jump me or something…

Is it me?

I know you recognize me, Nathan. You know why I am here.

“No, I don’t. I don’t know who you are. Why the fuck are you here?” I ask, trying my hardest to swallow the lump in my throat, trying my hardest to forget him.

It’s time, Nathan. Come now, give it up. Let me in. We’ve spent much too much time apart. You know this. You need this. You’re desperate for it, even. His face breaks into a horrible, wretched smile that makes my stomach twist and all I want to do is vomit.

“I’m scared,” I croak, voice shaking. I need him back, but I do not want him. I suppose the only thing I can do now is give in.

I know you are, but don’t worry. It will be okay and we will be together once more.

I nod in acknowledgment.

Let me in, Nathan~ Come on. Just say the word~

“Y-Yes, Riathe,” I whisper, feeling like someone tied a rubber band around my vocal cords, constricting my voice to a hoarse crackle.

A laugh is all I hear, the dark is all I see, and when my eyes open once more, I know that I am myself, no longer.

[readbookywooks]

THE ADVENTURES OF EUSTACE

AT that very moment the others were washing hands and faces in the river and generally getting ready for dinner and a rest. The three best archers had gone up into the hills north of the bay and returned laden with a pair of wild goats which were now roasting over a fire. Caspian had ordered a cask of wine ashore, strong wine of Archenland which had to be mixed with water before you drank it, so there would be plenty for all. The work had gone well so far and it was a merry meal. Only after the second helping of goat did Edmund say, "Where's that blighter Eustace?" Meanwhile Eustace stared round the unknown valley. It was so narrow and deep, and the precipices which surrounded it so sheer, that it was like a huge pit or trench. The floor was grassy though strewn with rocks, and here and there Eustace saw black burnt patches like those you see on the sides of a railway embankment in a dry summer. About fifteen yards away from him was a pool of clear, smooth water. There was, at first, nothing else at all in the valley; not an animal, not a bird, not an insect. The sun beat down and grim peaks and horns of mountains peered over the valley's edge. Eustace realized of course that in the fog he had come down the wrong side of the ridge, so he turned at once to see about getting back. But as soon as he had looked he shuddered. Apparently he had by amazing luck found the only possible way down - a long green spit of land, horribly steep and narrow, with precipices on either side. There was no other possible way of getting back. But could he do it, now that he saw what it was really like? His head swam at the very thought of it. He turned round again, thinking that at any rate he'd better have a good drink from the pool first. But as soon as he had turned and before he had taken a step forward into the valley he heard a noise behind him. It was only a small noise but it sounded loud in that immense silence. It froze him dead-still where he stood for a second. Then he slewed round his neck and looked. At the bottom of the cliff a little on his left hand was a low, dark hole - the entrance to a cave perhaps. And out of this two thin wisps of smoke were coming. And the loose stones just beneath the dark hollow were moving (that was the noise he had heard) just as if something were crawling in the dark behind them. Something was crawling. Worse still, something was coming out. Edmund or Lucy or you would have recognized it at once, but Eustace had read none of the right books. The thing that came out of the cave was something he had never even imagined - along lead-coloured snout, dull red eyes, no feathers or fur, a long lithe body that trailed on the ground, legs whose elbows went up higher than its back like a spider's cruel claws, bat's wings that made a rasping noise on the stones, yards of tail. And the lines of smoke were coming from its two nostrils. He never said the word Dragon to himself. Nor would it have made things any better if he had. But perhaps if he had known something about dragons he would have been a little surprised at this dragon's behaviour. It did not sit up and clap its wings, nor did it shoot out a stream of flame from its mouth. The smoke from its nostrils was like the smoke of a fire that will not last much longer. Nor did it seem to have noticed Eustace. It moved very slowly towards the pool - slowly and with many pauses. Even in his fear Eustace felt that it was an old, sad creature. He wondered if he dared make a dash for the ascent. But it might look round if he made any noise. It might come more to life. Perhaps it was only shamming. Anyway, what was the use of trying to escape by climbing from a creature that could fly? It reached the pool and slid its horrible scaly chin down over the gravel to drink: but before it had drunk there came from it a great croaking or clanging cry and after a few twitches and convulsions it rolled round on its side and lay perfectly still with one claw in the air. A little dark blood gushed from its wide-opened mouth. The smoke from its nostrils turned black for a moment and then floated away. No more came. this was the brute's trick, the way it lured travellers to their doom. But one couldn't wait for ever. He took a step nearer, then two steps, and halted again. The dragon remained motionless; he noticed too that the red fire had gone out of its eyes. At last he came up to it. He was quite sure now that it was dead. With a shudder he touched it; nothing happened. The relief was so great that Eustace almost laughed out loud. He began to feel as if he had fought and killed the dragon instead of merely seeing it die. He stepped over it and went to the pool for his drink, for the heat was getting unbearable. He was not surprised when he heard a peal of thunder. Almost immediately afterwards the sun disappeared and before he had finished his drink big drops of rain were falling. The climate of this island was a very unpleasant one. In less than a minute Eustace was wet to the skin and half blinded with such rain as one never sees in Europe. There was no use trying to climb out of the valley as long as this lasted. He bolted for the only shelter in sight - the dragon's cave. There he lay down and tried to get his breath. Most of us know what we should expect to find in a dragon's lair, but, as I said before, Eustace had read only the wrong books. They had a lot to say about exports and imports and governments and drains, but they were weak on dragons. That is why he was so puzzled at the surface on which he was lying. Parts of it were too prickly to be stones and too hard to be thorns, and there seemed to be a great many round, flat things, and it all clinked when he moved. There was light enough at the cave's mouth to examine it by. And of course Eustace found it to be what any of us could have told him in advance - treasure. There were crowns (those were the prickly things), coins, rings, bracelets, ingots, cups, plates and gems. Eustace (unlike most boys) had never thought much of treasure but he saw at once the use it would be in this new world which he had so foolishly stumbled into through the picture in Lucy's bedroom at home. "They don't have any tax here," he said, "And you don't have to give treasure to the government. With some of this stuff I could have quite a decent time here - perhaps in Calormen. It sounds the least phoney of these countries. I wonder how much I can carry? That bracelet now - those things in it are probably diamonds - I'll slip that on my own wrist. Too big, but not if I push it right up here above my elbow. Then fill my pockets with diamonds - that's easier than gold. I wonder when this infernal rain's going to let up?" He got into a less uncomfortable part of the pile, where it was mostly coins, and settled down to wait. But a bad fright, when once it is over, and especially a bad fright following a mountain walk, leaves you very tired. Eustace fell asleep. By the time he was sound asleep and snoring the others had finished dinner and became seriously alarmed about him. They shouted, "Eustace! Eustace! Coo-ee!" till they were hoarse and Caspian blew his horn. "He's nowhere near or he'd have heard that," said Lucy with a white face. "Confound the fellow," said Edmund. "What on earth did he want to slink away like this for?" "But we must do something," said Lucy. "He may have got lost, or fallen into a hole, or been captured by savages." "Or killed by wild beasts," said Drinian. "And a good riddance if he has, I say," muttered Rhince. "Master Rhince," said Reepicheep, "you never spoke a word that became you less. The creature is no friend of mine but he is of the Queen's blood, and while he is one of our fellowship it concerns our honour to find him and to avenge him if he is dead." "Of course we've got to find him (if we can)," said Caspian wearily. "That's the nuisance of it. It means a search party and endless trouble. Bother Eustace." Meanwhile Eustace slept and slept - and slept. What woke him was a pain in his arm. The moon was shining in at the mouth of the cave, and the bed of treasures seemed to have grown much more comfortable: in fact he could hardly feel it at all. He was puzzled by the pain in his arm at first, but presently it occurred to him that the bracelet which he had shoved up above his elbow had become strangely tight. His arm must have swollen while he was asleep (it was his left arm). He moved his right arm in order to feel his left, but stopped before he had moved it an inch and bit his lip in terror. For just in front of him, and a little on his right, where the moonlight fell clear on the floor of the cave, he saw a hideous shape moving. He knew that shape: it was a dragon's claw. It had moved as he moved his hand and became still when he stopped moving his hand. "Oh, what a fool I've been," thought Eustace. "Of course, the brute had a mate and it's lying beside me." For several minutes he did not dare to move a muscle. He saw two thin columns of smoke going up before his eyes, black against the moonlight; just as there had been smoke coming from the other dragon's nose before it died. This was so alarming that he held his breath. The two columns of smoke vanished. When he could hold his breath no longer he let it out stealthily; instantly two jets of smoke appeared again. But even yet he had no idea of the truth. Presently he decided that he would edge very cautiously to his left and try to creep out of the cave. Perhaps the creature was asleep - and anyway it was his only chance. But of course before he edged to the left he looked to the left. Oh horror! there was a dragon's claw on that side too. No one will blame Eustace if at this moment he shed tears. He was surprised at the size of his own tears as he saw them splashing on to the treasure in front of him. They also seemed strangely hot; steam went up from them. But there was no good crying. He must try to crawl out from between the two dragons. He began extending his right arm. The dragon's fore-leg and claw on his right went through exactly the same motion. Then he thought he would try his left. The dragon limb on that side moved too. Two dragons, one on each side, mimicking whatever he did! His nerve broke and he simply made a bolt for it. There was such a clatter and rasping, and clinking of gold, and grinding of stones, as he rushed out of the cave that he thought they were both following him. He daren't look back. He rushed to the pool. The twisted shape of the dead dragon lying in the moonlight would have been enough to frighten anyone but now he hardly noticed it. His idea was to get into the water. But just as he reached the edge of the pool two things happened. First of all it came over him like a thunder-clap that he had been running on all fours - and why on earth had he been doing that? And secondly, as he bent towards the water, he thought for a second that yet another dragon was staring up at him out of the pool. But in an instant he realized the truth. The dragon face in the pool was his own reflection. There was no doubt of it. It moved as he moved: it opened and shut its mouth as he opened and shut his. He had turned into a dragon while he was asleep. Sleeping on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself. That explained everything. There had been no two dragons beside him in the cave. The claws to right and left had been his own right and left claw. The two columns of smoke had been coming from his own nostrils. As for the pain in his left arm (or what had been his left arm) he could now see what had happened by squinting with his left eye. The bracelet which had fitted very nicely on the upper arm of a boy was far too small for the thick, stumpy foreleg of a dragon. It had sunk deeply into his scaly flesh and there was a throbbing bulge on each side of it. He tore at the place with his dragon's teeth but could not get it off. In spite of the pain, his first feeling was one of relief. There was nothing to be afraid of any more. He was a terror himself and nothing in the world but a knight (and not all of those) would dare to attack him. He could get even with Caspian and Edmund now But the moment he thought this he realized that he didn't want to. He wanted to be friends. He wanted to get back among humans and talk and laugh and share things. He realized that he was a monster cut off from the whole human race. An appalling loneliness came over him. He began to see that the others had not really been fiends at all. He began to wonder if he himself had been such a nice person as he had always supposed. He longed for their voices. He would have been grateful for a kind word even from Reepicheep. When he thought of this the poor dragon that had been Eustace lifted up its voice and wept. A powerful dragon crying its eyes out under the moon in a deserted valley is a sight and a sound hardly to be imagined. At last he decided he would try to find his way back to the shore. He realized now that Caspian would never have sailed away and left him. And he felt sure that somehow or other he would be able to make people understand who he was. He took a long drink and then (I know this sounds shocking, but it isn't if you think it over) he ate nearly all the dead dragon. He was half-way through it before he realized what he was doing; for, you see, though his mind was the mind of Eustace, his tastes and his digestion were dragonish. And there is nothing a dragon likes so well as fresh dragon. That is why you so seldom find more than one dragon in the same county. Then he turned to climb out of the valley. He began the climb with a jump and as soon as he jumped he found that he was flying. He had quite forgotten about his wings and it was a great surprise to him - the first pleasant surprise he had had for a long time. He rose high into the air and saw innumerable mountain-tops spread out beneath him in the moonlight. He could see the bay like a silver slab and the Dawn Treader lying at anchor and camp fires twinkling in the woods beside the beach. From a great height he launched himself down towards them in a single glide. Lucy was sleeping very soundly for she had sat up till the return of the search party in hope of good news about Eustace. It had been led by Caspian and had come back late and weary. Their news was disquieting. They had found no trace of Eustace but had seen a dead dragon in a valley. They tried to make the best of it and everyone assured everyone else that there were not likely to he more dragons about, and that one which was dead at about three o'clock that afternoon (which was when they had seen it) would hardly have been killing people a very few hours before. "Unless it ate the little brat and died of him: he'd poison anything," said Rhince. But he said this under his breath and no one heard it. But later in the night Lucy was wakened, very softly, and found the whole company gathered close together and talking in whispers. "What is it?" said Lucy. "We must all show great constancy," Caspian was saying. "A dragon has just flown over the tree-tops and lighted on the beach. Yes, I am afraid it is between us and the ship. And arrows are no use against dragons. And they're not at all afraid of fire." "With your Majesty's leave - " began Reepicheep. "No, Reepicheep," said the King very firmly, "you are not to attempt a single combat with it. And unless you promise to obey me in this matter I'll have you tied up. We must just keep close watch and, as soon as it is light, go down to the beach and give it battle. I will lead. King Edmund will be on my right and the Lord Drinian on my left. There are no other arrangements to be made. It will be light in a couple of hours. In an hour's time let a meal be served out and what is left of the wine. And let everything be done silently." "Perhaps it will go away," said Lucy. "It'll be worse if it does," said Edmund, "because then we shan't know where it is. If there's a wasp in the room I like to be able to see it." The rest of the night wa dreadful, and when the meal came, though they knew they ought to eat, many found that they had very poor appetites. And endless hours seemed to pass before the darkness thinned and birds began chirping here and there and the world got colder and wetter than it had been all night and Caspian said, "Now for it, friends." They got up, all with swords drawn, and formed themselves into a solid mass with Lucy in the middle and Reepicheep on her shoulder. It was nicer than the waiting about and everyone felt fonder of everyone else than at ordinary times. A moment later they were marching. It grew lighter as they came to the edge of the wood. And there on the sand, like a giant lizard, or a flexible crocodile, or a serpent with legs, huge and horrible and humpy, lay the dragon. But when it saw them, instead of rising up and blowing fire and smoke, the dragon retreated - you could almost say it waddled - back into the shallows of the bay. "What's it wagging its head like that for?" said Edmund. "And now it's nodding," said Caspian. "And there's something coming from its eyes," said Drinian. "Oh, can't you see," said Lucy. "It's crying. Those are tears." "I shouldn't trust to that, Ma'am," said Drinian. "That's what crocodiles do, to put you off your guard." "It wagged its head when you said that," remarked Edmund. "Just as if it meant No. Look, there it goes again." "Do you think it understands what we're saying?" asked Lucy. The dragon nodded its head violently. Reepicheep slipped off Lucy's shoulder and stepped to the front. "Dragon," came his shrill voice, "can you understand speech?" The dragon nodded. "Can you speak?" It shook its head. "Then," said Reepicheep, "it is idle to ask you your business. But if you will swear friendship with us raise your left foreleg above your head." It did so, but clumsily because that leg was sore and swollen with the golden bracelet "Oh look," said Lucy, "there's something wrong with its leg. The poor thing - that's probably what it was crying about. Perhaps it came to us to be cured like in Androcles and the lion." "Be careful, Lucy," said Caspian. "It's a very clever dragon but it may be a liar." Lucy had, however, already run forward, followed by Reepicheep, as fast as his short legs could carry him, and then of course the boys and Drinian came, too. "Show me your poor paw," said Lucy, "I might be able to cure it." The dragon-that-had-been-Eustace held out its sore leg gladly enough, remembering how Lucy's cordial had cured him of sea-sickness before he became a dragon. But he was disappointed. The magic fluid reduced the swelling and eased the pain a little but it could not dissolve the gold. Everyone had now crowded round to watch the treatment, and Caspian suddenly exclaimed, "Look!" He was staring at the bracelet.