#wonder if there are any museums that lend out personal collections.

[kirbyddd]

guess whos about to find themselves steward of a half century of irreplacable hardware🫣

half of it was literally mine anyways and i left it in the hoarder pile where i knew it could remain untouched for years til i escaped to a stable living situation where it could be set up safely.

thats... still not happening anytime soon, and may never. but the pile's gotten so much more extreme and filthy it's being actively destroyed where it is now so i gotta emergency airlift it to the less dangerous situation. scary stuff either way

[ajaxkinnie]

Lucifer Fluff A-Z

Words: 2701 (Huh?!)

Warnings: None

Notes: This is my first writing on Tumblr, and my very first piece for Obey Me! I’m just trying to understand these characters a little better, before I try anything more in-depth :)

Activities - What do they like to do with their s/o? How do they spend their free time with them?

Naturally, Lucifer is a very busy demon, so he finds it difficult to get any free time - let alone free time that he could spend with his love. When he’s working, they’re more than welcome to sit in his office and study alongside him. They’ve been working through his entire collection of exotic teas, trying to figure out which ones suit each other’s personal tastes. He wouldn’t admit it to them, but he actually finds it a lot easier to concentrate when his love is with him. 

When he is lucky enough to have time away from his RAD duties, expect to be showered in attention. He likes to take you to see the sights in the Devildom, regardless of how tasteful he finds them. One of his favourite memories is of the time you visited the nearby museum. He couldn’t believe how simply cute you looked while your brain was attempting to run at 100 miles a minute (“Wait, that story from the Bible was actually real?!”). He bought a pen from the souvenir shop, and he uses it to sign his most important documents.

Beauty - What do they admire about their s/o? What do they think is beautiful about them?

He admires their mind, more than anything. Sometimes he falls deep into thought and finds himself wondering what the chances are he’d fall for a human so smart and fearless. He likes feeling like he has someone he can trust unconditionally, and someone decisive who can help him in puzzling situations. Before you, he would ask Mammon, but his answers tended to stress Lucifer out even more. He’s actually very grateful that you use common sense more often than not.

Comfort - How would they help their s/o when they feel down/have a panic attack etc.?

Patience is one of the virtues he didn’t abandon after the fall, so he’s a calming presence whenever you feel emotionally down. He would drop anything to help you if he felt like you needed him, and all he wants is for you to be happy. If you’re comfortable with physical affection, he’ll hold you for the entire night, making sure you feel safe in his arms. If not, he’ll fix you a hot drink and find an activity for you both to enjoy. Once the worst of it has passed, he’ll ask you to talk about your feelings, just so he knows how best to support you in the future.

Dreams - How do they picture their future with their s/o?

He was shocked the first time he found himself fantasizing about your future together. He’s never been that kind of person. He imagines the two of you raising a family, in one of those Victorian-style houses he always sees in old films. Before you, he didn’t think he would ever want kids (especially with how Satan turned out), but he’d be lying if he said the thought of the two of you during tea on the front porch while your children play gleefully didn’t make him want to smile.

Equal - Are they the dominant one in the relationship, or rather passive?

Seeing how he’s used to being in control in every one of his relationships, he’s come to realize that doesn’t want that from you. He struggles with it at first, and it takes him a lot of effort to overcome his commanding nature, but the two of you are absolutely equals. He just wants you to be happy. In fact, he finds it endearing when you tease him about his council member duties. 

Fight - Would they be easy to forgive their s/o? How are they fighting?

Get ready for week-long silences and dramatic gasps of exasperation, everyone! Usually he keeps his cool when you guys start fighting - a few sarcastic quips and eye rolls have never done any damage. The worst fights are the ones where he gets angry. He always feels awful, and will lock himself up in his office for at least 3 days before he even acknowledges anyone else in the House of Lamentation. He never apologizes first, either. You just learn to accept it, and understand that he says sorry in his own way (namely, the days off he always mysteriously procures afterwards to do whatever your heart desires).

Gratitude - How grateful are they in general? Are they aware of what their s/o is doing for them?

His pride doesn't let him say it, so he expresses his gratitude in other ways. For Lucifer, gratitude is the heartfelt smile he offers when his love brings him a cup of coffee during a long night of work, or him lending you his coat on an evening walk. He never has to say the words “I’m grateful”, because his late night musings about how shocked he is that a human could make him feel this way says it for him.

Honesty - Do they have secrets they hide from their s/o? Or do they share everything?

After The Incident with Belphie, as everyone refers to it, you two don't keep secrets. The only time he won’t tell you something is when it's related to his work for Diavolo. He really sucks at white lies, too, which none of you expected. Asmo was mad when Lucifer spoiled his surprise spa day.

Inspiration - Did their s/o change them somehow, or the other way around? Like trying out new things or helping them overcome personal problems?

He’s a lot less stern these days. Sometimes he walks into council meetings with a smirk, knowing that he’s going to get to see you for the first time in his inhumanely busy schedule. Mammon’s made a few comments now, bragging about all the things he can get away with since you “broke” the eldest. (Lucifer heard. He was hanging upside down for a good few days until someone finally took pity on him.)

Jealousy - Do they get jealous easily? How do they deal with it?

Lucifer? Jealous? Of course not! 

Yes. He gets very jealous. He’s good at hiding it though, signalling you through a arm squeeze or wrapping his arm around your waist just a tiny bit tighter. He does stand a little taller, and gets every so slightly curt with whoever is attempting to steal your attention. After all, he was once the jewel of the heavens. What could this lower demon possibly have on him? 

Kiss - Are they a good kisser? What was the first kiss like?

Kisses with Lucifer feel like free falling, and take your breath away without him even having to try. They’re soft and romantic and full of emotion (until they’re full of something Else if you catch my drift). He just wants you to know how much he loves and adores you. He likes when you blush afterwards. He thinks it's cute.

Love Confession - How would they confess to their s/o?

He asked Diavolo if he could have uninterrupted access to the royal rose garden, with the intent of teaching you about the different types of flowers in the Devildom - nothing more. When you arrived, he took you for a calming stroll under the moonlight. When you stood in the gazebo and put your head on his shoulder, he felt his heart start pounding. He reached out to grab your hand, and in the spur of the moment, told you how nobody in the three realms had ever made him feel this way before. He wishes he’d planned something in advance, since he was never a person to act on impulse. Despite how many times you reassured him that a moonlight stroll through a rose garden was one of the most romantic things to ever happen, he doesn’t believe you.

Marriage - Do they want to get married? How do they propose? What would the marriage be like?

He’d never considered marriage before, since every other immortal being was insufferable by his standards, but you changed his mind. He thinks a lot about how beautiful you would look in traditional wedding attire (as much as he curses his father for, well, everything) and how he would love to spend the rest of his life with you by his side. Marriage with Lucifer would be hard, since he has a crazy schedule, but you work together to create a work-life balance. Surprisingly, he discovers that he enjoys painting. He displays some of his paintings above the piano, right next to your wedding photos.

Nicknames - What do they call their s/o?

He calls you Love, and Dear. If Mammon or Asmo would use it, it goes on Lucifer’s distasteful list and he will not go NEAR it. He’s very particular about these kinds of things.

On Cloud Nine - What are they like when they are in love? Is it obvious for others? How do they express their feelings?

Nobody outside of the council could tell. He expresses his love through actions, so unless they could see him fussing over your school schedule, or worrying about what you’d packed for lunch, they wouldn’t have the tiniest clue. He just treats you like you’re the most precious thing in his life, with soft touches and an even gentler temperament. He wants you to be happy. After you two “go public” he’ll wrap his arm around your waist, or lend you his clothes to wear for the day. Even if you aren’t big on PDA, he’ll make sure everyone knows that you two are a forever couple.

PDA - Are they upfront about their relationship? Do they brag with their s/o in front of others? Or are they rather shy to kiss etc. when others are watching?

Oh, as soon as one of his brothers walks into the room he locks hands with you just to see that little blush and nose scrunch you do. He doesn’t engage in public makeout sessions, he thinks it’s just gross, but he does like to quickly kiss your forehead when he gets pulled away. He just wants everyone to know that you’re happy with him, it fills him to the brim with pride. At Diavolo’s parties, don’t expect him to leave your side. It’s important everyone knows you’re with him, and he’s with you. 

Quirk - Some random ability they have that’s beneficial in a relationship.

This man is a PLANNER. He’s so used to managing everything that goes on in the Devildom that your dates are like child's play to him. He makes the most simple of dinner plans feel like a whirlwind romance you would see in a rom-com. He also loves taking you to the events that he helped plan, he loves the attention he gets from the ‘scandalous’ romance of the Prince of Hell and the human. He wants to show you off all the time!

Romance - How romantic are they? What would they do to make their s/o happy? Cliché or rather creative?

He lives and breathes compliments. You wear an outfit he picked out to dinner? Expect nonstop commentary of how gorgeous you look and how happy he is to be with you. Every word that leaves his mouth is like poetry, and it's always enough to make you melt in your seat. He loves how you turn the same shade as the strawberries you’re sharing for dessert. He just loves You.

“My love, I can’t believe you have conquered my heart like this. You look simply gorgeous in this light.”

“Luci, I really appreciate it, but can you not say those things while we’re trying to finish the grocery shopping?”

Support - Are they helping their s/o achieve their goals? Do they believe in them?

If he can pull strings behind the scenes to help you reach your goals, he will. He hates seeing you when you feel defeated. If you ask him not to interfere, then he shares meaningful words with you about how he believes in you, and he knows you can do anything you set your mind to. After all, if you can seduce the Prince of Hell, what can’t you do?

Thrill - Do they need to try out new things to spice out your relationship? Or do they prefer a certain routine?

He’s not a thrill seeker, but he doesn’t have a specific routine he prefers. He enjoys waking up and seeing you next to him, but as long as he gets to spend time with you it doesn’t matter what you do. He loves it when you surprise him with something you planned yourself, he always appreciates how much time and thought you put into everything you do for him.

Understanding - How good do they know their partner? Are they empathetic?

He had to analyse you closely at the start of the exchange, so he’s known about your mannerisms and how you react to most situations for a while now. Your brick wall of a boyfriend, however, is a very difficult can of worms to deal with. He’s used to being emotionally shut out, so while he can recognise your feelings, he finds it difficult to emphasise with you for a long time. Once he starts to open up though, he starts to understand why you act the way you do in some situations, and it actually results in you two fighting a lot less. He respects you a lot for helping him get back in touch with his feelings.

Value - How important is the relationship to them? What is it’s worth in comparison to other things in their life?

It’s near the same level of priority as his work, surprisingly. He considers you as part of his family too, since all of his brothers adore you, so you’re definitely at the top of his list of priorities. While sometimes he struggles with work-life balance, he tries his hardest, and that means the world to you both.

Wild Card - A random Fluff Headcanon.

He takes lots of photos of you whenever you’re not looking. He says that he's just trying to capture the moment with you, but he knows deep down that he's preserving your memory ready for the day you’re no longer with him. His lockscreen is a photo of you leaning on his balcony, gazing out at the moon, in one of your favourite flowing dresses. With the white light reflecting on you, he felt like he was looking at one of the most beautiful angels in the celestial realm. It makes him happy and bittersweet at the same time, and reminds him to enjoy every moment you spend together. (You made your lockscreen a photo of him sleeping. He made you swear to never get your phone out around his brothers, which you reluctantly agreed on. You’re sitting on a gold mine).

XOXO - Are they very affectionate? Do they love to kiss and cuddle?

More affectionate than everyone expected him to be. Expect to fall asleep against his chest, and spend your free time after classes wrapped in his arms with a pint of ice-cream covered in forehead kisses. He just loves to feel you near him.

Yearning - How will they cope when they’re missing their partner?

He sends you a simple text, just letting you know how much he loves and adores you, and lets you do whatever it is that has you separated. He uses the time to crack on with the mountains of paperwork, but he never gets much done with you on his mind. 

Zeal - Are they willing to go to great lengths for the relationship? If so, what kind of?

Once he cares for you, he would do anything for you, just like he would for his brothers. He wants the best for you, and that means he would do anything for you. Once, he cancelled on Diavolo to spend the day with you, much to your delight. That was the boldest thing he’d ever done, and to this day you use it to tease him. He really would do anything for you. That's love!

[housesoftrees]

THE SOUL OF JULIAN

Character Name — Julian Perez

Age — 30

Role — Fighter

House — Jupiter

FCs — Tommy Martinez

STATUS — Open

BEHIND THE SOUL.

“For a tortured artist - he can light up any room...” Or so the whispers of admiration and awe go, as Julian subverts the artwork that lines the coveted museum. Each piece of art exudes the darkness and depth of the human condition, but one look at Julian’s cheery demeanor can wash away its impact. One has to wonder, then, where he finds the emotional spectrum to form such a collection. But there are calluses on the same hand, where a paintbrush fits beautifully. A jaded history, behind the intricate tattoos that line his body. And slowly, but all at once, any admirer can see the man behind the specimen. One half of a wayward brotherhood that took the streets of Caracas, Venezuela - the brothers made a reputation for themselves. With their slick smiles and gift of gab, they fill their stomachs and then some on the unsuspecting and pompous’ deep pockets. At only seventeen, Julian and Javier set their sights on greener pastures. The golden city of Florence, with its tourist draw and ties to illicit enterprise, would be their new stage. Amidst the cacophony of lights and inspiring artistry, Julian finds his affinity for the lifestyle wane. Why take, when he can create? It creates a rupture in the Perez brothers’ tight-knit bond, with Julian traveling on the straight and narrow. The cause of Janus abandoned, for the call of Jupiter. Now, Julian brings beauty into the world - and lends the power of his fists, only when love and peace fail the House of Jupiter’s cause. 

BIOGRAPHY

–– PERHAPS, YOU WILL THINK LATER IN LIFE, IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN TRAGIC, the sight of two young CHILDREN traversing the streets of CARACAS with their arms full of the stolen wallets of tourists and locals whom had been so unlucky as to cross your path. Perhaps, it would have been SENSIBLE for the shop owners who trade you food and clothing to question WHY you are bartering with stolen money, rather than sleeping beneath a stable roof, under the watchful eye of a RESPONSIBLE adult. Alas, nobody ever stops to question this for more than a few moments – any PITY they might have felt for the PEREZ children quickly washed away with the attempt you will soon make to steal whatever items of value are on their person.

Make no mistake – you have never considered yourself to be a CRIMINAL. You never stole out of MALICE, or GREED, but rather desperation – and, for this, you believe you should be entitled to a full pardon ( even if the authorities in Venezuela never quite saw eye to eye ). Truthfully, the whereabouts of your parents remains a mystery to this day. Perhaps they exist in your EARLIEST memories – two shadowy figures who you imagine must have felt something close to affection for the sons they had produced ( or perhaps this is simply something you tell yourself to ensure you sleep better at night ), or maybe their presence has been entirely FABRICATED – a mind playing tricks on itself, scratching itself raw as it attempts to comprehend the UNKNOWN. All you know is that, by the age of ten, you are all but alone – the only ally in the world is the one who came into it five minutes before you.

You and your brother are two sides of the same coin – existing in a perfect BALANCE which allows you both to survive in a world that regards you with a scornful APATHY. Despite the slim age gap that exists between you, JAVIER assumes the role of older brother with ease – he has the wits and the cunning to become a natural LEADER among the pair of you. The schemes concocted in your youth to facilitate survival are all born from Javier’s mind – slightly more clever than your own, if also slightly more sinister. You’re content to follow along – it is the only way you know how to survive, and though the methods may seem UNDERHANDED, you learn to swallow your guilt when the alternative is starvation. While Javier is the MASTERMIND of your schemes, you are the HEART – all flashy smiles, exuding CHARM and MAGNETISM in spades – looking your victims right in the eye as dexterous fingers nimbly take what you need while they remain none the wiser. You serve as everything from a lure to a distraction to a pickpocket – you and your brother doing what you need to survive, TAKING what the world has failed to provide for you.

You differ from JAVIER in one crucial aspect – your AMBITION. Your brother always craved for MORE – more money, grander schemes, greener pastures, while you were content simply with taking what you needed to get by, preferring to spend your downtime drawing or daydreaming, perhaps even painting when you had coins to spare on brushes and paints. You never took much PRIDE in the mischief you and Javier found yourselves getting into – you never looked back on your schemes with much SATISFACTION beyond that of living to see another day ( though, for you, they were much less life-or-death than they were for your brother, his watchful eye always leaving you feeling SAFE, even when you were anything but ), but you would have followed Javier anywhere, your brother providing a shining beacon of SECURITY in a life that often felt ADRIFT.

It is JAVIER’S ambition which brings you to FLORENCE. The streets of Caracas soon became too small for his growing ego – the plans he made were BIGGER than the world you had thus far been confined to. And so, you do as you’ve always done – and you follow him to Florence and into the arms of the ROSSI FAMILY. It’s BEAUTIFUL – this is the first thing you notice, it is a city of bright lights and beautiful artistry, a HAVEN for those who would sooner put beauty into the world than try to take it away. The ROSSI FAMILY are good to you and your brother – JAVIER is able to quickly charm his way into their ranks, your illicit background soon winning you favour among the more junior ranks of their operation.

You fit yourself in among the ranks of the Rossi family alongside your brother – deft hands and charm still as effective here as they had been in Caracas, but you’re no longer in the position you were as a child – STEALING loses its appeal when it is simply for the sake of doing so. Back home, stealing had been your only option – it had been all you’d known, but here, in FLORENCE, there is so much life and beauty to explore, and you find yourself haplessly drawn towards far less ILLICIT pursuits, like a moth to a flame. You dip your toes into the house of JUPITER slowly at first – slipping away from JANUS at night to pay visit to THE AMORE, finding yourself surrounded by like minded individuals, who place more value on the arts, food, and entertainment, than they do on power, force, and structure.

You find yourself INSPIRED by the beauty they create, by the PASSION they bring into the world – choosing peace and love over destruction and thievery. You try not to think of it as a BETRAYAL, when you approach SEVIL ERDOĜAN to learn more about the house of Jupiter. You try not to think of the way it might HURT your brother – the one who has been by your side since the day you were born. You’ve followed him everywhere since you were children, but you know this is a path you must forge alone. You were never cut out for the life that Janus offered you – you were never as ambitious as your brother, and though you’d never known it until you’d arrived in Florence – you’d always longed to CREATE rather than DESTROY. As a child, you’d sooner play with insects than kill them, and as an adult, you’d sooner paint landscapes than burn them.

Entering the ranks of Jupiter feels like arriving home. They give you a purpose, a job, and a feeling of SATISFACTION that your life has always lacked. You find a love within collecting and curating artwork for the gallery – of seeing your vision come to life, spattered across the ornate walls for all the world to see. You find a BELONGING within Jupiter, a sense of peace that you never knew you’d craved. Of course, there is still a DARKNESS within you, a disquiet.

It can be seen in your art – a twisted and tortured past that comes to life on canvas but fails to be spotted in your lighthearted and jovial sensibility. It can be seen when you come into contact with your brother – a bond so unceremoniously SHATTERED, leaving a fragmented relationship in its wake. You never meant to hurt him – but you were never yourself within Janus, and he would never feel himself within Jupiter – though you are brothers, you were never similar enough to continue along the same path forever. Finally, it can be seen in your hands – calloused and broken, you know that your peace is tenuous. If called upon, you will need to FIGHT for Jupiter, for the life you have built – that your days of getting your hands dirty are not as far behind you as you may wish to pretend.

PROFESSION

Fighter for the House of Jupiter  - Art Collector at The Museum

SOUL CONNECTIONS

Javier Perez - Soul Connection - Bonded. Javier is every bit the older, half-Irish twin that the eleven month gap implies. Where Julian exudes compassion and grace, Javier emanates harsh edges. Once upon a time, the brotherly-duo work; until Julian’s need to create instead of destroy ruptures the close bond. Their souls may be bonded, but it is built on broken seams. Will they ever come together again? 

Sunghee Iseul - Soul Connection - Medium. Of the few friendships Julien maintained within Janus, he holds Iseul’s to the highest esteem. A rare gem amidst the gloom and doom of Janus, she evokes a belief system that is vivid and alive. So much so, that many of Julien’s original pieces embody her spirit - as well as her likeness. Every artist needs a muse, even if it is Persephone herself. 

Sevil Erdoğan - Soul Connection - Low. They are honeyed words that pour into Julian’s eager ear. An kindness and empathy that draws admiration for some, is more like a lifeline to Julian himself. At twenty-three, Julian approached them to learn of Jupiter’s offerings. And now, he owes his place in their ranks to Sevil herself.

[stygiantarot]

Winter Witchcraft

(Taught in @thealexandriarchives on 1/17/20)

Winter. The solid dark earth, bright swirling snow, prickling sharp ice, stark reaching branches, echoing warm silence. It can appear in a variety of different ways around the globe depending on the local season. I shall do my best in today’s class to give inspiration and tools that apply to as many persons as possible. I apologize in advance if this Midwest USA witch is a bit too used to intense winters and forgets to adjust as much for those in more temperate zones.

When it comes to the season of winter, it is most commonly associated with snow, ice, cold, all those Hallmark style holiday card scenes with snowmen, scarves, and white covered buildings. At it’s core however, winter is really just your area’s fallow period. It doesn’t have to involve cold or snow; just the time when things are not growing (or not growing as much). Locals may tend to be more inclined to stay indoors; regardless of the weather, and just be more lethargic and measured in their time.

When it comes to incorporating winter and it’s attributes and power into your witchcraft, the main ingredients you’ll want to work with are:

Dirt: Fallow dirt is mighty! Like a hibernating bear, it’s carefully collecting all those nutrients and minerals and saving them up for spring to share in full with local flora and fauna again! It is stable, strong, and patient. A good ingredient for spellwork involving breaking a habit, defensive protection (long term wards especially!), prosperity and abundance spells; especially slowly building ones like a long term money spell, spells or glamours relating to hiding or camouflage, encouraging a relationship to remain stable and grow, and many more. Though it should be strictly collected/harvested during the winter, you can store it year round and it retains it’s Winter attributes.

Snow/Ice: The most obvious winter witchcraft ingredient, this will mostly be used in a melted water form but some examples I’ll offer use solid snow and ice and the melting of it is part of the spell. It’s a good ingredient for: cleansing, freezing a person or problem, healing, banishing, creativity boosting (especially in physical crafts). Like with winter dirt, you can only collect during specific times but can store year round. You can even refreeze in your freeze if you have a spell that requires it to melt in some fashion that you want to cast in spring or summer.
Specific types of snow and ice correspondences: https://orriculum.tumblr.com/post/ 168151692633/winter-correspondences.
My own post on using snow in witchcraft: https://stygiantarot.tumblr.com/post/181955654194/ we-just-had-our-first-real-snow-here-in-ohio-and

Stones: Stones found in winter can have a special sort of power to them. Despite being unchanged physically year round (besides temperature), stones absorb energies readily. They are attuned to what is going on in the locale seasonally despite not directly changing themselves. It is because of this physical permanence that they are more easily able to be energetically sensitive. I like to use them especially in divination work (whether directly in creating runes or oracle sets or indirectly in boosting divination power and focus). They hold that deep quiet and patience of the season deeply under their hard surfaces. They also make excellent spellwork batteries and anchors for warding or enchanting.

Sticks/Pinceones/Flora castoffs: Those things that trees and shrubs drop are especially potent in winter as well. A weathered stick, a prickly pinecone, even some nuts and seeds are cast off during the fallow season and can be used in spellwork. These tend to be good for intentions relating to growth, protection, spirit work, psychic prowess boosting, and creativity as well as associations related to the plant it came from.

Cold weather Flora: Evergreens, hearty flowers like heather, and witch hazel, and early flowers like snowbells or daphne; there are still some plants that thrive even in chilly temps or fallow growing periods. Keep a sharp eye out in your local area for what remains or becomes vibrant during your winter and you can incorporate it into your spellwork. It would have the attributes of that plant, but “jazzed” up a bit during the season of winter when it remains strong amongst other flora that wait for spring or summer.

Citrus/Spices/Seasonal kitchentry: Despite it’s bright sun and summer associations, most citrus fruits are winter growing and this is an appropriate time to incorporate them into drinks and foods to bring some sun into your fallow period. It can help with healing (anti-depression especially), inspiration, solar magic, and creativity. There are also the warmer spices like those used in mulling ciders and wine that are good to use during this season to inject warmth and power into your spellwork. Take a look at what might grow or be commonly used in cooking during your area’s fallow period and incorporate them into your kitchen work in drinks, food, even baking!


Now to build spellwork and crafting ideas. The following are from my own grimoire that you may use or be inspired by!


Snowmen poppets: draw or write a taglock on a piece of paper and put it into a snowman! The intention of the spell takes effect on the target as the snowman melts.

Snow cleansing baths: put a bit of snow in your bath for a soothing ritual bath. Imagine all your worries falling away like a gentle snowfall drifting from the sky.

Winter Jar of Dirt: collect some winter dirt into a special jar, leave a bit of room at the top and put in scraps of paper that outline things you need to have growth or be more stable throughout the year. Feel free to double down by drawing some sigils on the jar for growth and stability.

Create a tool: use a winter stone or collection of them to create a tool for your practice. This can be a divination set, a spellcasting battery, an enchanted focus stone, even a painted offering, etc!


Use that crockpot or bake!: This is the time to do something warm and slow. A soup in a crockpot, a slow roasted dinner, those favorite cookies or brownies you remember from days of yore. You can also focus on a warm drink recipe; chocolate, cider, tea, coffee, wine, etc! They all can be made intentioned with spices and flavoring additions while they warm up to toasty soothing temps!

Room and floor sprays: use a bit of snow or ice, added to standard water, along with winter focused herbs and spices infused and put in a spray bottle for room spray or fl oor wash. You can focus the intentions as needs but a good one would be a pre-cleansing treatment for that “spring cleaning” physical cleaning many do! Or an energizing or inspiration spray to keep out seasonal blues and lethargy.

Enchant a blanket: Take a favorite blanket and enchant it with comfort, warmth, and peace for you to cuddle with during chilly evenings. You can do the same with a favorite towel for after warm baths or showers!


The methodology in creating crafting and spellwork ideas is to think about that fallow period and what you can “harvest” from it; whether it being something directly like snow or dirt. Or something indirectly, like the quiet, the introspection, or even the longer nights to do more lunar focused magic. Spirit work is another strong association in winter months. The slower and quieter season allows for easier connecting often to those not of physical form. Trying visiting a graveyard, park, or museum during your fallow season and seeing what you are able to sense.

Winter is also the time to take stock of your own life and spirituality- just like the earth does during its fallow period. Catalogue and cleanse your tools while you consider if there are any more you need or any you might pass along because you no longer use them. Clean and reorganize your storage and altars or shrines. Spend some time adding to your grimoire or journal those entries you’ve been putting off. Do some shadow work or divination. Write down some clear spiritual goals you’d like to focus on this year (good to put in your Jar of Dirt 😉 ) Do extra research on that area you’ve been debating on delving into.

However, don’t let yourself become too isolated. It’s normal to want some additional space in fallow periods, both personal and seasonal. But it’s important to still have some regular times that you get out of your own headspace. Set reminders for yourself to reach out to your favorite people to at least have a chat even if you don’t have the ability to get out of the house. Connect with online friends and community. Share ideas, thoughts, stories. Go see a movie or to a museum.

Letting winter into your bones doesn’t have to be chilling- it can be like that first breeze when you step outside. A surprise, maybe you gasp for a moment. But it’s exhilarating and revitalizing and reminds you of the beauty and wonder of nature. Even when nature is quiet and stark, she’s there. Just waiting for you to reach out and find her secrets and power to lend you. Go forth and Do the Magic.

Orriculum’s Winter correspondences: https://orriculum.tumblr.com/post/153243108238/winter- witchcraft


Some other Winter inspirations:
 https://ofcloudsandstars.tumblr.com/post/153908846876/゚-winter-witchy-things-to-do

[correspondencearchive]

2. Natalia Nakazawa & Nazanin Noroozi

Natalia Nakazawa and Nazanin Noroozi discuss their use of archives and photographs, creating hybrid narratives, cultural transmission, and the formation of personal and cultural memories.

Natalia Nakazawa, Obtrait I, Jacquard woven textile, 71 x 53 inches, 2015, Photo credit: Jeanette May

Natalia Nakazawa: First off, Naz, how are you doing? There has been so much going on - it is far too easy to forget we have bodies. We have families, we have things we need to do, and we need to take care of ourselves. As they say, put the oxygen mask on first, and then help others. Can you maybe start by just telling us what your day looks like? What are you doing to take care of yourself?

Nazanin Noroozi: I’m doing ok. I have to balance my day job and my studio time. My day job is working in high-end interior design firms in which our clients spend millions and millions of $$$ on luxury goods. It is very interesting to look at the wage gap especially considering the pandemic. When someone can spend 40k on a coffee table for their vacation house, and you hear all the issues with the stimulus checks etc, it makes you wonder about our value system and how our society functions.

As for self-care, I guess just like any other artist, I buy tons of art supplies that I may or may not need! I just bought a heavy-duty industrial paper cutter that can cut a really thick stack of paper! I needed it! I really don't have room for it, but I bought it! So that is my method of self-care! Treat myself to things that I like but may be problematic in the future. ;)

Natalia: I recently re-watched Stephanie Syjuco’s Art21 feature online where she talks about having to actively decide to become a citizen of the US, despite having come to this country at the age of 3. One of the poignant points she brings up is how we are all reckoning right now with what it means to be “American”. She also brings up the iconic photo taken by Dorothea Lange  of a large sign reading “I am an American” put up by a Japanese American in Oakland right after the declaration of internment - thinking about how citizenship can be given or taken away. This all feels very relevant right now. What do you think about these questions? How do you use archives and photos of our past to engage in these issues of belonging, citizenship, and the precarity of it all?

Nazanin: What I try to do with archives is to question them as modes of cultural transmission and historical memory. I think many artists deal with archives in a more clinical and objective manner, whereas I like to add my own agency to these found photographs. When one looks at a family album or found footage, one is already looking at fragmented narratives. You never know a whole story when you look at your friend’s old family albums. I truly embrace this fragmented, broken narrative and try to make it my own. I also constantly move back and forth between still and moving images, printmaking and painting, experimental films and artist books. So there is this hybridity in the nature of found footage itself that I try to activate in my work. In these works handmade cinema is used as a medium to re-create an already broken narrative told by others, sometimes complete strangers to tell stories about trauma and displacement. That is what fascinates me about archives. The fact that you can recreate your story and make a new fictional alt-reality.

Nazanin Noroozi, Self Portrait

Natalia: But who is to say these if fictional alt-realities are less important or less serious than purely “art historical” narratives? One of the things that I am exploring in my work is giving space for slippages in memory, rearranging of timelines to accommodate a lived experience. What happens when we look at collections - even museum collections - with the same warmth, tenderness, and care that we would an old friend? What possibilities are dislodged there? What benefit is there to towing the status quo - which is built on white supremacy, stolen artifacts, and other types of lying, exclusion and dubious authoritative storytelling? Also, there are so many family histories that often become reified - being told and retold with certainty over and over again. How do we claim agency from that oppressive knowledge? The things we tell ourselves about our families may not be “true” so what do we risk by revisiting our archives and re-telling those histories through our current eyes? When we re-examine the history - we may discover new ways of seeing and being with ourselves.

Nazanin: I like to think of photographs as sites of refuge. When you look at a photograph of a kid’s birthday from many years ago, you know for fact that this joyous moment is long gone. These mundane moments that bring you “happiness” and security won't last. It’s like “all that is solid melts into air”. In a larger picture, isn't everything in life fragile and fleeting and there is absolutely no certainty in life?  For example, look at how Covid has changed our “normal everyday” life. A simple birthday party for your kid was unimaginable for months. In “Purl” and “Elite 1984”  I mix these mundane moments with images of flood, natural disasters and other forces of nature to talk about fragile states of being and ideas of home. I digitally and manually manipulate footages of a stormy Caspain Sea, Mount Damavand or a glacier melt to ask my questions about failure or resistance, you know? I let the images tell me the new narrative, both visually and thematically.  

Something I find really interesting in your work is how you re-create these alt-realities by actively and physically engaging your audience into participating in your work, like your textile maps - called Our Stories of Migration? Do you have any fear that they may tell a story you don't like? Or take your work to a place that you didn't anticipate? How do you deal with an open-ended artwork that is finished but it needs an audience to be complete?

Natalia Nakazawa, Our Stories of Migration, Jaquard woven textiles, hand embroidery, shisha mirrors, beetle wings, beads, yarn, 36 x 16 feet, 2020, Photo credit: Vanessa Albury

Natalia: I am always stunned by the generosity of the people I meet - those who dive in and share their own histories - and I think it points to a universal need of ours to share and connect. There is always potential to create intimacy - even within the walls of large institutions, such as schools or museums - when our own lives are placed at the center with care and concern. I’ve never heard a story that didn’t make me pause and grant me more space for contemplating the complexity of being a human on this planet. We have all kinds of mechanisms for memory - archives, written diaries, photos, paintings, objects - but at the end of the day they are nothing without our active participation. Quite literally they are meaningless unless they are being interacted with. That has been the entry point for me, as an artist and educator. How do we take all of these things that exist in the material world and make sense out of them? What does the process of “making sense” do to the way we live TODAY? Or, perhaps, how we envision the future? It is almost like a yoga practice, a stretching of the mind, a flexibility to think backwards and forwards - that lends us more space to consider the present.

Nazanin: Yeah! I think you really are on point here! I think we really can't understand our existence without retelling the history and recreating new realities.

Nazanin Noroozi, The Rip Tide

Natalia: Thank you, Nazanin! Anything coming up for you that you want to mention?

Nazanin: Yes, I am actually doing a really amazing residency at Westbeth for a year. This is an incredible opportunity as I get to live in the Village for one year and have a live-work space in such an amazing place. Westbeth is home to many wonderful artists!

Natalia Nakazawa, History has failed us...but no matter, Jacquard textiles, laser cut Arches watercolor paper, vinyl, jewels, concentrated watercolor and acrylic on wood panel, 40 x 90 inches, 2019, Photo credit: Jeanette May

Natalia Nakazawa is a Queens-based interdisciplinary artist working across the mediums of painting, textiles, and social practice. Utilizing strategies drawn from a range of experiences in the fields of education, arts administration, and community activism, Natalia negotiates spaces between institutions and individuals, often inviting participation and collective imagining. Natalia received her MFA in studio practice from California College of the Arts, a MSEd from Queens College, and a BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design. She has recently presented work at the Arlington Arts Center (Washington, DC), Transmitter Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY), Museum of Arts and Design (New York, NY), and The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY). Natalia was an artist in residence at MASS MoCA, SPACE on Ryder Farm, The Children’s Museum of Manhattan, Wassaic Project, and Triangle Arts.

www.natalianakazawa.com @nakazawastudio

Nazanin Noroozi is a multimedia artist incorporating moving images, printmaking and alternative photography processes to reflect on notions of collective memory, displacement and fragility. Noroozi’s work has been widely exhibited in both Iran and the United States, including the Immigrant Artist Biennial, Noyes Museum of Art, NY Live Arts, Prizm Art Fair, and Columbia University. She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the Artistic Freedom Initiative, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, NYFA IAP 2018, Mass MoCA Residency, North Adams, MA and Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts Residency, NY. She is an editor at large of Kaarnamaa, a Journal of Art History and Criticism. Noroozi completed her MFA in painting and drawing from Pratt Institute. Her works have been featured in various publications and media including BBC News Persian, Elephant Magazine, Financial Times, and Brooklyn Rail.

www.nazaninnoroozi.net @nazaninnoroozi

[mabelleflanerie]

The Birth of Fauvism

A Study of Matisse’s The Young Sailor II

As I walked through the Metropolitan’s exhibition gallery of Greek and Roman art, through the great hallway showcasing pieces from Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, and into the Modern and Contemporary Art galleries, I realized that within the span of three short minutes I had experienced the fastest chronological and geographical exploration of art history. Hidden towards the far back of the museum is a group of rooms showcasing a collection named “Reimagining Modernism”. It houses the paintings of everyone from Picasso to Grünewald. The smallest of the rooms, 904, is quite unlike the rest. It doesn't have a bright vibrant wall on which the paintings have been mounted. While the other rooms have walls painted in a rich burgundy or deep royal blue, 904 is a pale grey room. Upon further inspection of its contents, I began to understand the reason for the choice of wall colour: Filled with extremely vibrant artwork by Matisse, Vlaminck, Picasso, and Derain (to name a few), it would have been an eyesore to make the walls equally as colourful. It would have even taken away from the paintings themselves. The largest, most multi-coloured, and therefore loudest of all the pieces is Matisse’s 1906 painting The Young Sailor II. At first glance, I responded in shock and to be honest, slight fear. Why would Matisse choose a bright pink background for his model who is already dressed in a jarring blue and green get-up? Well, upon further research I have discovered that these colour choices are what made Matisse stand out from his fellow modern artists. 

The Young Sailor II is a fauvist portrait of a young fisherman named Germain Augustin Barthélémy Montargè from a small Catalan village called Collioure (Rewald, 89). Germain is seated on a wooden chair and his facial expressions are painted in a very cartoon-like manner (Fig. 1). Although much sharper than Matisse’s first version, there is still a lot of ambiguity that is heavily present. The only sense of differentiation between the body parts or pieces of clothing is through colour choice. The painting itself is a striking palette of green, blue, pink, and orange. The face of the model does have a few details however: The eyebrows are extremely exaggerated and I even sense a playful expression being presented. Sabine Rewald, curator of Modern Art at the Metropolitan Museum states that Germain’s “theatrical looks and his colourful costume, set against the pink, candy-coloured ground, combine to make this work one of Matisse’s most decorative portraits in the Fauve manner” (Rewald, 90). The model is dressed in some sort of a bright blue jacket, green pants with a checkered printed cuff, pink shoes, and a blue-green cap. Being that Matisse has not included any details of the garments, I find myself staring at the cuffs of the pants wondering if he intended them to be boots or checkered socks instead. This sort of confusion seems to be a common reaction to Matisse’s artwork: Julia Brucker, contributor at The Art Story, states that although Matisse’s artwork “was important in endorsing the value of decoration in modern art” the manner in which he paints with his colours is frequently disorienting to viewers (Brucker). This fauvist portrait does exactly that and I suppose it is what forced me to keep staring at it until I was completely hypnotised and enraptured by it. 

Matisse - Young Sailor II

“Fauve” was a word that kept appearing on the information plaques of 904’s paintings so I sought to discover the meaning behind this strange word. Synonymous to “grand félin féroce” or in English “wild cat”, “Fauvism” describes a movement in modern art where the artists  focused on personal expression through eccentric colour use (Wolf). The artists, or “Fauves” as they were known, included Henri Matisse himself, Albert Marquet, and Georges Henri Rouault. They were inspired by the artwork of Van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat, and Cezanne and they concentrated on the use of vibrant colours: “Matisse emerged as the leader of the group, whose members shared the use of intense colour as a vehicle for describing light and space, and who redefined pure colour and form as means of communicating the artist's emotional state. In these regards, Fauvism proved to be an important precursor to Cubism and Expressionism as well as a touchstone for future modes of abstraction” (Wolf). Justin Wolf, from The Art History Contributors specifies three key ideas important to Fauvism: Firstly, the Fauves saw the significance of colour and the atmosphere it created. Colour was in fact autonomous to the painting itself. Secondly, the Fauves drew attention to the flatness of the canvas in order to create a sense of unification in the artwork. Lastly, the Fauves focused on depicting human expression and inner emotions. Being that Matisse excelled in these three modes of painting, he was considered to be the forerunner and pioneer of Fauvism: “Synthesizing all these ideas, Matisse turned away from using subtle hues of mixed paints and began working with bright colour, directly from the tube, as a means of conveying emotion. He had been working outdoors since the mid-1890s, and his travels to Corsica and the south of France in 1898 increased his interest in capturing the effect of strong natural light” (Wolf). Looking at the painting, I see exactly what Wolf is describing. There is very little shading or colour gradient in the piece. The jacket is a flat blue with a small number of purple stripes and the pants are a solid green just as the background is a solid pink. The brush strokes are visibly large but other than that there is no sense of texture being created. 

However insignificant of a fact this may seem to us, to Matisse, it was very intentional: “Rather than using modelling or shading to lend volume and structure to his pictures, Matisse used contrasting areas of pure, unmodulated colour. These ideas continued to be important to him throughout his career” (Brucker). The reason Matisse did this is because he felt it permitted him to better communicate the model’s emotion and the emotion that is depicted in the painting is one that is quite peculiar. The young man seems to be posing in a “look how fabulous I am” manner with a particularly wily look on his face. What I began to wonder while I was sat on the wooden bench in 904 staring in beguilement at this piece is how much say Matisse had in the posture or expression of the model. According to Brucker, it’s highly possible that Matisse was in fact using the model as a medium in which he could portray his own feelings by “reducing them to ciphers in his monumental designs” (Brucker). This theory seems to be proven by Matisse himself - “Matisse, by way of Cezanne and impressionism, attempted to realize his emotion in front of the object. (Matisse frankly stated in an interview of 1912: ‘I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion that it produces upon me’)” (Bock-Weiss, Matisse, 58). So now, this painting gives us much more than just a depiction of a sailor in Collioure. It gives us insight on Matisse’s life during the summer of 1906. Matisse painted The Young Sailor II while on one of his travels to the Catalan region near the Spanish border. This small village of Collioure was a frequent vacation spot of his and is in fact the birthplace of Fauvism (Brucker). Germain, the model, was one of many fisherman from this small seaside village.

Collioure, France (by journalistontherun.com)

But what exactly made Germain stand out from the eight hundred and ninety-nine other fishermen that lived in this village? According to Rewald, the Montargè family were unlike other Catalans: “Since Germain was six-feet tall and of athletic build – which is unusual for  Catalans – it is not surprising that he might have caught Matisse’s eye during one of the painter’s early morning strolls along the pier in Collioure’s harbour… Another characteristic that made Germain stand out in a crowd was his Slavic features. These are shared by the Montargè family … and are still referred to, by the people in Collioure, as ‘cet air primitif’ (‘that primitive look’)” (Rewald, 89). Prior to this painting, during the summer of 1905, Matisse produced many other works of art portraying Collioure: The Open Window, View of Collioure, and Landscape at Collioure are among Matisse’s most well-known fauvist paintings. He worked alongside Derain and together they developed and refined the fauvist style (Wolf). After four months in Collioure, Derain and Matisse set off for Paris to present their work at the Salon d'Automne. 

Matisse - Vue de Collioure

While Collioure proved to be the birthplace of the fauvist technique, the Salon d’Automne of 1905 is where the movement got its name: Louis Vauxcelles, an art critic who was inspecting the pieces at the exhibition used the phrase “Donatello parmi les fauves” in reaction to what he saw (Wolf). Translating to “Donatello among the wild beasts”, the word “Fauve” endured despite being disparaging. However slighting the reviews were, their portraits were bought by the likes of Leo and Gertrude Stein and Fauvism proved to be important to how colour was seen and used in the domain of modern art: “The Fauves liberated colour from any requirements other than those posed by the painting itself. "When I put a green," Matisse would say, "it is not grass. When I put a blue, it is not the sky." Art exerted its own reality. Colour was a tool of the painter's artistic intention and expression, uncircumscribed by imitation” (“Explore This Work - Henri Matisse, Open Window, Collioure”). What colour did was add meaning and context to the painting in a new and different way. Instead of asking why Matisse painted a sailor boy looking into the distance, we can now contemplate as to why the sailor boy’s ear is  orange while his right hand is pink and what Matisse is trying to communicate by doing this. Before Matisse and Derain, artists were compelled to paint a blue sky, a tan face, and a red flower. Now, the artist was free to paint a red sky, a blue face, and a tan flower. Fauvism, for the first time diminished the authority the object had over how it was painted and it consequently gave way to the more successful abstract movements such as Cubism and Expressionism. 

Along with painters such as his rivals Picasso and Mondrian, Matisse re-invented the way in which art was produced. By the use of simplification and color as the sole subject of painting, Matisse had a considerable influence on art and future abstract artists, proving him to be a major figure during the twentieth century. Be it Cubism, Pointillism, or Fauvism, the art of painting went through some drastic experimentation during the early 20th century and Matisse was surely an important part of it.

Bibliography: 

Bock-Weiss, Catherine, and Henri Matisse. Henri Matisse: Modernist Against the Grain. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009. p.58 Brucker, Julia. “Henri Matisse Artist Overview and Analysis.” The Art Story - Modern Art Insight, The Art Story Contributors, www.theartstory.org/artist-matisse-henri.htm. “Explore This Work - Henri Matisse, Open Window, Collioure.” National Gallery of Art, www.nga.gov/Collection/highlights/highlight106384.html. Kleiner, Fred S. Gardner's Art through the Ages: The Western Perspective. Vol. 2, Cengage Learning, 2009. P.688 Matisse, Henri. “The Young Sailor II” .Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, 1998. Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Matisse, Henri. “The Young Sailor I” . Private Collection, 1906. Rewald, Sabine. Twentieth-Century Modern Masters: the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection: , Metropolitan Museum of Art. Abrams, 1989. p.89-90 Schapiro, Meyer. Nature of Abstract Art . American Marxist Association, 1937. Wolf, Justin. “Fauvism Movement Overview and Analysis” The Art Story - Modern Art Insight, The Art Story Contributors, www.theartstory.org/movement-fauvism.htm.

[lackadaisycats]

Do you have any advice for furnishing rooms in illustrations? I'm creating a short film for uni and a big component of my film has to do with the personality that each room has but I often find myself at a lost on even where to even begin ahh... I'm really inspired with how you design and set up each of the rooms in your comic and was wondering if you may have any advice? Thanks a ton! ;w;/

Sounds like an exciting project!My personal approach to designing and drawing rooms has roughly two parts. Maybe they’ll be of some use.1.)  I begin by asking myself a series of questions about the place or room in question, about its function and character. It’s not a formalized process by any means, but I like to ruminate while thumbnailing. If I’m still fiddling with the layout of the room on paper, I’ll sometimes jot down a list of things I want to include as they occur to me so that I don’t forget them along the way.Just as with the drawing itself, I work from large to small details, beginning with the overall architectural style and shape of the room, working down to large furnishings, small furnishings and then other extraneous items, bearing in mind the sort of personality and atmosphere I’m trying to convey. I like to approach it like I would approach character design, really. When it’s a room occupied by a character I have already developed, it’s also sort of a fun exercise in creating a metaphorical reflection of that character with items, styles, colors and mood.

2.)  The other part of my approach is simply digging around for good photo references. This aids me in fleshing things out a little further (especially if I’m running dry on decor ideas) and it helps me lend some authenticity to my design. Historical photos of tenement living, old saloons, garages, old office buildings, banks, suburban homes, decade-specific shots from interior design magazines and a plethora of other such things are readily available in online image archives and photo collections. If your setting or subject matter predates photos or is more fantastical in nature, you can often still find recreations or things that pertain - old manses or castles or cottages or laboratories converted to museums and decorated with an aim at historical authenticity, for instance.————————————

Some questions you might ask yourself as you design a room: What’s the room used for and what belongs in the room on a utilitarian basis? From what era is the building and how does that influence the style of the room’s features, like the window and door frames and flooring? What are the walls made of? Is the building heated by radiators, massive fireplaces, wood stoves or modern HVAC? Does it look old or contemporary? Is it worn by time, with crumbling plaster or stone and water stains, or is it freshly painted or wallpapered?  What are the major pieces of furniture? Is there a centerpiece or focal point around which the rest of the room is styled or situated? How is the room lit? Windows? Lamps? Sconces? Rail lights? A chandelier? What sort, what style? How should the lighting affect the room? Dim, bright, soft glows, slivers of light? Are any of the inner workings exposed - ducts and wires and pipes?What’s the overarching character of the room? Is this a warm, cozy place, a massive and daunting place, an eerie place, a sterile and unwelcoming place? What sort of character uses or occupies it and what can the room say about them? How would they decorate? Does the furniture match? Is there a theme to their choices - French countryside or baroque or art deco or geometric Ikea or 1950s retro? Do they place things mindfully and deliberately or carelessly? Do they dust and clean?Do they leave things on the floor? Are they lavish? Eccentric? Austere? A typical teenager? What are their interests, and what would they wish to surround themselves with or allow others to see?Are they vainly putting on a show for visitors or is it a haven that no one else may enter?  What is most specific about the character(s) who use the room? Do they collect weird taxidermy or creepy porcelain dolls or build robots or sew clothing or write notes to themselves on the wall? Do they festoon things in Christmas lights year-round? Are they nostalgic? Proud? Do they put their trophies and accomplishments from their distant past on display? Is there something conspicuously missing from the room? Are there broken things here? Are there plants or flowers or living things here? Would they hang artwork up, or movie posters, or photos of their family?Anyway, that’s a lot of text, but there’s a lot to think about. Indulge and have fun with it!

[ladyoutlier]

Halo Beautiful

[Read on AO3] | [Week 1]

Week 2: Aziraphale is missing his halo. Gets Crowley to help him look for it. Demon goes on a mad search but comes up empty. When he returns, Aziraphale presents him with a new ring that was once his halo.

It was inventory day at Aziraphale’s bookshop. A day which the angel very much dreaded for it was the day he had to face the list of books he had begrudgingly allowed pass out of his door. It could put him in a very sour mood if he let it, and when he was alone with his records, it was a very easy trap to slip into. 

For this reason and this reason alone, he invited the demon he had teamed up with to prevent the End Times over as company. Despite the rather dreariness associated with the task, Crowley was quick to agree to join him. Although maybe that shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise. Crowley wasn’t one to put up much of a fight when it came to spending time with Aziraphale.

As such, he strode into the shop just as the sun began to breach the horizon on one lazy Sunday morn. Not many people were out. Those unfortunate enough to work on the weekends that were headed out for the day. Drunks on their way home after a long night of partying. It was the hours of scaddatling. Hurrying somewhere as to not be caught out at this time. Appropriately, Crowley took leisure with his step. He liked to swim against the current.

“Morning, angel. Another glorious day where the world wasn’t reduced to rubble overnight,” he said as he met Aziraphale inside.

“I just might wish it was by the end of all this,” Aziraphale replied with a rather sour look on his face.

“Should leave the gloom and doom to me. Doesn’t really suit you.”

“It’s these days that really make me wonder why I run a bookshop.”

“Beats me. Probably should run a museum. Monkeys see but can’t touch.”

“Oh but books are meant to be read.”

“You say that and then use every tool at your disposal to scare away sales.”

“No one has any care for things nowadays,” Aziraphale began as he straightened up a pile of books. “Just toss around priceless collections of information like they’re playthings.”

As the stack became slightly more tidy, the angel swept his hands clean, and led Crowley to the room in which he kept all his records. Paper was a common sight in a bookstore, but this room seemed to have more pages than all of the books out in the store front combined. Generations of running a shop resulted in quite a bit of paperwork. An amount which rivaled that of Heaven’s and Hell’s combined.

“Are there even book museums?” Crowley wondered more to himself than anything as Aziraphale searched for his ledger. “There must be, right? But I haven’t seen one. Not the type of thing you just pass by while walking down the street.”

Aziraphale let out an exasperated breath as he pulled the ledger from a shelf. Despite his numerous miracles to keep the shop dust free, a significant amount of the stuff poofed out as he set the book of records down. He ran his hand down his face. The angel suddenly looked a lot more tired as if, perhaps, he was exaggerating for dramatic effect.

“This might just be the longest day there ever was, and it’s only just begun,” he said, collapsing into a seat.

To see Aziraphale in such a funk was quite irregular even for a day such as this. The angel never liked to see how many books he had sold, but he typically was more sad about the sales than horribly irritated. Irritation wasn’t a thing Aziraphale often showed. He wasn’t one to have a short fuse.

“You feeling all there today?” Crowley asked, having picked up on those details. “You just don’t seem as bright as normal. Er, not bright as in smarts. As in your natural glow is a bit on the dim side.”

Aziraphale brushed off the cover of the ledger, and the dust from it disappeared out of existence. He took a short breath, closed his eyes, and turned to Crowley.

“Ah, I was hoping you wouldn’t notice that, dear. Really foolish of me considering that you’ve got quite the eye for details. You see, I’ve seemed to have misplaced my halo. It’s not the best way to start the day off I must admit.”

“Not like those Frisbee disks hold much purpose other than working as team jerseys. And even with that, wing color’s got them beat. Easier to tell an angel from a demon by looking at the color of their feathers rather than trying to spot a halo.” Crowley shrugged, and then, noticing Aziraphale’s still stoic demeanor, continued on a bit more seriously. “It’s got to be around here somewhere. Plenty of nooks and crannies for it have gotten into. With all your clutter, this place is a lost and found paradise. Might take half a decade, but we’ll find it.”

Aziraphale’s eyes brightened and a smile grew on his face. His little pouty fit had swayed Crowley once again to lend him a hand. “Oh, so you will help me look for it?”

“Sure. Better than watching you manage finances all day. Er. Where’d you see it last?”

“On top my head.”

“Well, that doesn’t really help, does it?”

“I’m certain it is somewhere within these walls. I only ever physically manifest my halo as an, um, improvised reading light.”

“Course you do. A reading light. Yep.”

“It’s much more convenient than using a miracle. Specifically because, until recently, to use one for reading purposes would have been far too frivolous of behavior. Upstairs wouldn’t send me a disciplinary letter for using my halo.”

“Can’t relate. Don’t have a halo, and Downstairs was never that strict on anything like that. Selfishness is an inherently demonic quality. Encouraged frivolous behavior if anything.”

“What did happen to your halo, Crowley?”

“Shattered,” the demon replied rather emotionless. “Now, where do you want me to start looking? Not going to find anything just talking.”

“Oh, um, yes very well. I’ve searched most of this room before you arrived. Yesterday, I was looking through some boxes I received back in 1993 from Sri Lanka. Perhaps, that would be a good place for you to start while I finish here. Towards the back of the shop.”

“Yeah. Sure. On it.”

With that, Crowley turned and left Aziraphale. He had thought search for your halo had meant search for your halo together, but apparently that’s not what Aziraphale had intended. He, seemingly, was more set on the split-up-and-search-for-clues method. Whatever. It didn’t matter.

It mattered so little that his walk wasn’t at all the tad bit huffy as he found his way into the depths of the store. Aziraphale’s shop had a strange quality to it. Particularly, it seemed to be much larger on the inside than the outside would suggest. This, of course, wasn’t something Crowley, of all people, was that unfamiliar with. Still, the towers of books became a bit like a labyrinth this far in.

The demon, in his grumpy state of mind, didn’t focus on any of this. Rather, he made note of how Aziraphale owned far too many candles for someone with so much flammable material lying around. The bookshop’s fiery demise during the End of the World was likely long overdue. He’d have to introduce the angel to those quaint, little LED ones. No real flame. No real fire hazard. And the best part, no more worries keeping him up at night. Although he didn’t need to sleep, it was a real bother not being able to get some shut eye in when he wanted.

A stack of wooden crates beside a droopy leather couch dictated that he had arrived at his destination. Stray bits of straw packing material littered the floor. Despite it obviously being a mess, it was a mess in the most tidy way possible. Really, that description could be applied to all of Aziraphale’s shop. Crowley rolled up his sleeves and plunged his hands into the open crates.

Why was he even doing this? The answer was clear. It was for Aziraphale of course. But he was in the mood to complain. Maybe all this wood fluff wouldn’t show on Aziraphale’s clothes with them being roughly the same color, but for his more nightly palette, he’d be brushing himself off for the next century and still be finding the odd straw particle. 

And what if he did find the angel’s halo? The thing would probably sear his hand clean off. Nothing more holy than a halo. Consecrated ground had nothing on one of those glowy rings. 

Although, the more he thought about it, he couldn’t remember a single time he heard about a demon getting a hold of a halo. Not really something that happened. Minus him and Aziraphale, angels and demons never really were in that close of proximity to each other, so a demon taking an angel’s halo, as far as he knew, had never actually happened before. So what would happen if he found it? He actually had no idea. Aziraphale, at least, hadn’t seemed that worried about it.

He could hardly even remember how halos worked. Did they still glow when apart from their angel? If so, he was wasting his time looking through these crates. The light shining from it would’ve lit up the whole box. Then again, if they did continue to glow, he could hardly imagine how Aziraphale had lost it in the first place. A literal doughnut made of light was hard to misplace.

He moved aside one box, having inspected it for the missing halo, and moved on to the couch. There were more crates, but with how much muck had gotten on him from the first one, he wasn’t excited to get to the rest. Even a miracle likely wouldn’t remove all the fibers from his clothes. Life just had those little irritations that never really ever fully went away. He would know. He invented a lot of them.

He tore the cushions off the couch and threw them to the side. If he had done this in the typical person’s home, Crowley would likely find objects such as coins, hair clips, tele remotes, and food crumbs scattered amongst the exposed surface. However, this was not any ordinary person’s home, and all he found was a spare bookmark with a lovely golden tassel attached to one end.

He sneered as he picked the bookmark up and set it on a nearby end table. That was about the only place a halo could be hidden in a couch. He tossed the cushions back on. It looked much more disheveled than when he began, but he didn’t really care. He dropped to his knees and cranked his head to look below the aged piece of furniture.

The distinct sound of approaching footsteps became audible just as Crowley was about shoulders-deep underneath the couch. He pulled himself out and swivels around to see Aziraphale, who was looking rather uneasy himself. The angel opened his mouth for a moment, furrowed his brow, and then shut his jaw again. His eyes glanced around as if he was plucking the correct words from the air. Crowley pulled himself up and took a few curious steps towards Aziraphale.

“Something on you mind?” he asked, throwing his weight to his back leg.

“Ah, yes quite a lot actually. Would you—that is could you—oh how do I word this?”

“You’re the one that’s read every version of the dictionary twice over for fun. You tell me.”

Aziraphale took a breath and held it for a moment, allowing time to just stagger still for the minute. He took one step closer to the demon as he released the breath.

“Let’s put it this way. I’ve just had the strangest idea for where my halo might be.”

“And where’s that?” Crowley lifted an eyebrow.

Aziraphale smiled and nervously lifted his hand. He slowly raised it to Crowley’s face and then past it to his ear. Crowley followed the angel’s movement with his eyes, but the rest of his expression remained quite frozen in place.

Neither of them moved for a second, instead looking at one another in hopes to gain something from each other’s eyes that they didn’t already know. Aziraphale pulled his hand away, and in a quick shuffle of his fingers, displayed a glowing white ring that didn’t look unlike a wedding band.

“It seems,” Aziraphale began rather flustered. “That it was behind your ear the whole time.”

“Was this whole thing a trap to practice one of your magic tricks?”

“Not—not exactly. Crowley, I’d actually quite like for you to hold onto it. Since you don’t have your own halo, you can wear mine. It would mean a lot to me.” He placed the ring-sized halo into the demon’s palm. “Not sure you could wear it over your head. I didn’t think that was much your style anyways, so I made it a bit smaller. So you can, um, wear it on a finger.”

Crowley stared at the halo in his hand. It didn’t burn like he feared it would. Rather it produced a very comfortable warmth. A warmth that reeked of Aziraphale in the best possible way. He didn’t deserve this. Something so absolutely precious to an angel. He didn’t deserve to hold onto it.

“Why?” he replied. “You’ve only got one of these things. Why would you want me holding on to it?”

“Well, they are just silly Frisbee disks as you called them.” Aziraphale did a little shake of his head. “You mean an awful lot to me, dear, and I figured this was an appropriate way to tell you the lengths of that.”

“Hope you didn’t expect me to get you anything.”

“Your company is more than enough. You’ll keep it then? For me?”

“Yeah, course. I mean, yes absolutely. Wow. Wasn’t expecting this today.”

Aziraphale took the halo and slipped it onto Crowley’s finger. A finger that was appropriately named for wearing jewelry, and also a finger that typically only one type of ring is ever worn on. As he let go of the demon’s hand, the ring halo continued to glow but much more dimly. Dim enough that the odd passerby wouldn’t even notice that there was anything extraordinary about it.

“It looks wonderful on you, dear.”

“So I take it you don’t have any finances to do today then.”

“I thought that would’ve been the giveaway. I haven’t sold a book in fifty years.”

Crowley looked up from his hand to Aziraphale. His face relaxed back into a wide grin. “Of course you haven’t. Really you should go with the museum idea. Would save you a lot of trouble.”

“And forgo all of the tactics I’ve learned to keep away sales? I’d think not!”

They both laughed at that. Something important had happened, but things were not all that different because of it. Perhaps, they were now closer than ever. Specifically, physically at this time, and Aziraphale seemed to notice that as his laugh trailed off and he caught himself watching Crowley continue his.

 There was nothing he could imagine rather doing in this moment. This was one of those fragments of time that would engrain itself as a long-lasting memory. As if impulsed from that, Aziraphale pulled Crowley into a hug. The demon stopped laughing and became rigid, but he soon relaxed and melted into Aziraphale’s embrace, wrapping his arms around the angel as well.

The rest of the bookshop was a still silence. Candles that really shouldn’t have been there continued to burn. Sunlight poured in a bit more from the windows. And in the center of it all: an angel and a demon whose identities had become a bit more muddled into one another's.

***

This work was a part of my discord Weeklies event. If you’d like to learn more, click here.

[geminicblue]

20 Galaxies: Legend in the Sky Chapter 7

Breckenridge was a few miles from Quarterhill's main tourist strip, and the Breckenridge girls rarely visited. The house mothers preferred museums and historical landmarks over the gaudy glory of Main Street. Ru's mother used to take Colleen to Main Street every once in a while. Colleen remembered the haunted houses the most, though they never scared her. She admired the props and wondered how much time it took to build them.

Main Street wasn't anything special, Ru said. Just ice cream shops and haunted houses and five different T-shirt stores all selling the same ten designs. Colleen silently argued she'd take an ice cream shop any day over Breckenridge. For once, she thought most of her housemates would agree.

Breckenridge itself was an attraction, though it didn't get as much traffic as Main Street or Tanager Park. It was a historical site with very limited tours. Most people saw the house only from the street. A stark iron-spear fence lined the property, taller than any person Colleen had met. The gate was wide, made of a labyrinth of flat, uneven curls. Mother Fontaine told Colleen it was designed with the leaves of a tree in mind. Colleen thought of it more as the inner workings of a lock.

She wished Mother Fontaine was still there. Most of the girls knew her as Laura; she had been the only house mother who let the girls call her by her first name. She was also the only one who ever tried to talk to Colleen without giving up. Mother Fontaine had bought Colleen her first paint set. The two of them spoke more often in pictures than in words.

Colleen shoved the memory away. Tears threatened when she thought too long of Mother Fontaine. Proper young ladies hold themselves with dignity, Mother Kendrick said. They don't blubber or whine.

The Breckenridge manor seemed miles away from the bottom of the hill, surrounded by towering oaks and maples. A few willows dragged their branches along the edges of a small pond. The manor was as wide as the high school gym, with lavender walls and navy shutters, the tall windows barred with white slats. Crew cut hedges and rosebushes wreathed the house. The porch had a railing like a ribbon of white lace, and a neat row of wicker chairs, all of which stood abandoned at the moment. Neatly abandoned. Proper young ladies do not leave their chairs facing every which way, Mother Kendrick said. The rest of the house had the same symmetry to it, as if Mother Kendrick had spoken to it personally.

Mother Grace herded the girls through the gate. She was a tall and narrow woman, whose physical presence was about as scant as her mental one. Colleen could have easily mistaken her for a figure on TV rather than someone actually standing next to her. Under her eyes the girls wandered about the property and lingered on the porch before her plaintive instructions finally nudged them all through the door. Colleen was last. Her feet crunched slowly on the glittering gravel path, her eyes dragged over the ants climbing through the porch boards, on the coral roses bobbling in the breeze. Sunlight grazed the stained glass on the front door and cast a wheel of color on the floor.

Mother Grace disappeared as soon as the group was in the entry hall. Colleen looked everywhere but at the other girls, at the marble floor, velvet furniture, the chandelier with crystals like melting icicles. Most of all, the stairs to the second floor. Until Mother Kendrick came to take roll, Colleen would have to hide, then make her escape to the stairs. Once she reached her room, she would be safe. Mostly.

"Aww, look who made it home. And all by herself, too."

Too late.

Ronnie Kale leaned in the doorway to the south wing, where only the house mothers were allowed. She was careful not to speak loud enough for her voice to carry to the next room. Colleen knew better than to acknowledge her, but there was nowhere else to go. The other girls were watching now, most with scorn, a few with pity.

Ronnie stepped in front of Colleen, her brown curls bouncing. She had a small face with huge eyes that made her look half her age, the perfect front for her snide, sharp tongue. Only Mother Kendrick seemed aware of Ronnie's true nature. "What'd you learn in school today? Numbers, or letters?"

Mutters fluttered in Colleen's ear. It was her own fault, bringing their attention on her with those supposed nightmares. Or maybe she really was scared of the dark. Maybe if she didn't have to have a room to herself, she wouldn't be such a crybaby. The whispers of those who believed Colleen's nightmares were worse. What if she dreams about me? What if she dreams about the house burning down? Don't let her see me.

"Hi, Colleen!"

She turned, surprised by a new voice. Misty was now in full Breckenridge uniform. She looked strange in it, like she was too tall for it and at the same time too thin. It draped off her like it would on a hanger. "I saw you have a Carmody."

Something shined in Misty's hand. In the many lights of the chandelier, the object seemed to gleam on its own. "I collect them. Maybe we can trade."

The room fell silent. Dozens of eyes locked on Misty.

"It's not a Carmody," Colleen said, voice tremulous. She brushed the tail of the dolphin with her fingertip. "My mother bought it for me when I was a baby."

"You still are a baby," Ronnie said.

That, on top of Misty's perplexed and disappointed look, sent Colleen scurrying for the nearest corner with tears brimming in her eyes. The only thing that kept the tears from falling was the peculiar expression that wiped out all emotion on Misty's face. Misty's pale eyes went unfocused, her lips open, as if she was on the verge of speaking, but to no one.

Ronnie put on her sweetest smile and put a hand on Misty's shoulder. Colleen was fairly certain that Ronnie was warning Misty not to make friends.

Misty's face froze over. She slapped Ronnie's hand away. Ronnie scowled, but then Misty replied.

Colleen didn't hear what was said, but all the girls in earshot flinched. Ronnie actually recoiled, wincing, as if she'd been slapped in the face instead of the hand. Colleen had never seen Ronnie afraid. Colleen liked it a lot less than she assumed she would.

Her stomach fluttered with Misty's eyes found her again. Misty had the same calculating expression Ru had when working on a tough math problem. Not malicious, but without empathy, either. By experience, Ronnie would have Misty seeing straight in a week. Ronnie was in charge of the house mothers, Quarterhill students were ignorant slobs, and the only one worse was Colleen Amundsen. Ronnie was at the other end of the room now. Contempt laced her voice, but her hands trembled. It did seem awfully cold in the hall.

Once the house mothers took attendance, Colleen sprinted for her room. Well, as close as she could to a sprint without being scolded about her manners, which was little more than a stiff, brisk walk. She hurried past the sunburn-pink walls and fluff-filled rooms without looking twice. Her room had not always been on the far end of the north wing. At a doctor's request, she had been moved. She had a vague, unpleasant memory of the doctor and Mother Fontaine asking questions about her nightmares, and what she remembered about her parents.

The lone room suited Colleen well. She minimized contact with her housemates anyway. Early in the morning, usually before the sun rose, she peered down the hall, looking for lights under the other doors. She went through supper at the very end of the long, lace-covered table with her eyes firmly fixed on her plate. Whether she liked or hated what was served to her, she ate as fast as she could without being upbraided for table manners. At least most of the girls ignored her there. It was hard to get away with anything under the hawk eyes of Mother Kendrick. Colleen didn't like being under her watch any more than being scrutinized by the girls her own age. She was always excused first. Whispers followed her up the stairs. There were no locks on the doors of the bedrooms; when Colleen wasn't the first upstairs, she found things missing. A picture of her parents, one of her diaries. She stopped writing those after she found Ronnie reading the entries aloud to her roommate. The only house mother who didn't act like the theft was Colleen's fault was Mother Fontaine.

For this reason, she kept the dolphin pendant around her neck at all times, even when she slept. Mother Kendrick made her take it off, afraid she'd choke to death in her sleep, but she put it back on after bed check was complete. She could not afford to lose it, especially if it turned out to be made of precious stone. It might be the only thing she had with enough worth to get her away from Quarterhill when she was old enough. Or when she escaped.

Her mind wandered from the World War I battle she was supposed to be studying. One summer night, she would pack all her things in her art supply bag. She would sneak some food away from the dinner table or kitchen, climb that tree on the west side of the property that leaned over the gate, and run as fast as she could before sunrise. Ru could lend her clothes so she wouldn't be running in her easily-recognized uniform. She brought the subject up at school once with Ru, and dropped it after her little brother overheard.

"First of all, Quarterhill's curfew is 11."

"Who says someone'll see her?" Ru shot back. "Besides, she's tall, they might think she's too old for curfew."

Jayson shrugged his sister off. "Second, there's no way you'll get out of Quarterhill before sunrise, even if it is kind of small. You might be able to hide in Tanager Park for a little while, if you don't think the Blue Star is coming to get you," he rolled his eyes, "but I bet that's the first place they'll look for you. Joe Ackerman's dad says that's where they find the most runaways."

The idea had already crumbled in Colleen's head, but Ru wasn't ready to give up. "Did Joe tell you that, or did you hear it from his dad?"

"His dad, when he was here on Career Day. A cop would know, right? Third, no one's going to buy a tourmaline necklace from a kid. They'll either think you stole it, try and find out where you came from and who your parents are, or they'll try to steal it from <i>you.</i>"

"How do you know?" Ru asked heatedly.

Jayson sighed. "Remember that time Randy broke a window on his dad's van?"

Colleen had only met Randy Fresnel a few times, and was happy for so few meetings. He seemed like a compressed spring ("That'd explain why he's so short," Ru said) ready to launch with his mouth or his fists.

Colleen's room was small and her possessions scant. A few carbon copies of her uniform hung in the closet, along with a puffy white parka and her pajamas, freshly cleaned. There was a set of plastic drawers, mostly full of things Ru's mother scavenged from the Amundsen home before everything was auctioned off. A picture of Colleen's parents and distant relatives, her great-grandfather's engineering textbook with brown pages and a crumbling leather cover, a tiny wooden pot Colleen liked to play with when she was younger, a tape of Colleen's mother playing violin. Ms. Hadley said Colleen's mother had been a songwriter, and the money that was still being made by those songs would pay for Colleen's entire stay at Breckenridge.

The room was different today. The floor had been covered by a plain yellow rug, but Colleen made a mess of it after the dream about Kelly. Her stomach still turned at the memory. At least the smell was gone, though it was replaced by the choking scent of sanitizer. All this she had expected. She was startled to find the other bed in the room occupied.

Three small, worn leather suitcases squashed the frilly comforter on the other bed. One case had its contents spewed across the bedspread, clothes, a pair of frayed, filthy sneakers, and a small makeup kit. The owner of that kit would have to learn to hide it, or it would end up in Mother Kendrick's contraband bin, never to be seen again.

"Oh, so you're my roommate?" Misty scoffed. "Good, I thought I'd end up with one of the annoying ones. Your name's Colleen, right?"

Misty resumed emptying her luggage. She handled her things in a strangely business-like manner, something Colleen would have expected from a house mother. Colleen's nerves buzzed as she sat down on her own bed. She rummaged through her bookbag, her long hair obscuring everything but the sandy carpet. She heard Misty walk to the closet and back. Metal hangers clanged softly as they were set on the bar.

"Why are the other girls afraid of you?" Misty asked suddenly.

Colleen's head jerked up. "Afraid of me?" she blurted.

"Yeah. Especially that girl, Ronnie."

"Um -- I don't think she's afraid. But I do have bad dreams sometimes. And my birthday's October 31st."

Misty gave a short, confused laugh. She had her eyes on her things, but Colleen couldn't help but feel watched. "That's it? Is 31 an unlucky number or something?"

Colleen stared in disbelief. Was Misty trying to make fun of her? "You don't know about Halloween?"

Misty flung her hands into the air. "I don't know about anything! Do you know how many times the house mothers yelled at me today? Over really petty stuff, too. Especially the old one."

"That's Mother Kendrick," Colleen said. "She's on second watch. She's here until ten every day."

"Does she let you have any fun? Or is that something 'proper young ladies' don't do, as she would say?"

Misty's voice flashed into an impersonation of Mother Kendrick's, near-perfect only ten times more cantankerous. Colleen giggled, despite her shock and nervousness that Mother Kendrick could have easily heard. Misty smirked at her. "Really, do you just study when you get home?"

"I like to draw."

Normally Colleen was hesitant about showing her works to the other girls, but Misty actually, genuinely seemed interested. She pulled out her sketchbook. The images within were mostly of outdoor scenery, different angles of the Breckenridge property with the house and birds and flowers she'd seen. Misty's face lit up as she shuffled through the pages. "These are so pretty! Could you draw me something, maybe?"

That was a common request, one Colleen usually turned down. "I could, maybe," she said quietly. "But you have to hide it from the other girls. They might rip it up."

Misty's silver eyes widened with shock. She almost seemed offended. "Why would they do that?"

Colleen's voice came out thin through a suddenly tight throat. "Ronnie did, anyway. The other girls just laugh at it. They, um - they tell me my artwork isn't any good. I'm not smart enough to make anything good. Maybe I never will be."

Misty smiled, a bright, warm smile. Colleen wondered why she assumed Misty wasn't capable of such a friendly face. "Oh come on! Don't say things like that. You're the nicest one here I've met so far, and you really do have talent. You should stand up for yourself more."

"You think I'm nice?" Colleen said. "Even after I wouldn't trade with you?"

Misty waved her hand dismissively. "I'd be mad if I found out it wasn't a Carmody, except maybe if yours is made of diamond. But then I'd just feel bad because yours is probably worth a lot more. Hey, want to see my favorite?"

She tucked her fingers into her collar and pulled on a string beneath. It must have been the thing she'd showed Colleen in the common room, a gray, silvery cloud pendant with an iridescent sparkle. Though it was easily the prettiest raincloud Colleen had seen, it was still sad. "A friend of mine back home gave it to me. It's the only one I'd never trade."

"It doesn't look like the other Carmody jewelry I've seen," Colleen said.

Misty's eyes looked beyond Colleen, her cheeks rosy. "It's not."

There was a quiet moment before Misty noticed Colleen's soft, questioning stare. Misty turned nearly as red as her hair. "Uh, anyway! Have you ever tried origami?"

Colleen let her question go unspoken. "Never heard of it."

A binder of colorful paper squares came out of Misty's suitcase. Misty chose a silver leaf, smoothed it out, and went to work on it. She folded, pressed, flipped, pulled hidden prongs from under the paper's umbrella-like folds, until a bird sprang to life out of the sharp corners and points. "It's a crane," Misty said. "You want to learn how to make one?"

A smile cracked Colleen's face. "Sure."

First Chapter || Previous Chapter || Next Chapter

[nyfacurrent]

Conversations| IAP Detroit Participants Jasmine Rivera and June Bae

Mentor and Mentee share their experiences from the Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program.

Jasmine Rivera is a director, writer, producer, and actor from Detroit. Her films have been screened in film festivals around the country, winning numerous awards. Rivera’s latest narrative short, American Prophet, is set in 1968 Detroit and based on the true story of peacemaker Bishop Thomas Gumbleton.

For three months, Rivera generously shared her expertise, knowledge, and contacts with her talented, dedicated, and humorous mentee June Bae as part of the Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program: Detroit. Bae’s trajectory as a filmmaker went from what he calls “years of heartbreak in the advertising world,” to a leap of faith that granted him the “Audience Award” in the Detroit 48 Hour Film Project. We talked to both mentor and mentee about their relationship and the impact of IAP on their lives. 

NYFA: Can you tell us about your experience participating on the Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program?

June Bae: The mentorship aspect of the program was a great experience. Jasmine really took me under her wing and took a lot of time and interest in the projects I was working on, helping me to develop my process and my practice as a filmmaker. She also took me to multiple events where she would walk me around to meet different individuals in the Detroit film community. All in all, it was great to have Jasmine in my corner. She was a fantastic mentor.

Jasmine Rivera: My experience as a mentor has been a great opportunity to get to know an inspiring filmmaker, June Bae, as well as a powerful community of rising and established immigrant artists in Detroit. With June, it was wonderful to meet a person who has a dedicated commitment to his craft, with a constant search for improvement and steady practice. I was very pleased to lend advice and connect June to other resources in the film community to supplement his projects. In turn, June's dedication helped me to stay on my own course in producing my films, and it was a great benefit to have a peer to discuss ideas and issues with.

NYFA: How did you interact with each other during the program?

JB: My interactions with my mentor happened in four ways. First, she attended NYFA sessions with me and made time to talk in between sessions or lunch to review the different topics of the day. Second, we would communicate via email, keeping each other updated with progress on projects or different film events happening in the area. Third, we would meet in-person where we would spend more in-depth time, typically discussing some questions I had about filmmaking or a specific project that I was working on. Last but not least, we would meet at different film events she would know about, often introducing me to different people in the local film community.

JR: During the program, June and I met periodically to discuss progress with work, and to attend events such as screenings and film industry gatherings. At the conclusion of the program, both June and I began attending a local filmmaker workshop where a group of peers offers constructive criticism and resource-sharing to members.

NYFA: As a mentee, did the Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program have any direct impact on your art practice?

JB: It definitely helped me understand the areas of my practice that I had questions about, specifically on the topic of how to find funding. I feel that it has helped me fine-tune the non-artistic areas of my practice that are necessary; helping me to become more holistic in my practice. I think a direct result of the program is the first narrative short film that I'm currently in pre-production for.

NYFA: What projects are you working on at the moment?

JB: I have a couple of projects in the works at the moment. The first one is a narrative short film that was funded by a non-profit organization. I actually took some of the things I learned from the NYFA program and implemented them in my own way to fit my circumstances. I had to do a bit of creative thinking because film funding is different from other art disciplines, as I've learned.

The second project is a music video that I'm working on with a local band called SIAS. I can't really talk too much about the project itself but another cool aspect of it is that I'll be collaborating with another artist that I met through this program, Manal Shoukair. She's a phenomenal visual artist and super stoked to have her part of the team. We also might possibly have another music video collaboration lined up after that.

Last but not least, I'm currently in the early stages of ideation for a new short film. This year has been packed with a lot of sponsored projects, which doesn't always allow for complete creative expression because you're doing it for some brand, group, or individual. I'm kind of burned out from all those projects so I feel the need to do something that I want to do. That's what this short film will do for me: breathe some personal creative expression back into my life.

JR: I am producing a series of short films titled Belle Isle Elegy to be shot in June of 2019. I am also working on a feature screenplay while producing a neighborhood political documentary series called Democracy Detroit as well as a short documentary titled Marcelina, which follows a Congressional Medal of Honor Filipino World War II veteran and her immigrant journey. As a co-founder of Final Girls, a Detroit-based women's filmmaker collective, I am helping to organize a series of educational workshops for local rising female-identifying filmmakers to promote the inclusion of women in the film industry.

NYFA: Can you give any advice or recommendations to artists from Detroit that are considering participating in this program?

JB: I would recommend this program to artists who are serious about trying to grow in their craft, and specifically to those who are trying to make their practice into a career, not a hobby. I would encourage participants to have an open mind and ask as many questions as they need to get as much out of the program as they can. Last but not least, I'd encourage participants to be proactive and engaged. Although at times some sessions are not specific to your discipline, you can still extract principles from it to then apply to your practice and further your career.

JR: I would advise future Detroit participants to take advantage of the program by both attending the set workshops as well as meeting independently with their mentors at events and industry gatherings in their respective disciplines. Because Detroit is smaller than other cities, attending events with mentors gives the mentee the opportunity to become familiar with key figures and resources that they may not be aware of. There are so many art and cultural offerings that are constantly in motion in Detroit; immersion in the community with someone who can act as a guide and advocate is invaluable.

Applications are now open for the Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program: Detroit. Learn more here.

Jasmine Rivera is a director, writer, producer, and actor from Detroit, MI. As a narrative filmmaker, she has written, directed, and produced media via her company Anawim Productions as well as four narrative films including Nain Rouge, which won thesis honors at Columbia University, numerous awards for Best Short Film and Best Director, and has been screened at film festivals around the country, including the Uptown/Detroit Independent Film Festival, Great Lakes International Film Festival, the Frankfort Film Festival, the Detroit Windsor International Film Festival, the Lake Michigan Film Competition, and Cinetopia International Film Festival. Her latest narrative short is American Prophet, set in 1968 Detroit and based on the true story of peacemaker Bishop Thomas Gumbleton. Rivera is the recipient of the Loreen Arbus Scholarship from the New York Women in Film and Television Organization, was a Junior Professional Media Fellow at the United Nations University, and a Detroit Sundance Screenwriters Lab Fellow. A recipient of the prestigious 2014 Kresge Arts Fellowship Award, she earned her Masters in Fine Arts in Film Directing at Columbia University in the City of New York.

June Bae is a filmmaker originally from Houston, TX. He moved to Detroit after graduating from the University of Michigan with a degree in Screen Arts and Culture, a fancy term for film studies. His career began at a local news station creating the terrible jingle commercials we all despise. Soon after he experienced years of heartbreak in the advertising world where any hint of artistic expression was smothered. In an act of desperation, June participated in the Detroit 48 Hour Film Project where he somehow miraculously won an Audience Award. Since then his personal work has screened in festivals and showcases such as the PBS Reel 13, International Pancake Film Festival at the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Detroit, and the A2 Tech Film Showcase. His parents celebrate daily that he has a paying job.

- Interview Conducted by Alicia Ehni, Program Officer at NYFA Learning

This interview is part of the ConEdison Immigrant Artist Program Newsletter #109. Subscribe to this free monthly e-mail for artist’s features, opportunities, and events.

Images from top to bottom: Jasmine Rivera on Set, Courtesy of Jasmine Rivera; Film Still, Cy Abdelnour; Jasmine Rivera Headshot, Courtesy of Jasmine Rivera; June Bae Headshot, Kenny Elshoff

[sargenthouse]

Jaye Jayle interivew // Destroy//Exist

No Trail and Other Unholy Paths, the upcoming album by Jaye Jayle, follows the band's mighty impressive recent offerings, House Cricks and Other Excuses to Get Out, their debut full length from 2016, and The Time Between Us, a collaborative EP with Emma Ruth Rundle. There are a few points about it one could emphasize on right off the bat, like the fact that it was produced by David Lynch’s music supervisor of the last twelve years, Dean Hurley, that it features another collaboration with Rundle, and that it bears no specific beginning or ending, with its songs designed to be experienced in any sequence the listener chooses. 

Full interview via Destroy//Exist.

Jaye Jayle's Americana-noir sound has always been enticing, but never voiced better than how it is on the coming record. 

The multi-talented and cultivated Evan Patterson answers a few questions. 

What made you decide to put Young Windows aside and begin a project like Jaye Jayle with such a different sound and approach? 

Young Widows hasn't been put aside. I hold the songs and experiences very dear. Nick and Jeremy started families. The time available to create, write, and travel became infrequent. For many years prior to conceiving Jaye Jayle I had been wanting to make compositions that were based around stories or vocal melodies as the lead instrument. Lending the music to relax and settle down somewhere similar to that of film score. I've touched a bit on that concept and sound with Young Widows. 

Never thought of my music groups as being projects. Maybe when Jaye Jayle was first conceived it was more of a project. The process of creating as a group is such an emotional and personal investment. Each piece or song is more of the project within the group. 

How would you describe the band's present dynamic? And how has it advanced since the previous album? 

The group has a steady dynamic. Neal, Todd, Corey, and I spent the majority of our lives together in 2016 and 2017 touring. The closer we become the more advanced our communication through music becomes. Experimenting is much easier now, allowing the songs to be elaborated. House Cricks was a collection of songs from four different sessions. No Trail is consistent to a sound and mood composed as the group. 

What does Dean Hurley bring to the album's sound design? and how does his production complement the compositions? 

I believe that what Dean enjoys to hear in music is what I also enjoy to hear in music. We sent him a massive amount of tracks; Low Again Street had near 80 tracks to sift through. Dean had total creative control as the mixing producer. The result is a wide colorful spectrum of sounds. It's exciting to be able to work with him. 

There's great chemistry between Emma Ruth Rundle and yourself, evident on your prior collaborative EP and on Marry Us, a captivating song on the new album. Are there any other artists you'd imagine as ideal collaborators for Jaye Jayle? 

I'd loved to collaborate with more artists. Yes, more collaborations are must. It's preferred. I dreamt of asking Rachel Grimes if she'd like to collaborate on a piece or album, but have been delaying asking. Drew Miller's saxophone on the album is another perfect example of leaving sections of the composition open for additional collaborative improvised instrumentation. Honestly, I feel that even working with Dean is a collaboration. 

I had the pleasure of collaborating with Emma on her new album earlier this year. No hand in writing the songs, but total freedom to write the additional second guitar parts. Her album came out gorgeous. I'd also love to join more artists. 

Do you prefer physical media over digital? Are you a record collector? 

I prefer all formats and sources for anyone and everyone to listen to music. I just made a playlist on Spotify and was shocked by what all is available through that outlet. I am a record collector. I bought a record today by Flash and the Pan. Their song Walking in the Rain is perfect. The record was three dollars. I'm collecting Ennio Morricone scores. 

What are you currently listening to mostly? 

I've been listening to the score for the film Marco Polo by Ennio Morricone in the evenings. The album Time Was by Zomes has been a favorite for the past three years. Fela Kuti in the mornings. The two most recent PJ Harvey albums are regular listens while on the road. Tangerine Dream, Jim Reeves, Fred Neil, and Einstürzende Neubauten. 

Outside music, what other sources have had heavy impact on your creativity? 

A few. Looking above the rolling hills of Kentucky or the desert in New Mexico. Any elevated perspective or a landscape is inspiring. To see nature in all its beauty gives me a sense of clarity. Film is an big inspiration. Phantom Thread was great. I've also been doing my best to see more visual art around Louisville. There's a few museums in town that are curating some fantastic exhibits. 

The new album's cover looks wonderful, rather abstract at first glance and ultimately pretty bleak. What made you choose that image to represent the music? 

There is something relieving and yet tortured with the image. Placed between the lightness and darkness of nature. It's a balance between those two worlds. Stuck between the heavens and the hells of mental health. 

Having the songs on the record arranged to be non-linear and interchangeable is a very interesting approach, and not something we encounter often. What made you decide to design the LP that way? 

The concept came to me from feeling that regardless of my options and my choices in life, regardless of door A or door B, my paths would have me ending up ultimately in the same placement. We hope to do the things we love and survive. The idea of my desires have seemingly taken me to a place that I felt I could have been in regardless of which wall I tore down or which forest I cut through or ocean I swam through. Forward motion. The direction is not what's important. I've just kept going and trying to bring a sense of joy out through art and never give in. I'm not making this music for anyone else. I'm making it because it makes me feel alive. I have survived thus far because I've continued to not just fall into a pattern or follow a format in life. Everything I live for still feels very strange and exciting. Life is a constant surprise. Guaranteed. 

What does the near future hold for Jaye Jayle? 

The album is out in nine days. We're announcing nine weeks of touring soon. If all goes well, I'd love to complete another album by the end of the year. 

No Trail and Other Unholy Paths releases June 29th, 2018 via Sargent House.

[youmightfindyourself]

That woman Estelle,'" the note reads, "'is partly the reason why George Sharp and I are separated today.' Dirty crepe-de-Chine wrapper, hotel bar, Wilmington RR, 9:45 a.m. August Monday morning."

Since the note is in my notebook, it presumably has some meaning to me. I study it for a long while. At first I have only the most general notion of what I was doing on an August Monday morning in the bar of the hotel across from the Pennsylvania Railroad station in Wilmington, Delaware (waiting for a train? missing one? 1960? 1961? why Wilmington?), but I do remember being there. The woman in the dirty crepe-de-Chine wrapper had come down from her room for a beer, and the bartender had heard before the reason why George Sharp and she were separated today. "Sure," he said, and went on mopping the floor. "You told me." At the other end of the bar is a girl. She is talking, pointedly, not to the man beside her but to a cat lying in the triangle of sunlight cast through the open door. She is wearing a plaid silk dress from Peck & Peck, and the hem is coming down.

Here is what it is: the girl has been on the Eastern Shore, and now she is going back to the city, leaving the man beside her, and all she can see ahead are the viscous summer sidewalks and the 3 a.m. long-distance calls that will make her lie awake and then sleep drugged through all the steaming mornings left in August (1960? 1961?). Because she must go directly from the train to lunch in New York, she wishes that she had a safety pin for the hem of the plaid silk dress, and she also wishes that she could forget about the hem and the lunch and stay in the cool bar that smells of disinfectant and malt and make friends with the woman in the crepe-de-Chine wrapper. She is afflicted by a little self- pity, and she wants to compare Estelles. That is what that was all about.

Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How much of it actually happened? Did any of it? Why do I keep a notebook at all? It is easy to deceive oneself on all those scores. The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.

My first notebook was a Big Five tablet, given to me by my mother with the sensible suggestion that I stop whining and learn to amuse myself by writing down my thoughts. She returned the tablet to me a few years ago; the first entry is an account of a woman who believed herself to be freezing to death in the Arctic night, only to find, when day broke, that she had stumbled onto the Sahara Desert, where she would die of the heat before lunch. I have no idea what turn of a five-year-old's mind could have prompted so insistently "ironic" and exotic a story, but it does reveal a certain predilection for the extreme which has dogged me into adult life; perhaps if I were analytically inclined I would find it a truer story than any I might have told about Donald Johnson's birthday party or the day my cousin Brenda put Kitty Litter in the aquarium.

So the point of my keeping a notebook has never been, nor is it now, to have an accurate factual record of what I have been doing or thinking. That would be a different impulse entirely, an instinct for reality which I sometimes envy but do not possess. At no point have I ever been able successfully to keep a diary; my approach to daily life ranges from the grossly negligent to the merely absent, and on those few occasions when I have tried dutifully to record a day's events, boredom has so overcome me that the results are mysterious at best. What is this business about "shopping, typing piece, dinner with E, depressed"? Shopping for what? Typing what piece? Who is E? Was this "E" depressed, or was I depressed? Who cares?

In fact I have abandoned altogether that kind of pointless entry; instead I tell what some would call lies. "That's simply not true," the members of my family frequently tell me when they come up against my memory of a shared event. "The party was not for you, the spider was not a black widow, it wasn't that way at all." Very likely they are right, for not only have I always had trouble distinguishing between what happened and what merely might have happened, but I remain unconvinced that the distinction, for my purposes, matters. The cracked crab that I recall having for lunch the day my father came home from Detroit in 1945 must certainly be embroidery, worked into the day's pattern to lend verisimilitude; I was ten years old and would not now remember the cracked crab. The day's events did not turn on cracked crab. And yet it is precisely that fictitious crab that makes me see the afternoon all over again, a home movie run all too often, the father bearing gifts, the child weeping, an exercise in family love and guilt. Or that is what it was to me. Similarly, perhaps it never did snow that August in Vermont; perhaps there never were flurries in the night wind, and maybe no one else felt the ground hardening and summer already dead even as we pretended to bask in it, but that was how it felt to me, and it might as well have snowed, could have snowed, did snow.

How it felt to me: that is getting closer to the truth about a notebook. I sometimes delude myself about why I keep a notebook, imagine that some thrifty virtue derives from preserving everything observed. See enough and write it down, I tell myself, and then some morning when the world seems drained of wonder, some day when I am only going through the motions of doing what I am supposed to do, which is write - on that bankrupt morning I will simply open my notebook and there it will all be, a forgotten account with accumulated interest, paid passage back to the world out there: dialogue overheard in hotels and elevators and at the hat-check counter in Pavillon (one middle-aged man shows his hat check to another and says, "That's my old football number"); impressions of Bettina Aptheker and Benjamin Sonnenberg and Teddy ("Mr. Acapulco") Stauffer; careful aperçus about tennis bums and failed fashion models and Greek shipping heiresses, one of whom taught me a significant lesson (a lesson I could have learned from F. Scott Fitzgerald, but perhaps we all must meet the very rich for ourselves) by asking, when I arrived to interview her in her orchid-filled sitting room on the second day of a paralyzing New York blizzard, whether It was snowing outside.

I imagine, in other words, that the notebook is about other people. But of course it is not. I have no real business with what one stranger said to another at the hat-check, counter in Pavillon; in fact I suspect that the line "That's' my old football number" touched not my own imagination at all, but merely some memory of something once read, probably "The Eighty-Yard Run." Nor is my concern with a woman in a dirty crepe-de-Chine wrapper in a Wilmington bar. My stake is always, of course, in the unmentioned girl in the plaid silk dress. Remember what it was to be me: that is always the point.

It is a difficult point to admit. We are brought up in the ethic that others, any others, all others, are by definition more interesting than ourselves; taught to be diffident, just this side of self-effacing. ("You're the least important person in the room and don't forget it," Jessica Mitford's governess would hiss in her ear on the advent of any social occasion; I copied that into my notebook because it is only recently that I have been able to enter a room without hearing some such phrase in my inner ear.) Only the very young and the very old may recount their dreams at breakfast, dwell upon self, interrupt with memories of beach picnics and favorite Liberty lawn dresses and the rainbow trout in a creek near Colorado Springs. The rest of us are expected, rightly, to affect absorption in other people's favorite dresses, other people's trout.

And so we do. But our notebooks give us away, for however dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implacable "I." We are not talking here about the kind of notebook that is patently for public consumption, a structural conceit for binding together a series of graceful pensees; we are talking about something private, about bits of the mind's string too short to use, an indiscriminate and erratic assemblage with meaning only for its maker.

And sometimes even the maker has difficulty with the meaning. There does not seem to be, for example, any point in my knowing for the rest of my life that, during 1964, 720 tons of soot fell on every square mile of New York City, yet there it is in my notebook, labeled "FACT". Nor do I really need to remember that Ambrose Bierce liked to spell Leland Stanford's name "£eland $tanford" or that "smart women almost always wear black in Cuba," a fashion hint without much potential for practical application. And does not the relevance of these notes seem marginal at best?:

In the basement museum of the Inyo County Courthouse in Independence, California, sign pinned to a mandarin coat: "This MANDARIN COAT was often worn by Mrs. Minnie S. Brooks when giving lectures on her TEAPOT COLLECTION."

Redhead getting out of car in front of Beverly Wilshire Hotel, chinchilla stole, Vuitton bags with tags reading:

MRS LOU FOX HOTEL SAHARA VEGAS

Well, perhaps not entirely marginal. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Minnie S. Brooks and her MANDARIN COAT pull me back into my own childhood, for although I never knew Mrs. Brooks and did not visit Inyo County until I was thirty, I grew up in just such a world, in houses cluttered with Indian relics and bits of gold ore and ambergris and the souvenirs my Aunt Mercy Farnsworth brought back from the Orient. It is a long way from that world to Mrs. Lou Fox's world, where we all live now, and is it not just as well to remember that? Might not Mrs. Minnie S. Brooks help me to remember what I am? Might not Mrs. Lou Fox help me to remember what I am not?

But sometimes the point is harder to discern. What exactly did I have in mind when I noted down that it cost the father of someone I know $650 a month to light the place on the Hudson in which he lived before the Crash? What use was I planning to make of this line by Jimmy Hoffa: "I may have my faults, but being wrong ain't one of them"? And although I think it interesting to know where the girls who travel with the Syndicate have their hair done when they find themselves on the West Coast, will I ever make suitable use of it? Might I not be better off just passing it on to John O'Hara? What is a recipe for sauerkraut doing in my notebook? What kind of magpie keeps this notebook? "He was born the night the Titanic went down." That seems a nice enough line, and I even recall who said it, but is it not really a better line in life than it could ever be in fiction?

But of course that is exactly it: not that I should ever use the line, but that I should remember the woman who said it and the afternoon I heard it. We were on her terrace by the sea, and we were finishing the wine left from lunch, trying to get what sun there was, a California winter sun. The woman whose husband was born the night the Titanic went down wanted to rent her house, wanted to go back to her children in Paris. I remember wishing that I could afford the house, which cost $1,000 a month. "Someday you will," she said lazily. "Someday it all comes." There in the sun on her terrace it seemed easy to believe in someday, but later I had a low-grade afternoon hangover and ran over a black snake on the way to the supermarket and was flooded with inexplicable fear when I heard the checkout clerk explaining to the man ahead of me why she was finally divorcing her husband. "He left me no choice," she said over and over as she the punched the register. "He has a little seven-month-old baby by her, he left me no choice." I would like to believe that my dread then was for the human condition, but of course it was for me, because I wanted a baby and did not then have one and because I wanted to own the house that cost $1,000 a month to rent and because I had a hangover.

It all comes back. Perhaps it is difficult to see the value in having one's self back in that kind of mood, but I do see it; I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were. I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be; one of them, a seventeen-year-old, presents little threat, although it would be of some interest to me to know again what it feels like to sit on a river levee drinking vodka-and-orange-juice and listening to Les Paul and Mary Ford and their echoes sing "How High the Moon" on the car radio. (You see I still have the scenes, but I no longer perceive myself among those present, no longer could even improvise the dialogue.) The other one, a twenty-three-year-old, bothers me more. She was always a good deal of trouble, and I suspect she will reappear when I least want to see her, skirts too long, shy to the point of aggravation, always the injured party, full of recriminations and little hurts and stories I do not want to hear again, at once saddening me and angering me with her vulnerability and ignorance, an apparition all the more insistent for being so long banished.

It is a good idea, then, to keep in touch, and I suppose that keeping in touch is what notebooks are all about. And we are all on our own when it comes to keeping those lines open to ourselves: your notebook will never help me, nor mine you. "So what's new in the whiskey business?" What could that possibly mean to you? To me it means a blonde in a Pucci bathing suit sitting with a couple of fat men by the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Another man approaches, and they all regard one another in silence for a while. "So what's new in the whiskey business?" one of the fat men finally says by way of welcome, and the blonde stands up, arches one foot and dips it in the pool looking all the while at the cabana where Baby Pignatari is talking on the telephone. That is all there is to that, except that several years later I saw the blonde coming out of Saks Fifth Avenue in New York with her California complexion and a voluminous mink coat. In the harsh wind that day she looked old and irrevocably tired to me, and even the skins in the mink coat were not worked the way they were doing them that year, not the way she would have wanted them done, and there is the point of the story. For a while after that I did not like to look in the mirror, and my eyes would skim the newspapers and pick out only the deaths, the cancer victims, the premature coronaries, the suicides, and I stopped riding the Lexington Avenue IRT because I noticed for the first time that all the strangers I had seen for years - the man with the seeing-eye dog, the spinster who read the classified pages every day, the fat girl who always got off with me at Grand Central - looked older than they once had.

It all comes back. Even that recipe for sauerkraut: even that brings it back. I was on Fire Island when I first made that sauerkraut, and it was raining, and we drank a lot of bourbon and ate the sauerkraut and went to bed at ten, and I listened to the rain and the Atlantic and felt safe. I made the sauerkraut again last night and it did not make me feel any safer, but that is, as they say, another story.

[skepticaloccultist]

The Bookshop as a Meeting Place

Treadwell's Books has been a part of London occult life for more than a decade. A center for London's disparate and motley occultists, witches, and magicians of every ilk and path to celebrate and meet.

Between weekly events, book launches and tarot readings Treadwell's is a home away from home for occultists the world over. From regular lectures and presentations by Phil Hine, Michael Staley, Hannah Sanders, Chris Josiffe, Robert Wallis, Owen Davies and dozens more to walking tours of the British Museum and Bloomsbury's occult history it's a place to linger, searching for that rare bit of booklore, meeting others on their own path. Some incredible people have found their way through Treadwell's door, a couple of friend's even found each other and eventually married because of Treadwell's. Its a magical place in many ways.

Having moved seven years ago from its first location in Covent Garden it is now tucked away down Store Street in Bloomsbury. A bigger space upstairs and downstairs lends itself to more events, with a comfortable downstairs that is even available for lettings for various group functions, public and private.

Behind Treadwell's is proprietor and "presiding spirit" Christina Oakley Harrington. In between her sold out Magical Bloomsbury Walking Tour and otherwise busy schedule I managed to chat with her about London occulture, her passion for books and running a bookshop in 21st century London.

  +++

Christina Oakley Harrington of Treadwell's

While Treadwell's has only been in London since 2003 it seems to be a fixture that is much more firmly rooted in the occulture of London than its teenaged years belie. How have you come to be so central to the occult community of London?

Gosh, are we really? I have to give the credit to the wonderful people who've come through the doors of Treadwells for that. I've been hugely inspired by London's history of occult communities and in particular, the exciting occult renaissance of the 1880s and 1890s, when the Order of the Golden Dawn and the Theosophical Society had hundreds of members and there were gatherings, rituals and conversations happening every night of the week. I saw that such a renaissance might be possible in our own day if there was a bookshop which was actually a meeting place -- and I saw from history that such a place needed to offer a combination of hospitality, friendship-building and events space.

We hosted our first event within a few months of opening our doors. Since then, it's never been fewer than three nights a week that we're here. That's why we can't open any earlier than 11 am during the week and at weekends we certainly couldn't start any earlier than noon. All our late nights here!

What misbegotten adventure led you to opening an occult bookshop?

I got involved in paganism and the esoteric community in 1987 in the US, where I lived for eleven years. In 1989 I moved to London. It was the Atlantis Bookshop under the ownership of Caroline Wise which was the hub of activity and occult community creativity -- she was a force of nature, hosting conferences, promoting groups, advertising pub moots, and generally making me (and other young people) welcome and feel so inspired. Through her we got to meet magical orders, attend rituals, learn about magic from practitioners. She kept the channels flowing. If you went into her shop, she'd bombard you with recommendations, hand-made fliers, posters and postcards. So I opened Treadwells just as she was retiring from owning Atlantis, and felt that in that regard, she passed on the baton to us. Caroline's been a huge supporter of Treadwells and she's my personal inspiration of what an occult bookshop owner should be.

Do you collect books yourself?

I do! My collection is pretty eclectic. I don't have the completist gene, so I don't need to own full sets of things, mercifully. Then I get bored. I collected all of Dion Fortune's first editions, then once I had the full set, I didn't care anymore, so I sold them. I now have her work in paperback, which I've marked up with my marginal notes and personal opinions in the front and rear covers. So I work most of my books pretty hard. It's from my days as an historian, that I have opinions on what I'm reading and want to debate with the authors, or agree with them. So the margins of my books show that.

In the corner of my study is a shelf of books mentioning Treadwells, signed by their authors. Authors sometimes mention the shop in their novels, or in their guidebooks. Occasionally students and scholars mention Treadwells in the acknowledgments if we've helped them with their research - and that's so lovely. We have a commitment to assisting scholarly research where we can.

My collection is a working library of books containing ideas I love, historical research that inspires me, and lots of poetry -- which I use in contemplative reading and adopt into rituals I write. Big subjects I read are witchcraft, sapphic writers from Sappho through the 1920s, Renaissance planetary magic, and biographies of magicians of previous centuries. I've got an entire room for my books at home, and most often there are lots of them piled up on the desk with bookmarks stuck in, and intermingled are my various notebooks with quotes scrawled from the books I'm reading.

You mentioned a background as a historian, were you an academic before becoming a bookseller?

I was! I was a medieval historian. I taught for eleven years at a college of the University of Surrey. My PhD was at University College London with supplementary study at Jesus College, Oxford. The links between the world of scholarship and magical practice have grown wonderfully over the past fifteen years, so I relish reading the recent academic articles and studies of medieval magical texts and practice.

Do you recall the first book of, or on, magic you remember owning? Not a library book, but something that was your own?

I am sure I had children's books with witches as a very young child, as I was crazy about witches, and always wanted to try to do spells, and I even pretended to be able to fly (I had a children's storybook called No Flying in the House). However, I was very taken with a book whose name I can't recall, which I took from my parents' bookshelves, on superstitions and charms. I would copy the best charms -- in my opinion -- into a notebook, which I called my spellbook. I must have been about six, seven years old....

What rare items have come through Treadwells shelves over the years?

I'm so fortunate to see treasures coming through here. We have had a good smattering of Aleister Crowley first editions, Gerald Gardner first editions and books signed by Kenneth Grant. These are the staples of occult rare bookselling. But I love the offbeat stuff - we've got awesome zines. Zines are overlooked but are truly collectible as they're snapshots of the occult community at a particular moment, at the working coal-face, as it were. A faintingly exciting moment was when we got a very early Rider-Waite tarot deck, from a lady who had it in her attic, and had inherited it from her grandmother. We had people coming in just to look at it before we sold it to its current owner - during those two weeks we were honoured to be able to let tarot-lovers view it and appreciate it.

Some rare items are new - we've launched very limited edition items here -- nocturnal parties for books which are individually consecrated and inscribed and of which only one or two hundred copies are made. Those events are very magical, as it's just a small group of guests, lots of incense billowing, and good red wine flowing.

How has occult bookselling and publishing changed from your perspective over the last 14 years?

Bookselling now is a harder living than even twenty years ago, with London rents being high and with people having the option of purchasing on Amazon. But it's still vibrant, and getting even moreso. Reading occult literature inspires people to want to practice and meet others -- that's where the bookshop is crucial, and always will be. A bookseller is a curator, an advisor, and a bit of a therapist even, at times. I love that it's a continuity, a continuity of over 200 years.

Has the environment changed since the store moved to its current location several years back? Do you feel the community has grown?

We've been here at Store Street for seven years, having moved here after seven years in Covent Garden. I find it hard to believe we've been in Store Street just as long as we were in the old address. So uncanny! The community is different here than there -- and well, times change. In 2003 there was a tight connected community of people, and newcomers entered that network of people, socially. Now, it's much more open, less a community than a wider base of many many individuals who have overlapping interests. They will meet likeminded people at more niche events. I think it's because the era of subcultures is largely over, or so it seems to me. But Treadwells itself is a kind of community of regulars -- we get to know people whose vibe is in tune with ours and they keep coming back so next thing you know, we know all their kids' names and are invited to their art openings. But we are keen not to behave like a clique. So many occult-oriented people were outsiders at school that honestly, we don't need to replicate that in adulthood. A friendly gesture and a welcoming hello for our customers and new acquaintances: that's essential.

So many occultists I know scattered around the world have stories to tell about Treadwell's, visits on trips, meeting future spouses there, finding some bit of rarity they had long sought. Any insights into the future of occult bookselling in London and in general? Where does the plot take us from here?

I'm very excited about a new bookshop/occult event space in Seattle, Mortlake & Co, run by a wonderful chap named William Kiesel (of Ouroboros Press fame). It's got not only a range of rare books, but it also hosts intimate, intellectually-engaged soirees. I think occult bookselling is at its most exciting when it overlaps, not with the New Age, but with history and anthropology. By which I mean to say, when we widen our interest from the practice itself to include the people and the cultures that produced it. As an example, if you you love Enochian magic, check out Elizabethan court life. If you are drawn to hoodoo, learn about how African Americans lived in the era of slavery. If you practice traditional witchcraft, read a book on old cunningmen.

Any upcoming events or releases you would like to mention?

I'm particularly proud of our commitment to traditional, classic tarot reading. The art of reading the cards takes over a decade to master, but one can learn enough to have a meaningful experience in a single day. We offer one-day workshops, eight-week courses and even intermediate brush-up days. Tarot cards came out of the Italian Renaissance, so the symbolism is rich and deep, and it's the same symbol code you find embedded in Renaissance art. If you study the tarot cards, your trips to art museums suddenly become much more exciting.

+++

Discover Treadwell's Bookshop for yourself:

Treadwell's Books 33 Store Street, Bloomsbury, London www.treadwells-london.com/

[123designsrq]

FURNITURE DESIGN COLLECTION MAKES BEST IMPRESSION IN YOUR HOME

Here are a few of our favorite winners from the Furniture Design collection class at final year’s A’ Design Award and Competition. Now the purpose of this roundup is twofold. If you’re a fan of furniture layout (either as a layout lover, or as a furniture fashion designer your self), go in advance and bookmark this web page for thought, or upload these pics for your Pinterest by means of clicking the Pin button at the pinnacle left of any image. The second cause is to spark your imagination and get those innovative juices flowing so that one day, you could layout something worthy of a layout award.

Now if you DO have a layout that’s rather new or gathering dirt to your portfolio, leveraging its innovative enchantment to win a design award can truly do wonders for your profession. You’re just in time to send your work over to the A’ Design Awards. The multidisciplinary design award software spans an entire form of categories, starting from the traditional layout disciplines like furniture design collection, interiors, architecture, lighting, customer tech, to more niche areas like social design, differently-abled design, education design, or even jewelry design. The international award software is hosted every year, with a grand interdisciplinary jury of 209 specialists from extraordinary fields. The awards application is currently on the last leg of its 2019-2020 run, and the cut-off date for submitting your paintings is much less than two weeks away! So in case you’ve got your self a super design with a number of potential, go in advance and permit it increase your career and brand! If not, don’t worry! This showcase should provide sufficient innovative fodder to motivate and encourage you! Register to participate inside the A’ Design Awards now! Hurry, that is your final chance to win an A’ Design Award in 2020! Deadline: February 28th, 2020.

01. Lollipop Armchair via Natalia Komarova I couldn’t agree greater with Natalia Komarova’s declaration that thought can actually come from anywhere. The idea for the Lollipop Armchair came to her while she was journeying the Sweet Museum. The chupa-chups furniture design collection shape forms the basis of the armrests and the lower back and seat are made in the shape of conventional candies. The purpose of the chair is to add a splash of playfulness and shade to indoors spaces, and from the looks of the way inviting (and delicious) it seems, I’d say it does a remarkably top job!

02. Lunule Chair by Arsalan Ghadimi In South-Eastern countries, it's far extra commonplace for human beings to take a seat cross-legged on the ground than to take a seat on chairs. Not best is this an integral a part of their culture, however it is supposed to be quite true for the posture too! Drawing thought from the lifestyle of his country, Iranian designer Arsalan Ghadimi created the Lunule Chair. Featuring a wood body with leather-covered cushions, the chair contains the culture of sitting cross-legged. Its circular form gives the right structure to area the decrease half of of our bodies onto, with enough area for our knees and legs as well! The doughnut-like seat flippantly distributes the pressure exerted upon our frame whilst we sit, permitting us to maintain a stable posture. A backrest with a tender foam cushion may be connected to the Lunule Chair, paired up with the already ergonomic shape of the chair, this provides further support to our caudal vertebrae and waist.

03. Symphony Number 7 Art Chair through Ting-Hsian Chen Similar in spirit to the Butterfly Chair with the aid of Eduardo Garcia Campos, the Symphony 7 Chair is inspired via the softness and sweetness of the seventh Symphony by way of Beethoven. The furniture design collection rocking chair is crafted from a pipe frame, and comes with leather-based cushioning, combining comfort, strength, and an incredibly organic skeletal design that makes for a extraordinary silhouette. The chair appears even stunning while paired collectively with every other of its kind, growing a lovely symmetry!

04. Intermodality Desk via Attila Stromajer Inspired by the distinguished position and place of grand pianos in homes, the Intermodality table is just as grand. With a layout that follows the cues of the massive instrument, the desk comes with a similar shape, size, or even features a massive lid that opens sideways, like in a grand piano. Standing on 3 legs, like the musical instrument, the Intermodality desk is crafted from antiqued plywood, and features copper trimmings close to the handles and at the base of the legs, adding a hint of finesse to the desk’s grand layout.

05. Mountain Bench by way of Yi Feng Crafted from character mahogany slats, the Mountain Bench not simplest offers seating, but also provides an detail of artwork to its area. Inspired via the excessive mountains of Chinese paintings, the bench’s undulating backrest certainly does appear like a mountain range. Individual layers of wood deliver the bench intensity too, lending volume to the design while also giving it a tranquil, meditative spirit.

06. Oceania Couch by using Simon Haeser Designed to be what I’d describe as a present day-day take on the Eames Lounge Chair, the Oceania sofa comes with a layout presenting a molded plywood backrest and base, with cushions to offer comfort. Oceania’s smooth strains and flowing curves are designed to embrace and comfort. The visible language of furniture design collection ON the couch attempts to seize the designer’s interpretation of fluidity, stimulated by way of Australia’s beaches.

07. Beel Seat Ware by using Selami Gündüzeri The Beel Chair’s particular biodynamic aesthetic actually takes concept from the part of your frame that rests against it… the spine! Mimicking the form of vertebral bones, connected together via a spinal column, the Beel chair offers cushty sitting and healthy posture, while being flexible, thanks to the backrest’s layout. Designed with the aid of Selami Gündüzeri, the Beel is paying homage to the design aesthetic championed through past due German layout stalwart Luigi Colani.

08. Koron Sofa by means of Reza Salianeh & Hamid Packseresht The Koron Sofa isn’t one to pull away from its proud Persian heritage. Inspired with the aid of the Iranian instrument Taar, the Koron comes with a voluminous design that replicates the Taar’s hollow, bulbous body. The sofa uses a mixture of steel and leather-based to present it its awesome look that makes it appearance visually heavy, however additionally snug, making it a exquisite addition to the very center of present day houses, retail spaces, and places of work with semi-Persian styling.

09. Eget Desk by Adrian Soldado Cid & Paula Terra Bosch Eget’s cutting-edge interpretation of the desk in reality makes it award-worthy. The desk is extra than a mere elevated surface on legs, and Eget’s ability to tie the desk to its user’s behavior lets in it to sincerely be remarkable. The Eget comes with a minimum styling, sticking to easy surfaces and the use of timber, white, and grey. The desk’s ply wraps across the sides to offer storage area within, enough for books, stationery, and even chargers galore. On the pinnacle, the Eget has its own adjustable drafting desk that helps you to set your writing/drawing surface at an angle. Behind it is a panel of felt that acts as a visible partition that still dampens noise and helps you to pin notes to it. Slots at the side of the desk can help you keep more notes, pads, sheets, and pens for brief access, and here’s my favourite part. The table even has its personal committed wireless charging place built in, so you can juice your phone whilst you’re being productive!

10. Shell Sofa through Natalia Komarova With a voluminous but hole frame, the Shell couch is visible, yet visually light. It is, in a strictly physical sense, minimalist (because it’s mainly hole), however visually, the Shell sofa is sort of pillowy, spacious, and a deal with to look at. The sofa is a frame that curves from the left to the again and to the right, with area in between for cushions, or even facet tables if you eliminate the cushions at the extreme ends. It’s visually imposing, however still manages to look mild and airy, thanks to its wickerwork of metallic rods. The interwoven rods additionally create this moire effect that creates a dynamic optical illusion, making the Shell couch’s body incredibly thrilling to appearance at… and whilst we’re on the difficulty of interesting, the couch comes with two small openings at the start and cease of its structure, making it possibly the most pleasing play place for a home cat. Good success getting it out although as soon as it is going inside! Register to take part in the A’ Design Awards now! Hurry, this is your final hazard to win an A’ Design Award in 2020! Deadline: February 28th, 2020. furniture design table furniture design images furniture design sofa furniture design bed furniture design course furniture design for bedroom furniture design online furniture design book Read the full article

[tfloosh]

Hazardous

Look @thewhitegoddesshylia! I finished it! 

Okay but this is long, like 7134 words long. But it’s 7134 words of vigilante!TP Zelda flirting with jewel theif!TP Link, and I’m so proud of it. Enjoy Zelink lovers!

For Zelda Harkinian, discovering that her parents had kept a secret lair hidden deep in the mountain their estate sat on was one thing. Finding out from her old nanny turned housekeeper that they had been planning to take to the streets as vigilantes before the plane crash had been a whole ‘nother jar of marbles.

At first, she had been a little offended that her parents hadn’t included her in their secret plans. She was an amazing gymnast thanks to years of lessons when she was younger, and she was fairly proficient at martial arts since her parents had insisted she learn to defend herself at a young age. Impa had assured her that her parents intended to include her in their vigilantism once they deemed it safe enough, but Zelda was still irrationally angry. She had every right to be, she told herself. They left their billion dollar company to their twenty-two year old daughter who barely had her bachelor’s in business under her belt, kept this potentially life altering secret from her for two years according to Impa, and they had left her. She was still young, still at the beginning of her life; how was she going to make it without them?

After about a week of crying, attending boring board meetings to make her new position as CEO of the Harkinian Corporation official, and releasing her tension via punching bags, Zelda boldly declared to Impa that she would follow her parents’ footsteps and become a vigilante. She spent the next two weeks after modifying her mother’s intended costume and adding some of the gold accents from her father’s. Her parents had apparently already raided Harkinian Corp.’s technology division for toys and goodies, so Zelda didn’t have to worry there. There were grappling guns, various stunning devices, smoke bombs for a quick getaway, several nonlethal weapons, hacking devices, and even a state of the art detective’s kit filled with a fingerprint duster, tracking devices, bugging equipment, and evidence bags. Zelda left the detective kit behind for her first outing; she would work up to solving crimes, she figured.

Filling her gold utility belt with everything she deemed useful, Zelda donned her outfit and readied herself for her first adventure as the Loftwing, named after the mythical birds that protected Hylians in ancient times. It took her about an hour of jumping around buildings to get used to gliding with her cape, another hour of practicing to actually land gracefully, and then a solid three hours of waiting to catch two muggers and one drug dealer. All in all, Zelda felt pretty good about her first night out. It was exhilarating. A happiness she never thought she’d feel again after losing her parents had filled her. It was as if her parents were there with her, encouraging her, lending their spirits.

It didn’t take Zelda long to get addicted. Soon she was out every single night searching for bad guys and stopping crimes. Of course the police eventually caught on to her actions and branded her a public menace, but they quickly changed their tune when Loftwing ended up being the only person who could subdue the rampaging meta-human (‘cause what else do you call a guy who could turn into a wild boar at will) that attacked downtown Kakariko about two months after Zelda became the Loftwing.

After bringing the meta-human in, Loftwing’s public image became overwhelmingly positive, despite the grumblings of some older police captains and city councilmen. The newspapers had branded her Kakariko’s Golden Girl, and the mayor had even held a clichéd ceremony to give her a key to the city.

Life had been a fairly simple balance of signing important documents, attending board meetings, and patrolling nightly. That is until he came along.

Zelda had been about to turn in early from a rather uneventful night patrolling Kakariko when her scanners picked up an alarm going off at the Goron Jewel Refinery. An interesting target since most of the ore there was essentially worthless hunks of rock, but Zelda figured she should check it out anyway. It was easy enough to sneak in (something she would have to talk to the Gorons about), but the refinery seemed deserted. She carefully made her way to the room where the alarm was set off. The only thing noticeably different about the empty room was an open window a little too high for any normally motivated criminal. Whoever the thief was, they came here with a purpose.

Zelda continued to search nearby areas in the refinery. An outline of the building she had pulled up told her the storage room wasn’t too far; she headed in that direction. She opened the door and was instantly blinded by the bright fluorescent lights. It took a moment for the lenses in her domino mask to adjust, but by then the element of surprise was gone.

“You took longer than I expected, Loftwing,” a smooth, masculine voice called.

Zelda’s head whipped around, just in time for her to raise her arms and block the kick headed her way.

“You know this isn’t the best place to go jewel shopping,” Zelda grunted as she responded with a couple of punches and a kick of her own.

“Now who said I was shopping for jewels?” the man laughed as he disengaged her attack.

Zelda finally got a good look at the thief. He was slightly taller than her with wind swept, dark blonde hair and blue and red lines painted across his forehead and cheeks. His eyes were only white voids behind his mask, but his smirk was wide and cocky.

“We are in a jewel refinery,” Zelda raised an eyebrow. “Unless you really think you can make off with some of this machinery without being noticed.”

The thief simply laughed, “There technically aren’t any jewels here, only ore.”

“That’s not the best thing to make a ring out of,” Zelda quipped as she charged him to trade another round of blows.

“Never thought you’d be one for sarcastic comments, Loftwing,” the thief grabbed ahold of her leg as she spun to kick him. Zelda couldn’t break his hold, so she was stuck with her leg trapped against his shoulder. A mischievous smile spread over the thief’s face as he yanked her leg higher, causing Zelda to lose her balance and practically fall on him. Her hands fell to his shoulders, their faces inches apart, and she essentially stretched into a split against his body.

His grin darkened dangerously as he glanced down, “Flexible, nice.”

Zelda wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled with all her body weight to bring him to the ground, “You could at least try and stay professional, you pervert.”

“I prefer Shadow, if you don’t mind,” Shadow quickly broke out of her hold and both scrambled to get to their feet. “And you’ve kept me here longer than I intended, beautiful.” He swiftly dropped and swept his leg out to knock Zelda’s legs out from under her.

He ran over to where he left his bag of stolen ore, and gave her a cocky wink before declaring, “Catch you later, Loftwing.” He scrambled out of one of the storage room windows and disappeared into the night.

Zelda was still riling ten minutes later when the police finally showed up. She gave them a description of the thief and what he took along with his chosen codename of ‘Shadow’ before declaring she wouldn’t let him get away next time.

She took the next day off from work to train with Impa so she would be prepared for her next meeting with Shadow. She researched the type of ore Shadow had stolen and what it could be used for. She even looked up the markings that had been painted on his face to see if that would give her a clue to who Shadow was or where he came from.

And so Zelda waited. She kept an eye out for suspicious robberies and was always the first to respond to jewelry store break-ins for ten days before she met Shadow again.

It was at the Kakariko Natural History Museum. Zelda had chased Shadow from the Minerals of the Earth section up two floors and across the building to the History of the Sheikah Tribe exhibit.

“This is quite refreshing,” Shadow’s voice seemed to bounce off the walls, and Zelda couldn’t pinpoint his location in the exhibit. No wonder he gave himself the codename ‘Shadow.’ “Usually I’m the one chasing after girls.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Zelda called to the semidarkness. “I’m really only after those jewels you stole. Gonna add them to your collection of ore?”

“Trying to get me to reveal my evil master plan?” Shadow tutted. “Now that just won’t do, Loftwing.”

“As if a petty jewel thief would have any master plans,” Zelda taunted. She was so close to finding him. She just needed to keep him talking.

“Oh Loftwing, you wound me,” Shadow sighed dramatically. “You really only see me as a petty jewel thief?”

“I also see you as quite the arrogant ass if that helps,” Zelda smiled triumphantly as she rounded a corner to see Shadow with his back to her crouching behind a display. But it seemed the jewel thief was impossible to sneak up on. Shadow quickly turned to intercept Zelda as she ran toward him.

“I’m only an arrogant ass for you, beautiful,” he smirked as they sparred amongst the displays.

Shadow soon found her weakness; she was lessening the strength of her attacks to prevent damage to the exhibit, but it hindered her maneuverability substantially. So with a simple move that Zelda wouldn’t block for fear of breaking the display glass and harming the artifact within, Shadow had Zelda trapped face-first against the glass with her arms forced behind her.

“What’s your name?” he whispered into her ear.

Zelda answered with an attempt to kick his legs.

Shadow merely chuckled lowly, “Come on, beautiful. I only want to know your real name.”

“Like I would tell you,” Zelda said with as much acid as she could muster.

“Do you want to know why I led you here?” Shadow leaned down to rest his chin against her shoulder. Even with the pain in her arms, Zelda couldn’t help but notice how much of Shadow’s body was pressed up against her.

“It’s so we would be far enough away from the Minerals section to be undisturbed by the cops.”

Zelda gasped realizing he was right; the police would never come to this part of the museum when the crime occurred two floors below them.

“So we have all night alone,” his lips grazed her neck, and suddenly Zelda couldn’t breathe.

“Sheik,” she said, twisting her neck so he would no longer have access. “My name is Sheik.”

“Interesting name,” Shadow hummed. “Also the name of the ancient Sheikan warrior who protected the tribe during the Great War, so you’ll understand if I don’t believe you seeing as you’re trapped against a display describing his heroics.”

“Her,” Zelda panted, feeling far too hot with Shadow’s mouth so close to her skin. “Sheik was a woman.”

“Really?” his grip on her wrists slackened just a little. “You believe those old wives’ tales that Sheik was actually a woman?”

Zelda quickly broke his hold, flipping around and swiftly grabbing his wrists to stop his movement.

“Any intellectual who has actually spoken to a descendant of the Sheikah would know that Sheik was indeed a woman. A very badass woman, too.”

“Much like yourself, I presume,” Shadow flashed her a dazzling smile, but Zelda was ready this time.

“No more flirting for you, mister,” she dug out some industrial grade, nylon rope from her utility belt and tied his hands together. “Now are you going to answer my questions, or do I have to drag you straight to the police?”

“Will you let me go if I answer your questions?” Shadow countered.

“Of course not,” Zelda scoffed.

“Then I’m afraid we’re at an impasse, beautiful.”

Zelda didn’t like the smug grin that rested on his face. He had something up his sleeve, and she didn’t want to wait long enough for him to pull any tricks.

“I’m taking you down to the police,” she declared. But as she reached over to grab his wrists, Shadow hit her with a round house kick. Zelda fell backwards, hitting the back of her head against the display glass behind her. Her vision swirled. She looked up to see the hazy outline of Shadow waltzing toward her.

“I don’t have the time to waste breaking out of a cell, but it was a nice try,” he leaned down in front of her, but Zelda couldn’t make her limbs move to swipe at him. “I’ll just have to catch you later, beautiful.”

There was a slight pressure against the top of her head, and Zelda’s vision went black.

She was awoken by the police thirty minutes later. The detective on duty wanted to arrest her for trespassing, but once the security footage confirmed her story of fighting Shadow to regain the stolen gems, the detective reluctantly let her go free.

Impa checked her out once she got home. She wanted to call in sick to work again, but Impa advised her against it, stating that people might see notice a pattern if she doesn’t show up to work the day after every encounter Loftwing had with Shadow. So with no concussion to actually prevent her from going to Harkinian Corp. in the morning, Zelda reluctantly got up after three hours of sleep and dressed for work.

But Zelda could not keep her mind off Shadow. What were his plans? What was his motive? Where would he pop up next? Zelda was so consumed in her thoughts that she zoned out during two meetings with potential investors and had to continually ask her assistant to repeat herself whenever she was telling Zelda something.

Despite her exhaustion when she returned to the estate that evening, Zelda went straight to the secret lair to train with Impa.

“I think this constant vigilantism is causing you too much stress, Miss Zelda,” Impa said after their two hour work out. “It would be prudent for you to take a break.”

“Crime doesn’t take a break, Impa,” Zelda replied after she drank some water. “Besides, I can’t miss Shadow if he decides to rob another place.”

“Your desire to apprehend Shadow is clouding your judgement,” Impa fixed her with a stern look.

“Someone has to bring him in,” Zelda relied. “And the police certainly aren’t going to be able to do it.”

And so Impa reluctantly let Zelda go out on patrol, but only after getting her to promise that she would come in two hours earlier than she normally would.

Zelda hopped from building to building, making up her route as she went. Impa was right. Over the past two weeks or so, she had let Shadow consume her life outside of Loftwing, and she hadn’t even notice it happening. Was it because he was the first adversary she had come across that she couldn’t beat? Or could it be his cocky attitude? The way he was always incessantly flirting and how handsome he looked while fighting?

Woah, did she really just think Shadow was handsome? Where did that come from?

But before she could examine her strange thought train derailment, the police scanner on her communications unit reported a robbery at a jewelry store. Shadow was back to work quicker than she thought. Zelda made her way to the jewelry store, intent on paying him back for knocking her out last night.

She arrived at the jewelry store just as smoke started leaking out of the busted door, and Shadow was sneaking out via the roof. She followed him at a distance, hoping he would lead her to whatever hideout he probably used in the city. It was going well for about three blocks, and then he jumped over a fire escape, and she lost him. She walked to the edge of the building to see if he was down in the alley still running, but he was nowhere in sight.

“Yo! Loftwing!”

Or not.

Zelda turned around to see Shadow smiling mockingly at her. He gave her a tiny wave.

“I’m actually pretty glad you followed me away from the police. You see, I’ve got a bone to pick with you,” Shadow thrust an accusatory finger in her direction, his smile furrowing into a frown. “Why the hell did you have to tie me up in industrial grade rope, huh? I couldn’t get it off myself and had to ask my neighbor to untie me, and do you want to know what I had to wind up telling her as an excuse? That my girlfriend left me high and dry while we were playing at bondage!”

Zelda snorted before collapsing in giggles. She had no idea what she had been expecting Shadow to say, but it definitely wasn’t that.

“And the worst part is,” Shadow continued ranting. “She gave me this knowing smile like it was a hundred percent viable excuse. I don’t even have a girlfriend, man!”

Zelda couldn’t stop laughing. Her knees already felt weak, and her cheeks were beginning to hurt from smiling. She let Shadow continue to rant for five minutes before she held up a hand to stop him.

“Oh my Goddess,” she breathed deeply to try and stop the laughter that was still bubbling up. “You’re serious, aren’t you? That’s probably the best thing I’ve heard in my entire life.”

“I’m glad my embarrassing life stories amuse you,” Shadow griped.

Zelda rolled her eyes, her smile refusing to fall from her face just yet, “You’re the one who turned around just to tell me this story.”

“So you would feel guilty,” Shadow crossed his arms defiantly like a pouty child. “Not so you would laugh at me.”

“Then your story shouldn’t have been funny,” Zelda retorted with a smirk.

“I demand compensation,” Shadow grinned slyly. “Tell me your name, and I’ll consider us even.”

“So that’s your angle,” Zelda’s smile fell. There went the light mood. She stalked over to Shadow and rather violently prodded him in the chest with her finger.

“First of all, you are a criminal. The fact that I tied you up does not deserve compensation of any sort. Secondly, my name would absolutely not be equal compensation for tying you up. And most importantly, I will never tell you my name.”

Shadow laced a frown over his features and rubbed the spot Zelda had poked, “I’m hurt, Loftwing. I thought we had a real connection, one that could develop into something more.”

“Really?” Zelda couldn’t resist a weak jab at his chest that he easily blocked. “You could have fooled me with the way you knocked me out last night. You know the detective on duty wanted to arrest me for trespassing? Not cool, Shadow.” She threw another punch with a little more power behind it.

Shadow dodged with a laugh, “So are we going to fight over who had the worst night yesterday? ‘Cause I really think my story is totally worse.” He retaliated with a simple right hook Zelda easily blocked.

“Do you ever get tired of hearing yourself talk?” Zelda asked as she aimed a kick to Shadow’ stomach.

“Never, beautiful,” he laughed as they exchanged a few more blows. “It’s just a part of my charm.”

“I thought that was what the flirting was for,” Zelda snapped. Her punches were backed with more power, and Shadow actually grunted when one landed on his side.

“Awe, Loftwing,” he cooed in a way that would have been annoying if Zelda hadn’t interrupted him with a punch in the gut. “You aren’t jealous, are you? Come on, beautiful; you know I don’t flirt with anyone else when I try to escape. Not even the really cute cops, I promise.”

“Jealousy would imply actual feelings,” Zelda grunted as Shadow threw a particularly powerful punch her way. “And I don’t have any feelings for you.” A weird, twisty, churning feeling that had nothing to do with Shadow’s latest kick bloomed in her gut.

“That just means I have to try harder to wear you down,” Shadow chuckled. Zelda could swear he winked at her behind his mask.

“Oh that’s what we’re calling it now?” Zelda huffed as she sent another barrage of kicks at Shadow.

He blocked the kicks then swiftly wrapped his arm around Zelda’s waist and pulled her close to him.

“Why don’t we make this dance more literal?” he wiggled his eyebrows.

Zelda began to protest, but her hands were pressed against Shadow’s belt, or more specifically, the bag of stolen jewels clipped to his belt.

“If you want to dance with me,” Zelda whispered in the sultry voice she used on guys in college before she slapped them for being handsy. “You’ll have to score an invite to one of my parties.”

“So you throw parties?” Shadow chuckled. “And so the mystery grows.”

“Parties, galas, the occasional work dinner,” Zelda leaned in a touch closer. “But it’ll take more than that for you to see me without my mask.”

“Just wait until I sneak into one of your parties, beautiful,” Shadow winked behind his mask before pulling away from Zelda and back flipping off the building.

But Zelda didn’t feel the need to pursue, not with the bag of jewels in her hands.

The next day, Zelda was bubbly and smiling at everyone. She didn’t realize she was acting differently until her secretary asked her if she was alright.

“Oh, I’m fine,” Zelda smiled. “Just happy for no meetings today.”

“Well you do have a couple of small meetings, Miss,” her secretary smiled. “Just a lunch meeting with the president of the Kakariko State University Future Business Leader’s Association to talk about some internship possibilities for Association members, and then at two you have a meeting with the director of the Kakariko Humane Society to talk about their latest fundraising dinner.”

“See but those are easy meetings,” Zelda nodded as she took a sip of her coffee.

The young and peppy president of the Kakariko State University Future Business Leader’s Association nearly talked Zelda to death, and Zelda somehow agreed to come speak at their next meeting before she even knew what was happening.

And the director of the Kakariko Humane Society was really cute, so Zelda felt the need to buy an entire table for his fundraising dinner next week. She could guilt trip her board members into going with her if her friends couldn’t make it.

Needless to say, Zelda was in a pretty happy mood for patrol as Loftwing that night. She managed to finally get one of the drug dealers to reveal their source and stopped three robberies. She was just about to head in for the night when, surprise, surprise, Shadow dropped down in front of her with that Cheshire grin across his face.

“Have I told you, you have a beautiful smile?” he asked.

Zelda eyed him suspiciously, “No, I don’t think so.”

“Well you do,” his smiled widened.

“Is there something you need, Shadow?”

“Oh, no not really,” his grin somehow widened even more. “I just wanted to see the famous Loftwing in her downtime.”

“I’m patrolling,” Zelda rolled her eyes. “This isn’t downtime.” She ran toward the edge of the building and jumped to the neighboring roof. But that wasn’t enough to shake her Shadow.

“You’re not fighting off criminals; that’s downtime enough for me,” he smirked as he landed gracefully next to her. He grabbed her by the arm to stop her from running off again.

“Well, don’t blame me if you get left behind then,” Zelda scowled. She shook off his hold and took off running as fast as she could, intent on losing Shadow in the jungle gym that was the skyline of Kakariko.

She circled around downtown and climbed the flag pole on the top of the courthouse dome.

“Is that the best you can do, beautiful?” Shadow called above the wind from the base of the flagpole.

“Are you issuing a challenge?”

“Only if you’re willing to participate,” Shadow smirked. “For a prize of course.”

Zelda slid down the flagpole, “I might be game, as long as the prize isn’t my name.”

“How about a kiss then?” Shadow raised an eyebrow. His expression was playful and teasing; Zelda couldn’t tell if he was entirely serious or not. It was a harmless bet. She would just have to win, and then it wouldn’t be a problem.

“Deal.”

Shadow’s smile spread to a full on shit-eating grin, “How about we name check points to meet up at. Whoever gets there first gets a point. Whoever had the most points at the end of the night wins.”

“Who gets to decide what the checkpoints are?” Zelda asked.

“We can switch off to make it fair.”

Zelda felt her adrenaline rising. The anticipation, the race, it was making her feel giddy in a way she hadn’t felt since she first donned her cape as Loftwing.

“So where to first?” she asked, already bouncing on her heels.

“Lady’s choice,” Shadow leaned in close enough that their noses almost touched.

Zelda surprised herself by not pulling away, “The old windmill on the edge of town.”

She sent Shadow a wink then leapt of the courthouse dome into the open air. She effortlessly glided down to an office building across the street then started to make her way to the old abandoned windmill she had set as the checkpoint. History books say it had drawn water for Kakariko when it was still but a small village, and really if it weren’t such an important historical landmark, the city would have torn it down years ago. Zelda made it there in good time and counted to sixty before Shadow landed behind her.

“One point for you, beautiful,” Shadow smirked. “Enjoy your lead while you can.”

“Where to next, Shadow?” Zelda attempted to roll her eyes but found she couldn’t thanks to the smile spreading across her cheeks.

“The Temple by the graveyard,” Shadow declared. “Not the super old, creepy one at the back. The top of the steeple at the Temple in the front. Our Ladies of Something and Someother.”

“It’s Hope and Love,” Zelda corrected, but Shadow was already off.

She quickly grappled to the nearest tall building in order to catch up to him. Zelda had never felt this alive in her life. She was almost glad Shadow had come to her tonight and proposed this game. She hadn’t had this much fun since before her parents died.

She climbed up the steeple of the Temple of Our Ladies of Hope and Love. Zelda was rarely on this side of town; there wasn’t enough crime to warrant frequent patrolling of the area.

“Nice of you to drop by,” Shadow suddenly dropped down beside her. “I only got here half a minute before you, so don’t worry. You didn’t lose by much.”

“I won’t be losing anymore, Shadow,” Zelda smirked. “Next checkpoint is the top of Old Main on Kakariko State’s campus. Know where it is?”

“I might have toured the campus once or twice or seven times while in grade school,” Shadow sneered. “You won’t be winning this round, Loftwing.”

“Then prove me wrong, handsome,” Zelda laughed as she jumped off the Temple steeple to glide to a building across the street.

She didn’t realize what she had said to Shadow until she was half way to Kakariko State University’s campus. Zelda almost stopped dead in her tracks. She called Shadow ‘handsome’ to his face. How could she have said such a thing? He was never going to let that go; Shadow was going to bring that up every time they ran into each other from now until eternity. She couldn’t face him again. But she also couldn’t lose this bet. She would just have to play it off, Zelda decided, pretend she said it to throw him off and give herself a lead.

But does that mean she actually meant it?

Her mind was still jumbled when she arrived at the roof of Old Main, Kakariko State’s academic building. No matter how thoroughly she thought it through, Zelda could not convince herself that she didn’t think Shadow was handsome.

“There you are,” Shadow called from the ledge of the dome that sat atop Old Main. “You sure took you time getting here.”

“Looks like my trick didn’t work,” Zelda fake-sighed. “Me calling you ‘handsome’ didn’t slow you down at all, did it?”

“Not in the slightest,” he slipped from the ledge he was sitting on and made his way over to where Zelda was standing. “But it did seem to trip you up.” Shadow slowly invaded her personal space with a smirk across his lips, but Zelda refused to step back. “Didn’t it, beautiful?”

He reached for a stray strand of brunette hair that was hovering in front of Zelda’s face and gently tucked it behind her ear. His fingers grazed the edge of her domino mask, and suddenly that out of breath feeling hit Zelda again. She stumbled backward, turning away from Shadow against her crime-fighting instincts.

“Where,” she began, but she had to take a deep breath before continuing. “Where to next?”

“The top of Harkinia Corp.’s headquarters,” Shadow said. Zelda knew he could clearly see the shock in her face. “What? Scared the tallest building in the city might have too romantic a view, Loftwing?”

“No,” she practically growled. “I’ll beat you there no matter what.”

“You better,” Shadow called keeping right behind her as she jumped from rooftop to rooftop to exit Kakariko State’s campus. “Otherwise I’ll start to think you’re losing this bet on purpose.”

His laughter still echoed in her ears even as she pulled away from him and made her way across the city to her own office building. She did so almost mindlessly; Harkinian Corp.’s tower was always her halfway point on patrols. She was sure she would beat Shadow there. And then she was going to punch him for the little stunt he pulled on the roof of Old Main. And maybe she would punch him again if he tried to pull anything else on the roof of Harkinian Corp. ‘Too romantic a view’ her ass.

Zelda was so caught up in her thoughts, that she didn’t notice Shadow in front of her until she was two blocks away from Harkinian Corp. Dammit. Letting Shadow get to the top of the skyscraper first was not an option. Zelda picked up her speed, pushing her grappling gun to its limits in order to hop from roof to roof quicker. But it wasn’t enough. She was seconds away from touching down on the roof of Harkinian Corp. when she saw Shadow saunter onto the rooftop. Zelda felt like screaming as she landed on the concrete roof.

“So close,” Shadow laughed as he traipsed over toward her. “Yet so far.”

Zelda shot menacing daggers from her eyes before she remembered Shadow couldn’t actually see her eyes behind her domino mask.

“I guess I should just show mercy on you and take my prize now,” he smirked. “Unless you wish to continue.”

“Ah, yes,” Zelda said harshly. She stalked toward him, meeting him halfway across the roof, and stopping close enough to make him lean back slightly. “Why don’t we make our next checkpoint the roof of Precinct 1? I’m sure the cops would just love you voluntarily landing on their building.”

“I think I’ll pass on that one,” Shadow clearly rolled his eyes even though Zelda couldn’t see it. “Let’s just call an end to our game, hmm? I won’t even kiss you if that’s what’s bothering you so much.”

Zelda narrowed her eyes suspiciously at Shadow. If she called off the bet with no kiss, Shadow would turn her words back on her claiming she had feelings for him, which she absolutely did not. But if she just gave in and let him have his kiss, well… she’d be giving in and letting him have his kiss. It was a lose, lose situation, and Zelda couldn’t see a way out of it at all.

“That’s not what’s bothering me,” she scoffed to buy herself some time to think. Then Zelda heard the distance wailing of sirens on the street far below them. That was strange; her emergency signal tracker hadn’t picked anything up. Her emergency signal tracker hadn’t picked anything up. She quickly examined her gauntlets where the communications unit was located.

“All of my comms are shut off,” Zelda whispered. How could she have not noticed until now?

“Loftwing?” Shadow stepped forward cautiously.

“Did you do this?” Zelda turned to him menacingly. “Did you shut of my comms so I wouldn’t be distracted from your stupid game?”

“No!” he gasped, leaping back as Zelda advanced on him. “I would never, Loftwing; you have my word.”

“Sad thing is, I don’t trust your word,” Zelda lashed out at him angrily. Her movements were sloppy and filled with rage, but she didn’t care. He had the opportunity to shut of her comm system when he grabbed her arm on that very first rooftop they met on. Shadow had prevented her from fulfilling her duty to protect Kakariko, to save peoples’ lives, to honor her parents’ memories.

Zelda froze mid-punch. She was lashing out at Shadow for all the attention she had focus on him and not the rest of her duties, angry at him for being the only criminal so far she had yet to bring in to the police, fighting with him when all he had really done was exist.

“I’m sorry,” she hung her head. She had let anger cloud her judgment; Impa would be disappointed.

Shadow seemed to hesitate for a second before quickly wrapping his arms around her and gently sealing their lips together.

Zelda was not expecting that. It was literally the last thing she thought she would be doing that night. But, damn, if it wasn’t the best kiss she’s had in her life. Not that she would ever tell Shadow that, especially after she decked him with a mean right hook when they separated.

“That was for not asking first,” she growled out. Zelda had to resist the urge to pull him back toward her for another kiss. Wow, where did that come from?

“So if I ask, can I kiss you again?” Shadow’s face lit up into a ridiculous smile.

Zelda was at the edge of the rooftop already. She slowly turned around with a coy smile and laughing eyes hidden behind her mask.

“Only if you ask nicely.”

Three hours later, Zelda was in her bedroom screaming into a pillow.

“I can’t believe I did that,” she howled to an apathetic Impa. “I let him kiss me. And then I told him he could do it again.” She screamed into the pillow again. “What is wrong with me?”

“You are attracted to him,” Impa stated as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“But he’s a thief,” Zelda whined. “He steals precious jewels and ore, and this is bad; it’s hazardous.”

“Are you afraid you are compromised by your feelings?” Impa asked bluntly.

“I know I am, Impa,” Zelda rolled over to look her house keeper in the eye. “I spent practically the half night playing tag with him and barely helping anyone, and then I let him kiss me, and I enjoyed it.”

“But you found out where the suppliers are for all the dealers in the city,” Impa attempted to cheer her up. “Now you can focus on taking that down instead of Shadow.”

“That’s true,” Zelda nodded and rubbed her face. “Time to start investigating.”

Zelda spent the next week working, taking short patrols across Kakariko, and scoping out the drug supplies that were hidden in the mountains. The storehouses were so extensive, Zelda thought she might have to call in the help of the police department. But there wasn’t time for that now. Zelda had a fundraiser to go to.

Zelda put on her favorite dress, the sparkly purple one with the halter top and the slit that was just high enough to be sexy but not high enough to be called slutty. She was meeting a couple of friends from college and a few of the board members she managed to guilt trip into attending at the dinner. When she gracefully exited her car, Zelda was surprised to see the director of the Humane Society waiting for her.

“Miss Harkinian,” he offered his arm to escort her. Dang, he looked good in a tux.

“Call me Zelda, please,” she smiled as she took his arm, and they started walking. “You didn’t have to come escort me, Link.”

He chuckled, “I couldn’t let this evening pass without saying thank you to the largest donor here.” His smile faltered as he realized what he said. “Ah, shit no, I meant you gave the largest donation to the Humane Society, not that you are, like, physically large. You actually look stunning in that dress. Dammit, there went my suave first impression.” Link hung his head after his ramble. Zelda could only laugh.

“No, it’s okay,” Zelda couldn’t stop the small chuckles escaping her lips. “This is better; now we don’t have to be pretentiously formal with each other.”

Link smiled, “If you say so. Shall I show you to your table?”

“Yes, please,” Zelda smiled as their photo was taken. They walked to a table near the front center, and Link pulled out a chair in between Ashei, one of Zelda’s college friends, and one of the stuffy board members of Harkinian Corp.

“Don't be a stranger, Link,” Zelda winked as he left to entertain some more guests.

“You’re sweet on that guy, yeah?” Ashei leaned in close to Zelda and smirked.

“There’s nothing wrong with helping a good cause,” Zelda shrugged, hiding her grin by taking a sip of wine.

The fundraiser was quite the success. Link came back over to talk with Zelda at least three separate times, and he even escorted her out to her car when she left a little early so she could have a short patrol as Loftwing before going to bed.

“Feel free to call me if you ever need anything,” Zelda smiled, hesitating before getting into her car.

“I will,” Link’s eyes sparkled, and damn they were so blue.

“I’ll see you later then,” Zelda couldn’t stop smiling as she slipped into the car.

“Maybe quicker than you think,” he winked before closing the door for her.

“So I take it you had a good time, Miss Zelda?” Impa asked from the driver’s seat.

“I would appreciate it if you didn’t comment, Impa,” Zelda tried to snap, but it didn’t sound right with a smile plastered across her face.

Later that night, Zelda was letting out her excitement by twirling across rooftops and flipping excessively when jumping from one place to another. It wasn’t until she heard clapping as she crossed one rooftop that Zelda felt mildly self-conscious of her movements.

“Lovely show,” Shadow called. “When should I expect your name in lights?”

“Give me five years and I’ll take the stage by storm,” Zelda laughed.

“Someone had a good night,” Shadow raised an eyebrow. “Care to share the juicy details?”

“I think the juicy details would only hurt your feelings,” Zelda sighed. “But if you must know, I met a guy.”

“Loftwing,” Shadow gasped, playfully scandalized. “Have you been cheating on me?”

“Oh no,” Zelda smirked. “This guy I actually like.”

Shadow comically threw a hand over his heart, “Now that hurts me deep, Loftwing. How would Link feel about you being so vicious?”

Zelda froze, “I never said his name.”

“Funny thing about Links though,” Shadow chuckled and reached up to his domino mask. “There aren’t all that many in the world.”

Zelda gasped as Shadow took off his domino mask revealing brilliant, blue, familiar eyes.

“You said I could call if I ever needed anything, right?” Link smiled. “Well I have a proposition.”

“How do you know who I am?” Zelda asked, still wary of the thief.

“I wasn’t one hundred percent sure until you reacted to my name,” Link smiled sheepishly. “But it was a silly thing really. When we played tag, you wore the same earrings as Zelda Harkinian when I met her for our meeting earlier that day. And then your smile is pretty unique, uh in a good way. As in it’s really beautiful, and ‘I could recognize that smile everywhere,’ you know?”

“We’re going back to my place,” Zelda declared. She started to stalk off the roof.

“I, uh, you need a ride?” Link called after her.

She turned, “You got one?”

Ten minutes later, Link was driving his motorcycle into the secret lair Zelda had been operating out of under her mountain estate.

He whistled lowly as he turned the engine off, “This is so much nicer than the back room of my shelter.”

“You have a shelter?” Zelda asked as she finally took of her own domino mask.

“Yeah, I own and operate the Kakariko Animal Shelter,” Link said as he stared around the lair. “It’s hilariously underfunded, and I had to take to stealing things from people who totally deserved it by the way so the animals in the shelter could get the proper care they need.”

“So what is this proposition you mentioned earlier?” Zelda stared at him, hands on her hips.

“Well, Shadow wouldn’t need to take to the streets stealing jewels if the KAS was funded by the charitable Zelda Harkinian, who recently found a passion for helping the animals of Kakariko at a recent fundraising dinner.”

“That sounds pretty plausible,” Zelda tilted her head to the side. “What would I get out of it?”

“A partner,” Link’s bravado faded once again. “If you want one, I mean, if you’ll have me.”

“Did you just ask me to be your girlfriend?” she couldn’t resist the tease.

“Only if you’re offering, beautiful,” Link smirked. For once, Zelda could see the mischievous Shadow in Link’s blue eyes.

“We’ll talk,” Zelda conceded. “But I’ll agree to your other conditions. I’ll help fund your animal shelter, and you can be my partner permitted you stop committing crimes.”

“Deal!” Link smiled enthusiastically.

They could hash out the details later, Zelda figured as she took in the huge grin on Link’s face. For right now, she wanted to get to know this lighter side to her Shadow.

[manuhd]

Mobile App Development Trends for 2020

There are over seven billion people in the world, and nearly 3.5 billion have mobile phones. Statistics also show that 90% of mobile time is spent on applications.

Mobile is fundamentally transforming business models and marketplaces at a surprising rate. To outsmart your competitors, it is critical to analyze the mobile application development trends that are ruling the industry. There are many technologies that are set to impact the mobile app development industry in 2020, let’s take a deep dive into some of the most popular trends.

IoT Integration

The Internet of Things (IoT) isn’t a new concept but the rise in mobile development across a wide range of industries and sectors has opened up many opportunities for the IoT.

The IoT refers to the growing network of physical devices that are connected to the internet, all collecting and sharing data to provide added convenience and control to consumers and, in some cases, even allow automating simple processes such as ordering supplies.

The IoT is poised for steady growth in the coming years with software leading the way. The global Internet of Things market is expected to reach $318 billion by 2023. According to Statista, the revenue from technology associated with the Internet of Things will reach 1.6 trillion by 2025. Household devices, automobiles, and healthcare are three specific markets to keep an eye on.

Foldable Devices

Foldable devices constitute a small part of the overall mobile market share – manufacturers shipped a total of one million foldable smartphones in 2019. However more and more users show interest in foldable devices and analysts expect foldable smartphone shipments to reach 50.1 million units globally by 2022.

According to Samsung, hundreds of popular Android applications have been optimized for Galaxy Fold, including Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, Microsoft Office, Amazon Prime Video, and VSCO. Video streaming and gaming applications can benefit most from foldable because the increased screen size provides extra space for additional information and controls.

Wearables

The market of wearable devices already offers a variety of trackers, fitness bands, smartwatches, and even smart rings. These wearables have changed the way we interact with smart devices. The market for wearables is constantly growing. According to Statista, around 25% of adults in the USA, will use some wearable devices by 2022.

The popularity of wearables is expected to increase due to the growing interest in healthcare. This COVID-19 pandemic has shown that wearable devices can be used for medical and fitness purposes. Another way to use the potential of wearable devices with mobile applications is augmented reality. AR supporting smart glasses may be useful for mechanical problem solving, navigation, and drone piloting.

Beacon Technology

According to Statista, in 2016, the beacon market was valued at 519.6 million U.S. dollars and will reach 56.6 billion U.S. dollars in 2026. The technology is the first mobile application trend that is completely embraced by museums, hotel management and healthcare spheres and more.

Beacons are small transmitters that connect to Bluetooth-enabled devices like smartphones. They were developed to connect and transmit data to smart devices to make location-based searching and interaction easier and more accurate. They are one of the latest developments in location technology and proximity marketing. Today, beacons are used in a wide array of industries, including retail, healthcare, banking, logistics, airports, cinema, and more. The best part of beacon is that an average user can easily get used to its functionality.

Mobile Commerce

This trend has been dominating 2018, 2019, and continues to thrive in 2020. It is expected that by 2021, mobile e-commerce will rake in some $3.5 trillion and make up almost three quarters (72.9 percent) of e-commerce sales.

With more and more people leaning towards mobile purchasing, mobile e-commerce functionality is a top feature and it seems like every day another business is launching an application to stay competitive and drive sales.

Applications play a significant role in the current and future success of mobile e-commerce. Apple Pay and Google Wallet have encouraged customers to shop via smartphones. Retail and e-commerce companies build applications that let their customers shop easily without cash or physical cards.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

It is expected that the global ML industry will be worth almost $9 billion by 2022. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have been among the top trends in mobile application development for the last few years in a row. When machine learning is combined with deep learning, developers can do wonders by providing valuable data and real-time analytics.

Here are the AI features that can be implemented into a mobile application:

image recognition;

face recognition;

speech recognition;

text and image classification;

sentiment recognition and classification;

predictive maintenance.

AI and ML can make applications smarter and improve their performance at all levels. From backend to frontend development, they are changing the way applications are built in 2020.

Mobile Wallets

According to a recent report, there was $6.1 billion worth of transactions from mobile wallets in 2019. The number is expected to reach $13.98 billion by 2022.

As more people use their mobile devices to shop online the popularity of mobile e-commerce is growing, and so does the popularity of mobile wallets. Mobile wallets  are convenient and make the user experience smoother and more enjoyable. Moreover, they are very secure and keep users’ money safe. Plenty of applications, for example, allow you to lend to businesses and individuals, store money in any currency you like and even offer better overall foreign exchange rates. Of course, there are more applications of mobile wallets. For example, mobile wallet technology is used in smartwatches  as a viable replacement for credit cards.

Wallet integration will become a standard feature for every application that processes transactions. Even though mobile wallets aren’t a common thing now, their popularity will grow significantly in the coming years.

Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality

Mobile apps can use augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) for a wide range of use cases. In 2019, many mobile applications involved in gaming and entertainment already shifted to augmented reality and virtual reality.

Now businesses in other sectors have realized the advantages of AR and started implementing it in their applications. Brands like IKEA and Sephora have included AR in their applications to enhance user experience.

Although AR and VR are still developing, they have enormous potential and will take center stage in iOS and Android app development.

Chatbots

There are many ways to use chatbots. In the B2B field, chatbots can be utilized to accelerate communication with customers and provide them with support  24/7. Many businesses have already integrated chatbots into their routine tasks. In fact, they are becoming the new standard of customer service.

It may seem surprising, but chatbots started to appear in the market about a decade ago. Over the years, chatbots have evolved and become much more advanced. Since they are driven by AI, their responses are becoming more human-like. Some even expect them to be indistinguishable from humans.

The chatbot market size is projected to grow from $2.6 billion in 2019 to $9.4 billion by 2024 at a compound annual growth rate of 29.7%  which means that the demand for chatbot development is increasing day after day. Chatbots reduce operating costs for enterprises and can work in segments such as marketing, payments and processing, and service.

Predictive Analytics

Everything follows a pattern. Predictive analytics analyzes huge volumes of data, extracts valuable insights and uses them to identify issues before they occur and suggest ways to avoid them. In mobile development, predictive analytics can work on two fronts – improve user experience and the development process. For example, it can predict what action the user might take next or analyze what pages in the app have the lowest retention rate and find the root of the problem.

In the coming years, predictive analytics will be implemented in a variety of industries, for a wide range of mobile applications, primarily to enhance the user experience. The idea here is that every user will have personalized experience with an application. For example, users will be provided with personal product suggestions based on their actions and behavior history.

Cloud Computing

While cloud technology is not new, it hasn’t reached its full potential yet. It provides a wide range of possibilities for mobile development such as reducing costs in hosting, improved loading capacity, and streamlined business operations. Due to cloud computing, applications can store information and carry out complex tasks on the cloud, as opposed to storing data directly on the user’s device.

Besides that, cloud computing can help to solve many security-related concerns, making mobile app development more secure, fast, and reliable.

Cloud platforms like Dropbox and AWS have enabled applications to run directly in the cloud. As cloud computing takes over the mobile world, the coming years will see quantum computing, hybrid cloud solutions, and the development of cloud services.

Conclusion

Mobile app development is continuously evolving. As a business, you need to stay on top of the trends to gain an edge in your niche. Of course, you don’t need to implement every single trend, but you need to have a general understanding of how the market is changing so you can adapt your business and marketing strategies to the growing consumer demands.