#young gully | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

akwardlyuncool · 1 year

Photo

Class Favorites: Movie Rank!

This is a ranking of all the movies I watched for the first time in 2022. I didn’t review every new movie, but I will link to any reviews that I can. That being said, be sure and click the links to also see the trigger/content warnings. (If they are what you need.)

Also it’s not in reverse order because I can never be bothered.

1) Spider Man No Way Home (2022)

It was just good and gave what it needed to give. The “surprise” was very well done and definitely worth the watch. If you haven’t seen but would I recommend. Sorry no review, but I enjoyed myself and I’m pretty sure there were tears at some point in the watching of this film.

2) Lone Star State Of Mind (2002)

We can argue that there were better made movies on this list, but I promise you none of them made me laugh as hard and gave the comedic gold that this one did. Laughter is a strong sway and in a world that’s falling apart, I’ll take the joy of genuine laughter. Joshua Jackson and DJ Qualls don’t hurt either. It’s what you want out of a 2002 comedy.

3) Unpregnant (2020)

I think the movie did what it set out to do very well and that’s why it’s up here so high. Would it be one to get a quicker rewatch? No, but it was still a pretty decent movie over all and in the lineup it stood out as a good movie, if you’re into the the YA book to movie adaptations.

4) The Ultimate Playlist Of Noise (2021)

I think I’m just so in love with music and playlists and having a soundtrack to everything, that there was no way this movie wasn’t going to get a high ranking on this list. It was a little heavy, but still gave off more light than anything. Yes there were the typical he has to save her or they have to save each other, but at the end of the day a decent little movie. Now I’ll be honest and say that my brain didn’t automatically remember this one, but after seeing it in the line up it does spark some good memories.

5) Moonshot (2022)

This movie was good for what it was and because it wasn’t trying to be something it clearly wasn’t, I enjoyed it. it fell right among it’s peers and even out preformed some of them. It was cute, lighthearted and took a couple digs at billionaires and they’re gross infatuation with space, so it metaled in my book.

6) The Making of Lords Of Dogtown

This was like a 30-45 minutes documentary on how they made the Hollywood movie version of Lords of Dogtown. I really enjoyed the original documentary on those kids story and thought the movie was also done really well and this addition to that collection of things was well received, at least by the small subset of folks who claimed to have watched it on Letterboxed. If you watched the movie and just want more, but have already seen the original documentary, then this is a solid recommend. And even if you haven’t seen the movie, but just love skate culture, then I recommend it to you as well. I will say that it is a bonus feature on the DVD copy, however since I only got the VHS tape, I went and found a copy of it on YouTube.

Note: I didn’t rank this one higher because of it being a DVD bonus feature, but if it was a full length documentary it probably would have garnered one of the top 3 spots.

7) Cherry (2021)

We all know that sometimes the drama wins and I think that’s why I went and ranked this the way that I did. There were parts that were really intense and then there were parts that weren’t as great, but overall I thought it was worth checking out and something that I wouldn’t steer people away from, that is unless subjects of war, addiction and PTSD struggles are a trigger for you, then I’d go check something else out.

8) Elvis and Annabelle (2007)

This was a very late watch in the year for me, but it still found a way to make the top 10 cut. I liked this one more than I thought I would and I think most people who are also into dark, but still kinda light romances, would too. It pulls at heart strings and keeps you engaged, definitely one I can see having a small following behind it.

9) Step Up Revolution (2012)

I took a moment in 2012 to rewatch the Step Up series and also catch the ones that I hadn’t seen before. I had previously seen 1 and 2 and maybe the beginning of part 3, so this one was new for me. If my memory is holding up, Revolution was the most fun I had with the series and that’s not counting the first movie. It was also the film in the series that held a lot of it’s own weight without Moose’s character. Moose does show up at the end and does his little thing, but the rest of the movie fares pretty decently without him.

10) Too Young To Be A Dad (2002)

Since I didn’t post a review the quick synopsis is that 15 year old Matt Freeman (Paul Dano) get’s his girlfriend pregnant and the families all have to figure out what to do, when Matt wants to step up.

First it’s Paul Dano, so do with that information what you will. Second this is a “Lifetime,” made-for-TV movie, so treat it like such. Now I’d say it was decent for what it is. It’s not ranking at the top in it’s category, but it does pretty well in mid range. I find enjoyment in this type of movie, however I know not everyone else does, so watch or not watch accordingly.

11) Gully (2019)

Gully is ranked this low simply because it is so traumatizing. To quote my review cause I felt like I said it best then, “if you are emotionally tired of seeing Black youth being brutalized, even in a fictional setting and even if they are sometimes being brutal themselves, (product of their environment) give this one a pass. You do not have to sit through all that trauma because someone on Twitter was talking about how it’s a “must see.” Now if you feel you can handle it, than I suggest watching it with self-care practices in place.”

Basically the cast preformed very well, but it was far too violent and once again traumatizing for me to rank it any higher. Part of me thinks I could have gone even lower with it but since the cast did so well, while there were other just not great performances, it gets a mid rage score.

12) Expecting Amish (2014)

Another “Lifetime” made-for-TV movie, cause I dabbled in a few this year. This one was fairly decent, but it ranked lower because of the ending. When a movie is Oh-Kay, but it doesn’t give you what you want, you tend to drop it down several points. That all being said it has Jesse McCartney, so do with that information what you will lol.

13) Step Up All In (2014)

It’s the Battle of 2014 apparently. It’s also an “All Starts Season,” which everyone knows is typically filler. It wasn’t the worst in the Step Up lineup, but you could see what they were doing and even when you had a moment of fun, you were still kinda tired. It’s fun with the binge though.

14) Step Up 3D (2010)

I remember starting this movie forever ago, but not getting very far into it, fast forward to this binge of the series and I finally understood why. Basically this is the boring feature. It’s the movie they made while thinking they still had clout from the previous two and they were wrong. Again Moose does his thing, as well as Alyson Stoner, but it just wasn’t enough.

15) First Love (2022)

This was a movie that wanted to be something is didn’t deliver. It wanted to be a star crossed lovers film, but never succeeded in making us actually believe that. Yes it was the better of the Hero Fiennes Tiffin movies I saw this this year and it wasn’t the worst thing I saw, but I’m not sure I want to put something I thought was a little empty too high on this list.

16) Left For Dead: The Ashley Reeves Story (2021)

The quick rundown since no review, is that 17 year old Ashley Reeves was assaulted and left for dead, but later found buried alive and it follows how she coped afterwards.

This is an actual Lifetime Movie, based on a true story and sometimes they get them pretty decent and sometimes they fail and this one was not good. Yes the story itself is captivating, but the way it was told here wasn’t. It felt fake and rushed and overdramatic without the actual good dramatic parts to hold it up. It lacked so much for the type of story it was trying to tell and it just wasn’t worth the watch, unless you want to see all of them, good or bad. Good for it here though, cause there were worse movies that I saw in 2022.

17) Love, Game, Match (2022)

Students try to pair up their teachers, but there’s secrets that threaten to get in the way.

Another made-for-tv movie that didn’t give me any of the feels they are at the very least required to give. I’ll pretty much sit through any former Degrassi star’s post community school work, especially if there’s romance involved, but that doesn’t mean I have to call it good. It took me a couple sittings to get through this 1hr 25min movie because it couldn’t keep my attention when it needed to. I’m not a big fan of the word boring, but sometimes that’s the only way you can describe a film that lackluster. The goal is to crank out a lot and sometimes they’re good and sometimes they’re not, but a lot of time they’re just there on the Urgent Care waiting room TV making so the room isn’t totally empty. It was simply fine.

18) The Change-Up (2011)

2 best friends switch bodies after thinking the other has the better life.

I’ve been wanting to see this movie for a long time, cause i happen to enjoy these types of films, but after watching it I feel like it could have stayed as something I just happened to missed. I guess I was over sitting through that much trash with little reward and maybe that’s why I shouldn’t be picking these movies up. There is no redemption arc that needs to happen here, at least not with this one. Sometimes this particular trope or theme or whatever is done well and other times the fact that you’ve seen it play out several times pulls it down even further.

19) After Ever Happy (2022)

One had to come before the other and this one was slightly better and do mean slight than it’s sibling that came out last year. It’s a toxic relationship, no shipping, we’re just in too deep.

20) Zach and Miri Make A Porno (2008)

2 Best Friends/Roommates who can’t pay their bills decide to make an adult film with their friends as well as some paid actors. What once was platonic may be catching some feels.

I love this era of movie, but not even Seth Rogen being Seth Rogen could save this movie, especially with him dropping the n-word. (Like that is one of the most unattractive things I’ve seen him do.) It had points for some professions of love, but lost them. Sorry not sorry, but a sad one in an era that I generally like. I feel like if I had watched it back in high school that I probably would have found some joy in this film, but once again I probably watched it too late and the connection is lost.

21) After We Fell (2021)

This movie was rushed and I barely knew what what going on in relation to where we were in the story line. This story is a mess just like the main character’s toxic relationship. There’s just not much redeeming for this particular film or the After series in general, so I think it was always end up at the bottom of the barrel.

0 notes

blackgully · 1 year

Text

‘One finally getting a good grip on the front of his head.

It pulled back and clocked his head against the machines glass.

Rattling Chris’s brain inside his skull.

Chris growled and screamed thrashing about but it continued to bash his head down into the glass.

Once more and and he was dizzy,

Two more and he was disoriented,

Three and he passed out, hearing police finally make their way inside.’

0 notes

headspace-hotel · 1 year

Text

Proposed logging project in the Daniel Boone National Forest (South-Central Kentucky, USA)

I found out about this recently and Ive seen barely any discussion or attention about it in real life or on the internet, so hopefully I can attract more attention

The USA Forest Service is planning to log 10,000 acres of the Daniel Boone National Forest near Jellico Mountain, near the Kentucky-Tennessee border. The plan includes around 1,000 acres of clear cutting.

We need mature forests to remove and store carbon from the atmosphere. This is disastrous from a climate change perspective.

The excuse being given (apart from the obvious economic incentive of logging) is that the tract is mostly "mature forest" and that the forest needs to have a "diversity of age classes" for wildlife. This is total bullshit, since less than 1% of old growth forest in the Eastern USA remains, and an 80-year-old forest is still incredibly young. This type of reasoning is greenwashing.

To make matters worse, the planned logging is on mountain tops, which will cause huge amounts of erosion and possible floods and landslides that endanger the people who live in the valleys below.

Kentucky experienced a deadly flash flood in the eastern mountains that killed 40 people last year. Forests help stop flash flooding by absorbing rainfall in a dense layer of roots and soil, draining it slowly into waterways; without them, mud and rainwater goes rushing straight into narrow mountain gullies rapidly, causing dangerous floods.

Mud and sediment rushing into streams also kills fish and aquatic life that need clear, clean stream water.

Kentucky has one of the most biodiverse freshwater ecosystems in the entire world, with only a couple states next to it having more freshwater species. Kentucky's forest streams have fresh water fish, crustaceans and other species found nowhere else on Earth.

The Southeastern USA has the most diverse freshwater life of any place on Earth, the most salamander diversity of any place on Earth, and the Appalachian Mountains are a global hotspot of biodiversity, considered one of the world's most biodiverse temperate deciduous forest habitats.

It is crucial that we begin building the old-growth forests of the future NOW!

Logging these forest tracts will facilitate invasive species to take over. Mature forests form buffer zones against invasive species. The forest will never grow back the way it was; it will be infected with Kudzu, Autumn Olive, Honeysuckle and other invasives that take advantage of the destruction and prevent the normal process of forest succession from happening as it should.

If you live anywhere near this area, talk to everyone around you about this, send them the links above and encourage them to do the same themselves.

Talk to your friends, your neighbors, people at your church, everyone you are in contact with or speak to in your day to day life. Tell them about the risks of flash flooding and landslides and the importance of preserving mature forest land. Any environmental clubs and organizations you know of, tell them as well.

Most people haven't even heard this is happening, and that's how they get away with it.

Public outrage protects priceless habitats all the time, so TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW. Tell people you don't know, even. Call and email organizations and people that might be interested, until you run into someone who has an idea of what to do. That's how change happens!

#boost #kentucky #conservation #logging #protect our forests #climate change mitigation #usa

1K notes · View notes

wardenparker · 3 months

Note

You know I need me some Connie forehead kisses, so Detective Tim Rockford and “Wait! Don’t leave.”

I mean, there’s so many options so I’m tossin’ that one up there, but I’m also gonna say “Connie’s Choice”! You hit a massive milestone so you should getta celebrate however you see fit, darlin’.

Detective Tim Rockford and “____” <- You fill in the prompt.

*points to my forehead*

Right here! When you’re ready. No pressure. 😁😘🥰

My darling Dax 🧡 You get ALL the forehead kisses, but unfortunately also a very sad microfic.

Tim Rockford. 2,332 words. "Wait! Please don't leave!" Co-written with @absurdthirst Warnings: Explicit descriptions of crime scene, death, murder, domestic dispute (verbal), angst

The rain beats against the windshield, his knuckles tight against the steering wheel as the headlights slice through the inky black of the night. Tim doesn’t pay attention, he can’t. The blare of the police radio cuts through the silence in the car, his thoughts racing in circles as he drives as if he’s on autopilot.

Sharp winds whip around his car outside, an annoyance of white noise in the background that only makes his blood pressure rise when it shakes his little car. He knows the address he’s driving to. He knows it by heart.

******

“I just wish you would put me first once.” You express as he jams the loose items that are scattered across the dresser into his pockets. Two dollars and thirty-seven cents in change, a pocket knife, a losing scratch off ticket, a receipt from Jimmy’s Hot Dogs, a random mint, the ever present cigarette lighter and his wallet. The badge is tucked into his jacket, along with his car keys, hanging on the coat tree near the front door.

“I got a call.” He huffs, annoyed by the guilt that is settling on his shoulders. “You know the drill.”

“Can you even tell me the last time you ate dinner at home?” The last thing you want is to be cruel to him but you’re trying to make a point. Your husband of seven years and partner of ten has been slipping further and further from your fingers with every passing day and you’re at your wits end with how to get it to stop.

Your name is like a sigh of frustration and he pauses, turning tired eyes on you. He’s tired of the same arguments over and over again. “I’ll be back.” He tells you, turning and walking towards the door.

“Tim, wait!” The anguish that cracks your voice comes with tears — guilty, burning ones that you were trying not to let free. “Please don’t go.”

His resolve cracks and he turns, his hand on the door knob. “Babe, I have to go.” He doesn’t— not really. It’s not his case, but he feels like it’s connected to that fucking mystery that has taken over his life. As soon as he can solve it, he will fix this gully between the two of you. “I’ll be back in a few hours and we can talk, okay?” You don’t answer, but he takes that as your agreement. “I love you.”

“Be safe.” Unable to even bring yourself to say that you love him back — because you do, you absolutely fucking do but right now it feels like he’s just saying the words to placate you — you turn away and slip back into the kitchen. Tim is never home and you work a 9-5, so the chores pile up relentlessly. Maybe you’ll put dishes in the dishwasher and clothes in the dryer and go to bed early.

Walking out the door feels like he is fighting against himself, but the urge to close this case, to finish things off is too great to ignore. He pushes back the sight of your hurt face out of his mind and pulls his cell phone out of his pocket. Walking towards his car, he’s not Tim, your husband, he’s changed into Detective Rockford.

******

“Detective Rockford?” The primary on the case is already there, and he wasn’t expecting back up. But the seasoned detective that he knows well is a welcome sight, even if Rockford doesn’t quite look himself.

“Hey Jimmy.” Tim gives a wan smile before looking towards the tape. “What do we got?”

The young detective has worked hard for his place on the force and seen plenty, but this one is a lot even for him. “Female. Forties. Stabbed to death in her own living room. Pretty gruesome stuff, honestly, and you know these things don’t usually get to me.”

Tim swallows, closing his eyes and swaying where he stands. “Do—” he chokes out and his voice falters. “Do we have the guy?” He manages after a moment, trying not to cry right there.

“We have tire tracks, finger prints, and plenty of detritus under the vic’s fingernails. She fought hard.” Jimmy shuffles, not used to seeing his mentor this emotional. “Some of the wounds look defensive. And the weapon was left at the scene.”

His lip trembles and he inhales sharply. “Are you— are you sure it’s the homeowner?” He asks shakily, praying for a miracle.

“ID in her purse matches.” The younger man confirms. “Seems like she had barely gotten home. Might’ve been a robbery gone bad, but we need to take a more thorough look before that call gets made.”

Tim shakes his head, body trembling and he screams out your name, rushing towards the house. “Baby! Baby, come out!” He shouts, ducking under the tape and bolting through the door. “Sweetheart? Baby? Answer me!”

“Detective Rockford!” Jimmy swirls to run after him, not understanding what’s caused such a monumental break in his colleague’s behavior. Obviously he knows the victim, otherwise it makes even less sense.

Tim can’t stop, doesn’t even hear Detective Fallon as he rushes into the house and over to the body that is draped in a white sheet, the thick material slowly being soaked red with blood. Choking as he drops to his knees, he reaches up to draw the sheet back.

“Ma’am, you really can’t be—” Detective Fallon’s voice is part of a sea of white noise, unheard and unnoticed by Tim as he reaches for the corner of the sheet he absolutely shouldn’t be touching. “Ma’am, this is an active crime scene!”

But you don’t hear him, blasting past the young detective to stumble into your own living room, where the figure of your sister is crumpled in the middle of the carpet and covered in a sheet. “Get away from her!” Is all you can think to say, burning tears choking anything but fear and anguish out of existence.

Your voice makes him freeze, head whipping up to see you and his eyes widen. Choking out your name, he then whispers— “Is it— are you?”

“Tim?” He’s the last person you ever expected to see again, let alone in this house, but suddenly you’re actually glad for it. He looks like he’s seen a ghost, but you’re shaking with fear for the reality of who is under that sheet.

You are alive. His eyes dart back to the sheet and he looks back at you with a small frown. “You’re here.” He breathes out, immediately understanding. Since the divorce, you had lived with your sister. He stands and moves over towards you. “Baby.” He knows this will hurt you and he wants to take away the pain if he can.

“Is that…” You don’t have to finish the question. The boot poking out from under the sheet is the pair she borrowed from you, and the blood spattered purse with an evidence tag next to it is so familiar you would know it in your sleep. “She accidentally grabbed my purse when she left for work this morning.” You choke out the explanation but lurch forward when your knees buckle and your heart squeezes up into your throat. “Was it—were they—was it supposed to be me?”

“I don’t know.” You are about to break, he’s witnessed enough families to know. Stepping closer, he strokes your arm and looks into your beautiful, devastated eyes. “I don’t know baby, but I’m going to find them. I’m going to find who did this.” He promises.

******

The fluorescent lights of the station are harsh and the coffee in your hand is burnt, but it's better than being in your house. At this point you doubt you can ever go back there again and you're definitely trying to figure out where you're going to go or what you're going to do once you leave the station.

Tim comes back with a bottle of water for you, offering it to you when he walks up, and exchanges it for the coffee that you aren’t really interested in. “Preliminaries look like it was a mugging/burglary gone wrong.” Tim tells you quietly, aware that he probably shouldn’t say anything about this, period, but this is your sister. And you used to be his wife. “Camera footage from the neighbors show that the suspect approached her when she opened the door.”

"I don't–" Your head bobs in thanks when he takes the coffee from your hands and replaces it with the water bottle, though you still don't do anything but hold it. For your whole life you were always the person to be able to take charge and provide comfort in a crisis. Now that the crisis is your own, you're drawing a blank. "Will they let me go back? For–for clothes and stuff, I mean? I need to find a hotel..."

Tim grimaces. “It’s….still a crime scene.” He tells you reluctantly. “No one goes in right now.” He bites his lip, knowing that the DA would be pissed, but he would log a record of it in the case file. “If you want to make a list, I could get you some things.” He wants to offer to let you stay with him, in the old house you used to share, but that might be too much for you.

"No, I...I don't want you to get in trouble for me." There are strict rules for crime scenes. You were a cop's girlfriend and then wife for long enough to know that. "I can just get some stuff from Target tomorrow. Temporary stuff..."

“I can.” He offers, squatting down to look at you. “Do you have a friend…a boyfriend, where you can stay with them?” He asks, even if the idea makes him sick. He lost you, he has no right to be upset if you’ve moved on. “You shouldn’t be alone tonight.”

"No." For as long as you and Tim were together, he knows you never really had an extensive circle of people close to you. You're an introvert and most of your friends were either his coworkers or the spouses of those coworkers. The friends you made in college have all gone their separate ways by now, and you had had your best friend in your sister. "No it's just Liz and me..." It was just the two of you, anyway.

Tim sighs softly and his brow furrows in concern. “You can— you don’t have to— but, you can stay with me.” He offers, unsure of how you would take his offer. You had told him during the divorce that you couldn’t wait to be done so you would never have to see him again, and circumstance had changed that. He still hasn’t told you he hadn’t had to be at that crime scene. He had just memorized your address and when it came over the radio, his heart had dropped.

"Wouldn't you get in trouble?" That has to be a conflict of interest or something, but the idea of being safe tonight has you shaking all over again when you suddenly jolt at the memory of why you even need safety in the first place.

“No.” Tim shakes his head. “You aren’t a suspect, never were. And the captain knows who you are.” He wants to reach out and wrap his arms around you, keep you safe, but he doesn’t want to overstep. “Or I can get you a hotel. Wherever you want.”

For maybe the first time since you walked into your house to see him standing there, you actually look up a little and meet Tim's eyes. "I don't think I should be alone, either," you admit quietly.

His heart breaks at the loss in your eyes, the sense that you are adrift and unsure of your course. He nods. “Then you don’t have to be alone, sweetheart.”

"There's not...not anyone at home who would be upset?" You have no business being upset if there is – after all you're the one who filed for divorce, not him – but you still stop your hand for reaching for him when it's halfway out.

He doesn’t miss the gesture and reaches out to take your hand. “No.” He promises. “Just a really lazy cat named Twix.” He licks his lips, heart pounding at the touch of your skin against his and he pushes those feelings down. He just means to comfort you. “No one since you left. Your blanket is still on the couch.”

“I—” There's no reason to refuse, and you're a little too shell-shocked at the moment to know whether or not you could actually manage all the logistics of a hotel on your own. Besides – again – the idea of being alone doesn't sit well with you. "Thank you." you manage finally, gripping his hand tightly in gratitude.

“You’re welcomed.” He knows he should get you home, his home, and he squeezes your one last time before letting it go. “Let me go finish up for the night, and we’ll get you settled.”

"Wait." Your hand tightens instinctively, holding him beside you. "Please don't leave?" Even in a room full of bustling people doing their jobs, without Tim beside you, you feel completely alone. And even though you know he has to do his job, you just – you need that comfort for a few minutes more.

It’s the same words that have haunted him for years, the ones you had uttered one desperate night that he had disregarded, signaling the end of your relationship. He regretted that night in the middle of the lonely nights that followed, wishing that he could somehow go back, do things different. He can’t change the past, but he can show you the compassion you need. Shifting to his knees in front of you, Tim looks up at you, his eyes wider than normal as he gives you his promise. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m right here, sweetheart.”

______

Master Tags: @pixiedurango @chattychell @winter-fox-queen @lady-himbo @artsymaddie @princess76179 @paintballkid711 @missminkylove @pedrosbrat @ew-erin @sarahjkl82-blog @sharkbait77 @justanotherblonde23 @lv7867 @recklesswit @mylittlesenaar @f0rever15elf @gallowsjoker @steeevienicks @athalien @sherala007 @skvatnavle @thatpinkshirt @jaime1110 @girlimjusttryingtoreadfanfics @goodgriefitsawildworld @greeneyedblondie44 @littlemousedroid @harriedandharassed @churchill356 @ajathegreats-blog @haylzcyon @beardsanddetectives @kirsteng42 @ladykatakuri @adancedivasmom @madiebear @tanzthompson @emilianamason @bigsdinger @xocalliexo @pedr0swh0r3 @avaleineandafryingpan @charlyrmv @avidreader73 @iceclaw101 @loveslide @elegantduckturtle @becsworld @julesonrecord @its-nebuleuse @itsrubberbisquit @mikeyswifie @guelyury @lizzie-cakes @for-a-longlongtime @vabeachazn @purplerain04 @weho2kcmo @madnessofadaydreamer

My Masterlist!

#Pedro Pascal #Pedro Pascal character fanfiction #Pedro Pascal fanfic #Tim Rockford #Tim Rockford x you #Tim Rockford x reader #Tim Rockford x female reader #Tim Rockford x f!reader #angst #murder #this microfic contains death

95 notes · View notes

theredofoctober · 5 months

Text

MANNA- CHAPTER TEN: RABBIT

Dark!Hannibal Lecter x Reader x Dark!Will Graham AU fic

TW for eating disorders, noncon, abuse, drugging, Daddy kink, implied child abuse, self harm, fatphobia, body dysmorphia

This is chronologically the tenth chapter in the series.

Read beneath the cut...

Napalm is the slow fire of waking from a terrible dream, blind, gasping, burnt. The pain, though delusive, is made actual by the action of nerves.

Only a hand at your shoulder, vigorous in its attentions, hauls you up from the putrescence of slumber into the light-dark of four in the morning. You find Hannibal's shape through lashes gummed with sleep's adhesive.

His face is as impassive as a star, but his hair, ever coiffed, is displaced from the friction of his pillow.

“You were screaming,” he says, as you sit, stunned, in his arms. “What were you dreaming about? Do you remember?”

“No,” you say, although the scenes remain briefly in your vision, doubling like silk screen prints upon the walls.

Hannibal fills up a glass with fresh water and bids you to drink, his eyes pensive, unconvinced.

Only the notion that he may suggest you share his bed or else intrude upon yours impels you to honesty.

“I dreamt that I was trapped in one of the Silicone Lover’s dolls. That he was trying to squeeze me inside, and I wouldn’t fit. He said, ‘You’ve gotten so big since I last saw you. I’d better do something about that.’

“Then he started cutting me up with kitchen scissors, and I couldn’t stop him.”

You pause, choking on a breath, a verbal stagger.

Dr Lecter offers you the water again, which you take in both hands and drain to its end.

“Take your time,” says Hannibal. “When you’re ready, go on.”

Lying will fail you before the all-seeing eye, so it is with a flat honesty that you say, “It wasn’t what the Lover did in my dream that scared me. It was what he said to me. Because he was right.”

You reach down to pull the quilt up across your stomach, which Hannibal, with a subtle gesture, prevents.

“To agree with such a statement there must be some basis of comparison for you,” he says. “You knew the person standing in as the Lover in your dream. Can you name him?”

Hannibal could guess it, from the little you’ve told him of your unclean past, but if memory conjures the name from the gully of silence he does not say so.

Instead, he comments, “I think it’s unwise for you to sleep again until your mind is settled. Perhaps we may take advantage of the hour to continue your therapy, in an informal fashion.”

He sits in a chair by your bed, producing a notepad and pen from a pocket of his dressing gown.

You see that he will not move.

"What if I don’t talk?” you ask, softly. “What if I say I'd rather take the punishment?"

Hannibal's slender lips upturn.

"I wouldn't be inclined to take such a claim seriously.”

In sullen defeat you flounce back against the pillows.

Dr Lecter takes his cue.

“I’m curious about the friendships you’ve formed throughout your life. Have there been any notable examples?”

“Not many,” you answer, looking at the raw edges of your fingernails. “I was kind of the weird kid. It was like looking through a dusty museum window at everybody passing by, not really knowing how to get out there and talk to people. Like I was too old and too young at the same time.

“I got bullied, kind of. Nothing worth talking about. Just dumb kid stuff.”

“Even persecution of a childish nature bears painful resonance in later life,” Hannibal comments. “Moreover, isolation from one's peers may disrupt development in those vital years.”

You think of dolorous hours patrolling a fallow playground alone, three hundred children staring through you with adult hostility.

“I did make one friend,” you say. “First year of high school. Amy Glass. She was a weird kid, too.”

Hannibal scratches deftly on his notepad.

"Describe how you met."

Closing your eyes, you find your way back through the forests of the past to a corridor whose tiled floor squeaks under your shoes. You smell textbook paper and saccharine body spray. The sweat of young bodies, and the stale cafeteria fare you’d never tasted throughout your time there.

“Between classes Amy would sit in a window listening to music, or reading,” you say. “Stephen King, usually. Sometimes Ann Rice. She seemed to be up there all the time. I don’t think she was getting shit from the other kids or anything; she just preferred hanging out on her own.

“I wished I was like that, not caring. I wished I was her, period.”

“In what way?” asks Dr Lecter, and in the hallway of your mind a slender figure appears, brown of skin and eyes, blue hair cut roughly to the chin, its roots seeping in atop it like a stain.

Amy.

“A lot of ways,” you say. “Before I really knew her, it was about how she looked. She had piercings— ears, lip, nose, eyebrow. Teachers would tell her to take them out, then the second she was out of their eye-line she’d put them right back in. And even back then she had these awful stick and poke tattoos of bats and crosses she covered up with band aids for classes.

“She did all of them herself with a safety pin. God knows how she didn’t get an infection or anything.

“Then there was the fact I knew we liked some of the same music because of the patches on her bag, and her t-shirts and stuff. Nothing you’d approve of,” you add, as interest touches the face of your listener. “Jesus, I can’t even imagine playing stuff like that in this house. Anyway, I didn’t want to just be like, ‘hey, you like that band, too’. It would have been too weird. Stalkery, maybe?”

“Music isn’t such a terrible way to form a connection,” says Hannibal, amused. “I was once approached in friendship through a shared taste in cheese.”

Picturing his restrained derision you cannot help but laugh.

“Oh, god,” you say. “What were they thinking?”

“It was a naive assumption of commonalities. Besides, my commitment to professionalism would never have allowed us to be as close as he would have hoped.”

You give a little start of affront.

“You’ve made friends with other clients.”

Dr Lecter’s smile remains.

“Only with those whom I feel my presence benefits.”

“Benefits you, you mean,” you say, pettishly. “Whoever it was, you just didn’t like him that much. That’s why you turned him down. Or maybe he was too like you.”

Without appearing offended, Hannibal turns a page in his notebook.

“I'm unconcerned with debating my personal relationships, little one. Let’s return to Amy. Who initiated the friendship between you?”

“Amy,” you say. “It was after this councillor was trying to get something out of me, and I didn’t want to talk. I walked out that room feeling so... heavy, and grimy, and embarrassed. Then there was Amy, heading to the same office I just walked out of. She looked at me, scrunched her face up, and said, ‘Wish me luck.’ Next time I saw her I made the same face back and asked, ‘how was it?’

“‘The worst, just like always,’ she said. ‘Where’d she get her certificate, anyway? Clown school?’

“I burst out laughing. ‘She’s so bad, right?’

“And that was it. Friends. We went everywhere together. Amy really liked me. I don’t know why. I think maybe she thought I was sort of mysterious and interesting rather than just depressed, probably because I didn’t want to talk about what was going on with me.

“She told me everything about her. How her dad didn’t believe in mental health issues even though he was just like she was, and how her mom just ignored everything, hoping it’d just... go away. But I didn’t tell Amy even one little thing about me, really. Not one.”

Guilt you’ve never truly confronted falls like a petal from a late summer bloom, cloying the dark with its flavour.

“Did Amy ever indicate that she’d recognised your particular illness?” prompts Hannibal, and you shrug glumly.

“A couple of times. I ignored every hint. Changed the subject. Acted like it wasn’t a thing when it obviously was. I knew that she knew. That was the dynamic. She was softer, around me. She got it. She got me.”

Suddenly your breath feels very high in your chest, catching on a rib.

“I can’t help but notice your use of the past tense,” says Dr Lecter. “Might I assume that you are no longer friends?”

“We grew apart after school,” you mutter. “I think she would have liked it if I stayed in touch, but then sometimes I wonder if that’s just wishful thinking, and maybe she didn’t care all that much when we drifted apart and stopping talking.

“I have her on Facebook. That’s all, really. She was never a social media person anyway, but still. I could have tried harder. I don’t know why I didn’t.”

Hannibal allows the silence between you to ferment before he speaks again.

“Looking back, what do you think prevented you from maintaining contact?”

“I felt like after school was over she’d find other friends, and I’d just end up being left behind. So I got out of there before I had to see it happen.”

"You abandoned a friendship on the basis of a prophecy that might never have come to fruition."

"It would have,” you insist. “All my life I've had senses about things. Like, if I get a feeling something will or won't happen, I'm always right. Like I was right about you."

Swanlike, Dr Lecter’s hands move across his notebook, tactfully punctuating a note.

"It's common for sufferers of complex post-traumatic stress disorder to misinterpret their hypervigilance as psychic premonition. A heightened awareness of your surroundings and the behaviours of people in your vicinity develops in order to predict danger before it occurs. Pattern recognition is more mathematical than clairvoyant."

"What about my dreams?" you ask, sharply. “Are they math, too?”

"You've had other nightmares?” asks Hannibal, and leans forward, poised to digest you answer.

Canny, you hoard the matter like a serpent its glittering lair.

Hannibal accepts his defeat with grace.

Gathering up his notebook and the empty glass, he says, "That's enough therapy for now, particularly so early in the morning. I'll make you some tea, and you may return to sleep. Peacefully, this time, I hope."

Later, there is a meal that sits, sinking in a bath of bronze on Dr Lecter’s dining table, so much of it that you’re gorged merely from the arithmetic of its makeup.

“Arroz de Cabidela,” says Hannibal, as he pulls out his own chair. “A Portuguese dish made with rice, chicken, or rabbit cooked in its own blood. Today I’ve chosen rabbit. Have you ever eaten it before?”

It occurs to you that he expects you to be disturbed by the notion, but you are not. Meat is meat, all of it equally cruel. That life must end for the furthering of your existence has driven you to veganism many a time.

Little chance of sustaining such a diet now that you sleep in the devil’s slaughterhouse.

“No,” you say. “I’ve never tried rabbit. I heard it’s really... gamey.”

Your palate is scarcely educated enough to comprehend the statement. Still, it is apparently accurate, for Hannibal makes a low hum of agreement.

“It has similarities to poultry, in flavour, though it’s rather lean and dry. The blood stew adds a richness you’ll find complimentary, however.”

The scent is certainly inviting, but you are so committed to rejecting whatever is served to you that you feel lightheaded, succumbing to the altitude of starving heights.

“Couldn’t you have given me a smaller portion?” you ask, piteously. “I don’t mean to be rude, but it’s so... much.”

Hannibal glances from your plate to his own, his visage neutral.

“I’ve served you a great deal less than I’ve given myself,” he says. “That said, I’m sure we can settle our differences. I’m not unyielding, if I can see some effort is being made.”

You look him in the eye, hoping you appear more bold than frightened.

“Dr Lecter, you make me all these courses, and they’re crazy even for a normal person. I feel like you do it on purpose. And afterwards my stomach hurts.”

“That’s normal, after a period of fasting. Your body will adjust. Now, please eat.”

You don’t. The cut on your plate makes you think of the Lover’s dolls, how even at your slightest you wouldn’t have fit into such a shell. How, changed as you must be through Hannibal’s cooking, you would ooze over every edge.

“I could use the feeding tube, if you’re unwilling,” says Dr Lecter, rising from his chair to stand at your back. “It would be relatively easy for me to administer. But I’d hate to sour an otherwise pleasant meal with brute force.”

He cups your throat in his smooth hand, and you envision how lovingly he’d coil about you in restraint, guiding the pipe down through you as you choked and flinched in his grasp.

“I’ll eat a quarter,” you say. “That’s it. Then... then nothing else until tomorrow. I won’t sneak out of bed, and I won’t do anything that breaks the rules. Please, Dr Lecter. Uh... Daddy?”

Your confusion between roles endears you to him, as does your breathless, eager willingness to beg.

“Should I allow you to barter?” Hannibal muses, still caressing the wand of your stiff neck. “It’s a symptom of your illness, after all.”

“Just let me choose how much and I’ll try anything you offer me.”

Dr Lecter releases a small breath of laughter.

“I wouldn’t like you to eat your words, little one.”

Gnashing your teeth, you say, “I won’t. I can do it. Please let me. You’re supposed to dote on me, aren’t you?”

You feel Hannibal’s lips against your hair in a kiss of paternal indulgence.

“Always so spirited,” he says. “Very well. I cannot deny my little beauty her request.”

What beauty does he refer to? You’ve only recognised it in the mine shafts of furthest hunger, mistaking a shadow for some precious stone.

Yet clearly you are not so low quality as you believe if both men have fucked you so freely over other women, whom they could conceivably draw into the net of the house.

Then again, there is no accounting for the tastes of madmen, and mad they both are, even Hannibal in his gelid divinity.

From the topiary of his language and flippant games you are beginning to see that you interest him in your very opposition to his being. Were you to succumb completely you would not be so worthy: all men bow to Hannibal, after all, seduced and deceived until they’d lick his fingers like lambs for the milk of his approval.

You, like Will, resist and evade enough of his passes to set yourself apart from the flock.

You may yet throw a halter over the head of the horned man, if only in as much as he allows himself to be reigned.

Quartering your meal as neatly as you're able, you glance up at Dr Lecter, afraid that, by some caprice, he’ll break his code and force you to eat down to the bare plate. But he merely stands by, retaining his honour, and as you look at him you picture his mild hands breaking the neck of the rabbit to drain as though for a ritual of blood.

Frequently through your days with Hannibal he immerses himself in hobbies and work about the house, cultivating a necessary solitude after the long hours of ingesting others’ anxious thoughts.

He reads, or writes music, sketches, telephones his friends and past lovers—of whom there are many—or else sets his pen to journals, having seen you safe to your locked room, where he need not prepare for misdemeanour.

In this way your residence in Hannibal’s home does not impede upon his individual pursuits, but rather compliments them, an accent of his sempiturnal glamour.

You are, after all, but one of his many pastimes. It is indulgence, then, when he insists on attending your evening bath.

As he kneels beside the tub to dampen a washcloth his intentions surface, another infringement upon the flesh.

“I don’t need you to help me,” you mumble, arms taut across your chest. “I’m not your baby.”

“Your inner child wails for the tenderness your illness has long obstructed,” says Hannibal, calmly. “Your independence would have you die like an infant abandoned to the forest. Let me carry you, at least in this small act of service.”

You look at him with eyes as dull as old blades and picture the futility of your struggle, his lithe arms holding you, kicking and airless, beneath the foam.

“Don’t you have your own daughter you can do all this with?” you ask; you’ve not yet needled him on his familial relations, and feel yourself more than entitled to know.

Hannibal begins to work the flannel over your naked form, paying no heed to your twitching affront.

“Abigail would have served the role admirably,” he says. “But it wasn’t to be. As for my own children, I have none.”

The revelation passes you without surprise. It’s only possible to imagine him having elegant, adult offspring, absent of the soiling indignities of rearing an infant.

“So you took me away for you and Will to raise,” you say. “Guessing he doesn’t have kids, either.”

The washcloth folds beneath the water, and you gaze studiously at the opposite wall so as not to think about the hand behind the fabric, how it has touched you in other ways, pleasantly, horridly.

“Will is also childless,” says Dr Lecter. “He has never known family, as you have. His mother left him when he was only an infant, and his father was a distant figure, though present. Now it seems that they’re estranged from one another. One can only imagine the loneliness Will has known in his life. Perhaps, with your assistance, this will change.”

Cloth, skin, hands, touch. Gentle and beguiling their trap, to distract from the permanence of this suggested triptych as fingers play against you underwater.

Unsteadily, you ask, “Is Will your boyfriend?”

Hannibal turns you an indecipherable look.

“Do you perceive our relationship to be romantic?”

A strange question, considering the violation with which you were inducted to their company. But not once did either man kiss or grasp the other— a technicality, certainly, yet one, it seems, that holds weight.

“Yes,” you say. “For you, anyway. I don’t know about Will. I know he thinks highly of you. He just sees me as something that’s in the way.”

You kick a foot testily, splashing water over the rim of the bath.

“What are you in the way of?” asks Hannibal, as he begins to lather your hair.

“Not sure. Your friendship, I guess.”

“Do you believe him when he implies that you're only an obstacle to him?”

Water pours over your head, and you close your eyes, enduring the sensation.

“He told me I’m unwanted,” you say.

“When you attempted to kill him?”

Fear bowls over you with a black suddenness.

“He told you?”

“I came to my own conclusions. You weren't quiet, either of you, that night."

You look at Hannibal, at the stag man of your dreams, and taste something like dirt, something like blood, at the back of your mouth.

“Had you seriously injured him or succeeded in your bid to end his life I would have been forced to conclude our treatment,” he says. “But you did not. I’m thankful to have been provided with a truth I hadn’t yet drawn from you: I know that you are not a killer, at least not at this present moment.”

In a strengthless whisper, you ask, “What do you mean?”

Hannibal draws a comb through your hair, unmoved by the conversation.

“As time changes the continents, people come apart through circumstance into new being. That shift may one day lead to the birth of murder’s country.”

A thought stings you like the cold: Will and Hannibal want you to be capable of killing, if not of them, then someone of lesser consequence, the hereditary illness emerging in the child.

That is the secret under this house, the whisper in the walls, its present haunting.

“I hope that never happens,” you mumble. “Never. No matter what you do.

“And yet the whetting of your blood thirst didn’t begin with Will and I,” says Dr Lecter, mildly. “Until you admit your liking of its flavour you will remain unsatisfied, little one.”

You do not ask how he knows you’ve thought of killing, once before, which you yourself had forgotten; having been in your home, the chill sanctum of your childhood bedroom, he may have learned, of you, a myriad, his interrogation merely a practice in contextualising his findings.

“I’d rather starve,” you say, at last, and sink your chin beneath the water.

Dr Lecter takes a razor from a nearby cabinet and begins to shave you with slow precision. He does not ask if you wish for it, only glides the razor across your underarms, groin, and each leg until you run silken beneath his hands.

That done, Hannibal rises, brushing unseen dust from his knees.

“I’ll bring you some fresh clothes,” he says, and leaves the room, a ghost departing the stage.

You look at the razor, entrapped in its plastic guard on the rim of the bath.

Had you a pair of scissors you might have cut the metal free to make a weapon, or else an escape into realms unknown to the living. Though its edge is still wickedness manifest, it would take a great deal of pressure to pursue death by this angle, though it would not be impossible.

It is not death you want to meet, however, but another, nameless coward.

You take the blade to your arm, and the pain is like eating, a sin that sates the freak of misery.

The bathwater turns like a devil’s baptism, and though they are but shallow cuts you feel suddenly faint. Lying back, you lay your arm against the porcelain, thinking murky thoughts of your mistake.

Hannibal returns carrying a muted lilac dress and pale stockings, stilling at the sight of you, of the water, red as autumn mud.

He sets down the clothing and kneels beside you again.

“Let me see.”

You let him take your arm and touch the crude little gashes softly.

“Shower, quickly. Then I’ll treat your wounds. Fortunately, they aren’t so deep.”

How gentle he is with you, this beast dressed as a man in his pressed shirt and waistcoat, guiding your numb form about with a soothing authority. You’d once yearned to be handled like this, to be absolved and set free of any and all expectation. That it comes from him is like being spit in the eye by the Fates, one after the other.

Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos: what have you done to so offend them?

It’s only after having bandaged your forearm and settled you, dummy-like, upon his bed, that Hannibal speaks again.

“What motivated you to do this?”

“You know.”

“Elaborate.”

You lie, face down, in the pillows. The cotton smells like him.

“To feel better,” you say. “Amy said it helped her, sometimes. Cleared her head.”

The mattress tilts slightly as Dr Lecter sits down beside you.

“You mirror her pain to feel closer to love lost. Has it helped you?”

“No. I feel stupid. I feel—”

Restless, you turn onto your side and feel a tear, compelled by gravity, mark your jaw.

“I feel like a kid,” you say. “It’s humiliating. I hate that I always feel this way. Don’t make me live like this.”

Dr Lecter presses a tissue into your hand, as much to save his bedclothes as to comfort you.

“Fighting the expression of necessary emotions will only stunt them further, little one. Will and I would dearly like to see you flourish. Amy would surely wish that for you, too.”

Cradling your wounded arm to your chest, you flick the used tissue to the floor with the other.

“Screw you,” you say. “Both of you. That’s what Amy would tell me to say to you, Dad.”

Hannibal stares at the tissue, and you sense the inward twitch of his irritation as he bends to pick it up from the ground.

“Your parents called again, this afternoon,” he says, offhandedly. “I informed them that you were struggling with your treatment. I advised that we continue your residence here a month longer than previously agreed.”

He casts you a pitying look, and you’re reminded of the futility of going to war with Hannibal Lecter.

“It seems that I made the prudent choice,” he says. “Don’t you agree?”

#hannibal lecter #hannibal lecter x reader #hannibal fic #yandere hannibal lecter #manna fic #tw eating disorders #tw fatphobia #tw self harm #dead dove do not eat #darkfic #hannibal darkfic

119 notes · View notes

treason-and-plot · 8 months

Text

Meanwhile, across town...

....Roy has little motivation to do any work after the emotional and physical excesses of the weekend, and is instead daydreaming at his desk after telling Celine to hold all his calls. His mind drifts to his favourite fantasy, the one where his hunky caveman alter-ego Rorg rescues sexy cavewoman Anya from a rotating menu of apex predators, none of whom stand a chance against Rorg's Herculean muscle-power and awe-inspiring courage.

Alerted by piercing screams, the fearless hunter Rorg charges through the forest, his long and girthy manhood slapping rhythmically against his muscled inner thighs as he gracefully leaps across rocks and gullies towards the source of the commotion. He is soon confronted by a harrowing sight!

A beautiful young woman cowers next to a giant boulder, her perfectly formed breasts heaving with terror, erect nipples straining against the flimsy fabric of her tunic. Rorg follows her gaze, his taut torso surging with adrenaline; towering above them is the monstrous, drooling head of a ravenous T-Rex, its razor-sharp teeth glinting in the sunlight, drool dripping from its fearsome jaws.

In a death-defying display of bravery and athleticism Rorg scales the boulder closest to the terrifying beast and without a second thought for his own safety heroically launches himself at its head, his granite-like fist connecting squarely with its snout. The T- Rex shrieks with pain and immediately turns and retreats into the forest, knowing instinctively that he is no match for Rorg’s superior strength and agility. The young woman throws herself at Rorg in wordless gratitude, wrapping her lithe limbs around him and pressing her quivering bosom to his broad, sculpted chest. Rorg draws her close to him, feeling her heart beating next to his, her pouting red lips trembling with emotion.

“You saved my life! However can I thank you?” she breathes. “I don’t require thanks. Knowing that you are safe is reward enough,” grunts Rorg. “Such noble words from such a strong, handsome hero,” she whispers. She presses herself tighter to him...

You can read more on my Blogger! (Over 18s only).

#Rorg #Anya #Roy #back to bridgeport #5 years later #sims spice

135 notes · View notes

bettergeology · 5 months

Text

Colorful Clays of the Painted Hills area

The Painted Hills are one of the most popular and well-known of Oregon's scenic treasures. The towering ridges of yellow, red, and black clays reveal part of the complex geologic story of Oregon when the area was a tropical rainforest, or a hardwood temperate forest, or a volcanic hellscape at different times. The different bands and layers are folded, warped, and faulted by complex plate tectonics. Here though, at Painted Cove just behind the main Painted Hills viewpoint, the story is just a little different.

Painted Cove is a couple of shallow gullies linked in a loop by a boardwalk and trail. In here, you pass through areas of bold red and yellow clays before reaching a gully flanked with a light purple rock. The light purple is of a completely different origin than the clays, which are effectively fossilized soil layers.

This is a weathered outcrop of rhyolite lava, a lava composition that is mostly quartz by mass. This area grades from purple to brown to red. This is an actual preserved soil horizon. If you dig a hole, you go through different soil horizons - or chemical and physical conditions - before you reach bedrock. Commonly these are O (for organic-rich), A, B, and C. B and C are closest to bedrock and include chunks of weathered, eroded source rock. Here, the purple is that C horizon, then the brown layer is B, and the red is an A horizon mantling the rhyolite lava flow. This whole stack of soil is somewhere around 25 million years old!

This is one of my favorite rock outcrops in all of Oregon because of how elegantly and simply it displays soil development processes from more than 25 million years ago!

(A note for other geologists: my soil horizon analogy isn't completely accurate since these paleosols have different classifications than regular young soils do, and I'm not very well-versed in those at all)

If you're in to photography, these are (with the exception of the 2nd to last shot) shot on Fuji Color 400 with my Nikon FM2.

#oregon #geology #photography #pacific northwest #bettergeology #adventures #rocks #fujifilm #photographers on tumblr #nikon #film photography #central oregon #eastern oregon #painted hills #john day fossil beds national monument #john day fossil beds

20 notes · View notes

limerental · 1 year

Text

here, have a half-finished witcher americana retelling I've been sitting on for years now. I didn't quite have the gusto to go everywhere I wanted with it but here she is. I got in my yenralt & ciri feelings mostly :')

It did not go like this:

Yennefer was born the unfortunate eldest daughter of a local farmer of dairy goats and hogs, the sort of farm built into a gully that boiled up with mud and shit when it rained. Born all twisted up in the womb, her spine curved in a permanent hunch.

Some devil got to her mama, her daddy always said, leaning on a fencepost, hard-eyed and jeering as he spit tobacco into the dust.

Some devil had likely looked a lot like the young man her mama fancied just a few months before she was married quick to her daddy.

The devil long vanished off to the city.

Yennefer was no good for farm work, but she could do well enough bussing tables at the diner off the main road. She worked there more hours than not for less than scraps, but she did her work and ducked her head and kept mostly quiet about it. If she was just patient enough and careful, she could find her way out of there in time.

Yennefer kept a secret.

She'd been born with witchcraft hidden in her crooked body, the sort that ran in rich veins through the land itself. The kind that sang in the creek-carved ravines and thrummed through the gnarled roots and swaying branches of the forest.

She could call the animals to her and find anything lost and drive out the snakes from the chicken coop with a word, and she'd heard stories about things like that all her life so wasn't surprised by the possibility at all. Except for the fact that no one had ever taught her those things, and nobody knew she could do it.

In only a few short months she'd come into the full depth of her magic and the Witch would come for her and changed her life for good.

Before that, she met Geralt.

Yennefer'd long given up fantasies of being spirited away, thinking about strangers' lives with the kind of detached daydreaming of a girl who did dull work for ceaseless hours.

She wondered who this man was, old enough to have seen the war but younger than her daddy, who had been exempt from the draft on grounds of being a farmer. Which was good fortune, because he would have made a bloodthirsty soldier.

Geralt was a simple man who worked in travelling pest control. His beat up company van coughed over the miles, tools of the trade rattling in the back, big cartoon rat grinning evilly painted across the side.

Geralt kept a secret.

He knew every trick and gimmick to eliminate a rodent problem, could give his usual spiel about baiting and trapping to any fellow who asked, but had never employed anything that mundane even once. The pests he controlled and catalogued tended to be bigger and meaner and not as pretty splashed over the panels of a van.

Monsters were real, and he knew them by name. Kept tabs on the quiet ones and put down the loud and messy ones.

Always respectfully, that is.

Most of them weren't evil, just creatures as old as the land or older, the growing civilizations on this Continent encroaching more and more on the wild places they had once owned.

The war was many years over, and they said the future was bright. The future was now. Geralt didn't know by what metric they measured those things, because to him the world looked the same as always.

He'd done pest control enlisted in the war too, chasing the sort of monsters that paled in their wretched cruelty in comparison to men. Most of the things he sought out were just trying to survive with shrinking odds in a world rapidly forgetting them.

Geralt got that.

Got it in ways rural poor America did, living the same rusted out life they always had, going on in the usual quaint and tragic ways.

Yennefer didn't quite get it yet, but she was going to.

She poured burnt coffee for the grey-haired stranger in the far booth, a typical dusty midday silence settled over the diner. The slanted cartoon eyes of the rat on his sepia-toned van stared at her from where it was parked beside the pumps.

Places in towns this small wore many faces, general store, filling station, and diner in one. The main road was a common route north, and Yennefer liked to wonder where passersby were going, what lives they led. Imagine what faces they hid from the world, same as her.

Geralt had a job out this way with a few hours left to drive, hoping the company van didn't shit the bed again before he made it there, and he watched the waitress' hands shake as she poured him his coffee. Crooked through the shoulders, she limped when she walked and seemed to have trouble with the weight of the full carafe. Geralt smiled at her, an ugly, little smile on a face unused to such gestures, but the girl smiled back. He hoped they paid her fair. She had nice eyes, sharp and a cool violet.

Yennefer brought him a slice of apple pie and wondered where the stranger'd got his scars. He had a number of them on his face and hands alone, pink puckers and angry mauve ridges and was sure to have more hidden by his dark coveralls. Probably the war. If it had been the other waitress working, the chatty one, she would have asked, mister, did you get those in the war, must have gotten half blown to hell, but Yennefer didn't ask.

She smoothed her hands down the front of her starched apron and got back to work filling salt shakers, and neither spoke a word to the other.

Geralt didn't make much of a living on the road, but he lived simple and didn't need much anyhow. The pie was an extravagance, tart and sweet. The girl had working hands, calloused. He thought of saying something to her, making conversation, but he didn't. There was the sound of flies humming against the dust-streaked glass, the occasional rumble of traffic on the road, the quiet noise of his fork on chipped china.

He didn't stick around to watch his dollar tip fluster Yennefer's cheeks red. Didn't look back at all. If he had, he would have seen her pause in the screen door to watch him drive off, wondering about what sort of work he did in a strange vehicle like that, what sort of man he was.

The van's ignition choked and then caught. He had some miles to go.

Neither left a lasting impression on the other at that first unremarkable meeting, but when Yennefer next saw him two decades on, she knew him at once in the way that witches always know those sorts of things.

How fascinating it was to see that the stranger looked exactly the same despite the years. Same greyed hair, same dour expression, probably same pale orange van parked at the edge of the festival grounds. Witchers didn't age the same as men, after all, and that's the sort of thing she saw he was. Perilously slow heartbeat, calculating look in his newspaper yellow eyes, scars curved by talon and tooth and not shrapnel.

Geralt had known what she was by her description, whispered low and reverant like something holy, that this woman was no ordinary medic. Knew before he parted the canvas flap of a shabby tent in some muddy, over-trodden field and stepped into an opulent throne room, the stone walls hung with erotic tapestries, the high ceiling shimmering with a cloud of stars.

The witch herself sprawled perfectly naked on a high-backed throne with a seat of red velvet. Alone, she looked on in detached interest, still as a statue, a haughty and omnipotent sentinel. Geralt thought her ethereal, beautiful, enthralling.

Trouble.

In truth, Yennefer was wretchedly hungover after a riotous orgy the night before and could avoid the throbbing of her temples if only she kept perfectly still.

It was by her eyes, shrewd and violet, that, with a jolt of surprise up his spine, Geralt recognized her as the crooked waitress from the diner many years past.

There'd always been witches hidden behind any great power, old world or new. King Arthur ruled by the guiding hand of the wizard Merlin and JFK by a blonde starlet in a snow white dress, though none would ever have taken the latter for a sorceress.

How tiresome it was, thought Yennefer, how empty, how thankless.

Geralt sighed and adjusted his hold on the unconscious Dandelion's thighs, hitching his friend higher across his back as he wheezed into Geralt's ear. Would have rather gone elsewhere. Would have rather the idiot had not offended the ancient, moth-winged creature Geralt had come to reason with into making less noise.

But there was no talking sense into Dandelion. Damn lucky the creature the locals here called Mothman hadn't thought to curse him with something more severe than whatever ailed him.

It didn't take kindly to flirting.

Dandelion was a poet and a philanderer and a starchild and a balladeer and a free spirit and a scholar and a conscientious objecter and a right pain in Geralt's ass, except that he was also good to talk to and steadfastly humorous even all these years on and the sort of friend who remembered little details like your brand of cigarettes or your favorite candy, who Geralt liked even for his numerous flaws because Geralt liked most people truly and was a good man and loved deeply and loved consistently with his whole damn too-big heart.

"A friend?" asked Yennefer and Geralt shrugged.

What happened next happened the way it always did in every version of the story.

Two broken, fragile-hearted people and something close to tenderness.

It didn't happen like this:

Somebody had a pest problem, a wealthy widow with a pretty young daughter. Somebody'd cursed a poor son of a bitch into beastly form. Said he roamed the hills howling by night and walked the streets a man by day.

The curse broke in the usual way, just as Geralt said. The daughter's kiss on a full moon. True love and all. Happily ever after.

Except a new war broke and in time, it widowed the daughter too and her poor heart couldn't take the grief, and then the market turned sour and the wealthy widow lost her fortune and hung herself in the pantry. Geralt got a letter naming him next of kin by some questionably legitimate legal twist of fate and then, he sighed deep and resigned and drove north to pick up the girl.

It wasn't so unusual in his line of work, strange orphans scattered all over like grisly flotsam. But he didn't usually see to raising them. He'd never had a father besides the old man, and he'd never thought much of having his own children.

He couldn't know the true dark web of conspiracy around her and would never know the whole of it. The sort of man her daddy was to bear a curse like that in the first place. The old and intricate magicks, bound up in blood and circumstance. The sort of woman young Ciri would be.

Even if he'd known, Geralt would have drove to get her even so. He found the girl buck-toothed and scrawny and lugging a too heavy briefcase down the slumped front stoop of the elderly neighbor who'd been putting her up. Hair the pale color of woodsmoke, eyes like her mama, green as a copper kettle.

And just like her mama, young Ciri had some whisper of something else in her. Something carried over from older lands than this and bolstered by the ancient things here, passed on like the detritus of trauma gained generation to generation. Something tainted and bigger than he had the know-how to suss out.

Geralt sat down and fumblingly wrote a letter.

Meanwhile, young Ciri passed an idyllic summer and cold as tits winter on the isolated Morhen ranch in the rural mountains. She'd never worked a farm before and never even seen a farm animal up close, especially not a ranch like that one which was straight out of some pastoral fantasy.

A painted red barn and swaying, golden fields and a willow tree with a swing beside a white farmhouse on the ridgeline and a little cliche collection of animals. A black and white cow and a billy goat and a pair of checkered chickens and an old, whiskered horse and a little, scrappy dog.

Keeping up appearances, old Vesemir said and made her go muck out the pen. She wished they'd keep up appearances with mucking too and when she said that, the old man's eyes bugged out his head and Uncle Eskel wheeze-laughed folded over smacking his knees.

But the others didn't come until later into fall when the harvest needed brought in. For many long, humid, dust mote days of summer, it was just Ciri and her new, mysterious guardian and the old man who trundled on his tractor with a pipe dangling from his lip, mowing grass and cussing when the tires dipped into a whistlepig hole.

Most days, Ciri was expected up early to feed and muck and clean, which she did with a healthy amount of complaining. Her little pink hands sloughed red with oozing blisters, and Geralt held them in his rough palms to apply salve, feeling like he wished he could give this girl something more, something grander, but this was what they had, this was what he knew.

But Ciri liked the idea of it, her hands going rough and calloused and big like his, her body going hard and lean. She wondered about his scars and his lined face and how strong he was when he lifted her up in his arms.

The lightning bugs came out over the fields each night, so numerous that she could cry over it, and Geralt taught her how not to be afraid when catching them cupped in her hands, kneeling before her with the flickering light held out like a solemn offering.

He prayed it would be enough, the small things he could give her, but Ciri had never known anything bigger. Her daddy sitting on the creaking edge of her bed in the attic to tell her a bedtime story. One with the true monsters and evils smoothed out into a fairytale.

Geralt told her many stories. Long ago, there were elves and giants and wizards and queens and all of them tangled up together in mysterious and elaborate ways. Ciri reminded him about the knights, and he said, ah yes, the knights, and told her about the quests and the riddles and the labyrinths and the dragons. Ciri liked the dragons best. And the swords that slayed them.

When she asked about his own monsters, he said only that there were things in this land older than all of them.

Sometimes the land itself resisted occupation.

And if she was ever on a dirt road along a field of corn or alfalfa at night, never stray in, no matter what beckoned. And if the screams of the coyotes took on a different pitch, don't go looking. And if the cicadas and the crickets went silent all at once and the woods gathered a hush, run home and run fast and don't glance behind your shoulder.

She brandished a pitchfork out in the animal pen, playing at killing beasts, and Geralt watched from the front porch of the farmhouse wishing he could make it all true for her. Heroes and legends and noble truths.

Instead, he whispered a prayer to the wind rattling through the corn fields and held tight as he could to her little, calloused hand.

It all went more or less the same in the end.

"And that's it!" says Ciri, waggling her fingers in a dramatic flourish. "Well, it didn't happen like that." She keeps her voice low and steady in the manner of storytelling, perched up on a fence rail, hands dangling between her legs. "Well, it all did happen. But not like that. Not in those places at that time."

The farm boy she is speaking to looks at her with big eyes, dumb as a newborn lamb. He doesn't know where this America is or half of the words she uses.

Ciri yawns. She doesn't think she'll tell that version again. Or else be choosier with her audience. The sky has started to go red with fading light, and the bats loose themselves from the eaves of the barn to take wing over the fields.

"Don't you have evening chores to do, boy?" she asks, and the boy startles as though awakening from a dream. "Those sheep won't feed themselves."

Later, when his mama cuffs him over the head for his tardiness, he will not be able to explain the reason for the dawdling. He remembers the dark silhouette of a stranger on the border of the fenceline and a peculiar sort of hollow sadness.

In all the darkest and strangest days of his life afterward, his thoughts will return sometimes to that shape in the cradle of dusk.

And one night when his own young, sleepless daughter asks to hear a story, he will close his eyes and draw a breath and tell her one.

#the witcher #yenralt #ciri #my fic

73 notes · View notes

monstersandmaw · 2 years

Text

Male moss leshen x gn reader - Part One (sfw)

Disclaimer which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.

___

Content: our two main characters meet first as children when the reader gets separated from their group on a school science trip to Wistman’s Woods, only to be rescued by a mysterious young forest spirit with a mask. Years later, the reader returns and wonders if it had been real after all... Wordcount: 6166

Surprise? I’ve had this sitting in my drafts for a while (Discord folks, this is the one I mentioned a while ago after I got back from Orkney, hence the mythology dump halfway through!) and I figured I’d share the first part.

Hope you like it :)

You hadn’t meant to get left behind.

One minute you’d been watching the slow, inexorable stretch of a snail across a small rivulet that led down into a mossy gully below, transfixed by its alabaster body and swirling brown shell, and the next, the group had moved on and you were completely alone in the tangle of twisting oaks and mossy boulders of Wistman’s Wood.

“Oh no.”

You’d spent the morning with your class on the nearby moorland, studying the heather and the soil and taking samples to bring back to the little science laboratory at school, but now the colour green pressed in on all sides — thick on the boulders and roots, and slick on the steam-bed — only to be cut through in a spiderweb of darker, twisting lines of trees like veins in the fog. That fog had rolled in earlier after you’d all eaten your packed lunches on the boulders along the path up to Wistman’s Wood amid flowering gorse and jewelled, silver spiderwebs, but that felt like a long time ago now, and the daylight was fading.

Moss dripped down in draping folds from gnarled and coiled branches, shrouding the oaks that were so old they’d watched the druids dance among them, and clumps of bracken waved their beckoning fingers at you as you stared around and realised you could hardly find the path any more.

Panic clutched your throat and locked your knees. Your little backpack, blue with yellow roses embroidered on the back, was devoid of food and your water bottle was almost empty. Spying an odd, looping branch in a tree that looked like it had been made to let the weary body of an eight year old rest there a moment, you scuttled over to it on shaking legs and sat. If you went back in the direction you’d come — over the moor — it would take hours and you weren’t sure you knew the whole circuit anyway. If you went on, you would most likely find the party soon. It couldn’t be that far.

After taking a puff of the wet, green air for courage, you hopped off the branch, squeezing the twisted form in grateful thanks for the calming pause, and then scrambled up the path. Your foot slipped on a scummy, green-slimed rock and you pitched forwards, landing on your palms with a grunt of surprise. Hands smarting, you pushed on, scrambling up the incline out of the rock-strewn gully and emerging at the top into fog so thick you couldn’t see more than five feet in front of you.

“Hello!” you yelled but the sound was muffled, dampened by the weight of the air, and your voice sounded pathetically small. “Hello?! Help! Where is everyone?”

Ferns and lichen hung down from the trees like the hair of a great tree monster, and branches snagged at your clothes like the reaching fingers of a fairytale monster as you crashed in panic up the incline. You had to get out. They were going to leave without you. You’d catch a cold if you stayed there all night, and the stories Miss. Tremayne had told you all on the bus that morning, about the faerie folk and the blood-eyed ‘Wisht Hounds’ and the old spirit of Crockern that walked the hills at night, all crowded in on you until you let out a strangled scream and crashed to your knees in a small, leaf-strewn clearing.

With snatched and rapid breaths, you tried to get a hold of yourself, but it was no good. Tears sprang hot to your eyes and rolled down your cheeks to spill onto the copper carpet of fallen leaves beneath your scuffed and dirty hands.

A twig snapped nearby and a magpie gave a hoarse, rattling laugh.

You looked up, sniffing back tears and scrubbed your hand across your face to leave a muddy trail across your cheeks. “Hello?” you sobbed. “Miss Tremayne? Mr. Lee?”

In the drifting fog, you started to recognise a pattern to the boulders around you and froze. You were kneeling at the heart of a small circle of standing stones, each one only a foot or so high. In the moss of the nearest one, you could just make out a spiral of bare rock intertwining with the vibrant green of the moss, and on the next one over, you found a different pattern. Beyond the clear bubble of air inside the circle, the fog pressed in, close and silent, and all you could hear was your own, tight breathing.

Someone would come for you soon. Someone had to notice you were missing soon. It didn’t matter that you were the weird kid who played with frogspawn and thought snails were neat and knew how to identify all three kinds of newt native to the UK. Someone would notice that you weren’t with the rest of the school trip.

All you had to do was wait where you were. The first rule of bushcraft when you realised you were lost was to stay put and not panic. One of those two you could do.

Wistman’s Wood really wasn’t that big, and they’d count everyone in on the bus, so you wouldn’t be left behind.

You sat down and waited.

And waited.

You were shivering by the time evening was properly closing in, and the fog was still drifting all around, and beyond the circle of stones, the noises of the night were starting up in a faltering chorus. A vixen’s screaming bark far away on the moor above made your blood run cold, and an owl’s soft, wavering call from the trees nearby drew an answering whimper from your own throat.

Leaves rustled everywhere as if the trees themselves were breathing, though there was no breeze that you could feel. The moss beneath your hands felt warm, as though the sun had been on it all day. You spread your dirty fingers through it and tried to draw some comfort from the warmth, imagining it was the thick coat of a friendly animal, but it was no good.

After what felt like hours, you curled up into a ball on your side and wept.

The ghost dogs would get you and tear you to pieces or the wild hunt would take you away.

Footsteps light as pattering rain over the autumn leaves jerked you awake some time later and you sat up to see a soft, golden glow on the edge of the ring of stones. Silhouetted in the fog just behind the lantern was a dark outline that looked a little too thin to be human and too short to be an adult.

Your scream of surprise and horror filled the clearing and was immediately answered with a gasp and a quiet, “No, it’s alright. I won’t hurt you,” from the other side of the stones. The voice was strange, like two rocks scraping together or the creak of a tree in a high wind, but it seemed kind.

“Who are you?” you hissed.

“I… I’m a friend. Why are you out here?” Whoever it was, the small glow wasn’t enough to illuminate them properly in the fog, and while they seemed young — perhaps about your own age — you didn’t recognise them as anyone from your class.

“I got lost,” you said, and fought off tears again. “Do you know the way back to the road?”

“Which road?”

“The… the one where we got off the bus,” you said. “There was a white building nearby. I think it was a pub.”

“Oh,” the unusual, reedy voice said. “You mean the human road to the south.”

Your heart iced over with wild fear. “You’re… You’re not human?”

“No. You can’t see in the dark, can you?”

“Of course not,” you said. “I’m not an owl. What are you? Are you part of the Wild Hunt? One of the ghosts? A druid?”

The creature laughed, and the sound was like a small brook rushing over loose stones. “No. You’re cold,” they added. “Here, I’ll come and warm you, but you mustn’t be afraid of me. I might look… scary… but I won’t hurt you.”

The light bobbed nearer, and you saw long, root-like fingers holding a lantern made of the lacy remains of old leaves and glowing from within. The arm that held it looked like it was made of dry, cracked wood, interspersed with patches of moss and little rocks that glittered in the light. When the creature knelt beside you, you sucked in a breath as the bare skull of a badger loomed down out of the mist. You knew it was a badger because you’d looked at them that week with Mr. Lee in science class.

Shaking, you waited to see the rest of the creature.

“I won’t hurt you,” they said again. “Please don’t be scared of me.”

“Ok,” you breathed, not sure what else to say. You hugged your knees in close and fought off the urge to close your eyes, pretending none of this was happening. “What about the Wisht Hounds and the ghosts?”

“They won’t hurt you,” they said cheerily, kneeling down beside you and setting the lantern on the mossy grass. “They guard the wood with me but they won’t hurt you if you don’t mean the place any harm.”

“Oh.” You looked up them and tried not to stare at the creature. “Ok.”

If they’d been human, you guessed they were around your own age and height — small, skinny and two legged — but their whole body seemed to have been made of wood and stone and bits of moss, and they had an animal pelt wrapped around their hips and the badger skull over their face. Glimpses of dark, almost-human skin showed here and there though, especially around the neck and collarbones and down the right side of their chest and arm, though the arm holding the lantern was like an old tree branch.

“Come on, you’re getting cold,” they said, and went down onto all fours. “Lie down.”

Not knowing what else to do, you obeyed, using your rucksack as a pillow, and they reached out and simply pulled the forest floor up around you like a blanket. The warm scent of moss enveloped you, and the comforting weight and heat of it took you by surprise.

“There,” they said as they tucked it up around your shoulder before curling up behind you and wrapping their arm around your middle. “Try to sleep. They’ll come looking for you soon, but if they don’t, I’ll show you to the edge of the woods in the morning.”

“Promise?”

“I promise. Rest now.”

You closed your eyes and found yourself drifting off almost immediately, as comfortable and warm as if you were tucked up in your own bed.

The shrill of a distant whistle jolted you awake and you found a pressure on your shoulder joint, shaking you gently before it moved up to touch your neck with a shy, tender caress. “Wake up,” the creature hissed and you sat upright with a jolt. The blanket of moss and grass simply tumbled away from your body and became seamless forest floor again, as though it had never been disturbed.

You jerked around to stare at your new friend. It was still pitch dark, and your rapid exhales fogged in the air around you, making twisting, ghostly shapes in the small light of the creature’s lantern that had never gone out.

“Told you they’d come looking for you,” they said with a playful laugh.

You heard the baying of dogs in the distance and tensed.

“Not my hounds,” they said, drawing back and looking around twitchily. “I have to go. Please… Please don’t tell them about me? They probably won’t believe you anyway, but… please?”

You nodded. “I won’t tell anyone. And thank you for helping me.”

The creature tipped their head to one side in something you thought was a smile, though the bone mask that covered their face made it impossible to tell.

“I won’t forget you,” you croaked.

At that, the strange creature leaned forwards and hugged you. They were warm, and although the parts of their body that touched you were hard and unyielding, they slotted perfectly against you where you sat in the dead centre of the stone circle. “Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Thank you,” they croaked. The cold press of those root-like fingertips against the warm skin of your neck made you gasp suddenly, but as a torch beam glanced off the trees, they rose and sprang away like a deer, vanishing into the shadows of the gnarled trees in the blink of an eye.

Someone shouted your name and you staggered to your feet. “Here!” you croaked. “I’m here!”

The yells went up, more dogs barked, and in a few minutes, you were being wrapped up in a blanket and seen to by the rescue team.

The half mile walk back to the road passed in a blur as everyone fussed over you and the events of the night rushed through your mind.

What kind of creature had that been?

You kept your promise though, and never told a soul about them, and when you woke the next morning, you found a small, leaf-shaped mark on your neck where their cold finger had touched you. No more than an inch long, it was the colour of a coppery autumn oak leaf, and whenever you brushed your fingertips over it, you shivered. The creature had marked you somehow, but you never minded. You loved the mark, and it made you feel special, cherished, and protected.

‘Badger’, as you came to think of them because of the skull, lived on in your imagination all throughout your childhood, and sometimes you even dreamed of them, running through the small woods with their ghostly black hounds barking and playing at their heels.

Whenever things got too much, you would pile up blankets atop you in bed for the weight and warmth, and curl up on your side, and remember the way they had pulled the forest floor up over you to keep you warm. Your fingertips would trace the small leaf mark on your neck, and you would feel grounded and calm again. Your parents had thought you would be traumatised by the event, frightened of foggy nights and of the woods, but you had never felt safer than you had on that lonely night with your strange friend among the twisted oak trees and the mossy standing stones.

Your career inevitably led you into wildlife conservation and the protection of rare landscapes just like Wistman’s Wood, though considerably further north.

“You should be going somewhere hot and dry for your holiday,” your colleague grinned at you as you both shrugged into your heavy coats and prepared to lock up the field office. The weather for the past week had been truly awful, even by Scottish standards, and your cramped, barely-insulated, converted shipping container office in the heart of the Highlands — affectionately nicknamed the ‘bothy’ after the more traditional shelters dotted across Scotland and Wales — had taken an absolute battering. Still, you’d somehow got a lot of work done together, and it was time to head back to the centre with the data.

With a laugh, you shook your head and adjusted the jacket around your shoulders with a shrug. “I know, but I’ve been wanting to go back to Devon for years and I’ve finally got enough leave stored up to make it worthwhile.”

Ben’s brown eyes twinkled and he shook his head at you. In his lilting, Orcadian burr, you best friend and fellow ranger chided you affectionately. “Ah well, I always said you were daft, didn’t I? At least it’s nareaboots stopped for the day anyway,” he added, cocking his head to listen to the last lashings of wind and rain on the roof and tiny perspex window. “Come on, I’ll buy you a pint at The Selkie tonight. What time are you off tomorrow?”

“I’m getting the 8.25 train to Inverness from Golspie, then the bus to the airport. My flight’s not til late afternoon.”

You chatted as you locked up your very basic field office and battled the last throes of the autumn storm to get your stuff into the Landrover. With the windscreen wipers on maximum, you jolted down the rough, winding forestry track through patches of forest and open heath, ignoring Ben’s comments on your driving — “Like you’d do any better!” you retorted. You both let out a grunt of relief though when you got back onto the tarmac that would eventually take you to the small, seaside town just before sunset. Not that there was a visible sun to see setting behind the perpetual, pewter-grey clouds.

That night, Ben got more than usually tipsy, and you found yourself listening to his beguiling accent as he talked of the folklore of his native Orkney Islands, prompted by the name of the pub in which you were drinking — The Selkie — and his insistence, again, that the mark on your neck was a mark of the fairfolk. What choice did you have but to refute it and claim it was a birthmark? Even if you could have told him without breaking your promise to Badger, he probably wouldn’t have believed you anyway.

Although…

His large brown eyes glittered as he talked of the selkie-folk and the finfolk, and his expression grew almost dreamy as he told you of their island summer-home of Hildaland, and the safety of the city beneath the waves that was their winter refuge, Finfolkaheem. Ben had always been a good storyteller, filling nights around the stove in the bothy with evocative tales of Scottish folklore, but he talked of it now as vividly as though he’d been to these fantasy places and seen them for himself. His accent got stronger and stronger, and his tone more yearning until finally he realised what time it was, blinked, and sighed. “Ah, but it’s late, and I’ve made myself homesick.”

Ben was tall and strong, though not in the lean, chiselled, way of runway models and gym-goers. Stocky, with a stout layer of fat around his gut, he looked made to weather whatever the elements had for him, and his wild, brown hair was already turning very silver though he couldn’t have been a day over thirty.

“You’ll have to call Mag when you get home tonight and make yourself feel better,” you said, standing up and patting him on the shoulder. “Though I doubt he’ll thank me for letting you get so tipsy.” You’d never met Magnus, but Ben talked of him often enough that you felt you knew him just a little.

His handsome, weathered face took on a softer look, and he smiled at the sound of his boyfriend’s name and pushed himself to his feet as well. “Aye, he always knows how to cheer me up, that’s for sure, despite being the grumpiest, most miserable-looking son of the sea I ever met.”

Ben's stories of the hidden folk of his island heritage haunted you all the journey south for some reason. Images of the tall, stern, shapeshifting and sorcerous finmen, and the soft and kindly selkies, mermaids, and mischievous trows who dwelled in the barrows and the secret places in the earth brought to mind your own childhood experience in the wood, and your thoughts turned yet again to the creature you had come to call Badger.

The following day, as the tyres of your hire car finally crunched over the gravelly tarmac outside the lime-washed, 18th century roadside inn that you recognised from all those years ago, you bit back a yawn. It was just after half four in the afternoon, and the light was still pretty good, so after checking in, dumping your bags in your room, and changing into walking clothes, you set off up the trail towards Wistman’s Woods to stretch your legs after a long day of travelling.

The air was clear, and no mist hung between the trees that evening, but otherwise, nothing felt like it had changed. The woods slept on like King Arthur’s knights, and you stepped reverently over the rocks, placing your palms carefully so as not to crush any snails or other creatures lurking in the spongy, verdant plant life. Tourists and social media had done irrevocable damage to ecologically sacred places like this the country over, but so far it seemed to have escaped the worst of it. Slowly and without haste, you wove your way into the heart of the small oak copse that clung to the line of the little river below.

Small birds flitted here and there among the branches, and the air smelled thick and wet with the coming autumn. You expected to find mushrooms popping their bonnets up from the grass as you passed, and out of the corner of your eye you almost imagined the tiny forms of fairies flying around, but when you turned more than once to look, it was only the dancing clouds of gnats that caught the last rays of sunlight.

Eventually, after rambling around for a while, you found the circle of stones and came to a halt outside it. In the interceding years between that night and the present, you had immersed yourself in folklore as much as you had wildlife conservation, and you stared at the stones in wonder. If the fairytales were to be believed, you had been lucky to have survived your encounter at all, let alone with the freely-given help of a supernatural creature.

The golden light of the dying day flashed along the dewy moss that adorned the spiral stone and your breath caught.

“Were you even real?” you breathed into the silence. “Would you even remember that one lost child all these years later?”

You sat down cross-legged — outside the stone circle this time — and rested your weight back on your hands behind you, face tilted to the twisting canopy of vibrant, shivering oak leaves overhead. It was chilly, but not unpleasantly so, and the moss beneath you was once again as warm as a summer’s afternoon.

After only a few minutes, all the birdsong fell quiet, the sun dipped below the hill, and twilight descended on the woods in the blink of an eye.

With the new chill came a tangible stillness to the woods, like everything was holding its breath until morning, and you felt the back of your neck prickle. Freezing in place for a moment, you strained your ears until finally you heard the faintest shifting in the ferns behind you.

Twitching around, you found a tall, gangling creature standing perhaps three or four yards away, no longer with a badger’s skull, but adorned with what looked like the ancient skull of a red deer stag.

Its large, forking antlers stretched up and away from the head in perfect symmetry, and across the darkly-stained bone of the old skull itself were engraved tiny runes. The creature looked emaciated and it hunched over at the shoulders in order to fit into the space between the twisted branches of the oaks on either side, and its lanky arms dangled down well past its hips. Its left arm seemed entirely made up of interconnected sections of wood and bark, adorned at the shoulder like a pauldron with moss and at the elbow with small rocks like ball bearings, and the limb ended in three long, pale, root-like talons like a thumb and two fingers.

The right arm though had a much more human-like quality to it, with a human hand covered in that dark, tannin-stained skin, and the bark coverings seemed more like armour than anything else. Their collarbones seemed to show human skin beneath the patches of bark and wood and moss on their torso, though the colour and texture was like that of skin from ancient bog bodies — dark and leathery looking — and the muscles of their neck were sinuous and withered until it vanished behind the deer mask.

From their shoulders hung a great, woven cloak with moss and lichen and spiderwebs blending seamlessly into soft, dark green wool, and it was held in place by carved and engraved, triangular brooches that seemed to have been made from deer scapulae. Their long, mossy, tree-like legs ended in roots instead of toes. Around their narrow hips, they wore an animal skin loincloth, and at their side hung a carved wooden cup or bowl on a twisted vine cord.

You stared a long time before swallowing thickly. “Is it you?” you whispered at last. “Are you the one who saved me all those years ago?”

Slowly, the creature inclined their head. “You… remembered me?” Their voice was much deeper now, but just as rough and scraping, and they sounded astonished.

“How could I forget you?” you laughed, all apprehension draining away as you scrabbled to your feet.

In a sudden rush of wild elation, you ran towards them and without hesitation flung your arms around that skinny, bony waist and squeezed.

A low, earthy laugh rumbled from the creature and they enveloped you in those strange arms, hoisting you right up off the ground and hugging you tightly to their chest. “I felt sure you’d forget about me,” they mumbled.

“I made you a promise,” you said, wheezing as their grip got somehow even tighter. “Oof, you got bigger!”

The strange creature laughed a little harder and set you down carefully. “So did you,” they said. “Why did you come back now?”

Their voice had an otherworldly note to it, like a high harmonic in a cathedral, and it made your whole body reverberate with the sound of it.

Clearing your throat, you said, “I had some holiday time to use up and… it’s been too long. My friend from work, Ben, he’s been talking a lot lately about selkies and the fae-folk from where he lives, and it made me think of you. I had to see if you really were… real.” You looked up into their face and tilted your head a little. “You outgrew the badger skull, I see.”

A snort of laughter sounded from behind the deer skull, which made you more certain than ever that it was a mask and not a part of them, and they nodded. “A long time ago. This one belonged to my mother.”

“Your mother was a deer?”

Again, the creature laughed delightedly and it sounded like a small rockfall tumbling down a cliff side. “No, my mother was a spirit of these lands. A creature with the face and heart of a beautiful woman, and a hollow, rotting back and the tail of an ox from behind.”

You tried not to grimace at the strange imagery.

“She loved my father, who was a mortal man and who loved her all his life. They were mated, and when he died, she…” they shook their head. “She stopped wanting to live and… returned to the forest, leaving only her memory and her mask behind for me. It had been her father’s before it was hers.” They looked to one side and brought their root-like left hand up to touch the twisting trunk of a nearby oak. “She is still here, in a way. In the way that all who have gone before are remembered here by the forest.” They paused and added ruefully, “As I shall be, one day, I suppose.”

They sighed, a sound like the wind through the leaves above, and looked down at you.

“What… are you then?” you asked.

For a moment, the creature’s chest rose and fell without words. Eventually, they said in their harsh, broken-boulder voice, “I am… a guardian, I suppose. My kind are known by many names across the world: leshy, green men, dryads and hamadryads, lares, Sylvanus, woodwose…” they shrugged. “But I am only a half-breed,” they added with a wry chuckle.

Completely fascinated, you asked, “Do you have a name?”

That again gave the creature pause. “Yes,” they said after a while. “But not as you would understand it.”

You frowned.

“I am named the way a river gully is named, or a wild animal, or one of the high tors is named. Not… Not like a human with a single word.”

“You’re right… I don’t understand,” you breathed, still frowning.

“Here, let me show you,” they said, and they reached out that dendroidal left hand towards your temple. You shrank away instinctively but they shook their head. “I did not hurt you before and I will not hurt you now.”

“Sorry.”

With a slow incline of their head, they tried again. This time when their fingertips touched your temple, you did not flinch, and an image filled your mind. After only a second, it became apparent that it was not an image but an experience.

It centred on the stones of the circle behind you, illuminated as they had been only a few minutes earlier at sunset. Pure, radiant, golden light streamed down and, like stained glass, lit up the moss and lichen that rose a few inches from the stone’s surface. Midges danced in the air above the stone and a drop of dew beaded at the tip of one of the fronds, sparkling for just a second before it rolled down and soaked into the moss. You tasted fresh-fallen rain on your tongue and smelled the earthy, green scent of moss, and the last rays of the day warmed your skin. This was who this creature was. He, you realised. The creature was male.

He let go of you and you gasped, swaying on the spot as the colour and warmth of the vision receded into the grey-blue of dusk.

You blinked. “All that in one name?” you croaked, and he laughed. “And here I’ve been calling you Badger all these years.”

“Badger,” he repeated. “For the mask?”

“Mmm.”

“I like it,” he said. “They’re cheeky and resourceful creatures. It’s quite the compliment.”

You twitched your eyebrows upwards. “Well, at least it’s not been an insult. One more question?”

“Doesn’t have to be your last,” he said, clearly amused. “Ask away.”

“Are you responsible for this mark?”

You turned and exposed your neck to him, and he hummed softly. It sounded like a tree stretching.

Again he reached for you, towering from his seven foot height, but to your surprise, he eased himself down onto one knee as he traced the soft, warm fingertip of his human hand over the mark. “Yes,” he said in a tiny voice. “I didn’t mean to mark you, but I’m glad I did.”

“What do you mean?”

He looked down sharply, almost catching you with one of the prongs of his antlers, and a little, bitter laugh escaped him. “I wanted to keep you safe, but I was only a child too when we met. I didn’t know how to control the magic in me — the magic of these woods — and I didn't know what I was doing. That symbol will mark you out to all the supernatural as someone… loved.”

You smiled and pitched forwards to hug him again. “Thank you. My whole life, whenever I’ve felt lonely or afraid, I’ve touched it and it’s like…” you sighed, unsure how to describe it. Brushing your fingers over it again, you went on, “It feels like it did when you covered me with moss and kept me warm.”

He shivered. “With you so close, I can feel when you touch it,” he said.

His arms encircled you slowly and he drew you close. He smelled like autumn — like misty sunrises with dewy grass and glittering spider webs — and you nuzzled your cheek against the side of his head. The mask moved a little by accident and he tensed.

“Sorry,” you murmured.

“Do not be,” he said, leaning back a little way without fully letting go of you. He did readjust the mask though. “How long are you here for?”

“Two weeks,” you said as you stepped back to look at him properly. “I planned to go walking on the moors, as well as visiting here again to see if you really were real.”

Before he could answer, a shadow moved behind him and your eyes went wide at the sight of a colossal dog with blood red eyes. You took an uncertain half-step back and Badger turned to look over his shoulder.

The animal — spirit? — stepped carefully over the mossy stones and made its way down to sit silently beside the two of you, regarding you curiously.

“This is… Whisper,” he said, reaching his hand out as the massive dog butted its head up into his palm. “She is the leader of my pack of Wisht Hounds. She’s curious about you.”

“Hi. She’s… beautiful,” you said, realising it was true. The way the shadows rippled through her long, smoky black coat was mesmerising. She looked like a large, pitch-black German Shepherd, though she was slightly rangier and longer legged, and her swishing tail seemed to end in a wisp of smoke. She was also the size of a small pony.

Whisper seemed to like being called beautiful because she rose and padded close, sniffing at your hand and then barging her cold nose into it for some strokes. Her red eyes burned like embers, but she didn’t seem in the least bit frightening now. Her fur was softer than anything you’d ever touched, and the animal made small, happy little noises in her throat as her ears and chin were showered with attention.

“I bet you can be really scary when you need to be,” you said carefully, “But you’re also incredibly sweet…”

Badger laughed and stood up, creaking and cracking like an old tree in a high wind.

“That sounded… painful?”

He laughed and shook his head. “No, not really. My body is a little… dramatic, that’s all,” he said, curling his left hand up for emphasis. As the talons of his hand closed, they made a soft creaking noise.

You shivered as a breeze cold snuck in down the back of your jacket and you straightened up, much to Whisper’s disgruntlement. The spectral hound turned away, nosed a farewell into Badger’s hand too, and then trotted off, melting into the gathering night like a fading memory.

“She’s going to patrol the wood,” he said. “I’m glad you met her. I remember that you were afraid of the idea of them first time we met.”

“Well, I didn’t have anything other than the ghost stories our teacher told us on the bus back then,” you snorted. Your stomach rumbled audibly and you pulled a face. “I’m exhausted. I came down from Scotland today, and I haven’t eaten since this morning. I should get going, but can I come back tomorrow?”

He nodded. “I would love that. The woods have seen more people than usual of late,” he sighed. “People trampling it and breaking off moss and branches and taking acorns away, but it gets quiet in the afternoons. I can remain hidden if necessary though.”

You nodded and sighed as you looked up into the empty eye sockets of the deer’s skull mask. “I’m so glad I met you again,” you said. “After all this time.”

“So am I,” he said with a slight bow. “I will walk you to the edge of the woods, if I may?”

“Sure, thank you.”

The only sounds when he moved were the gentle breathing of the woods themselves and the slight creak of bark and the whisper of wind through the leaves. You felt loud and clumsy and out of place in comparison.

At the edge of the trees, Badger stopped and looked out at the moorland beyond. Bracken whispered in the breezes that didn’t really seem to touch the small oak copse behind you, and the air seemed colder and fresher and somehow thinner out there.

You turned and looked up at him. “See you tomorrow,” you said, and touched the oak leaf on your neck.

He shuddered, and then whickered a low laugh. “Tomorrow.”

He watched you go, and as you rounded a turn in the path, you glanced back to find him still standing there, just barely visible between the gnarled trees. He almost looked like one of them, with his bark-and-moss body and his antlers, but you could see him distinctly enough. Around the edge of the copse, further up the rolling, stony hillside, three black shapes careered over the fieldstones and crumbling remains of a wall: Wisht Hounds.

Raising your arm in a final wave, you laughed when he did the same and then turned to melt into the shadows of his oak wood once again.

___

Hope you enjoyed badger! Any guesses about Ben and Magnus? Want to see part two? Lemme know as always with reblogs to show your interest.

If you do happen to have a couple of bucks spare, you could always drop a tip on my Ko-fi, but reblogs are just as welcome and just as helpful! As always, I look forward to your reactions to this one. Take care of yourselves.

| Masterlist | Ko-fi (tip jar)

#leshen #leshy #forest spirit #male forest spirit #forest guardian #male monster x reader #gender neutral reader #exophilia #monster boyfriend #childhood friends to lovers #much?#haha

283 notes · View notes