#your living manna

[babsbabbles]

"I will not throw out something that is very good because it is not perfect"

— Ralph Brandt // The Seven Churches

[humming-fly]

North Carolina Relief Masterlist

One of my close friends is currently living in North Carolina and took the time to put together this really nicely organized list of organizations currently taking donations after Hurricane Helene, and I thought it'd be nice to share it on tumblr as well since I know some folks like these kinds of organized lists! All links and descriptions come from her and her experiences with the orgs below. 👍

Foundation

The Community Foundation of WNC - Read no further if you want a catch-all, one stop donation spot for WNC long-term Helene response. CFWNC is a permanent pool of charitable capital for the 18 counties of Western North Carolina including the Qualla Boundary (land of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians). They are an amazing source of consistent support to many WNC nonprofits via grant opportunities. They have financially supported so many of the non-profits I have encountered or worked with. Donate to the cause of your choice via CFWNC (including the Helene response specifically) here.

Food Security, Farm Support & More

Bounty & Soul (Swannanoa Valley, Black Mountain, and Asheville) - decade-old non-profit currently typically focused on health and food insecurity now working in partnership with World Central Kitchen, MANNA, Hearts with Hands, and many others to distribute food, hot meals, and supplies. They are also working to resume purchasing and distributing fresh produce from farmers in WNC who still have crops to harvest and sell. Donate to their disaster relief here.

Annie’s Culinary Garden - I often frequent this small but mighty Black Mountain restaurant, which is closely partnered with Bounty & Soul. Annie’s was already embedded in health and food justice work pre-Helene but the last 2 weeks, Annie and her team have been working around the clock (using a generator to power their restaurant) to provide free vegan, vegetarian, and other diet-specific hot meals to retirement homes, distribution hubs, and also to feed the staff and volunteers at these hubs. This has been a huge need expressed to me by community members because much of the food available at distribution sites is not able to be eaten by those requiring special diets. Donate to their effort here.

Haywood Christian Ministry (Waynesville) - WNC’s largest food pantry has partnered with MANNA (WNC's largest food bank?) and is distributing food on the ground and requesting donations to help with the emergency disaster response. They are also directly purchasing from WNC farms to distribute fresh foods for folks cooking bulk hot meals and for families who can cook at home. For info and to donate, go here. 

Food Connection(Asheville-based) - I first encountered this org at a food waste solutions summit and thought their concept was brilliant. They rescue high-quality, chef-prepared meals and deliver them to neighbors in need (often those who can’t afford to participate regularly in Asheville’s expensive foodie culture). I have since seen them out in Asheville and beyond to rural communities doing exactly what they do best and delivering delicious, no-cost hot meals to Helene victims. Donate to them here.

Foothills Food Hub (McDowell County) - McDowell was hit really hard and this hub is working to source water and shelf-stable goods to distribute. They will continue to feed vulnerable populations and to support farmers with direct purchasing and a reliable market. Requesting monetary donations, which can be made online here.

TRACTOR Food & Farms (Spruce Pine*, Mitchell County) - In another hard-hit county, this hub is also working, much like the Foothills Food Hub, on connecting local farmers with folks in a system of equitable healthy food access in rural communities. Donate to this local food hub here.

*Interesting aside: Spruce Pine and its quartz mines were extremely damaged by flooding and this threatens the global tech industry. This rural town is home to one of the world’s only sources of high-purity quartz. The mines are currently trying to re-open.

MANNA FoodBank (Asheville) - This very large organization is still doing what they do best and distributing food, water, and more, despite having their warehouse/headquarters were destroyed in the flooding along the Swannanoa River. Donate online here.

Farmer Support & Advocacy

Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project (ASAP) (WNC) - this wide-reaching farmer advocacy org is currently��reestablishing communications with WNC farmers and getting aid to them. They also have healthy food programs that, once operating again, will serve tangentially in the relief effort. I have worked adjacent to this org for the last year and am a dogged cheerleader of them and their work. Donations can be made here.

Center for Environmental Farming Systems (Qualla Boundry and WNC) -  CEFS works closely with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, NC State, extension services and more to support food and farm initiatives across WNC. I previously worked adjacent to this org and was extremely impressed by their commitment and effectiveness. Donate (ideally to “Friends of CEFS” for more flexible funding) here. 

Tierra Fértil Coop (Hendersonville) - social and economic farmer cooperative formed by a group of Hispanic community members living in Henderson County that grows and provides culturally-specific foods but also has community programs to support the Latinx community in Henderson county. I have attended some of their educational events and have worked adjacent to them. I am ever impressed by their work. Donate to them by emailing tierrafertilcoophv@gmail.com.

Economic Justice & More

Pisgah Legal Services (all over WNC) - these folks do just about everything “life admin” for WNC's most vulnerable populations and have done so for over forty years. They provide pro bono civil legal aid, health insurance enrollment, and more. I have worked adjacent to them over the last year and could not be more impressed by their broad scope of bi-lingual legal work that maintains incredible efficiency and effectiveness. Donate to them here. 

Just Economics (WNC) - JE works on shaping the economic development of WNC in a way that benefits everyone and promotes a sustainable future. I have attended some of their workshops and found them to be powerfully educational. I am also grateful for their political advocacy for living wages for all in WNC. They are not directly working on the Helene response (as far as I know), but the road to recovery is long and their economic justice advocacy will be especially crucial as WNC rebuilds. Donate to JE here. 

BeLoved (Asheville) - Org working on improving the well-being and quality of life for individuals, families, and communities through our focus areas of Home, Health, Equity, and Opportunity. On-the-ground volunteers are currently collecting and distributing a wide array of supplies and BeLoved will continue to play a significant long-term role in housing and more. Donate to BeLoved here.

Health Services & Equity

Blue Ridge Health (WNC) - Blue Ridge Health is a federally qualified health center that is continuing to provide accessible & affordable medical care and mental health care to vulnerable populations (now including Helene victims) with their��sites around the region and mobile clinics. Donate here.

Vecinos (WNC) - This rapidly growing org provides direct healthcare services to underserved, uninsured communities with a focus on WNC's farmworkers at their clinics and with mobile clinics on site at farms. Donate to their continuing services here. 

Asheville Buncombe Community Christian Ministry (Asheville based) - The ABCCM helps run and provide shelter in Asheville and is partnered with the Red Cross. Donations help pay for motel and food vouchers for local residents and long-term support for those displaced. A personal aside: ABCCM also has an awesome medical clinic serving uninsured folks and they were the only medical service I could find that would treat a tick born illness that I had when I first arrived in the US from Canada (I did not yet have health insurance). To donate to their Helene response, go here.

Schools & Youth

FernLeaf Community Charter School (Fletcher) - FernLeaf was partially destroyed by Helene (one of the school buildings was entirely lifted off of its foundation then dropped several feet away in a truly remarkable display of the power of water from a small nearby creek). Donate to FernLeaf here. 

United Way of Asheville and Buncombe County - The local United Way typically works on youth/child food security, educational support, and physical and mental health care services. The org is helping with immediate natural disaster response and long-term support for flood victims. Donations can be made online here.

Other

Blue Ridge Public Radio - obviously these NPR folks have been working around the clock to keep people informed in the old-fashioned way, over the airwaves. You can support them here.

[master-of-47-dudes]

Oh! For those of you who like Lancer, I've made major progress in the campaign I'm writing: Kindness of strangers!

LRBT-III, otherwise known as Blanche to the locals. This sun-baked dustbowl of a planet has the high honor of being one of the few habitable terrestrial bodies that anyone has discovered in the Long Rim, and probably the only one that's actually any use to anyone. Luckily- or not so luckily, if you ask some people- it was Union that found it first. Well, about 70 years ago when they stumbled across this star system they got it in their heads that the Long Rim's days were numbered. There’s untold millions living out there scattered along the emptiest shipping lane in the known galaxy who'd need a way out once no one needed to pass them by, and by Christ the Buddha Union was gonna be there for them waiting with open arms.

All of that is background, though. You? You’re a bunch of mercenaries who got their hands on a couple of GMSes, decided to make your manna selling violence for pay. Worlds like Blanche don't take to colonies very well, so even two generations in there's still plenty of frontier out there being settled and railroad tracks being laid. The people out there struggle day by day to survive, and people like you are there to protect them from those who got sick of the hard life. Not everyone out there has the guts to stand up for the little guy- that's why you're called Lancers.

A setting and a campaign all in one, Kindness Of Strangers and its (eventual) follow-up Dancing With the Devil are a series of Wild West-themed 2-mission adventures intended to take players from 0-12 as they find themselves embroiled in the midst of a corporate conspiracy to overthrow the Union-backed government of the isolated colony of Blanche and a ploy to seize control over a nearly completed Blinkstation. All the while, a strange religious movement worshipping an eons-dead alien civilization grows ever more influential in the background...

This campaign tackles themes of colonialism, nationalism, corruption, and conflict between indigenous peoples, settlers, and immigrants, all in a world where well-meaning intentions have gone sour and the ghosts of the past have come back to haunt it.

Kindness of Strangers, Missions 1-3

Field Guide to LRBT-PN

Exotic Gear Documentation

Variant Frame Documentation

Kindness of Strangers Worldbuilding Short Stories

Kindness of Strangers LCP, Maps, and Assets

This latest update includes the first(ish) draft of Mission 3: The Field of Blue Children, allowing play of the first half of Act 2 and extending the LL range from 0-3. Mission 3 is heavily intrigue and RP focused, featuring a wide suite of characters, relationships, and locations in the Tourist town of Baugh- a thriving immigrant community situated on a soda lake.

The PCs have been hired to investigate a bomb threat at the newly completed Baugh Pumpworks, and water filtration and chemical processing facility that stands to end the water shortage and threatens corporate control over the colony's water supply- but is everything really as it seems? In the process, the PCs will go toe to toe with teenage gearheads, Pinkerton-expies, and a group of Sparri Espadas who got roped into this whole mess, and uncover the mystery behind the threat!

Also, there's a subaltern that talks like a pirate and catholicism.

Anyway this mission also includes a custom NPC Template (kind of, I don't know how to design the LCP for that but i did include instructions on how it works), several new reserves, and several custom sitreps!

So, check it out- I'm always looking for feedback.

[theredofoctober]

MANNA- CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: APPLE

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

TW for eating disorders, noncon, abuse, Daddy kink, cannibalism mentions, murder mentions, violence, blood

Read after the cut

---

Samhain falls upon the house like the red tongue of night, the rooms hung with bones and branches and the glinting skulls of animals, a morbid elegance to the season's ode.

Hannibal allows you to stand at a partially open window to sniff at the dark musk of the air which like some skilled perfumer you split of its ingredients with a discerning nose: rain in the earth, still pools of gingery leaves, the wind that scuttles the panes in its mischief, and the brew of an oncoming storm, a scent like fire and thunder.

"When exactly am I allowed to go outside again?" you ask, hanging a woeful head as far from the window as Hannibal will allow.

"When I can trust you to stay at my side or return to me," he says, and he draws you gently in again and shuts the latch upon the world.

You gaze at him, wistful and resentful; never, then, you think, unless you have nowhere else to go.

Yet with Will's arrival suspended over you like the immutable certainty of execution you wonder if perhaps you may well leave this dwelling, if only as meat carried in the case of some guest's stomach.

Hannibal surely notices your pensive mood, yet he does not address it, considering it some shade of your illness behind you, perhaps, or else pouting reproach that he had turned you across his knee that morning for hiding a pancake in the sleeve of your pyjamas.

He’d struck you lightly, no more than four times, at that, merely enough to spur a smarting star at your sex in some primitive answer to your embarrassment.

"It appears that I've overexcited you," Hannibal had said, rather seriously. "What is to be done about that?"

He had brought you up into his lap, your back to his crimson velvet dressing gown, and had delivered the rule of his punishment until you ran with the white ink of it, beating your heels against his calves in a pointless drum of hatred.

How sweetly he had set you down, then, touching your sulking lip with his own mouth until you'd kissed him in return to be rid of him.

"I want a bath," you'd said, and he had chuckled.

"As do I."

He'd brought you atop him again in the tub, the slippery passage of his hands pleasant upon you, and you'd wished you’d had the strength to shove him low under the suds to drown him.

But then orgasm had humbled you in your ruminations of revenge, and you’d allowed him to towel you and pull a pinafore over your head with lowered eyes, defeated.

As you’d done so you’d considered if you’d prefer your fathers to raise you in savagery alone, followers of Dionysus tearing apart a grieving Orpheus; you’ve myth on the mind, and all of it at the junctures of dying.

But you are enamoured now by the luxuries of life and body they festoon about you, and to revoke them for the sake of hubris would be to spit yourself in the eye.

You will take their gifts, you decide, even the twist of forbidden climax until you’re away from the house.

This, at least, you deserve from them, a reward for a gruelling actor’s work.

Now you await Will's arrival in the living room, staring with a perpetual absence of inspiration at the bare leaves of your journal as Hannibal oversees this activity from a narrow distance.

You've been continually defended against his evils by Will's attachment to you, yet should he choose to turn on the monster you may go down with him, taken off over Hannibal’s shoulder to some unknown country, or else killed and so tossed to the wolves of the press for their fodder.

It had been a fool’s hope to think that Will would betray his friend and bring down the Bureau in a surge of his most righteous instincts. Still there may yet be some chance of it, for as he enters at the front door you interpret from the brusque landing of his footfalls the extent of his wounded temper.

A sick pass of cold raises the hairs on your arms, and Hannibal gets up from peeling an apple for you with a pretty little knife to drape a blanket about your shoulders.

“If you’d agree to gain some modest weight you wouldn’t suffer like this,” he says, then glances up, distracted, as Will clears his throat at the threshold.

He is severe, almost refined in an expensive black sweater and jeans, his hair—worn in a shorter cut—combed back from his forehead in a gelled wave. There is a new scent on him, not the ship-bottled spray of the norm but something deep and rich, reminiscent of libraries and dark, polished wood.

You’re so startled by the alteration in him that you release a nervy giggle, shielding your mouth behind a hand as Will’s eyes glide coolly over you.

"Hello, Will,” says Hannibal. “I'm glad that you could make the time to see us.”

Will nods shortly, his critical gaze panning the room.

"You decorated,” he says. “Do you celebrate Hallowe'en in Lithuania?"

"Traditionally, we do not. But I've always enjoyed the holiday's pagan roots, the themes of warding away spirits at a time the wall between two worlds is thin."

The younger man's mouth quirks into something not quite a smile.

"That, and you just wanted to spoil her, as usual."

Hannibal's head tilts at a slight angle as he surveys Will’s expression.

"Our Little One has struggled as of late,” he says neutrally. “If I might lift her mood in this small way then I'm only glad to be of service."

He touches your shoulder, and in a panicked awkwardness you comment, "I really wish the decorations were on display all year. Hi, Daddy, by the way."

You stand up to kiss Will on the mouth, which he coldly allows, his arms tense as a general’s at his sides. He doesn’t meet your eyes as you look, imploring, into his, only pushes you lightly back into your seat and glances towards the kitchen.

"Something's cooking."

"Yes,” says Hannibal. “I thought a seasonal stew would be pleasant for this time of year."

"A stew,” Will repeats, with a hard, false innocence. “What's in it, specifically? Any particular ingredients I should know about?"

You glimpse suspicion descend over Hannibal like a winter dawn, his nostrils flaring.

"Would I be correct in thinking that there are unspoken layers to that question?”

"Seemed appropriate considering the undisclosed intentions behind some of the meals we've shared together, Dr Lecter."

You cannot yet tell whether he refers to the matter of meat or the other contents, nor does Hannibal, for though his hand returns to the apple knife it is only to cut the fruit into slender arches on a plate.

"You suspect me of poisoning you in some manner, I presume," he says, at last.

"This is beyond suspicion,” snaps Will. “You guessed that I had encephalitis— knew that I did. Probably sniffed it out the same way you've picked up on cancer, and you pretended ignorance. Comforted me while serving up anything you could think of to trigger another episode for your own entertainment. Riveted by the rat in the maze."

Hannibal makes no attempt to deny the accusation, merely continuing to cut the apple with slow, artful strokes of the wrist.

"She implicated me, I presume."

"Don't make this about her. I want to know why you did it.”

Will takes a step across the room, seeming drawn into habitual closeness to Hannibal despite his anger with him.

“I've remembered other things,” he says. “Bright lights. Your voice in my ear. Your hands on me. Moments that were already starting to surface. All this time you've been pulling my strings and I could never quite see it.”

Horror at his words torments you like some dungeon machine. You begin to shake, only the soft fabric of the couch cushioning the sound of your distress.

"You're aware of how close I've come to thinking I was responsible for murders I didn't commit,” says Will. “That I've contaminated crime scenes. Woken up at the side of the road with no idea what happened to me, or if I'd hurt someone. Hurt her—"

At this he jerks his newly sleek head towards you.

"That you would never have done,” says Hannibal.

"Don't try to comfort me with your empty platitudes. You wanted me to go over the edge. To make me kill again under different circumstances. Tell me I'm wrong."

The air in the room is all cinnamon and cyanide, the stench of lies dug up like a grave. Hannibal sets the plate of fruit before you and lifts his face to Will’s. When he speaks it is with the soft urgency of desperation, the equivalent of begging on his knees.

"I wanted to erode the barriers that prevent you from accessing your natural instincts. You've lived in seclusion, performing the dull actions of a self untrue to you merely to avoid facing and accepting that reality. I regret my methods, but my intentions were to nurture you into comprehending the remedy to your unhappiness.”

"You have pretty shoddy communication skills for a psychiatrist, Dr Lecter,” says Will, sharp with contempt.

"You believe that I should have asked you for your consent in this trial."

"Yes. Obviously."

You watch the two men with one hand clasped to your breastbone, feeling the lilt of your heart against your fingertips.

"I see,” says Hannibal. “Then why did you submit to waive that right in regards to our unhappy charge?”

"She needs this treatment to survive,” Will barks. “I survived for years without killing anyone. I don't need it."

"And what sort of existence was it to brood, tormented, into a lonely whiskey glass? Severed from love, community, and from the pastimes you craved? I'd argue the lust that haunts you is as necessary to your quality of life as food is to our darling girl."

Will utters a single laugh and turns on his heel as he replies.

"This may come as a shock to your ego, Dr Lecter, but that's not for you to decide."

As Will makes for the door you dart out of your seat after him.

"Wait!” you cry. “Where are you going?"

"To the bathroom,” says Will, “then to make myself another drink.”

"I'll come with you."

"No thanks. Now my encephalitis is on the way out I don't need a chaperone. I can hold it myself.”

He disappears around the corner, a rude breed of rejection.

As you turn back to Hannibal he stands up to meet you, his dominant hand clapping against your face with such velocity that you cannot quite believe what he has done.

You keel backwards, your very teeth seeming shaken in their bed of gums.

“You hit me,” you say, your voice trembling with awe. “But when Will did it you—”

“Will feared striking you in the face would cause you lasting injury,” says Hannibal. “I do not share his concerns. I’ve tolerated your disrespect with more patience than I’m accustomed to permitting without notable consequence. To insert yourself between Will and I with the intent of ending our friendship is unforgivable.”

The apple knife is in his other hand, you notice, though not yet raised to slice through to the red of your throat.

“Don’t hurt me,” you whimper. “Give me another chance.”

Hannibal considers like some poised herald of justice.

“You must rectify your mistake,” he says, finally.

A hysterical, indignant surge of courage comes over you.

“What can I do? He stays for you. This has always been about you. If Will didn’t think so much of you then he would have tattled to Jack, or Alana, or any of them already. He would have turned you in.”

“You’re lucky that he did not.”

“Well, I knew that he wouldn’t,” you insist. “I wanted him to, but I knew it was all totally pointless. And guess what, Daddy— the only reason I said anything about the food was to make him think you’d treat him the same way you treat me. I had no idea it was actually true. How could you? He’s supposed to be your friend. More than that. If he leaves you then it’s your fault, not mine.”

The truth of this crosses Hannibal’s features, and without a word he returns to place the knife back on the table.

In that instant you see that he had never desired to use it, that he’d only been so close to heartbreak that he would have made a regrettable error in the fog of it.

Emboldened, you approach him and put your sweating hand into his.

“You should just tell him you’re sorry,” you urge him. “Tell him how you really feel. I don’t get why you haven’t already. Don’t you think he probably feels the same way?”

You fall silent as Will opens the living room door again.

“Talking about me?” he asks, catching sight of your sombre faces greeting his. “What did I tell you about getting involved?”

This directed at you with a sharpness that you find insulting.

“I was only saying that I don’t want you to go,” you lie. “Not without me.”

Will sits down heavily in an armchair with an air of his old dislike.

“Why doesn’t that surprise me? You’re selfish and self-absorbed. You’re needy enough to lap up any attention we give you, but you just love playing us against each other. Sure, you’re scared of where you’d end up if I walked out on you, but the minute you saw a disagreement brewing between us you just lapped it up. Nothing Dr Lecter could make for you could ever taste that sweet.”

Astonished by the attack, you begin, “Daddy, I—”

Will cuts in.

“Admit it. You’ve been looking for an opportunity to set this up for weeks. And Dr Lecter is far from off the hook, but he’s right. You’ve been sticking the knife in so deep it’s struck the bone.

“It’s not just because you hate us, either. It’s because you know that we’re the only ones that can stop you from starving yourself to death. If Hannibal hadn’t taken care of you this week you’d be right back where you were on that first day.”

Bewildered, you study his clenched jaw, the white hand worked about one of Hannibal’s wine glasses, and wonder if he’s become inexplicably drunk for you to emerge as the fresh target of his resentment.

“None of this is about me,” you say, and Will chuckles shortly.

“Of course it is. The night of the seizure— when I thought about it long enough I realised that Hannibal triggered it knowing that no matter how much you despised me you’d still reach out to help me. You’re soft that way; he saw that in you.

“If he hadn’t done it we would have kept on wanting to kill one another, and I wouldn’t feel anything for you but obligation. Trapped by your existence.”

“And how do you feel towards her now?” asks Hannibal with the caution of knowing he is still the enemy.

“At the moment, frustrated.”

“But in general?”

Will looks at you, and some of the rage alights from him in a visible loosening of his frame.

“I’d kill for her,” he admits. “And I don’t say that lightly. Whenever I step back and examine that urge in myself I find it repulsive. But I know what I’d do to protect her. Even from you.”

Unsure whether to embrace him or to recoil in terror of his aggression you gasp aloud.

“You’ll never need to concern yourself about me in that regard, Will,” says Hannibal. “As close as our daughter may attempt to drive me to that end, I will not go to it.”

Unimpressed, Will samples his wine, the red on his lips like the quickening of blood.

“Maybe not, but you’ll stand right on the edge. Damaging the people you’re close to is a symptom of caring for them, apparently.”

Amused by the jab, Hannibal says, “Is it not yours as well? Perhaps I should anticipate a retaliatory action, then.”

Their bickering is intimate in a way that you doubt Will is quite aware of, yet that irrefutably exists; why else would he remain in the sphere of a man that has thrust such an assault upon his mind?

Feeling out of place amidst such dangerous chemistry you sidestep towards the door.

Will catches you by the arm as you pass him.

“Wait. We should make the effort to spend time together as a family. Shouldn’t we?”

He glances at Hannibal, a subtle attempt to dominate the room.

“We should,” says Hannibal. “Sit down, Little One.”

You hover, still stunned by the slap, by Will’s avowal of passion, and by his decision to stand by a creature of such evil.

Your younger captor gestures to the arm of his chair, and without a word you sit, starting at his touch at your back. He strokes you lightly, affection and possessiveness in every joint of his hand.

Helpless before such love you lean against him, and Hannibal looks upon you both with what you interpret as longing.

“I realised something about the Lover,” says Will. “I’ve gotten a greater understanding of him over the past few days. Guess you can pat yourself on the back for clearing my head.”

“I take no credit,” says Hannibal. “Your revelations are entirely your own. What are they exactly?”

Will savours a mouthful of wine for a long second before he answers.

“The Lover isn’t a local. That’s why he deposits his victims by or in rivers; they lead back home, or remind him of it, anyway. He’s taking them there like newlyweds the way he hopes to return with his muse.

“Our killer has travelled. Likely he’s changed his name. We’ll find similar murders in other states. They will have been committed when he was a young man. Inexperienced. Hadn’t honed his methods yet.”

Hannibal—who is acquainted with the Lover, could solve this case with the mere utterance of syllables—dons an expression of believable interest.

“You’re implying that he had a previous muse.”

“Yes. The murders follow a very specific timeline. The Lover’s latest paramour probably wasn’t even born yet when he first started killing.”

“She died,” you say suddenly. “His first ‘real’ doll. He killed her?”

“Not on purpose,” says Will, and his hand rises to your waist, drawing you closer to him. “Or only as a last resort. The Lover craves total control over his bride. If she didn’t fall into line, or if his fantasy was somehow shattered then she had to die like the others. This time he’s sure it’s true love.”

*

The evening continues in its implacable tension, and when at last you’re allowed to go up to bed you feel relieved to have escaped it.

You stare at a Clive Barker novel as the storm gnaws at the crust of night, your vision adhered to the same handful of words until they become absent of definition.

Hannibal’s slap is a bruise on the brain, seeping in between each thought until you throw your book aside with a groan.

It’s a new thing to fear that you’ve glimpsed in him, how in a crisis he may, like his friend, be quite rash.

The closer they become even in argument the more their behaviours overlap and interchange— yet Hannibal’s strike was unlike Will’s, you noticed, quick, and clean, and practiced. It is how he must slash a throat or break the neck of any victim, and though you’ve felt death in such proximity you are wet between the legs from the sick exhilaration of having given it the slip another day.

Discomforted, you turn on your side and attempt to commit yourself to slumber. Only by the help of the pills at your bedside do you induce that state, a servant to your captor’s care even in so natural a transition as this.

*

In the night you wake to realise that Will has been watching you sleep, standing back-lit in the doorway as thunder runs like gravel over the house.

You lie tangled in a cirque of sheets, your hair static with fear, and from the storm. The wind breaks its fists against the window panes, and you see the shape of Will's reflection there, a malevolent wisp in the glass.

"You're still here?" you ask, softly, and Will starts, having not known that you’d awoken. "Are you... staying the night?"

"No," says Will, after a strange pause. "I can't. I'm teaching tomorrow. Can't skip it."

He looks damp and pasty in the dim light, a grub dug up from the earth. You sit up in bed, oddly moved and rather alarmed by his appearance.

"You're still sick," you say. “Aren’t you?”

Will shakes his head slowly, coils of dark hair like a coronet on his brow.

"No," he says. “I just remembered something. A dream I had during one of my fevers. About you."

The words send such a chill through you that you draw yourself flat against the headboard, away from him.

"What was the dream?" you ask, although you don't want to know.

Glancing downwards in his own avoidance, Will reads some shape in the dark.

“I don't know if I should tell you.”

Against your better judgement, you enquire, "Why not?"

"Feels like it'd be speaking it into being, somehow."

You wrap arms of ice around your kneecaps.

"I thought you didn't believe in that stuff."

Will swallows audibly, clenching a hand on one side of the door.

"I... don't. But this dream is different."

You feel how he craves to come to you, to hold you, and to be held in turn, both of you vulnerable and pathetic. You know how he itches to run away and to hide in his house, that fortress of solitude.

Still he remains in the doorway, the threshold between these two needs.

"Wait," you say, suddenly. "I don't have to know."

But Will wets his lips and sways like a drunk, and then he says, “In the dream you escape from here. You run away. It's mid-autumn; the trees are dripping with so many orange leaves it's like I'm chasing you through a field of fire. My blood is up at the sight of you like you've triggered some instinctual urge to hunt."

Will closes his eyes in recollection, and you see them flicker below the lids as though he is slumbering, still.

"It's raining," he says. "Just like tonight. It's raining, and your dress is wet against you, and you're dirty, and your hair is full of leaves, and I'm angry because even in that dream I know that you belong with me and Hannibal."

"Don't," you mumble, but Will doesn't seem to hear you, returning to the red place of sleep.

"I catch you from behind," he murmurs. "My arms around your waist, pulling you down into the leaves with me. You're screaming, begging me to let me go, but you don't use my name. You call me 'Daddy', and that's a mistake, because it reminds me of exactly how mad I am that you dared to run away from me. The thrill of chasing you, and all that rage—

"I hit you. I kiss you. I stuff your mouth with dirty leaves like some kind of scarecrow, and I tear your stupid little dress off your body, and I thrust inside you as the rain falls down onto us."

Halting, Will mops his face with an erratic hand.

"Then I enter you in a second way, because I have a knife, and when I stab you it is— beautiful.

You moan aloud in horror, and Will stares past you as though he's forgotten that you're in the room.

"I stab you as I move inside you, and in that moment I can't decide which sensation is more pleasurable. There's warmth both ways, the feeling of taking what I want, of having complete power over you, and it's overwhelming. I woke up from that dream sick to my stomach, but I wasn't as horrified as I should have been."

Stiff and frail as an invalid child you wrap yourself into your sheets as though they might protect you from him.

"I was right," you rasp. "Deep down you want to kill me."

"No!"

This, spoken with an urgency that startles you.

"No," Will repeats, in a softer voice. "I don't. But if you ever try to run away I can't say for sure that it wouldn't end like that dream. It was potent, and it felt... real."

Thunder roars like the pain of a goliath beyond your bedroom window, and you reach up to draw the curtains shut.

"I'll never run away," you say, in a pinched voice. "Hannibal's too smart to let me do that."

At this Will looks at you with eyes of such blue darkness that it's like gazing into the endless graves of the sea.

"He might let you try, some day," he says. "Just to see what I’ll do."

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Hello! I have a request. So... seven months ago, I lost the ability to write the way I used to ever since I found warmth when I fell deeply in love.

Instead of tears sprinkling down to form poetry, it’s only petals being carried by a gentle breeze. Why is it harder to write about joy?

How is it that I know numerous words to describe emotional pain but so few to describe this exuberant feeling which is wonderful and almost unbearable (in a good way)? I'm wondering if you could share some words to help describe all kinds of beautiful and positive feeling? Thank you. I love your blog. :)

Hi, thank you for sharing your joy with me. Perhaps there is no need for poetry in the face of happiness, because perhaps happiness demands to be felt. Perhaps happiness is a jealous lover and it demands our undivided attention. In return for your heartwarming message, here are some words related to beautiful, positive feelings that perhaps may help you rediscover poetry:

Afterglow - a pleasant effect or feeling that lingers after something is done, experienced, or achieved

Ardor - an often restless or transitory warmth of feeling

Beatitude - a state of utmost bliss

Blithesome - gay, merry

Cacoëthes - an insatiable desire

Cupidity - strong desire

Delectation - delight, enjoyment

Eudaemonism - a theory that the highest ethical goal is happiness and personal well-being

Eupeptic - cheerful, optimistic

Exuberant - joyously unrestrained and enthusiastic

Exultant - filled with or expressing great joy or triumph

Felicity - the quality or state of being happy

Fervor - intensity of feeling or expression

Frolicsome - full of gaiety; playful, sportive

Gladsome - giving or showing joy; cheerful

Jocund - marked by or suggestive of high spirits and lively mirthfulness

Joie de vivre - keen or buoyant enjoyment of life

Jollity - the quality or state of being jolly; merriment

Lighthearted - cheerfully optimistic and hopeful; easygoing

Manna - a usually sudden and unexpected source of gratification, pleasure, or gain

Mirth - gladness or gaiety as shown by or accompanied with laughter

Pleasance - a feeling of pleasure; delight

Rapture - an expression or manifestation of ecstasy or passion

Ravish - to overcome with emotion (such as joy or delight)

Rollicking - boisterously carefree, joyful, or high-spirited

Roseate - overly optimistic; viewed favorably

Titillating - pleasantly stimulating or exciting

Torrid - ardent, passionate

Vehement - intensely emotional; impassioned, fervid

Zeal - eagerness and ardent interest in pursuit of something

Hope this helps! If it does, do send me a link to your writing, or tag me. I'd love to read your work.

More: On Emotions More: Word Lists

[jiminiecrickets]

HONEY WILD & MANNA-DEW. JJK / M!READER

summary. werewolves are dirty, savage, brutal beasts, jungkook thinks. after nursing a particularly pathetic one back to full health and realising just how attractive he is... well, vampires have never been known to evade what they want.

wc. 3.8k

tags. smut | vampire!jk, werewolf!reader, dom bottom!jk, sub top!reader, reader is generally described as "strong", jk calls r. mutt/dog/pup/puppy (slight degradation), praise (r. receiving), slight dumbification (? r.)

notes. written for and with nick :) you know who you are. thank you for everything !! <33

"fancy seeing you here, darling."

"i'm not your darling," jungkook replies immediately, his expression souring. he throws back his glass of whiskey, setting the empty glass down on the dark counter. he spins around on his stool, leaning his elbows back against the counter as he stares coolly up at you, his eyes hard with annoyance. "excuse me, please. i think it's time to go home."

when he shifts, a shock runs through you, and it's automatic when you cage him in, arms shielding him from the outside world. your face is inches away from his, drawn into a frown. "you told me to come here. really gonna leave me alone without buyin' me a drink? that seems like the nice thing to do."

"i did tell you," he says airily, his gaze raking over your figure. the tight shirt you've donned under a jacket emphasises the raw strength werewolves are known for. "i've just changed my mind. you look better when the lights are off."

he smirks, eyes glittering coldly up at you, and he pushes your arm out of the way to stand. he's stunning in an all-black ensemble, his buttoned shirt with its rolled sleeves held together by a single brave button over his belt. he tucks his hands into the pockets of his perfectly-pressed trousers and cocks his head, gaze unwavering as your jaw ticks. "come, puppy. you'll walk me home."

as he turns on his heel, weaving with supernatural ease through the thick crowds like a ghost, you shut your eyes tightly, dragging a hand down your face with a groan.

fuck. you should head the opposite way; every instinct in you is screaming it.

he hums softly as you join his side, strolling down the neon-lit city streets. he'd never stopped walking – he knows the hold he has on you. "good dog. if only you listened so well all the time."

 you step in front of him. he glances up expectantly, placing his hand on his hip. "yes, mutt? what is it?"

"come on, darling. you can drop the façade. you aren't fooling anyone – everyone can tell you like this – like us." a smirk tugs at your lips. "say, when we get to your house... how far in would you like to go in? living room, kitchen? maybe even just the foyer?"

"quiet," he hisses. "this means nothing! we are nothing! you're a rabid dog who knows nothing except fucking and fighting!"

"really? you seemed to quite like how rabid i was last night."

he scowls, his glare deepening. his eyes flash, for the briefest moment, a dark, swirling, razing red. he leans in. "you owe your life to me, mutt. you're in no position to be mouthing off at me." he reaches up, seizing your jaw, and in a quarter of a second you find yourself pinned against a brick wall, the wind knocked out of your lungs. he presses his body flush against yours – you can feel the uncanny rise and fall of his chest, the plane of his stomach, the sturdy thighs against yours.

"what, pup? don't want to talk now?" he tilts his head, shifting his thigh between yours almost unnoticeably. you certainly do, and he smirks when your breath hitches. he leans in, baring his fangs and nipping at your neck. he whispers into your skin, "be a good boy, darling. you don't have your pack here to look good for – just look good for me. can you do that?"

your throat bobs and he tracks the motion with his sharp eyes. he waits patiently, fingers digging tighter into your skin, and you wince, inclining your head such a tiny degree that anyone lesser would miss it entirely.

jungkook hums and pulls away, releasing you. you loose a soft, shuddering breath, rubbing your jaw where his nails dug crescents into your skin. heat bubbles low in your stomach.

he smiles, sharp and fanged, and turns away. he beckons over his shoulder with a short whistle. "heel, mutt. seems like we still need to do a lot of training – better start right away."

—

"come."

it's so fucking humiliating. your entire face is aflame as you shuffle forward, your hands clenched at your sides, trembling slightly with the pain of your nails digging into your palms. your cock stands at attention, dark and heavy, and jungkook hums, taking it into his hand. your eyes squeeze tight in a futile attempt to ignore the way he twists his wrist so expertly – and he does it all with a demure smile, knees crossed neatly as he perches at the end of the bed.

the bed. big enough to fit both of you comfortably. a dangerous sort of hope blooms in your chest. maybe he'll finally let you touch him.

"that's my good boy," he coos, stroking you to a quick beat as he watches your every move. no twitch or flinch goes unnoticed. you're trying so hard, and lust warms his chest where his heart should beat. "let's try this again. sit."

you kneel at his feet, your head bowed. your hands close into fists on top of your bare thighs as he kisses the top of your head, stroking the place where your ears would be, had tonight been a full moon. it wasn't – not for one more day. you found yourself growing antsy, staring at open green parks and forested areas with more longing than usual.

you shudder as he digs his fingers into your scalp, massaging deeply. you swallow a moan, but it comes out half-choked as a white shudder zings down your spine. you barely suppress a whimper when he strokes your hair, petting you as if he loved you. you can feel your thoughts struggle – you make a valiant effort, concentrating on forming clear and logical sentences in your head.

and then he scratches you behind the ear. everything melts. you whine softly, pushing into his hand as you grip his legs. as soon as his hand halts, your brain catches up, and you yank away, defaulting to a proper sit.

he sighs, and the sound makes your heart leap in distress. "puppy..."

"no," you blurt out, an embarrassing shake to your voice. "no, please, i'll be good – i will! don't start again, please don't start again..."

he smells so good. like sweet, sharp wildberries. you like wildberries.

"very well," he breathes. "off."

you reach for his shirt, unbuttoning it with shaky hands. he watches you carefully and you swallow as you lock eyes with him, pushing the cloth over the lines of his shoulders. you tuck it out of his belt and sit back on your heels, folding the garment neatly into a square and setting it aside. you gaze expectantly up at him.

"good pup," he whispers, before rising to his feet. you will yourself to keep your eyes on his and not on the cute bulge five inches from your face. "off."

you suck in a deep breath as you unbuckle his belt deftly. you've done this enough times by now to do it in one motion. gently, you drag the cold black zipper down, hovering your hands over his skin as you tug his trousers down his long legs. the black cloth falls. he's not wearing any underwear. your mouth feels dry.

"you're doing so well. bed," he murmurs, stepping back until the backs of his knees touch the foot of the mattress. you crawl over him, hovering steadily as you stare down at him with rapture and painful anticipation. your cock hangs heavy between your thighs, right between his legs, but he ignores it, propping himself up on an elbow. the other hand trails between his thighs.

"ah, fuck..." he whispers as he slides a finger into his already-loved ass, soon adding a second. he begins to finger himself, soft breaths and gasps falling from those perfect rosy lips. he notices the darkening hunger in your eyes. "stay," he orders firmly, his voice breathy but not unsteady. "stay."

you can't breathe. you've tried this thrice before and all three times you failed to get further than this. it wasn't fair. he kept changing the order of his commands.

his widens his legs, hooking his ankles around the backs of your knees. his back arches as he moans, lashes fluttering shut as his expression goes lax with pleasure.

the lube makes things wet and filthy. your arms shake, crumbling under the pressure of the sight of him touching himself. nothing you do keeps the addicting sound of his moans out of your head.

"fu-uck," he drawls, inserting a third finger. his whole body shudders, his thighs pressed firmly against the sides of yours. he opens his eyes, gazing up at you with eyes of cut rubies, flashing in the semi-darkness. both of you are night-dwellers, creatures of the dark and cold night. you can see every pulse and twist in excruciating detail.

jungkook moans your name in a breath, his fingers sliding easily against his walls. nothing fills him up as well as you do, but he'd rather die than admit it to you. he shifts in his fancy bedsheets – oh, how deliciously wrong it feels to taint them like this – and wraps his slender fingers around his leaking cock, stroking himself slowly in time with his quicker fingers.

you watch, paralysed. your cock throbs at the sight of his pretty ass clenching around his fingers, and your hips rock involuntarily. it leaks precum embarrassingly steadily, pooling on a spot on his bedsheets.

jungkook smirks, moans soft and airy like pants for air. "stay," he says warningly when you begin to fidget, restless as you admire the curves and planes of his body. his thighs tighten around yours, keeping you steady. your fingers flex.

you can practically smell his lust. his cock throbs in his palm, wet and slick from his prior games. a spurt of precum dribbles down his shaft and he swiftly sweeps it up, smearing it along his length with a greedy moan.

fists clenching in the sheets, you close your eyes stiffly, thinking of anything but him. anything except him and his pretty smirks and lithe body and tight little—

"open your eyes," he commands, and they fly open. "want to touch?"

"yes," you rasp, your throat bobbing harshly. "yes, oh, fuck – yes, i do..."

"mm, well, you can't," he teases. "hah – you look so fucking pathetic, did you know that? so big and strong, and yet reduced to near tears because of someone like me. you must be ashamed of yourself, mutt."

your hips jerk at the title. a tiny keen escapes your lips. jungkook laughs, his hands quickening as his voice grows softer, airier. "ooh, that was almost a restart right there. oh, darling, your pretty cock's all swollen and needy – you look the best like this, trembling for me as if you're a young pup all over again."

all you can do is whine, your cock throbbing hotly with need. fuck, you can feel it all the way up your spine – the need to be inside of him, the need to show him how good you are, the need to prove that you're his. all and entirely his.

"it's okay, puppy. you're doing so well," jungkook breathes, watching with satisfaction as a droplet of sweat rolls down your heaving chest. your expression is starved and dark, brows furrowed with an almost beastly intensity.

you're just so cute. he can't help but want to shower you in praise. he shouldn't – you're just an unruly mutt, uncontrollable and savage when the full moon comes around. he's leagues above you on the food chain.

he shouldn't even be entertaining you like this – not when your kind are known for their quick-to-love natures. if he goes a step too far, you'll be all over him, all the time. all over his black clothes and antique vases. wolves are notoriously hard to shake off once they've developed a liking for someone.

he slides his fingers out of himself with a soft moan, reaching for your dripping cock. you flinch when he slides his palm over the tip, breathing growing shaky.

"i see why they call you monsters," he whispers with a smirk. he tugs his lower lip between his teeth, a single white fang bright white against the dark pink of his lips. "you want to claim me with this, mm?"

you nearly buckle under the fog filling your skull, his touch cold and burning. he hums, relaxing in the comfortable weight of your heat, radiating from your skin as if there's a star in the place of a soul. fucking a vampire in the filthiest ways could never begin to challenge how good it feels to simply be near you, engulfed in the blazing heat of your embrace.

him, with his icy skin and fanged sneers... you, with your cocky smirks and frequent, flirty touches. it's a match made in hell and escaping it seems awfully counterintuitive.

"please," you whine, bucking into his fist stiffly. "want... w-want you – baby, please—"

"i'm not your baby," jungkook reminds you with a sharp flick of his wrist. his thumb runs along the pulsing veins he knows are most sensitive. "i'm not your darling, not your baby. i never can and never will be. do you understand, mutt?"

you nod feebly, grunting as he squeezes the base of your cock in warning. "i un-understand..."

"better." he guides the head of your cock to his ass and your breath hitches as your tip rubs against his wet hole, sending shocks of heat up your nerves. "go slowly. i want to feel all of you."

his face pinches as you thrust in shallowly, the inches sinking in with ease. your slick cock glides against his soft walls, pulsing tightly against them. he gasps as you nudge that spot inside him, swollen and tender with his playing. "fuck, puppy, right there!"

your cock twitches at the breathy keen of his moans. you gnaw on the inside of your cheek, gently thrusting in until he's taken all of you. your balls press against his ass and he shudders, ass clenching like a vice around you.

you can't help it. you whimper his name, thrusting faster, and he grunts in surprise. his eyes fly open.

"f-fuck—! did i tell you to go faster?" he demands. "dumb mutt! do you want to do this all again?"

"no," you groan, your hips stilling. you shift over him, powerful thighs tense and trembling beneath his. "n-no..."

he grabs your jaw and tilts your head up, forcing you to look him in the eye. arousal burns low in his belly at the sight of complete and utter want dominating your expression: lips parted, throat bobbing constantly, eyes glazed and dark. your tongue darts out and runs over your lower lip, leaving a pretty sheen in its wake.

"good," he says eventually, and shifts his hand. it goes from clawing at your jaw to cupping your cheek, thumb swiping over your lips. you tilt your head and take his thumb between your lips, sucking gently as you stare up at him. those pretty eyes of yours are hazy and shimmery, as if you're on the verge of tears.

holy hell. jungkook releases a slow, steadying breath. having a man like you in the palm of his hand isn't doing anything for his superiority complex – you're really something else.

"move," he commands, his glare piercing you like a bullet through jelly. "what are you waiting for?"

you drop your head, shaking it with a gasp as he clenches around you. "i – i can't..."

"you can't?" he repeats, scoffing. "what's wrong with you, mutt? i give you an opportunity to please me, but you can't?"

a soft, embarrassed whine leaves your throat. your fingers itch to touch him – to hold him, to caress him, to worship him. all that pale, graceful, flawless skin, and not a single mark of your love. sure, it'll vanish in minutes, but you can fool yourself into thinking that it'll remain for weeks under his prim and proper black clothes.

"i can't," you whimper. "i'll... 'm gonna come..."

a short silence passes between you. then: he barks a laugh, sharp and derisive. "really? you're that excited from being told what to do? oh, my poor puppy... you're so adorable. i just wanna sink my teeth into you," he coos, his arm snaking around your shoulders. the other hand slithers over your ribs, down your side, across your back. he squeezes your ass, pulling you deep into him. he grins as you throb inside of him, cock leaking profusely. "go on, then. touch me, pup."

in an instant, your hands are on him, learning him in ways so devoted it surges affection in the hollow of his chest. they run down his stomach and thighs, then back up again, cupping his chest around his upper ribs. you grip him like a toy, gently bouncing him on your twitching cock, and he moans, high and breathy, tugging you closer into the crook of his neck.

he really does smell sweet. you can't tell if it's his cologne or his shampoo, or if he just smells like that all of the time, but it's heavy, it's heady, and you can feel yourself getting drunk off of his scent. you tug him down onto your cock, grinding into his ass, and he grunts, grip tightening on your shoulders.

"you fill me up so well," he moans, wrapping his thighs around your waist as you fuck into him. "fuck, a-ah – you're such a good boy for me, huh? such an eager boy, so – mnh! – so obedient for me... make me come first and you'll be rewarded, okay? i-i'll reward you so well, fuck, my good boy—"

he squeaks as your hips quicken, slamming into him desperately. he cries out in pleasure, nails digging into the bulk of your shoulders as you smother him with your body, your face buried in his neck as he moans and cries. the wet smack of your cock against his ass each time you bury yourself hilt-deep inside of him is dangerously obscene, white-hot and buzzing his nerves.

"what—! what are you—" he can't bring himself to chastise you. your thick tip punches past his swollen prostate on each thrust and he mewls, slanting his mouth against yours hotly. he moans as you overpower him, your tongue diving into his mouth as his fingers tangle in the baby hairs at the back of your neck. his fangs nick your lip until blood and you groan, long and low and greedy.

he widens his shaky legs, his heels digging into the small of your back as he yanks you hard into him. you groan, deep and pleased, and slide an arm under his spine. your hips rock hungrily against his ass until the bedframe shakes.

"sorry, 'm sorry," you mumble, over and over again, warm breaths puffing against jungkook's collarbone. your head spins. the faraway guilt lays heavy over your mind like a blanket and the pleasure fires threads of heat through your whole body, aching and greedy. arousal pulses low in your belly. "'m so sorry, f-feels too good, you feel so good—"

"y-you stupid mutt!" he cries, his leaking cock bouncing on his belly. he slaps your side weakly, knuckling the raised trio of scars that cross your chest and stomach. you grab his wrists and pin them above his head, palms flat against the soft, pale insides of his wrists. you're dizzy with it, the way he sucks you in and refuses to let go. "s-slow down, nngh, i-i'm—!"

he seizes up, sides tightening as his cock spurts. his ass clenches and swallows you whole, his staccato cries and moans burning permanently into your brain. with one last thrust, you empty yourself inside him with a drawled whine, pulling his body flush to yours. he's so cold – it soothes your sweat-slick skin and you rock yourself against him, mind numb to everything but the white-hot pleasure concentrating in a tangled mess at the base of your cock, swollen and hot and dragging forcefully against his vice-like hole. it stretches for you, pink and hungry.

jungkook groans breathlessly, the mess on his stomach dripping down his sides. it soils his bedsheets. he tilts his head towards yours, his breath cold against the shell of your ear. you shudder, still filling him up, and he admires the way your muscle flexes under your skin with each panting breath.

eventually, he leans back against his pillows, his muscles aching pleasurably. his thighs loosen around your hips and you slowly pull out until just the tip, feeling cum drip out of him, and lazily push back in, fucking your cum deep into his ass. he moans, holding you chest-to-chest.

"wh... what was that?" he croaks, his voice strained from the volume of his cries. "fuck, puppy, you were doing so well..."

"n-no! i was good!" you bury yourself in his neck, breathing in his scent to calm your thudding heart. "you came first, i did what you told me to do! i was good, i promise."

"i told you to be gentle," he groans, slapping your chest. "bad dog."

"you take that back," you whine. "'m not bad!"

"no."

"take it back," you demand. he arches an eyebrow. you wilt. "please..."

"fine," he relents, "but only if you do something for me."

you perk up, eyes bright with interest. hell... how you can be so energetic after such a thorough fuck, he has no idea. "yes?"

he pushes lightly on your hips, pulling your cock out, and rolls over onto his stomach. he props his cheek on the backs of his hands, gazing up at you through heavy-lidded eyes over his perfect shoulder.

he smirks, wiggling his hips. "fuck me like this, mutt. you can be as rough as you like, but there's one rule."

"a rule?" your stare is trapped on his ass and the way his hole leaks your cum. it scratches a deep, animal itch inside you.

"mhm." he arches his back slightly and grins at the soft gasp you let out. "you can't touch me."

you glance up, wide-eyed. it's criminal how innocent you look. "w-what?"

"you heard me, puppy. no touching. if you can make me come without touching me, and without losing it yourself... well, i can think of a few fun things you can choose from."

"yes," you agree instantly, eyes pinned on the way his ass presses against your cock. you place it between his ass and he rocks his hips, grinding against it as he pins it to your stomach. "fucking hell, yes."

"good." his eyes glitter, somewhere between malice and mischief. he grins playfully and traces his fangs with the tip of his tongue, tasting your blood. he hums as you eagerly push back in, groaning at the slick feeling of his soft insides. "no need to rush, love. you don't want to fill yourself up with the entrées, do you? we'll be here all night long..."

[tradcathy]

He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

Deuteronomy 8:3

[alwaysrememberjesus]

Desert Places

The Lord . . . has watched over your journey through this vast wilderness. — Deuteronomy 2:7

When I was a young believer, I thought “mountaintop” experiences were where I would meet Jesus. But those highs rarely lasted or led to growth. Author Lina AbuJamra says it’s in the desert places where we meet God and grow. In her Bible study Through the Desert, she writes, “God’s aim is to use the desert places in our lives to make us stronger.” She continues, “God’s goodness is meant to be received in the midst of your pain, not proven by the absence of pain.”

It’s in the hard places of sorrow, loss, and pain that God helps us to grow in our faith and become closer to Him. As Lina learned, “The desert is not an oversight in God’s plan but an integral part of [our] growth process.”

God led many Old Testament patriarchs to the desert. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all had wilderness experiences. It was in the desert that God prepared Moses’ heart and called him to lead His people out of slavery (Exodus 3:1-2, 9-10). And it was in the desert that God “watched over [the Israelites’] journey” for forty years with His help and guidance (Deuteronomy 2:7).

God was with Moses and the Israelites each step of their way through the desert, and He’s with you and me in ours. In the desert, we learn to rely on God. There He meets us—and there we grow.

Valuable lessons can come from some of the strangest places. For ancient Israel, one of those places was the uninhabited zone known as the wilderness (Deuteronomy 2:1-7). The value that comes from trekking through such unwelcomed territory is described in chapter 8: “Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart . . . . He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna . . . to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” (vv. 2-3).

True safety isn’t determined by our location (lions’ den, fiery furnace, valley of the shadow of death, passing through fire or water). It comes with trust in the One who goes with us regardless of where we are.

[panlight]

hi! this is perhaps a very random question, but i come seeking your carlisle thoughts! 💕

we know that some of the cullens have preferences for drinking from certain animals (emmett with bears and edward with mountain lions? if i recall correctly?) — do you think carlisle has a preferred animal? is he partial to deer because they’re what “saved” him in a way? (altho i suppose the deer in 17th century england would be different than those in 21st century washington, so maybe it’s more of an “emotional” or memory thing than an actual taste thing?) or does he not have a particular preference, just whatever gets the job done, so to speak?

i was just randomly pondering this and wanted to know your thoughts, if you’re willing to share! ☺️

I tend to agree with you! If Carlisle has a favorite, I think it's probably deer. And it's not so much that it tastes good (because canonically carnivores taste better), but like you said, it was just the relief, the hope, that feeding on deer the first time gave him. The guy was all alone, with no one to explain this vampire stuff to him, he only knew his father and church considered them unholy demons. He tried to destroy himself, but nothing worked, so he hide in the forest for months hoping to starve to death. But he felt himself -- and his willpower -- getting weaker. And then like manna from Heaven, lo! A passing herd of deer! He was so starved that even that smelled good to him and triggered the hunting instinct and he realized he didn't have to feed on humans, he could subsist on animals, and that was something he could morally live with.

So, yeah. I think deer are his 'favorite' but not because they taste especially good, it's more . . . I guess it's like having a 'favorite' food because it's associated with a good memory rather than because you really love the taste? This was a turning point for him, where he started to feel a little less doomed and a little more hopeful. It's like how Little Debbie Swiss Rolls are not as good as an actually fresh-baked cake, but they remind me of my grandmother and my childhood, so there's a fondness and nostalgia there.

I also think that in the present day hunting is more like taking his vitamins than enjoying a good meal. He needs to keep himself fed so he doesn't get complacent and risk his long-practiced self control but I don't think he's particularly fussed about what kind of animal or how it tastes at this point. Which is probably another reason he 'likes' herd animals like deer. They're plentiful, not endangered, hunted by humans, too, and killing them has less of an effect on the ecosystem than killing a predator does.

[santoschristos]

The Unveiling of Realities

1. Interdimensional Travel:

- We are on the cusp of a greater innerstanding of interdimensional travel.

Just as waves advance into the ocean of existence and recede into the invisible, our consciousness will increasingly navigate between the physical and the metaphysical realms.

This will allow us to access knowledge and experiences beyond our current comprehension.

2. Immortality Realised:

- The concept of immortality will be redefined. It’s not about living forever in a physical body but recognizing that we are already immortal beings. This profound truth has been concealed, but as we awaken, we will innerstand that our essence transcends time and space.

3. Spirit World Integration:

- The veil between the spirit world and our reality is thinning.

Many have already allowed spirits to weave their way into the mortal realm.

This integration will become more pronounced, and those with heightened intuition will witness and interact with these entities, gaining wisdom and guidance.

4. Intuitional and Spiritual Realms:

- As we develop our casual bodies and quicken our ego’s vision, we will see things as they truly are. In the spiritual world, the divine and human will unify, fulfilling the divine purpose.

This will lead to a profound sense of oneness and enlightenment.

5. Spiritual Manna:

- Higher realms of spirit life are preparing to pour down spiritual manna upon us.

This nourishment will be available as soon as we open up the conditions that render it possible.

The obstructions lie not in the spirit world but within our own mortal limitations.

6. Future Selves and Destiny:

- Our future selves are actively reshaping our destiny.

We are balancing precariously between multiple possible realities, each influenced by our actions. This slipstream into our future offers hope and the potential for a brighter existence.

7. Veil and Shadow:

- The veil between the higher and lower realms, created from the Pythagorean Monochord, signifies the separation of matter and spirit.

As we innerstand and transcend this veil, we will see the shadow of matter for what it is—a projection that can be molded and transformed.

8. Outer Darkness:

- There exists a point of no return, where souls that do not align with the divine purpose will be cast into the outermost parts of the Outer Darkness.

This signifies a purification process, ensuring that only those in harmony with the higher vibrations continue to evolve.

Implementation for the Journey Ahead

1. Expand Consciousness:

- Engage in practices that expand your consciousness, such as meditation, astral projection, grounding, chi gong ! , healthy eating, clean water, and lucid dreaming.

These will help you navigate between realms and access higher knowledge.

2. Embrace Immortality:

- Reflect on the concept of immortality beyond the physical.

innerstand that your essence is eternal and that you are part of a larger, timeless existence.

3. Connect with Spirit Guides:

- Develop a relationship with your spirit guides through rituals, offerings, and communication.

They are here to assist you in your journey and provide insights from the unseen realms.

4. Develop Intuition:

- Strengthen your intuition through practices like scrying, or working with crystals.

This will help you perceive the subtle energies and messages from the spiritual world.

--The Collective Spiritual Consciousness

Corey Foggo

art: Inter-Dimensional Gate

Diego Andrade

[artist-issues]

Once upon a time, my dad has always taken care of me. Not only has he always taken care of me, but he knows what I like, he is intensely generous, and he is an excellent gift-giver. Tire blown, taxes late, not enough money for rent, homeless dude coming closer—didn’t matter what scenario was going on, if my dad ws there, everything was okay, because he fixed it. And he never held that over my head. And he treated the way he gives me gifts, the whole he looks out for me, the way he remembers what I like and dislike and anticipates what I want and don’t want, like it was all a given. So I did too. And once, on Father’s Day, I didn’t give him a present. No reason not to. Just…didn’t occur to me. Because he never asks me for anything. And he never complains or acts like he is in any way deserving of acknowledgement, from me, about how good he is and how much I love him.

But he is. So:

Deuteronomy 8:11–18 “Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you water out of the flinty rock, who fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end. Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day.

My pastor referenced this passage and said, “this is God saying, watch out. Don’t forget. Don’t let My goodness make you forget Me.”

How awful is it that when grace and help and goodness is constant, and ever-present, and we have a lot of it, makes us totally ignore the Person giving the gifts? Don’t let His goodness make you forget Him.

[starz2005]

One of the many letters Zemo has written

Dearest James

It's known that hunters display their kills on the wall as a trophy, showing off their impeccable shot to whomever may enter their domain. A conversation piece above the mantle, an excuse to brag. At many a visit I've wondered if these men feel any remorse for having their victims pinned up for all to see, staring at them with pale plastic eyes in the dead of the night when only God is awake to judge them. I fear I've wondered this for I too have been a hunter, a man who's tasked himself with causing pain to all I've deemed rewarding of it.I'm forced to stare at you and wonder why I've torn you apart over and over again,for all the world to see. You're the very demon I cannot bare myself to face. The one who's suffered more than deserved, whom I've aided in hunting down. You're my deer on the wall, James.

Have I ever told you that I don't believe in second chances? I feel many people waste theirs and expect another, I find myself to be that particular sort of person. Someone with so much remorse and self pity,that he thinks everyone should be willing to welcome him with open arms again,only for him to fall back into the same sin over and over and over again. Again and again and again until you're so utterly sick,that you wish to tear flesh from bone, tear soul from body, and throw me into a deep, dark, bottomless pit from which my miserable personality can never taunt you again. I know how much you wish you could rid yourself of me James, forget everything about me and never hear from me again. I know it burns you up inside whenever I speak to you. You curse and spit fire on my name. Your amends are simply there to make you feel better about having such draining creatures in your life. I am the very beast you cannot rid yourself of.

And yet...still,I suffer to hear you call me such sweet names again. I dream of caressing your skin and feeling your touch. I want to live out every whispered fantasy you promised to me, feel your pulse speeding faster than the cosmos and taste your breath upon my tongue. I'm not allowed such pleasures, I shouldn't even dream of such pleasures to be fair. But how I do, how I beg the very gods that have cursed me to be this way,to let me be yours again, James. Let me be everything and more,let me be the man I could never be, the answer to your prayers and the fire within your soul. Let me uproot moutians from the soil to prove how much I yearn for you, how every fibre weaved within in me calls out your name like a mantra. How your thorns pierce my sides James, how you pour my blood to the dirt at your feet and curse me to lap it up like a dog desperate for your attention, desperate to serve you and you alone. Feed me like manna, let me taste your honey, let me consume you. Only God himself could know how much I need you,and only Satan can tell you how much I want you. My sin and my divinity.

Many have come and gone,but you remain a constant to me James, the one I could never rid my head of. I hope you write back soon.

Yours, Helmut Zemo

[lunamaraproject]

LUNAMARA: Fragments [8]

👑

The old paper crinkles pleasantly under Felix’s fingers. For all he loves the sleek design of the tablets he usually teaches from, sometimes the tactile realness of paper is more enjoyable. Plus, when it comes to educating the princess, such luxurious materials are nigh on expected, so he can get away with requesting them.

“So this is you,” he explains as Elsie leans halfway over the desk, her hair spilling over her shoulders and nearly blocking his view.

“It doesn’t look like me,” she critiques with the honesty one can only expect from a girl barely 60. She grabs the nearest pencil and starts drawing hair and a dress onto the anatomical model.

“Okay, you fix it. Will you listen to my explanation while you fix it?”

“Mmhmm!”

She’s fairly good at multitasking, so he presses on. “When you eat manna, it goes down into your stomach here,” he both holds his hand on his belly, and taps on the diagram with his highlighter. Helpfully, she draws a star where he tapped. “Yes, there. Once it’s in your stomach, your body takes the manna, and breaks it down. What does it break it down into?”

“I dunno,” she says first, but he waits, until eventually she hedges a guess. “Maen?”

“Yes!” he grins brightly. “Maen is the energy that makes up all magic in the universe. It’s actually a shortening of ‘magical energy’, neat right?”

Elsie is too busy adding frills to the hem of her dress to actually agree with him about how interesting etymology is. A shame.

“Once the maen is in your body, it travels around it on the maen circuits. They run right next to your veins and nerves, and have special ‘pools’ all over, where the maen gathers. Can you draw more stars where I point?”

“Yeah,” she agrees, and he begins working around the body. First, travelling up the chest, then the neck, then the head. She has to draw the stars very small here, because there are so many points particularly on the face and skull. It looks like the figure sneezed on a constellation. “I can’t even see the eyes any more…”

“That’s okay, we’ll draw a bigger head in a minute so you can fit the stars in better,” Felix chuckles. “It’s important to know where the pools are, because they’re the places where maen exits the body when we use it to cast magic. Different kinds of magic use different pools on the body. So when I give you a kiss on your booboos, it’s not because I’m trying to eat you up!”

Elsie gives him a dry look. “I know that. I’m not 40.”

“I know you’re not!” he holds his hands up in surrender. “But I’ll always remember the time when I pretended to eat you, and you got really scared!”

“Well I don’t remember that at all,” she sniffs, then turns back to adding more details to her dress on the paper. “Are there pools on the hands?”

“Yes there are, very good! And also all up the arms here…”

It doesn’t take long to cover the rest of the figure in stars, on the front and the back side. Meanwhile, Elsie’s dress design is also coming along swimmingly.

“Did you get the idea for this dress from the present you got from the Naribians?” Felix asks.

“Yes, but I’m making it better with my own parts,” she says airily.

“You know, humans have maen circuits too!”

Now this finally gets her full attention. She looks at him like he’s grown a second head. “They do?”

“Yep! They’re veeeery thin and don’t get used much. Unlike starfolk, humanfolk can’t use their maen circuits by just thinking about it. So do other animals and plants, but even smaller, nearly not there at all.”

“Ohhh…” she trails off, mulling this new information over. “Doesn’t it hurt?”

“No, it’s not like with us where it hurts them to not use magic every now and then. They can live their whole lives and never use it, and be perfectly healthy!”

She continues to chew on this new fact for another minute of silence, before suddenly saying. “But what if that’s why they die fast? Humans, and animals.”

Admittedly, Felix wasn’t expecting that. Leave it to kids to come up with unexpected questions. He’s struck silent for a moment, pondering this himself. Who knows, maybe that was the reason. He’s not educated enough to know for sure. But then, when he’s not even an adult himself, he’s not sure what people are expecting.

“You know what, I don’t know!” he finally says with a laugh. “Let’s make a note of it, so we can look it up later in the library or with one of the professors.”

“Okay,” she agrees, scribbling the note in the top corner of the paper. “It doesn’t make much sense that the plants like trees live almost as long as we do, but the humans don’t. Humans look almost just like us, but their ears are weird and small and their bodies are big and hairy.”

“Sure do!”

"Do you think if I tried I could grow hair on my face like them?"

"... Maybe one day, Elsie!"

🌗

More from LUNAMARA:

Fragments: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

Comics: [Good Night] [Good Morning]

Art by Luka (http://nousanti.tumblr.com/) Story by Pidge (http://pidgestories.tumblr.com)

[munadrawson]

🏍🦑🐙⚠ Click and Open image for HQ! [Commission OPEN] | [Cheap-bi Commission OPEN] | [Ko-fi] | [Twitter] | [Instagram]

As a desi, I've got to reference one of the best desi movie songs from a blockbuster film: "Yeh Dosti Hum Nahi Todenge" Sholay (1975), and as a queer desi, it's the classic take on "Living the crime life and being gay af with your pardner." The chaotic energy.

This song was sung by two legendary Bengali idols, Kishore Kumar and Manna Dey. I kid you not; their voices fit perfectly well for these two. A beautifully dynamic voice paired with a softly sweet voice; I can't stop seeing it.

Although I don't speak Hindi (I speak Bangla), I did my best translating the chorus and a verse of the song and have it flow better in English. The entire song is pretty gender-neutral. I swear, the number of desi songs that sing about being romantically interested in a friend and/or referring to their romantic partner as a friend is longer than a laundry list. Also, I saw a cishet cover this song romantically. If they can do it, so can I. Checkmate.

BONUS:

My sis insisted that I must draw this scene, and I delivered.

At least they got them to laugh.

[theredofoctober]

MANNA- CHAPTER NINETEEN: DUCK

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

TW for eating disorders, noncon, abuse, Daddy kink, cannibalism mentions, murder mentions

Read after the cut

---

“Family,” says Hannibal. “Let’s return to that subject today.”

You occupy the living room, each in a velvet armchair tilted with intent to replicate the layout of his office, the clever dressing of a theatre set. Attempts to put off this particular session had proved inefficacious, the coercion of your attendance rendering you curt and snappish in demeanor.

Truthfully you’ve been so since this morning, having rolled, coughing and vaguely feverish, from dreams of bodies hung rattling like so many clothes hangers in some subterrestrial den.

Hannibal, as expected, had still seen fit to persist with his agenda, weathering your complaints with a brisk good humour.

Will had made himself scarce sometime before you’d awoken, and has left word that you’re not to expect his return for many days. You yearn for him in all his brittle ferocity, a gabion against his friend’s subtle erosion of your mind as you know it. The early hour, the assault of unwanted conversation: such sly methods of torture will damn you to madness as quick as the murkiest secret.

“I’ve told you about my family,” you say to Hannibal, fingering a loose tuft of angora on your sweater. “Besides, you won’t even let me talk to them.”

“I don’t think that it would be to your benefit for me to do so,” he answers, and makes a gracious pretence of examining his pen.

Had you not extended a hand to Amy there would indeed have been a second call, this you’re clearly meant to understand. Hannibal is not above such trivial warfare, as he makes a continuing point to prove; you might be entertained by so comic a flaw were you not in such dire opposition.

“Maybe it’d be good for me to talk to my family,” you say, smartly. “And how can you know that it wouldn’t be when you barely know anything about them?”

Hannibal smirks, pleased to have cast such irresistible bait.

“Enlighten me, then. Begin with your mother, if you like. A predictable start, but in that simplicity rather less challenging than other avenues.”

You glance about the room as though seeking inspiration from it and find it wanting. Only the window at which the dying autumn presses its face wets the brush of conversation again, that symbol of fleeing dark brick to beyond a reminder that you must play on.

“We fight a lot,” you say. “My mom and me. She always has to be right about everything all the time. Never made a mistake in her life. Never apologises for anything. And if you criticise her— well, just don’t. Plus, she used to hit me when I was little. Nothing crazy, but still. She hit me.

“Then one day I slapped her right back and she never did it again.”

Pausing, you tug the hem of your sweater to your knees, an instinct to cover skin that today is not an inch bare.

“It’s funny,” you say. “She acts like she doesn’t remember any of it now.”

“Those in denial of their misdeeds often excise those shameful moments from the past,” says Hannibal. “It may not even be a conscious decision on her part.”

“It’d almost be better if it was. Then maybe she could own up to it, some day.”

Hannibal’s pen mars a fresh page in his notebook; even were it not upside down you suspect you’d fail to untangle his complicated hand.

“Has your mother’s behaviour caused friction surrounding your anorexia?” he asks.

“God, yeah,” you say, half laughing. “She used to yell at me. Tried to bully me into eating. Now she cries a lot and kind of makes it all about her. She loves me, but not in the ways you want in a mother. She pays for stuff. Drives me to places. Ticks all those boxes, you know? But she’s never been kind or comforting, really.

“It’s not all her fault. I guess she just doesn’t know how.”

A leaf falls against a windowpane like the hand of a dead, withered child, and you find yourself drawing back in your seat, wishing you’d the strength to push the chair against the wall.

“Why do you think your mother is unable to fulfil her role as you would like?” asks Hannibal.

“I guess my grandparents treated her the same way she treats me. They were always kind of cold with me when I knew them.”

“Generational cruelty is an infection one must wittingly sterilise. A pity so few are self-aware enough to administer that treatment. Was your father sufficiently conscious?”

Odd, this invocation of the paternal when Hannibal and Will have worked so diligently to embody it in place of your genetic relative.

Now, in a shirt the colour of thatch rolled pristinely back from the jewel of his wristwatch, the doctor could well be the wealthy father of a girl your age, the type to pour upon you his thousands, to walk you down the aisle in a venue of his choosing to marry an approved match of your class.

But you will never wed now that Hannibal has claimed you. He speaks of your family from a wreckage of his making, at ease with his distance from it.

“I love my dad the most,” you say. “But he’s a weird guy. Quiet. Never opens up about his feelings. He’ll talk about movies, or the news, but real stuff? Nope. So I've never felt all that comfortable around him. I mean, with good reason after... after everything.”

“More than good,” says Hannibal, firmly. “That you aren’t angrier with both parents for their abandonment in your time of need surprises me.”

“I don’t really blame them. Uncle Lee has this way about him. He can make people believe pretty much anything he says.”

Inevitable that you should mention Leland, who—though of other blood—is still an incestuous growth on the vine.

“What is this way of his?” asks Hannibal. “You’ve previously spoken of a power to sash the eyes of loved ones against what you perceive to be an obvious darkness. How does that ability present in him?”

You bring your legs up onto the chair, crossing them under you for comfort.

“He moved from Louisiana in his twenties,” you say, “so he still has the accent and everything. He even speaks French sometimes. Then there’s this way of holding himself he has. Kind of cocky, but funny, though. From the second he moved in on our street my parents just loved him, apparently. They never saw what I saw.”

“He’d donned the rubber mask.”

You look up at Hannibal almost shyly.

“Yeah. You remember.”

“Yes. And did you love him, in spite of what seemed to you an obvious guise?”

“I did. In some sick way I still do. So I get why my Mom and Dad believed him over me, but sometimes I think maybe part of them knows the truth, but they just shove it down deep like something dead.”

Scrubbing your face angrily with the sleeve of your sweater you snub, without noticing it, the omnipresent box of tissues on the nearby table top. Hannibal makes no remark on your unclean habit, only pours you a cup of green tea which you accept for the sake of avoiding an argument.

“To truly love someone you mustn’t bury their evils,” says Hannibal. “You must find acceptance of them in whatever form you can. Your parents do not care for this friend so much as fear the upheaval of the known. A suburban life, a sullied idyll— by sending you to me they are attempting to reverse its disunion from their image of it in memory.”

“They’re selfish,” you say. “I know. What’s new there?”

You look at the bottom of your teacup, hunting an impossible pattern in the pale ceramic.

“I don’t want to talk about my family anymore. What about yours? You had a sister, didn’t you?”

Hannibal’s eyes change like the blackening of dusk.

“Will told you this,” he says.

“Does it matter?” you ask, shrilly. “I want to know who you are, Daddy, and this is where I want to start. What happened to Mischa? What did she die of?”

It’s frightening how the man before you alters in only light adjustments: the quiet crossing of a limb, the rhomboid slant of shoulders under his jacket, each a signifier of the restless potentiality for truculence in him.

His face is not so beautiful in moments such as this. The flaws in it stand out to you: flesh racked over halberds of bone, something amphibious in the mouth, of some alien taxon. A killer’s physiognomy, little though you care for such sciences as would define it so.

“My sister was murdered when she was a little girl,” says Hannibal. “I interrupted the culprit in the midst of defiling her body, but it was too late. She was lost to me.”

The moon opal of a tear tips loose of an eyelash, its passage a kinetic artistry. What you’d taken for anger is another emotion: a raw and ancient loss.

“Oh my god,” you say. “That’s awful. Do you know who killed her?”

“A man who remains imprisoned to this day,” says Hannibal. “That is his penance for taking Mischa from me.”

You are in too great a terror and disgust of this man to embrace him, as would feel apt for a moment such as this.

“I’m sorry,” you say, weakly.

Hannibal closes the notebook in his lap and asks, almost blandly, “Are you?”

His bald disbelief flusters you.

“Yes. Of course. She was just a little girl. In fact, I feel like I get it, now. All of this. Me and you. It makes sense why you want me. Why you are what you are. It’s because of her.”

Forcing a smile, you reach over and touch a hand to Hannibal’s cheek.

He turns his face gently away from the caress.

“You’re mistaken, Little One. Whereas you were moulded by your circumstances, I was liberated by mine.”

You stare at him, endeavouring to bone his words for their meaning.

“What are you saying?”

“My philosophies and desires pre-existed Mischa’s death. My love for her restrained me, for while she lived I was never free to act as I yearned to in fear that she would be harmed. In some ways I resented that restraint, but in passing Mischa offered me the opportunity to forgive her.”

A cloud snuffs out the sun, and you sit in the dark of it, aghast.

“Forgive her for what?” you ask, in a near whisper. “Helping you? Hannibal, I—”

“We are still at an impasse, I see,” he says, coolly. “We must rectify this. Would you like to know how she received her absolution?”

You shake your head.

“But you must,” says Hannibal. “You’re a curious girl. Mischa’s remains now lie in a grave in my home country. Before I buried them there, I ate part of her. That is how I reconciled my feelings for my sister with what I am.”

Shock throttles your body in its tremor, and the empty teacup drops from your hand, prevented from breaking only by the carpet underfoot. You had, with all the delicate senses of a medium, deciphered the presage of his appetite, and still you feel the plates of the earth shudder with the magnitude of his confession.

Hannibal gets up from his seat, places the cup back into its saucer, and takes your hand in his.

“Let’s end the session there,” he says. “I’d like to involve you in preparing today’s meal, since that’s a new interest of yours.”

With a fear-stricken servility you walk with him to the kitchen, expecting him to have something—someone—preserved in the glossy coffin of the refrigerator.

Instead Hannibal kneels to unlatch an ingenious door in the floorboards, revealing a neat little staircase which runs down into a basement room. From it emanates a rolling field of cold, biting at you through your clothes.

You take a step back, near tumbling in your eagerness to escape it.

“What is that?”

“It’s an expansion of the freezer,” says Hannibal. “With all the dinner parties I host it’s natural that I found myself in need of more storage space. This is my answer to that problem. I’d like you to go down and choose a cut of meat for dinner.”

There’s no threat in the statement; he speaks, in fact, quite casually, meaning to impress upon you the mundanity of his diet in his eyes. To make supper of his sister, to dine upon lamb: there is no separation for him, being that all of it is meat.

You squeeze your eyes shut, cannot face the oblong of shadow beyond the steps which you’ve dreamt of, unknowing,

“Please don’t make me go down there, Daddy.”

“There’s nothing to be frightened of. Open your eyes, Little One.”

“No. No. I don’t want to.”

You try to turn away, but Hannibal arrests you by the arms, holding you as a farmer would a wriggling hare.

“I’m not going to eat you,” he says. “If that’s what you think.”

“I know!” you wail. “But it doesn’t matter. If I go down there and... see, everything’ll change forever. Because I’ll know for sure, and I’ll be part of it. And I can’t be part of it. I’ll go crazy.”

You jerk passionately in Hannibal’s grip, but his greater strength prevails.

“Wait,” you say. “When you talked about Leland—bringing him to me—you meant that I should kill him to eat.”

“Yes,” says Hannibal, simply. “I did.”

There is a softness in his eyes you recognise as hope. He is a man desperate to create others like him, for all that he believes that they are born.

“But you said with Mischa that eating her was forgiveness,” you say. “But you don’t want me to forgive Uncle Lee. So what would it mean to eat him?”

“Look to why trophy hunters keep mementos of their sport. Some as markers of achievement and dominance over the animal, and others in a subconscious humiliation of the predator they’ve slain. Man gloats to bring a tiger to kneel; a girl, having conquered man, might do the same.”

Thinking of Hannibal’s recorded killings, some of them young women, you say, “Most animals don’t deserve humiliation.”

“That’s all a matter of perspective, my dear. A seasoned hunter develops rather a discerning eye for flaws in his quarry.”

Hannibal smooths a lock of hair behind your ear, his rancid touch queerly soothing.

“What did Savannah Belmont do to deserve humiliation?” you ask, sulkily. “She wasn’t a bad person. She was just a girl, like me.”

“A cursory reading of obituaries and odes to Miss Belmont’s life denote her brief career at a rare bookshop,” says Hannibal, “for which position her personal tastes suggest she was underqualified to take. It wouldn’t be so unrealistic to assume that she left customers unhappy with her inadequate ability to serve them.”

Horror breaks over you like the falling of a chandelier. This, too, you had foreseen: no serious cause to kill was ever required for Hannibal, and that you are fucked rather than murdered by him is but a flourish of fate.

Peering into your eyes, Hannibal comes to a rapid decision and bends to close the trapdoor again.

“Duck, tonight, then,” he says. “That will suffice.”

*

Through terror you cling to Hannibal long into the afternoon, lurking at his elbow, a thumb in your mouth, as he prepares for the day’s appointments.

If he is he here, with you, he cannot kill, you reason, not while he thinks only of the invitation of tear-salt on your lips, the liquor of your nether mouth around him. Again and again you’ll die upon his cock as tribute, for though cold in your disorder you are not so callous as to allow others to, if you can help it.

“I’ll be gone for just a few hours, sweet girl,” he says, pausing to rock you in his lap. “No more of this. I’ve left a new book for you in your room. Please begin reading it for me. And there is the recording of an opera I’d like you to watch. That should keep you occupied until I’m home to you.”

It’s only after he’s driven away in the hearse of his car that you succumb to the awfulness of all you've heard. As in those primordial days of captivity you grasp the bars of your window and scream into the burnished day, beating your fists upon the iron until they burst across the bone.

Only a volley of coughing halts you in this fit, sending you to your bed alarmed by the weakness come over you. You lie shivering for hours, wondering if this is the nervous exhaustion you’ve read about in novels that ends in heroines consigned to the madhouse, sunny climes, or else the grave, none of which you might expect to be released to.

When Hannibal returns he feels your forehead and listens to your coughs with a mildly furrowed brow.

“Hospital,” you croak, but he only laughs and strokes your head.

“There’s no need for that. You have a chest infection. Your immune system is very poor. Nevertheless, you’ll be well again soon.”

He perfumes your damp neck with a kiss and sits down in a chair beside you.

“Perhaps it’s for the best that Will is occupied with work,” he comments, at length. “I wouldn’t like his condition to worsen again.”

[autumnbrambleagain]

as i prep a little lancer campaign i'm again flubblasted at how wild the setting is tonally

it's like one brain split entirely in two and left to speciate separately from one another

utopia is a constant work in progress but we're getting there! you play as the vanguard of utopia, saving human rights from oppression! you do this by exclusively using the tools of exploitive megacorps to conduct violent imperalism on people who are living incorrectly.

half the base rulebook's fluff is just talking about stuff 5000 years ago and stuff like 10 people in-universe know about. it goes into so much depth about galsim and the secret branches of government and then goes "of course, no one knows about any of this and none of this will ever come up in a normal story"

so like. what stories can i even do?

in the campaign where i'm a player, my character is a princess whose people was pre-space flight when union found them and deposed them for being autocrats. and, like the rulebook says, when they colonize a planet, they convert their cultural wealth into manna. so like.

from my character's perspective, aliens invaded, tossed down all existing power structures citing that they had no right to be in charge, and then took all the art that her family had spent generations making and went "this is actually all that's valuable"

so she has this internal dissonance of "union says our autocratic families were leeches on the poor working folk, but also said that the resources to be taken from our planet and turned into manna was the cultural works my family created over centuries ? ? " and that dissonance is like. severely fucking with her it's great

and there's this stunning dissonance she's still grappling with as she sees democratic systems also utterly fail and her conclusion is "the form of government doesn't matter, nobility is about the people in charge and how well they look after those in their charge" and ok you can boo her for being an enlightened autocrat kind of deal but like

that's her reaction in-character to this setting where your planetary empire is overthrown for being ~evil~ because you're autocratic and then it being replaced with... i mean yall seen how post colonialism goes? post colonialist democracies or governments where you violently decapitate one and leave another to grow in its place, those are usually a shitshow do you think it isn't like that in space

i don't imagine union improved her home planet much. the nobility isn't in charge anymore but is overthrowing the existing power structure and plopping democracy onto the power vacuum really fixing anything

she's fighting against enemy nobility in space and getting really frustrated how flippant they are with the lives of civilians and is internalizing that the burden of nobility is you're the ones who should be held to a higher standard so other people can live normal lives

but she can't get elected on that principal because her deposed family meant she had to flee her planet so now her most ambitious family member is working the organized crime angle to get back into power and like, union keeps saying they're hands off except in extremes

how is union not leaving a dozen a hundred fucked up post invasion states in their wake. they aren't post scarcity everywhere yet, and where they aren't there's still going to be competition and selfishness you just shake up the jar and change who's on top and the problems are all still there

the campaign i'm running soon i'm doing it as a youtuber is doing a mr beast in africa publicity thing organizing lancers to help a conflict zone but the gameplay is about keeping the camera on good shots while doing "heoric work" that will play well in the utopia feel-good-o-sphere but with the in-game conflict of you might actually be trying to do good but your corporate sponsorships are demanding certain content out of you where do you cut corners when do you sell out your soul when will you put the clout above the good work because that's how it just incentifvizes you

the noblest person can get absolutely fucked by the existing reward/support structure being biased against them. i have seen it a thousand times it just HAPPENS you don't even REALIZE it sometimes that you've gotten swept in a different direction.

and like that struggle is honestly a lot more interesting to me than the default setting's basic rulebook's assumption of the game being like

oh, these people aren't doing it right. invade them and defeat them! yay! now the bad guys are gone, nothing bad will happen once we leave this planet :3

like lancer suggests a ton of interesting problems to investigate and then doesn't really interact with it much. why aren't we at war with harrison armories. i know that interview where he says it will cause huge problems but like. is it not causing problems already.

it gives us 3 huge villains to defeat and then tells us we can't defeat them we just need to go along with them

which is why i'm really excited about running a story where trying to do good will be disincentivized by the people who control your resources ngl