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terra-sprout-imagines · 3 years

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How Daichi and Suga would make up a missed date to their S/O because of Volleyball Part 1

Written By: Terra

Request: How would Suga, Daichi, Tanaka and Noya make it up to their S/O after having to miss a date for volleyball related thing???

Author’s Note: These headcanons, along with the last ones, make me look like more of a Daichi simp than I actually am lol. Originally this was all going to be one post, but since Daichi’s are so long I decided to make it two and two so you’re not scrolling for thirty years to get to the end. Enjoy!

Warnings: None but Daichi’s takes place in part 1 of season 4 and Suga’s takes place in season 2 c:

Part 2: Tanaka and Nishinoya (coming soon!)

Sawamura Daichi

Like I said in the headcanons where their S/O surprises them at a game, I genuinely think Daichi is one of the most mature boyfriends out of the Karasuno team

And as a result, you would have to be pretty mature as well because I just don’t really see him as the type of guy to get into a relationship with someone that he kind of has to “parent” for lack of a better term

Anyway, that’s not to say that he wouldn’t feel bad about having to miss a date because of volleyball, but he definitely wouldn’t throw himself into a panic about it and go super over the top trying to make it up to you.

So the date in question for this scenario, was just a simple dinner date at one of your favorite restaurants

Daichi had been super busy as of late after Karasuno had won the Inter-High Preliminaries with preparation for Spring Nationals

Of course you didn’t complain once about it

You knew how badly Daichi had always wanted to go to Nationals, and now that they finally realized that dream you had been nothing but completely supportive

Though Daichi made sure to try and support you and your hobbies as much as his schedule would allow, so things never felt one-sided for you and you appreciated the effort he put in

Didn’t have time to go out on as many dates as you used to? No problem, you’d just come to their practice and assist Kiyoko and Yachi where you could so you could still see your boyfriend

Tonight was supposed to be a day where practice would end early enough that you and Daichi could justify getting a late dinner in town

A night where the two of you could finally have some time together away from volleyball and the team

Not that you had anything against them, but you both just wanted to be able to do mushy couple things without Suga and the second years making kissy faces and wiggling their eyebrows.

But as the minutes passed and you still sat alone at the table, your dreams of spending a night together with Daichi seemed to slip further and further away.

You jumped as you felt your phone vibrate against the table, your heart rate speeding up a little as you read Daichi’s contact appear across the screen

Though you were quick to feel the slightest twinge of disappointment as you read the message

‘I’m sorry love, but I don’t think I’m going to make it to dinner in time. Coach Ukai had us try a new technique for Nationals and it took the team longer than anticipated to get it down. We only just finished and we still have to clean the gym and get changed.’

You typed out a quick reply and set your phone down with a small sigh.

The restaurant was starting to wind down for the night, and you knew it wouldn’t be too much longer before you would have to leave since they would need to close up for the night.

Even though Daichi couldn’t be there for dinner, that didn’t mean the night had to go completely out the window.

You flagged your waiter down and placed an order to go, knowing Daichi well enough by now that you were comfortable with ordering in his place.

You paid for the bill as you waited for your food to arrive, and then made your way home, pulling out your phone to send another message to your boyfriend

‘After you get home and get showered, come to my place. Just because we couldn’t do dinner doesn’t mean we can’t still at least see each other. I know my mom won’t mind if you spend the night.’

Just as you reached your front door, your phone vibrated again with a reply

‘I actually had a similar idea. If you’re okay with it, would you mind coming to my place instead in about half an hour? I have to get a few things ready.’

You replied with a quick ‘of course ♥️’ and got to work packing an overnight bag, letting your mom know about your change of plans.

Your parents adored Daichi, and trusted the two of you, so getting permission to spend the night was hardly ever an issue.

Before you left, you grabbed the takeout from the fridge and started the five-minute walk to your boyfriend’s place.

When he opened the door, he was quick to pull you into a hug, placing a tender kiss first on your forehead and then your lips.

“I’m sorry about tonight.” You could feel his lips move against yours as he spoke

“Don’t be. You can’t help it if practice runs longer than anticipated. Besides,” You held up the bag of takeout with a smile, “I still brought dinner for us.”

You saw his eyes widen a fraction before he burst out into laughter.

At your confused expression, he pulled you inside.

He had completely transformed the living room of his house. Strings of lights were hung up around the walls, a nest of pillows and blankets on the floor in front of the television where the menu of your favorite movie played across the screen. On the table in front of all of that, Daichi had set up a meal for the two of you, and your lips cracked into a smile when you saw that the dishes were exactly the same as what you carried in your bag

“I called my mom and asked her to pick it up for me on my way back from practice.” His hand was rubbing the back of his neck and his cheeks were adorned with a red flush. “I guess we had the same thought.”

You broke out into a smile and turned to face your boyfriend, your eyes sparkling with unshed tears of joy.

You really loved this man. You pressed a kiss to his lips, murmuring an “I love you” as you went to place the takeout you brought into the fridge.

“It’ll be lunch for tomorrow” You told him as he looked back at you.

He simply nodded and the two of you settled in the nest of blankets in the living room as Daichi hit the play button for the movie.

You were curled up into his side as the two of you ate.

Of course, that made it harder for Daichi, but he wasn’t about to complain.

Even less so when you started feeding him bites of his food as compensation for hogging one of his arms to yourself.

Later that night when the two of you settled into bed, he pressed a kiss to your temple as he pulled you in close.

“I’m sorry we had to change our date plans because of practice again.”

You brought one of your hands up to cup his face. “Daichi, it’s okay. I knew things like this would happen sometimes when we got together. You still go out of your way to make time for me, so a few missed dates are just water under the bridge.”

You let out a small yawn and placed your head on his chest. “Besides, dinner and a movie with you at home was a way better date than just eating out somewhere. I wouldn’t care if you missed a hundred more dates if it meant we got to do something like that instead.”

You felt his chest shake beneath your head as he chuckled. “I’d never intentionally skip out on spending time with you, but I’ll make sure to keep this date in mind for next time.”

Sugawara Koushi

He would feel pretty horrible about it.

Like he wouldn’t be over the top dramatic about it, but I do think he would have a lot of guilt over it and definitely be extra clingy for at least a week afterwards.

Like Daichi, I feel like Suga would understand that missing dates would probably be a thing because of him playing volleyball

And he would make sure that whoever he got into a relationship with understood that as well and would be able to be mature about it.

Despite that though, I still think Suga would bend over backwards to try and prevent volleyball from making him miss dates with you as much as possible

But when inevitably it happens, he would still feel bad about it, even though you say you’re not upset

Be prepared for a very soft and apologetic Suga as a result

Even though I said Suga wouldn’t be super dramatic about missing a date, he probably kind of was the first time he had to miss one

But after you were able to reaffirm that things were okay, he’d feel a lot more secure in your relationship and so he wouldn’t be as bad the next time it happens

The date in question for this instance, was supposed to be a surprise.

All Suga had told you, was that he would pick you up after he got home and showered after practice, and that you should expect to be out late so to dress comfortably

So, as the usual time for practice to end rolled around, you had gotten yourself ready

You didn’t know if Suga had planned for you to go out anywhere special, so you made sure that you looked nice enough if that was the case, but were still comfortable enough that your outfit wouldn’t be bugging you as the hours passed by

You ended up seated near your front door, scrolling through your phone as you waited for a call or text from your boyfriend.

Twenty minutes passed, then forty, an hour, two hours…

By the first hour with no message, you already had a pretty good idea that practice had gone on longer than usual, no big deal.

So by the second hour mark you had already changed into pajamas and set yourself up on your bed to scroll through social media, also no big deal.

You knew that the team all had to leave their phones and other belongings in the club room while they practiced, so Suga had no way of contacting you while the coach still had them busy in the gym.

He would call as soon as he had access to his phone, of that you had absolutely no doubt.

You still felt a slight twinge of disappointment that your date had been effectively cancelled, because who wouldn’t want to spend time with their significant other?

But you knew that volleyball was important to him, and you knew the effort Suga put in to making sure that you didn’t feel neglected as a result of his sport

So you just made yourself comfortable in your bed, and waited for Suga to get out of practice.

You had also sent a text to your parents, preemptively asking if he could spend the night, you knew he would want to spend as much time at your side as he could for the next few days.

Of course, your parents had no issues with him doing so. Suga had quickly managed to win both of your parents over when you first brought him over for dinner, and often the two of you would spend nights together at each other’s houses.

Your parents practically considered him their son in law already.

Several hours after the normal time for practice to end, you looked up from your laptop as you heard the repeated buzzing sound of your phone on your nightstand

You felt a small smile cross your features as you saw Suga’s contact light up across your display.

You hit the answer button and brought the phone to your ear. Before you could even say a word, Suga was already speaking.

“I’m so sorry about tonight, honey. The coach wanted to try out some new formations for the preliminaries, so he had us playing practice matches against each other.” He sounded out of breath, and you think you could hear his feet hitting the pavement in the background like he was running.

“It’s okay Koushi, you can’t help it if practice runs late. The preliminaries are just a few weeks away, right? I don’t blame your coach for wanting to make sure you guys have everything you need to make it to Nationals.”

There was a slight pause before he replied. “I really don’t deserve you, you know. I love you so much.”

“Of course you deserve me, don’t be silly. I love you too.” You took a moment to make sure you shut your laptop off before you put it off to the side. “I assume you’ll be on your way here soon?”

Suga let out a breathless laugh, “Actually, I’m already outside your door.”

“What?” You quickly sat up and made your way to your front door, you eyes widening when you saw Suga on the other side.

He was holding a small bouquet of roses and a bag of what looked to be your favorite snacks. His chest rose and fell with panted breath and his eyes were apologetic as he held out the bouquet for you to take. “Surprise?”

You let him pull you into a hug and a kiss, but you wrinkled your nose after a moment, pulling away from him. “Koushi, did you run all the way here from practice?”

“Mhm. I only stopped to pick these up for you.” He gestured to the flowers and snacks that he had brought with him.

“Koushi, you know I love you, and you really didn’t have to get me these things, but I appreciate them nonetheless. And I’m saying this next part because I love you so much, but please go take a shower before you kiss me again.”

He gave you an exaggerated pout “But I want to show you my love.”

You shook your head, a smirk on your lips, “I’m sorry but when I kiss you, I don’t want to also be kissing your ten layers of sweat. I’ll still be here when you’re done and then you can kiss and cuddle me all you want.”

He chuckled, “Mm, I’ll hold you to that then.” He placed a quick kiss to your forehead before heading into the hallway towards your bathroom.

The rest of the night was spent watching movies in your room on your bed, Suga lying behind you as the big spoon.

His right arm was wrapped around your waist, fingers tracing light patterns against your stomach while his left arm was underneath your head.

His head rested against your own, occasionally pressing light kisses to your head, neck, or shoulder.

A content smile made itself at home on your face as you brought your arm down to interlace your fingers with his.

The two of you fell asleep that way, and Suga spent all of the following day doting on you.

The next night, he drove you out to an outlook spot in the mountains for a picnic and some stargazing after the sun had set.

His cheeks were tinged red as he brought a hand up to rub the back of his neck.

“I wanted to do take you here last night but…”

You pressed a kiss to his lips, cupping the side of his face. You gave him a playful wink, “This was more than worth the wait.”

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original-fuzzywool · 3 years

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Martina is about the nicest wife anyone can imagine. I am told by friends and family all of the time what a sweetie she is and how lucky I am. We all have our surface personalities and for my wife Martina hers is sweet and nice. She is that way 99% of the time. That 1% of the time, typically happens when she has a paddle or cane in her hand. I am the only one to gets to “experience” the 1% Martina.

We are a typically kinky couple playing with bondage and spanking and dominating each other. We play games to see who will be “The Slave” the next weekend and half the time, we are both trying to lose. For the last six months or so, things have been shifting to Martina being more the dominant. I’d say the transition happened about a year ago when we started playing with Chastity.

I had been following some Chastity Blogs and had sort of been addicted to a few that pumped out daily Chastity Memes. One day I showed her some of them on my laptop. While we went through them, she shivered with excitement on some of them. It was like a whole new world with new ideas and concepts had opened up. She asked me to save the “good ones”. Every week or two, she would snuggle up next to me on the couch if I had my laptop and say, “Lets look at what is new in the chastity world”. We would go through the new meme’s I had collected and some of her favorite older ones. This activity almost always ended the same way. She would talk about keeping me locked up. She would say she was going to lock me up for a month and then decide to add another month. Or she would tell me that Chastity was going to be my new normal and she would be the queen of my world. Then things would boil over and a few minutes later we would be undressed and making love.

We did actually get a chastity belt (or 5 while we experimented with fit, longevity and security) a year ago. It is definitely a part of our lives; I am belted 2-3 times each month. Typically for 1-3 days while she teases me or we have something to do and she wants me focused. Of course I’m belted the 4 days a month that her body tells her, “Belt Him, he is useless”.

While Martina talks a great chastity game and loves the ideas behind the meme’s she is a disappointing keyholder for long term. And I am fine with that. She always asks if I am ok or if it hurts. I can tell after she asks she realizes she made a mistake, she really wants to be a harsh keyholder. We have had a few good runs but the longest I was ever in chastity was after a required 4 days because of her monthly cycle, she was going away for the weekend. She really wanted me belted but had to make sure about 5 times that it was ok with me to wait for her return. I was belted for 6 days and nights and after a year of chastity games that is the longest I have ever been belted.

Our fetish area’s extend beyond bondage. I have a MAJOR wool and sweater fetish. I beg her to wear thick and fuzzy sweaters and buy them for her all the time. Last Spring it was too warm for a big sweater and we were going to a BBQ on Sunday. It was overcast and I begged her to wear a sweater. She finally agreed when I offered to put the chastity belt on for a week if she would do it. I was only locked for 5 days, but that opened the door for similar deals.

One time I wanted to buy myself a very expensive thickly knitted turtleneck sweater and I had to ask because it was so expensive. She told me that when the package arrived, I had to go in the chastity belt and stay a day for every 10 dollars the sweater cost. Then I told her the sweater was $270 dollars so that would be 27 days. She asked if I still wanted the sweater. I hesitated for a whole day. Then I told her that I want the sweater and we ordered it. She was so excited when it arrived. I have to admit getting a new sweater is a very sexual experience for me and having it in a chastity belt was very frustrating. It was fun, and it was probably very fun for me because after 6 days she got the keys and said “Get that big sweater on and get the belt off and come to mama”. The following days she was very disappointed in herself for not going the 27 days. That was sort of typical for the first year of Chastity. She was a fun key holder but not like the women on the meme’s that got her so excited.

Lately we have been doing the memes even more and she has shown interest in the anal training memes. She asked if it was true that a man can cum from anal. We looked it up and it’s true. She wanted to know if a man could cum from anal while in chastity and we looked it up and it looks true too. She thought that was very hot. She asked me about my experience had I ever….. I had to disappoint her that I had never tried anal and only a few times worn a butt plug for a short time. Based on this interest, once she had me locked up for a day and used a dildo on my behind and while it felt weird and maybe a little bit good, I didn’t cum nor did I feel like I ever would. Still it became a fantasy for meme time.

She had several meme fantasies that always got her going probably number 1 was “I’m adding an extra month because you tried to get me to unlock you” At some point I realized that this was exciting to her because I never really asked her to let me out. I certainly never begged. She almost always ran to get the keys the instant I suggested we make love. Her number 2 favorite was the “Hey welcome to vacation, by the way, I left your keys at home” She loved that one. The 3rd one was probably a tie between “This is your new lifestyle get used to it” and “I am going to train you to cum from anal so I never have to unlock you”.

It was last Spring and I have some time off in June, So I booked a 4 day weekend in late May at a resort. I selected the resort for two reasons. 1) They have a killer golf course and I could play golf all day while Martina hangs at the pool or spa 2) The room had two bedrooms both with big cast iron beds. We can sleep in one room and set the other one up as a bondage room. Maybe she will even leave me tied up all night like she did once at another resort.

I emailed her the reservation and expected to get MEGA points for being a great husband. Instead I got “Golf really? What if I keep you in chastity all weekend. Can you still play golf? Do you still want to go there?” I had to reply that I have played golf in chastity at least a dozen times and while I don’t love it, I still enjoy the game and if she wants me to play golf in chastity, I am happy to oblige. And of course, I took the chance in my reply to tell her the evenings in May are cool enough for sweaters and I offered to pack some for her. (knowing I would pack much thicker fuzzier sweaters than she likes)

We made the booking and for the next six weeks before the trip she would look at me and say “Gee I hope I don’t forget to pack the chastity keys for our trip” and then she would shudder with excitement. I would counter with you won’t be able to reach the keys because I’m keeping you chained to the extra bedroom the entire weekend, gagged and diapers so you know you won’t be getting unchained. She would shudder at that too.

Saturday Night the week before the trip I was teasing her about keeping her in bondage for 4 days. She sat up straight and said, “I’ve got a serious issue with this trip. I’m worried that the first night we are going to have a furious night in bed and just drain all of our energy for sex and then I’m going to be in the condo and at the pool for 3 days board out of my mind while YOU are on a golf vacation.” I assured her that would not happen. She thought “Monday Morning put on your chastity belt and give me the keys, I want you good and horny by Thursday Night when we check in and I want to decide when it comes off.” I replied that keyholders always decide when it comes off (Even though we both knew this wasn’t really true) and I thought the idea was really effing hot. Finished by saying “So you are ordering me into chastity, I like it”

Thursday was stressful while we packed for 4 days of fun. We had two large bags I packed that were very heavy and all they had in them was chains, locks handcuffs, collars, dildoes, gags, paddles a whip, a cane six thick fuzzy sweaters of both male and female variety. We had a little fight but that was normal and the car ride was enjoyable. We talked about sex once, but I changed the subject because my “interest” was causing pain due to the chastity belt confinement. She figured it out and we had normal conversation.

We arrived at 8pm just before sunset. We decide to quickly get everything from the car to the top floor condo and make drinks to watch the sunset on the deck. We didn’t unpack but tossed bags into rooms and the golf clubs in the hallway. She was on the deck as I walked up with the drinks. She looked so happy. We watched the sunset and decided to make more drinks. This time she said “I’ll make the drinks and a snack. You go unpack the playroom, the deck will cool off so you better come back with some sweaters. I want you in that thick black cable turtleneck and I’d like you to pick for me the sweater that you would most like to make love to me in while I wear it. Ya know, old fashioned sweater sex.

She went to make the drinks and I went to unpack, I knew I had time because she was cooking a snack. So, I unpacked and set up the corners of the bed with chains and laid out wrist and ankle cuffs along with locks and keys neatly organized on the bed. I had brought a thick fuzzy pink turtleneck for her and I selected that for her to wear. When I came out she was just finishing the drinks and I was walking slightly bent over with short steps. All the excitement and my chastity belt where really starting to hurt me. I was too excited.

She was just finishing the drinks and saw the pink sweater. “oh you really want to fuck me tonight don’t you” I handed her the sweater with a wince. She noticed, “Trouble down under?” I shrugged and said, “Someone locked me in a chastity belt and I can’t even get a hard on when I see my beautiful wife”. She giggled and we went outside.

I sat down, it really wasn’t cold enough for these sweaters, I thought. She didn’t sit down instead something inside her snapped. She was jumping up and down, she was giggling and started to say out loud, “I did it, I did it!” and it got louder until she leaned over the balcony and yelled to the world “I DID IT” and someone on a deck below yelled back “Congratulations”. That embarrassed her and she shut up and sat down. Red faced and looking so “sweater sexy” she looked at me and said “I did it, I am so proud of myself, this is a wonderful feeling, I didn’t think I could do it, But this feels great, I am so happy” I asked if she quit her job or something. She looked deep at me and said “I forgot your chastity keys at home” then she made quotes with her fingers and said “Forgot” and laughed and laughed. “I really did it. Now we are going to experience that Chastity vacation together and I did it!”

She saw me wince again. All dressed up for sweater sex and no place to go…. I knew I was now going to be belted until at least Tuesday Night when we got home and that would be a new record of 8 days. For reasons that are not logical, this caused my member to be uncontrolled in it’s desire to achieve full status, I was getting 100% excited and I could not stop it. Some part of me loved this.

The next day playing Golf in Chastity was tough. Partly because I didn’t remember how tough chastity golf was and partly because Marina had waited till our 3rd drink then chained me spread eagle to the play bed, with just my sweater and chastity belt on. She then pulled out a stack of adult diapers we only used for extreme long bondage sessions and put on one me. She kissed me and said she wanted to sleep in the king bed alone tonight and assured me I would be unchained in time for my tee time. When you sleep chained spread eagle, you wake up sore. My golf game suffered.

Friday was warm and when I returned, I begged her to wear a sweater to dinner. She declined but said that maybe she would wear one for breakfast because cooler air was moving in. I started to beg, with my stuff locked up, sweater play was my only play. She stopped me and said: “I’ve already experienced the absolute joy of “forgetting” your keys” do you really want me to experience the joy of adding weeks to your chastity sentence on only our first full day of vacation? .... Do Ya?” I put my head down submissively, lowered my eyes and shook my head no. She put her hand on my head and said, “Oh I like how this works”

Saturday my tee time was not till 10am, we planned to eat breakfast together at 8am. I woke up sore. I was once again chained and diapered all night. It was 7:50 and she was ready for breakfast and unchaining my locks on the play bed. She said, “sorry I didn’t get you up earlier but you looked so peaceful sleeping all tied up, we both have to hurry to get ready.” I got up and went into the bathroom to change. I came out at 8AM and I started to get my golf stuff in the room together. I heard her from the hallway. “I’m going down to get a table and a mimosa. Don’t be too long.”

I was probably taking too long, it had probably been 10 minutes. That is when my phone buzzed and it was her. She used her selfie stick to send me a pic from the restaurant lobby. It was the photo from this post with a note, “We are being seated now, every minute you are late is equal to one day.” OMG I never saw her in that sweater!! She bought a new sweater! I dropped my golf stuff and flew out the door, ran down the stairs and got to her just as she was being seated.

She asked me where my sweater was? She indicated that when it’s summer and she is all sweatered up for me, she expects me to be sweatered too. She would explain this later tonight in case I don’t understand. I knew then I was in for a paddling tonight as she “explained” it to me.

I just kept gushing at the table about how sexy she looked in that sweater and the sweater and shorts were incredible. It took a long time to get us seated because she had asked for the table in the corner of the room away from everyone.

At a break in the conversation, I was thinking I should be wonderful and get her mind off of tonight’s spanking. I looked at her and I told her how horny I was being locked up and knowing I was going to be locked up all vacation, Then I told her how proud I was that she had taken the step to leave the keys at home and how fun it was to watch her revel in the achievement. I had no idea how difficult it had been for her.

She replied by telling me how she really struggles with being the Key holder. Part of her wants to be a ruthless keyholder and keep me in a sexual state all the time, but the bigger part of her does not want to be mean to me or make me uncomfortable so she lets me out. She said every time she locks me up she tells herself it will be a week to a month and almost every time she feels bad and lets me out in 2-3 days. She frowned and said, “It makes me feel like a failure”. She frowned a little then said “And I know you take advantage of me in this regard.” She paused and nodded, I knew she was right. “No more”

“What changed or inspired you” I asked.

“Mona” she said and I tried not to cringe. Mona is her friend who doesn’t really like me and is aggressive and kind of mean. But they are best friends and have been since before Martina and I met. “Did you know that Mona and Dave have done chastity for 5 years?” I had no idea that my wife even talks about this sort of stuff with other people. “Mona and I went through the chastity meme’s and she told me that most of them are simply male fantasy and very few women would ever say that. She told me her chastity system and says she would never have life any other way. She keeps a journal. When she gets a hankering to lock up Dave, or Dave is a dumbass, she writes down five things: 1) Why she feels that way 2) How long she wants him locked up 3) What she wants sexually for herself out of the locking up 4) What she wants Dave to experience sexually (if anything) during the lock up and 5) What she wants done and accomplished non-sexually before he gets unlocked.

She writes those five things down and she says that if a woman is going to be true to themselves and enjoy the power of having the key , while prioritizing to ignore male suffering, then she MUST make sure the list is complete before the belting is ended AND she NEVER tells Dave how long she is planning on having him belted. She will share things with him about the goals, especially things like… one time……ha (she laughed) Do you remember when Dave got it in his head that he was going to paint the whole house in a week all by himself? So do you remember that? Yeah. We thought Dave was crazy and he was, but it was not actually his idea. After being belted for 2 weeks, Mona told him he gets out AFTER the whole house is painted and not a minute before. She said he never worked so hard on anything ever. He never complained he just worked for his goal.

Last week I wrote down my five things. I read them three times each day to cement them in my head and make sure that is what I wanted. Now I am your Key Holder and I am confident with my plan and feel great about it. How do you like it so far? I replied that I really wanted to have sex with her but being belted on vacation with the keys at home was a really hot surprise.

She smiled big. You are so wonderful I have another surprise for you. I’m going to tell you some of the things I wrote down. (I thought, AWESOME) I wrote down that as my gift for you sexually I am going to spend the entire day and night with you and I’m going to wear this new thick fuzzy sweater all day long. I will be your smok’n hot, drink buying, golf partner, but I won’t play because golf is stupid. (she always said that), I will wear it after golf for whatever you want to do and I will wear it out to dinner when you take me to a nice restaurant tonight to celebrate. I will wear it when I serve you a nightcap back at the room.

Wow.

“And in return for this wonderful gift, you will be giving me, one month in chastity that starts today.”

“Holy Cow, I like the sweater part a lot”, I said. I was in a big panic. My world chastity record was 6 days and this was going to be 36 days, at least.

I got myself together and said, “How about I stay in Chastity till next weekend and every day next week we turn down the A/C and I pick a sweater for you to wear every night?”

She laughed and said, “It’s so cute you are trying to negotiate, remind me again who has the keys?”

“OK, OK, Chastity for 10 days from now, no sweaters and I’ll clean the kitchen every night, that will be 16 days in chastity and more than double my world record” and with that I gave her my most manipulative, please please, I love you so much face I could muster.

“You are staying belted until one month from now, I don’t see how that could possibly change, unless I decide to add time beyond a month. I do like the clean the kitchen every night. I’m sure you will do that anyway, because you might fear that I will add days for not doing so. Now, I expect you to clean the kitchen every night you are belted or that day does not count. I’m tired of this conversation. I am going to let you give me one more lame attempt to put conditions or propose changes to MY plan. Just one more time you can ever mention it. You have until the end of breakfast. Then any further requests for release or suggestions about my keyholding and your one month will automatically become TWO MONTHS. I suggest you at least be entertaining with your suggestion.”

The waiter arrived with breakfast, perfectly timed, so I would shut my mouth.

We didn’t say much during breakfast. At some point, she reached over and touched my hand. “You are pretty sexy when you are thinking so hard”

I knew I had to go back to the meme’s and the things that she seemed to really like. Suddenly I couldn’t remember any of it. As breakfast was almost done, I had it. “I’m ready, for my last lame attempt to get out of this chastity belt before one month”

“Good, I can’t wait, then we have a tee time”. She said it like it was just a formality and this was a pointless exercise in my using my mouth to say nothing important.

“I will submit to you for any action whatsoever for the next 10 days. I challenge you to train me to cum in my chastity belt from anal.” Her mouth dropped open, her butt wiggled a little bit and I knew that the juices had started to flow. I continued: “You have ten days to train me to cum from anal, not just drip a little, but to make me an anal whore. If you fail, on day #11 I am release from the chastity belt. But IF you are successful, and I hope you are, Then I want to be an anal whore and you have to make me cum from anal at least two times every week, further, if I am horny and want to be fucked, you cannot refuse me, unless I have already cum twice in the last 7 days.

She leaned back in the chair and one hand went under the table then suddenly rocketed back to the top of the table. I knew I did something good, because she was going to rub herself and had forgotten we are in a restaurant. After a minute if thoughtful gazing at me.

“I will accept your challenge, if you still want to do it, because I will not agree unless, after I have trained you to be an excellent anal whore, the rule will be, before you can cum, you must first be tied up, gagged and spanked heartily. Most times probably on the spanking bench but I want to also be creative. After your spanking I might just make you cum on the bench still tied up or untie you for some other adventure in cummies.

I didn’t like that additional terms, I don’t enjoy being spanked However, the chance to get out in 10 days or at least get some relief if she is successful, sounded pretty good. We agreed. I typed it all out onto an email and sent it to her. She replied confirmation that was the agreement. Apparently, putting an agreement in writing was also a Mona thing, so that there was no confusion later about agreements.

The check arrived and it was time to go get my golf clubs. Now my only concern was looking at her in the sweater as much as possible and remembering this day for the rest of my life. She is so sexy. And she will probably be very hot in the sweater too.

It was late morning and still cool, but her sweater was defiantly too much sweater for a normal person. The sweater got her noticed and two women approached her separately to tell her what a wonderful sweater she had on and ask if she made it herself. I caught the golf cart attendant checking her out seriously, he wasn’t looking at her rear or legs, he was definitely a sweater person too.

I started with a six pack of beer and a six pack of water and lots of ice from the snack shack. I figured it’s a great day to drink beer and stay hydrated. My golf game was ok. I had a birdie and I had some trouble. We were on the back nine where there were no houses or roads. I had just blasted my ball way down the fairway with a driver but at the last moment, my ball hit a little hill and bounced forcefully into the woods. I drove the cart up to the woods parked in the shade for Martina who was now a little red faced with heat, but being a super sexy woman and also drinking most of the beer.

The group behind us was four guys that started with a crapload of beer and we had not seen them for 5 holes, I bet we were 30 minutes ahead of them. And the group in front of us was fast so it was like we had the course to ourselves.

I decided that I could find my ball and probably play it. I grabbed a few clubs and walked into the woods to find my ball. After a minute or two I found it and hit a killer shot between the trees right up the fairway and almost to the green. I was happy to still have a chance for par.

As I came out of the woods Martina looked like she was passed out. She was leaning all the way back in the seat with her head back and her eyes closed. As I approached, I said, “What are you doing?” and at that moment I could hear her breathing. She was breathing hard. Her hand was down in her crotch. As I got to the cart, I just stopped. She was rubbing the outside of her shorts and masterbating. She looked like she had been doing this a while. I just stood there looking at her. My Chastity belt signaled that it was still in place and my heart sunk when I remembered the keys where at home and then sunk again when I remembered the belt might be my closest friend for the next month.

Sheepishly I said “Whatcha do’in?”

She gasped and didn’t move her head or open her eyes. Breathlessly she said, “I started thinking……..What if after a month……. You really like this ……….. (a longer pause for a few hard strokes) What if I really like this ….. or maybe we both really like this” With those words she gasped hard as if saying those words out loud was the trigger to her orgasm. Then her eyes shot wide open. She raised her head and looked at me …… “This could be a lifestylllllllllllllll Ahhhhh God please!!” Then as if speaking those words was a trigger to heaven, she came like a freight train for over a minute. I just stood there dumbfounded while I watched her cum more than one time.

As she settled down, I was still standing there looking at her. She opened her eyes again and turned her head toward me. She bit her lip in the most sexy way and took her hand off of her now noticeably wet crotch. She sat up a little and said, “I have 10-Days to make you the man of my dreams”

#chastity#locktober chastity chastitybelt #belt #sweater #sweater fetish #bondage #bondage story #keyholder #key holder #sweater fetish #sweater # wool fetish r#orgasm denial

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oh-obrien · 4 years

Text

Inscrutable {1}

Inscrutable: Impossible to Understand or Interpret

Relationships: Stiles Stilinski x Original Female Character

Word Count: 5,611 6,683

Warnings: None

Author’s Note: My first Stiles fic!! I’m super excited to share this series with y’all, especially being new to the Dylan O’Brien / Teen Wolf Fandom. Send me an ask or message me if you want to be tagged!

THIS PART OF INSCRUTABLE HAS BEEN UPDATED WITH MORE CONTENT AND HAS ALSO BEEN EDITED MORE THROUGHLY!

Finley Mannulv carefully scooped a second heaping spoon full of protein powder into her shaker bottle, hoping that the drink would give her a well-earned boost of energy for her first class of the semester. Knocking the scooper on the side of the bottle, she watched as some of the white powder stuck to the sides of the clear-blue plastic of the bottle, the rest forming a thick layer on top of the water. Finley dropped the plastic scooper back into the container and a small cloud of powder puffed out of the top, accumulating on the black fabric of her t-shirt. She hugged the protein powder container to her chest and closed it tightly before she tucked it back into her locker, wiping off what had gotten on her shirt afterwards.

Moving her bottle off of the bench in front of her locker, Finley kneeled on the wooden bench and let out a deep sigh looking into her messy locker. “Dad would have a hemorrhage,” she mumbled to herself before pulling out her dirty clothes from conditioning that morning. She made sure her number, eleven, had been printed on each piece of clothing before she clipped them on to her laundry clip and dumped them into the bin that their coach had brought in earlier. She made sure her clothes for practice later that night, along with her pinnies, were in her locker before deciding it looked clean enough for the time being.

She had never been the neatest, a controlled chaos being the easiest for her to navigate more often than not. The same philosophy also held true for any living space or locker she had prior to starting college. As soon as she made a space spotless, she suddenly couldn’t find anything she needed, and it just fell back into some sort of disarray a couple of days later anyway. A little bit of mess made her spaces feel more comfortable, more lived in.

Finley pulled one of her many school provided hoodies off of a hook inside her locker and slipped the white fabric over her head. She looked down at the American University logo that had settled in the middle of her torso, the reality still not fully sinking in that she’d be spending the next four years of her life at the university. Her junior year of high school Finley had verbally committed to the University, contingent on the fact that she produced favorable grades through her senior year and also kept up her performance on the lacrosse field. Now, nearly two years later, she had just finished her first pre-class conditioning session and was in the process of getting ready to attend her first class of her college experience.

Finley just shook her head, not needing to be reminded about how quickly her life seemed to be blowing by, and tucked some of the extra fabric of her hoodie up under itself so she could prove she did, in fact, have on shorts. Her hair, which had mostly dried during team breakfast, got pulled out of the back of her hoodie and settled in messy, half damp auburn strands on her back.

“What do you have going on this morning?” Finley asked Cameron, one of the other freshmen on the team, who had been filling up her own shaker bottle at the water station when Finley approached.

Cameron screwed the top of her bottle on tight and looked down at the unmixed powder that had been pushed down when she had poured the water in. “Caramel,” Cameron replied as she started shaking the container, “it’s good. My go to in high school.” Finley nodded and started filling up her own bottle, the fresh water pushing the powder down into the small amount of water that Finley already had in the bottle.

Finley made note of the flavor as she watched the bottle’s water level rise. “I need to order a few more, vanilla and cookies and cream get old after a couple weeks, but they’re all I brought with me.” She flipped the switch on the water fountain, turning the water flow off. “My brother stole a few containers for himself before he left for school so I’m low on my stock.”

Cameron took a long sip of her drink before tilting the bottle towards Finley in some sort of ‘cheers’ motion, “I’ll drink to that one. See you tonight.” Finley offered a smile in acknowledgement as she screwed the top to her own bottle back on tightly.

She held the top tight with her index and middle fingers and shook the bottle vigorously, watching the spring ball bounce around inside as the drink mixed. After she made sure her drink had been properly mixed, she took a long sip, swiping her tongue over her teeth to remove the film that stuck to them from the protein powder. “I’ll see you tonight!” She waved to Savanna, her locker-room neighbor, and adjusted the straps of her designated ‘class’ backpack on her shoulders.

When she had helped to move her brother into college a few weeks prior, she had made fun of him for taking his ‘Notre Dame Football’ backpack with him everywhere. But, to his defense, he had been gifted quite a lot of gear by the university prior to even getting to college and he had also used a similar backpack throughout his senior year of high school. Now though, Finley looked at herself in one of the mirrors and snorted, realizing she was now in the same position. Team sneakers were on her feet, team shorts her choice attire of pants and an ‘AU Lacrosse’ hoodie topped off her outfit with the matching t-shirt underneath.

“Good luck with your first day of classes!” Savanna offered Finley an excited smile. Finley nodded in thanks while she picked up her lacrosse bag with her free hand, she needed to bring it back to her dorm to tighten the pocket of her stick, and bringing the bag to class with her was a better option than having to travel back to the locker room after her class just to pick it up.

“This entire year will go a lot faster than you think it will now, the countdown to graduation in four years really starts now.” Jayden, a junior, added. Finley nodded as she grabbed her lacrosse stick and gripped it in the same hand as her bag, off to officially start her first day of college.

She received the opportunity to move on to the American University campus two weeks early, along with the other athletes who attended the school. The two-week period seemed to allow her, and the other freshmen athletes, a cushion to comfortably adjust to college life and the campus itself. It felt like it gave her a leg up on the other freshmen, she already looked, and felt, comfortable on campus that was a huge part of adjusting to college life and she already had it in the bag.

In her two weeks already on campus, Finley had been able to find where all of her classes would be, as well as settle into a routine. Six o’clock morning workouts, seven fifteen shower, seven-thirty team breakfast. After breakfast she knew her classes started at eight-forty-five or eight-fifteen depending on the day.

Taking all early classes would allow her plenty of time to nap in the afternoon if she felt like she needed to before attending evening practices. On the days when she didn’t feel like sleeping a little extra, it would allow extra time for homework and studying. Her brother had settled into a similar routine at Notre Dame, although a little busier because football was in season at the university, but it was comforting to know her twin was in a similar mindset.

At eight-thirty Finley stepped out of the William I Jacobs Recreational Complex, the sun had finally risen within the timeframe she had been inside the facility. The early mornings would begin to get old near mid-terms, but for now the early start felt somewhat refreshing, she was already awake and nearly three hours into her day while most of the other students had probably just woken up.

Despite her classes being in the first time block of the day, Finley noticed that campus had already started to bustle with activity. Students who were excited, nervous, and overwhelmed for their first day of classes were all on the way to the multiple academic buildings. Some were chatting in small groups, others walked alone with headphones in, and she even noticed a few couples holding hands. Must be nice.

The late-August morning air had a slight chill to it and Finley felt the hair on her legs stand up when a breeze passed. The morning air seemed easier to breathe than the stuffy August afternoon air she had been practicing in for the past two weeks during two-a-days. Her first class for the day was Introduction to Law, a class she didn’t feel all that excited for.

Finley liked to think she had a solid knowledge of the basis of the legal system. Thanks to her parents, of course. Her father’s current job title read ‘Director of the Central Intelligence Agency’ on various news channels when he would give interviews, and her mom had once worked for the Department of Homeland Security, she felt well versed in the basics of the law. However, Finley had also accepted that fact that she couldn’t use her father’s government position and the stories he had told her to get out of introduction level classes for her major.

However, Finley had been able to use many of the dual enrollment and advanced placement classes to get out of many of her core curriculum classes. She only had two freshman level classes to take this semester and would then be fully immersed into the classes for both of her majors, and with her starting out on campus as a sophomore, she would be able to register for what she needed next semester rather than getting stuck with the leftover dregs for classes.

Carefully reaching back to put her protein shake in her left backpack pocket, Finley pulled her phone out of the waistband of her Nike shorts and saw a text from her twin brother. Cian was a freshman quarterback at Notre Dame and hoped to start a couple games in the upcoming season and be named the permeant starter his sophomore year.

“You cheating on the field yet?” Finley snorted reading the text message over to herself a couple more times before trying to think of a witty response, she felt too tired to think of one, her brain not being awake enough to muster a proper insult.

“It’s not cheating when it’s my natural athletic ability. Same goes to you man.” She responded before tucking her phone back into her waistband before scaling the steps to the academic building her first class took place in.

Entering the old building Finley inhaled the stuffy air before trying to remember which way she went to find her classroom last week. The strong smell of mold and sheetrock made her sneeze and she realized that she would need to take one of her ‘allergy pills’ every morning to be sure none of the buildings would bother her going forward. After deciding to take the hallway to her left she quickly found the room she had located once before and pushed the door open with her elbow. She stepped into the lecture style room and saw a few students already inside the tiered room, scrolling through their phones or laptops.

Surveying the room, she noticed plenty of prime seat options and opted to climb the stairs and slide into the first seat closest to the middle aisle in the third row. She grabbed her protein shake out of its pocket and settled it on the table in front of her along with her water bottle. Finley set her lacrosse bag on the floor, tucking it up against the end of the table that spanned her whole half of the row, making sure nobody would be able to trip over it. She stood her stick up next to her bag before sitting down and pulling one of her headphones out.

Scrolling through her team’s group chat she followed along with dinner plans and made a mental note to remember to go after practice later that night, their coach stressed team bonding, and team meals fell under that umbrella. Finley would look up every time the door opened, and her classmates started to trickle in. So far only one other girl had settled into Finley’s row, on the complete opposite end from her.

At eight-forty a middle-aged man entered the room and started logging into the computer, no materials with him other than his reusable water bottle and cell phone. Finley assumed he had to be the professor and nodded before looking back down at her phone. Something about him just felt off, but she couldn’t pinpoint what the ‘offness’ he gave off was.

A couple minutes later she heard someone move past the girl at the end of the row, mumbling a ‘sorry’ as they slipped behind her chair. The footsteps indicated they were most likely a male, and as they got closer Finley got a whiff of their body scent. It could only be described as ‘boy’. The cologne and deodorant he had on clashed and the smell of the two mixing with his normal scent made Finley sneeze. Fantastic.

She heard the stranger get closer and closer until his erratic heartbeat settled right next to her, he also smelled like some type of medication, something with amphetamine in it. “Hey,” his voice distracted her while she was in the middle of typing out a message to her brother, trying to concentrate on the message she had been through the fog that was this boy’s natural scent. She hoped he would leave after she didn’t acknowledge him, but after he didn’t leave after a few seconds Finley caved.

She looked up and noticed the boy had dark hair and soft brown eyes, his facial expression definitely gave away his anxiety about his first day. His thumbs were hooked into the straps on his backpack while he rocked on the balls of his feet. “This seat free?” He asked while pointing at the chair next to where Finley sat. She gave him a quick once over and noted how he nervously chewed on his bottom lip, his cheeks getting a little bit red as his heartbeat quickened, his nerves only growing.

He was nervous, and kind of cute, he could stay. Finley nodded and pulled her other headphone out, “yeah.” She didn’t understand why he had to sit right next to her when there were plenty of other seats free that weren’t near anyone. There were also a few seats two away from her but decided not to point it out.

He wore a loose red and black open flannel shirt that contrasted the fitted white tee he had on underneath; his spindly muscles visible through the material. His legs sported a pair of dark jeans and he had a black leather belt tight around his waist. To anyone else he would smell like old spice deodorant and fabric softener if they were sitting this close to him. However, Finley smelled the anxiety that seeped out of his pores.

“Some boy just sat next to me,” Finley sent her brother.

“He reeks of anxiety,” she added, wrinkling her nose and trying not to sneeze again after she had sent it. She went to slip her right headphone back in but instead felt the boy next to her stealing a nervous glance at her. Finley knew he considered saying something to her and instead opted to unplug her headphones and slip them into her school bag in a messy tangle of wires.

“I’m Stiles! I’m from California!” He offered Finley a nervous smile after his more than awkward introduction, his heart beating ever faster than after he sat down. Did he know introductions didn’t have to be so formal and forced?

Before Finley mustered a response to Stiles’ introduction, she watched his eyes trail to her lacrosse stick that peeked over the top of the table. “Oh woah! You play lacrosse here?” She looked down at her hoodie which had ‘American University Lacrosse’ printed on it, to make sure she pulled on the hoodie she thought she did before leaving the locker room. Maybe he thought it could be her boyfriend’s? But American didn’t have an NCAA men’s lacrosse team, they only had a club men’s lacrosse team.

Holy shit, Finley thought to herself, he also had too much energy. “I’m Finley. I’m from the D.C. area,” she replied slowly. “And yes, I do play lacrosse here,” she could have ended her introduction there, but her dad telling her to be ‘diplomatic’ with her classmates the night before flashed across her mind. “You’re familiar?” She added after the fact.

He nodded enthusiastically, “I played in high school! I’m also playing on the club team here, since we don’t have a varsity men’s team and all. I also probably wouldn’t have been asked to play on a varsity team if there was one.” He reached back to scratch the back of his neck nervously. Maybe he wasn’t so bad, just nervous about being across the country. Or maybe he had ADHD, just like one of her and Cian’s younger cousins.

With a nod at his response Finley turned back to her phone and saw another text from her brother. “The downfalls of being supernatural. Suck it up Fins.” She rolled her eyes at his response and tried to think of something to snap back at him when Stiles’ voice caught her attention again

“So, are you a Justice and Law major also?” Finley could feel his eyes on the side of her face. “Wait no!” He cut her answer off before she could even begin. “This class is for my Legal Studies Major!” He had decided to double major, that had to mean he was pretty smart, right?

Taking another sip of her protein shake to prevent herself from sighing, Finley turned her chair so she faced him this time. “Accounting and Legal Studies.” She saw Stiles ready to ask another question and felt thankful when she instead heard the professor’s voice carry a full ‘good morning’ through the room.

Her eyes turned to the man at the front of the room as she pulled her legs up on to the chair she sat in, with her legs ‘criss-cross-applesauce’ on the plush material. She felt herself start to swivel back and forth as the professor started his introduction but avoided the urge. “I’m Robert,” their professor seemed to run a very informal classroom. He wore dark jeans and a polo shirt, an unzipped American University hoodie over it.

All of high school Finley’s teachers had spent time telling their classes, ‘this will never fly in college!’ However, that statement quickly had seemed to becoming false as one of the classes for the next day had already been cancelled and the Professor had sent them an email that just stated, ‘read the syllabus, ask any questions in out class on Thursday.’ Mix that message with this professor’s relaxed attitude, casual dress and lack of materials and Finley really believed that her high school teachers had just been trying to scare the students into listening.

“If you’re not here for Introduction to Law, you’re in the wrong place,” he leaned against the table at the front of the room. Finley watched as a few students stood and left the room, they all had their eyes on pieces of paper which most liked contained their schedules. “Anyone else?” Robert gave others the ability to leave if they needed. After he received no response to his question, he pushed himself off the table and clapped his hands together. “Fantastic!”

“Seems nice so far,” Stiles mumbled from his place next to Finley who tried not to show her annoyance with him. She just simply nodded in response and continued watching their professor, still slowly turning back and forth in her chair.

Robert picked up a piece of blue chalk and started writing on the chalkboard. “Since we’re in a freshman class I’ll do the whole introduction thing!” He scraped a few more words on to the board. “So, give us your name, where you’re from, you major, and I guess a fun fact about you or some shit like that.”

Oh, so it would be this kind of class. He pointed at the student who occupied the very first seat in the front row and prompted them to introduce themselves. Finley listened as others introduced themselves mentally taking note of who seemed to give off anxiety and those who were confident going into the first day. Most of the room stank of anxiety, but Finley tried to ignore the smell. She took frequent, small sips of her protein shake to fill her nostrils with the scent of vanilla instead of anxiety. After the boy in the row next to her, David, introduced himself she watched Robert’s eyes flicker over to her.

Mentally groaning, Finley pulled the protein shake bottle away from her lips. “Hi, I’m Finley Mannulv. I’m-”

“Wait. Hold on,” Finley audibly groaned when her professor cut her off. Why did professors or teachers always have to do this? Especially in D.C. didn’t they get the kids of government officials, congressmen, ambassadors, anyone else with a title seemingly ‘important’ to the function of the country and the world, all the time.

“Yes, Mannulv as in Maxwell Mannulv Director of the CIA’s daughter,” she finished for him while rolling her eyes. “Now that we addressed the elephant in the room I’m moving on. I’m here for an education just like everyone else.” She saw Stiles’ jaw open slightly next to her and shook her head. Fantastic, already off to a great first day. “Anyway, I’m from around D.C., originally from New York though, but I’m sure you knew that already,” she glared at her professor. “But I’m an Accounting and Legal Studies major and I’m on the lacrosse team.”

Robert narrowed his eyes at Finley who just offered him a lopsided smirk in response. “And no, my dad didn’t get me in here. I had at 35 on the ACT and a 1550 on the SAT.” She wasn’t going to let him intimidate her.

Robert smiled through clenched teeth, “so nice to have a student with such close ties to the legal system in the class.” He turned to Stiles. “And you?”

Finley coughed when she smelled his anxiety grow even stronger, did this boy ever relax? “Umm hey,” he awkwardly waved around the room. “I’m Stiles Stilinski, I’m from Beacon Hills in California, and I’m a Justice and Law and Legal Studies double major. Umm-” he hesitated, “a fun fact? I’m on the men’s club lacrosse team here.” Stiles took in a deep breath of air after he finished speaking. Finley allowed herself to breath after that and noticed that the air of anxiety around him decreased greatly. She had more important things than Stiles’ anxiety to worry about right now though.

Finley made sure Robert no longer looked in their direction before pulling her phone out. “There’s a guy in my class from Beacon Hills!” She quickly typed out in the group chat she had with her dad and brother knowing they would be interested in the information.

“Is it anxiety boy?” Cian replied.

At the same time her dad sent, “Is he one of us?”

“Yes and no!” She quickly sent. She followed it by saying, “his first name is Styles? I don’t even know if that’s how it’s spelled and I didn’t catch his last name but it started with like Still.” Finley wasn’t sure if that was how he spelled it but that’s how it had been pronounced. Hopefully it would be enough for her dad to work with.

“Just pay attention in class. I’ll send a few messages out and see what I can find.” Maxwell replied while his son answered with “Who the hell names their kid Styles?” Finley locked her phone and slid it face down on to the table in front of her with the ringer turned off.

Still having heard most of the introductions of her fellow classmates, Finley tuned back into class while watching the boy who sat next to her closely.

He definitely seemed human, another supernatural tended to be incredibly easy for Finley to sense, her father had been training her how to do it from a young age. He also didn’t smell like he had recently been in contact with any other supernatural creatures, maybe that was because he had just moved into college? If he lived in Beacon Hills he had to know about all the supernaturals there, especially after Scott McCall managed to somehow chase most of the hunters out of town and create a ‘supernatural sanctuary’ of sorts.

Finley felt a migraine creeping into the back of her head and knew she had to stop stressing about this Styles boy before she wouldn’t be able to make it through the rest of the day. Instead she focused on Robert as he began speaking about what the class would entail.

“As you all know this is an introduction to law class.” No shit, Finley rolled her eyes and took another long sip from her protein shake. “Let me start with this question. Is anyone here somewhat comfortable with the legal process?”

Finley’s hand shot up with absolutely no hesitation and she gave Robert a fake smile, as if she asked him to challenge her. She watched as Stiles’ hand slowly raised from his place next to her and her suspicion of the boy only continued to increase.

Robert looked at Stiles with shock, his hand coming up to point at the pair. “Now I know about Ms. Mannulv’s legal background of sorts. But what about you Mr.,” he trailed off forgetting his last name.

“Stilinski,” he filled in the missing word. Finley would need to remember that as best she could. “And my dad’s the Sheriff of our town back home. I also had an FBI internship for part of the summer.” Finley almost choked on her shake and had to cough again to cover it up, her eyes widening.

“Are you okay Ms. Mannulv?” Finley held a hand up at Robert’s question and nodded for him to continue. She set the shake down in front of her and her fingers were itching to pick up her phone to text her dad and brother with the update, but she knew she needed to wait.

Robert walked back to the computer and pressed a button that had a projector screen coming down from inside the ceiling. “Well, since you two are so comfortable with the basis of law already,” Finley watched as the screen lit up. The words ‘Partner Based Case Study and Mock Trial’ were written across a PowerPoint slide. “You can be our first pair for this semester!”

Finley actually choked on her protein shake this time and spiraled into a coughing fit. She quickly reached out for her metal water bottle and unscrewed the top taking a long sip to clear her airway. “Sorry, practice this morning has me wiped out, especially with the air being cool.” She let the ice water coat her suddenly dry throat. That had been a total lie, her body easily adjusted to the change in air that morning, but it would need to be a good cover for now.

She felt Stiles’ eyes on her and carefully listened for his heartbeat. After detecting a quicker than normal resting heartbeat again she realized he felt just as anxious about this assignment as she did. Maybe they would be able to pull it off.

“So now that we all realize this is a case-based class, if the rest of you would like to partner up with someone else in the class we can go through the syllabus after.” Finley watched as other students started talking with one another, trying to make compatible pairs for their projects. She took the opportunity to open her laptop and pull up the syllabus, also grabbing her phone.

“His dad’s the sheriff.” She quickly sent in the group chat before flicking her ringer back on and turning it all the way down so she would feel the phone vibrate.

Finley quickly made herself come to peace with the fact that she would have to talk to this Stiles boy more often than she originally intended to and turned to face him. “So, this just took an interesting turn.” She offered him a small smile, taking note of the indifferent expression on his face, but she did note that his heartbeat had slowed slightly.

Stiles nodded then looked over to Finley again, his eyes were soft and carried some hints of nervousness, but a genuine smile spread across his face. “Definitely not what I expected to say the least. But I think we’re both pretty experienced so we should be a great team.”

“Definitely,” Finley suddenly decided the rings on her fingers were interesting and started spinning them. “I wasn’t a huge partner work person most of my life, but this should be an easy introduction.”

Stiles snorted out a small laugh and his smile grew, “seems like all I’ve done the past few years is group work.” He shook his head slightly, “this should be a nice transition into college though. A little calmer than life back home.”

Robert clapped his hands to get the attention of his class, waiting for the room to fall silent before speaking. “Hope everyone has a partner,” he walked over to the computer and pulled up an excel spreadsheet. “So, we have Mannulv and Stilinski to start us off.” He typed their last names in and looked up. “Who’s next?”

Finley tuned out after that and picked her phone up off her thigh.

“Stilinski?” Her dad had asked. After replying with a simple ‘yes’, Finley looked to see the spreadsheet almost completely filled out.

Robert filled in the remaining rows and turned the PowerPoint back on. Finley quickly read the ‘Types of Cases’ slide and immediately had her mind set on completing the murder case with the added mental state determination element and wanted to argue on the state’s side.

She turned to Stiles whose eyes still traveled across the slide and waited until he finished reading it and also looked over to her before speaking. “Four?” She asked him, making sure she had the case number right.

“I mean, since you knew what you wanted that quickly,” he shrugged, “sure.” After agreeing on the case, Finley tuned back into the instructions Robert read to the class off another slide.

“So! With that being said after discussing with your partner which case and side you would like to argue for,” he flicked back to the slide. “I would like one of you to raise your hand and let me know.” He leaned back on to the desk.

Finley made eye contact with Stiles again and raised an eyebrow. “Go ahead,” he laughed lightly, giving Finley the go ahead to lock their case in. She quickly raised her hand and watched as Robert raised his eyebrows at her.

“Ms. Mannulv, Mr. Stilinski. That was awfully quick.” He crossed his arms over his chest while speaking.

Finley shook her head with a small smile. “We’re experienced right?” She didn’t wait for the professor’s answer before continuing, “by those standards we should know what we want then. The homicide case, which I’m assuming is actually murder charges, with the mental state element, state’s side.”

Robert smiles after hearing her choice and nodded. “Now as most of you will find out, your case is based on real life cases!” Robert’s voice filled the room, cutting off other student’s conversations. “Which will be expressed in the email I send to those working on each individual case after class. Some cases are closed, others are cold. Cold cases are much harder to work with,” he turned to Finley with a smirk. “After I take down which case, you’re doing you’re free to leave!”

“Thank god,” Finley began putting everything back into her backpack and zipping it up. She watched as Stiles did the same, standing up afterwards and looking over to Finley expectantly.

He watched as she tucked her empty protein shake bottle into the side of her backpack, and she also did the same with her water bottle on the opposite side. She reached down to pick up her lacrosse bag and her stick. She seemed to have everything under control, but should he offer to help her anyway?

Stiles nervously scratched the back of his neck before speaking, “do you umm need, I mean want, do you want help?” He asked her. She stood up straight again, her phone in one hand and her lacrosse bag and stick in the other, a soft smile on her lips.

“I’m okay,” she shook her head. “I mean I’ve been doing it for years now, but I really do appreciate the offer.” Stiles noticed her blue eyes were softer now as they made their way down the middle stairs of the room and out the door. Maybe she wasn’t as cold as she gave off in class.

He wasn’t sure if she had class after this or not, but he knew they finished their class about half an hour early and had been interested in making new friends at college. Lydia told him he should get to know people early on and establish a couple friendships he could see lasting past college. “You’ve played for a while now?” He asked her as they walked outside of the building and into the warming morning air.

“Me?” She laughed a little bit. “Started in second grade, haven’t stopped since. Always wanted to play with the boys though like my brother did.” She shrugged. She didn’t seem to give off the ‘girly’ attitude that Lydia and Allison had through out high school. Finley didn’t ‘dress to impress’ like they had and clearly went for comfort and functionality.

Stiles laughed lightly, “I mean, I didn’t get a ton of playing time in high school, but the pushing and shoving was fun sometimes, especially if I had a little pent up frustration.” The pair stopped once they were outside the building and Finley dropped her bag and stick. She sat down on the top stair of the staircase and looked up to Stiles motioning for him to sit.

He dropped his backpack next to both of hers before sitting next to her. “What brought you all the way out here though?” She asked. “I mean California is across the country and all.”

Stiles carefully thought over his answer, he didn’t want to give away too much about exactly why he had left Beacon Hills. He hoped he didn’t have to open that part of his life up to anyone new so quickly. “Umm, I’m looking to work in the FBI after college, so thought it would be a good place to go to school.” That part held true. “That and my girlfriend is at MIT, we’re close enough to visit when one of us has time.” Right being close to Lydia had also been part of the original plan.

Stiles had been so busy in the past week he had hardly been able to talk to Lydia, or any of his other friends from back home for that matter. Diving across the country had him absolutely exhausted, mixed with the stress of moving in and trying to get settled pretty quickly it had taken up the remainder of his energy. He felt guilty, but he also realized that the lack of communication would sometimes be the consequence of a long-distance relationship.

He watched as Finley reached back to pick up her water bottle and unscrewed the cap, taking a long sip. “Oh god that must be stressful,” she cleared her throat. “I’m only like half an hour from home at most, and I never had time for relationships. That and I think any boy I brought home would be scared of my dad.”

Stiles gave her a curious look and raised his eyebrow, urging her to continue on her thought. “You said he worked for the CIA or something right?”

“Yep, he does. Head honcho of the CIA.” She grabbed the edge of her hoodie and quickly pulled it over her head, resting it across her lap once it came off. “Sorry I started to get warm. But sorry if I acted like kind of a dick in class, I don’t like people questioning my intelligence because of my dad’s position in government.”

Stiles could understand where that frustration could be coming from. He had often used his father’s position as Sheriff to his advantage but had never really experienced the negative consequences that his position could have brought as everyone respected his dad. “I think we’ll be a pretty great team though.” He looked over to Finley who swung her water bottle back and forth between her legs, his eyes momentarily focusing on the object.

“I think we’ll be the best team that guy has ever seen!” She smiled. “I’ll make sure of it.”

A silence fell between the pair and Stiles closed his eyes and allowed his face to tilt up into the morning sun, it’s warmth quickly spreading out across his body. He opened his eyes when he heard one of Finley’s bags being opened. She shoved her hoodie into her lacrosse bag and put her water bottle back into the open side pocket on her other backpack.

She huffed and closed the bag again, standing up. “I need to get to my next class soon,” she offered. “If you want to get lunch and stat looking over our case if we have the materials in time that could work. Here-” She held her phone out to him. “I usually eat at the gym with my team, but I know a couple good places off campus that the meal plan covers if you’d want to do that?”

Right. She grew up around here of course she would know what to eat in the area. “I get finished at 12:20 but after that would work for me.” Stiles hoped their schedules would line up.

“Oh yeah same,” Finley watched as Stiles typed his number into her phone. “I have all early classes, easiest option for me.” She took her phone back before picking all her things up. “I’ll text you after my class gets out!”

“Sounds good!” Stiles threw his backpack over his shoulder before waving goodbye to Finley who went the opposite direction from him. She seemed nice enough, maybe this would be the beginning of his life settling into a new normal.

Finley returned the wave with the hand she gripped her phone in before making her way down the stairs and off to her next class, financial accounting. She flipped her phone over in her hand and unlocked it, looking through texts her dad and brother had sent her.

“Best friends with McCall for years now, human part of his pack basically.” Fantastic, Finley groaned audibly after reading the message her dad sent. She finds a nice boy and he’s best friends with Scott McCall and has a girlfriend.

Finley felt her phone vibrate and looked down to see a message from her brother this time. “Well at least McCall is intelligent unlike some of the others we’ve worked with.” That held true.

Finley sighed deeply as she pushed open the door to the business building, why would she be getting herself wrapped up with a guy from Beacon Hills?

#stiles stilinski #stiles stilinski imagine #dylan obrien #dylan obrien imagine #teen wolf #teen wolf imagine #teen wolf fanfiction #stiles stilinski fanfiction #werewolf #werewolf ofc #werewolf character #human stiles #anna writes #inscrutable fic

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unfragilelove · 4 years

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when all is lost, then all is found. (1/1)

This is the idea that’s been knocking around in my head and refusing to let me rest until I spat it out on paper. I hope you all enjoy. <3 (begins post-Frozen 1, and ends post-Frozen 2.)

Frohana/Kristanna || No warnings/rating || ao3 link

“If you don’t mind my asking, why did you travel with ice harvesters as a child? Why didn’t you live in an Arendelle orphanage?” Kristoff just shrugs. “Because there isn’t one.”

aka: The royal family establishes the first orphanage in Arendelle, and the children are not the only ones who find a home within it's walls.

Arendelle has always prided itself on being well-run kingdom, fortunate enough to have an abundance of resources, plenty of trade, a fairly stable economy, and residents who rarely disturb the peace.

Which is why it comes as such a shock to Anna and Elsa when, in a conversation with Kristoff, full of quiet admissions and tales of their childhood, the topic comes up:

“If you don’t mind my asking, why did you travel with ice harvesters as a child? Why didn’t you live in an Arendelle orphanage?”

Kristoff just shrugs. “Because there isn’t one.”

Anna’s jaw drops and Elsa looks a combination of surprised and uncomfortable, both of the women falling silent for several long moments, seemingly at a loss for words.

“There isn’t one?” Anna speaks up first, her voice incredulous, “Not anywhere in our entire kingdom?”

“No. But, to be fair, it’s not like there are a lot of displaced kids in Arendelle.”

“But when there are,” Anna says, her voice rising with her building emotions, “When it does come up, and there are parents who can’t take care of their baby, or a kid whose parents die,” Elsa and Kristoff both wince a bit at that, and the waver in Anna’s voice speaks for itself, “We don’t have anywhere for them to go?”

Kristoff presses his lips together in a tight frown, unable to find the words to ease her mind. Admittedly, it does bother him, too— the thought of other children growing up without homes, and perhaps not ending up as fortunate as he did. (Trolls they may be, but they’re his family, all the same.)

“I feel awful, for not even knowing.” Elsa says, her voice quiet and eyes pensive.

“Up until a few months ago, you two spent your entire lives inside the castle walls. It’s not your fault that you don’t know every inch of Arendelle yet.” Kristoff says, looking at the two downtrodden sisters, and hoping to assuage some of their guilt.

“But we can change that, right?” Anna asks, though her voice leaves little room for argument. “We could create a place where kids can be safe. Somewhere that they can stay until they find home and families, somewhere they don’t have to be alone anymore.”

None of them seem inclined to disagree.

It’s a fairly small thing, Arendelle’s Home for Children, but it’s plenty homey, with plush blankets on warm beds, and boxes full of toys, and a view of the fjord through the dining room window. It’s located right outside the castle gates, too, which makes overseeing the building process all the easier. (They all play a role in it’s creation, Kristoff helps with a lot of the hands-on work, Elsa oversees the plans, and Anna is the creative force behind it all, offering ideas and helping in any way she can.)

The demand for an orphanage was not immense, but it's a cause that proves itself more than necessary.

This rings particularly true, when it hasn't even been a week after they finish painting the outer walls, and they are approached by a woman, tears rolling down her face, a young toddler in her arms. A child that is not hers, but her brother’s, who went out for what was supposed to be a two-day trek into the mountains and failed to return alive, and she simply can’t raise the boy herself anymore, she’s sorry, so sorry--

(It isn't long at all before a couple-- two lovely women, both skilled blacksmiths-- tentatively come into the Home. They’ve wanted a child of their own for years now, and considering the way the couple’s eyes well up with tears when the two tiny hands reach up toward them, Anna, Elsa and Kristoff all have no doubt they made the right decision.)

As time passes, the amount of children in the Home ebbs and flows— thankfully, they’ve rarely had more than five residents at any given time, and in the two whole years since it’s been open, they’ve said tearful farewells to almost a dozen children who’ve found happy homes with new parents.

Turns out, there are kids in Arendelle who need a safe place to live, but there are also plenty of couples-- same-sex couples, or ones who cannot bear children, or individuals who simply want to adopt a child into their life-- who are equally grateful for the opportunity to expand their family.

It may be far from a lucrative business, but it’s brought them far more fulfillment than any amount of coin could.

When they first opened Arendelle’s Home for Children, Gerda had offered her assistance in running the place. Anna, who remembered how kind she was to her as a child, knew she’d be as good a fit as any. And now, coming up on two and a half years into the endeavor, it still rings true. However, while Gerda remains the primary live-in caretaker, the royal family’s presence has been far from absent.

Kristoff spends a fair amount of time down in the Home, often bringing Sven, who happily brays and lets the kids hang off his antlers, or ride on his back. He can’t help but talk for Sven, too, which almost always makes the younger children giggle and squeal in delight.

There’s one little girl there, Sylvi, with pale skin and tangled blonde hair, who mostly keeps to herself— she’s nonverbal, and hasn’t quite warmed up to any of them yet, curling away from any sort of physical contact.

(They’re not sure if she was born that way, or if it’s a coping mechanism, or some combination of both. They know next to nothing about her past, but they’ll do everything they can to ensure her a happy future.)

She still remains rather closed-off, despite being at the Home for a few months now. But then, on a crisp Spring morning, something incredible happens-- Kristoff breaks out in Sven’s voice, and Sylvi’s face lights up like a Christmas tree. She smiles-- the very first smile they’ve seen cross her face in all the time she’s been there-- and she wanders over to bury her hands happily in the thick texture of the reindeer’s fur. It’s the most progress they’ve seen her make thus far, and Kristoff has never felt prouder.

Meanwhile, Anna spends any free time she has at the Home, too-- enthusiastically telling the kids stories of her adventures, (usually with Olaf at her side, reenacting the scenes with equal enthusiasm.) And she’s almost always bringing the kids more toys. (“Your highness, how many times must I insist there are already too many toys to keep the place tidy!” “Oh, come on Gerda, how am I supposed to be considered a kind and generous princess if I don’t spoil my favorite little Arendellians! Plus, Kristoff and I already started building them bigger toy boxes, don’t worry.”)

There’s a boy there, Fredrik, with wild curly locks and a gap-toothed grin, who always runs and flings himself into Anna’s arms. He, too, always has a new story to tell— of he and the other kids playing pirates, or this baby rabbit he saw in the woods, or the way he swears there’s a sea monster in the fjord. Sometimes he’ll stop himself mid-sentence, as though realizing he’s rambling, and stumbles over an apology-- in a way that feels painfully familiar to Anna. But she’ll be damned if she makes a child feel any of the same inadequacy she did. With a shake of her head and a smile, she’ll urge him on, “Well, don’t leave me hanging! You’ve gotta tell me what happened next!”

The way his face always brightens in response is worth more than anything in the world.

Elsa stops by frequently, as well— though at first it had taken her a bit longer to get used to being around children, mostly due to the fear she still wasn’t fully in control of her powers. Once she had begun to visit, though, the children quickly grew on her, and she’ll often make them little flurries and piles of snow to play in during the hot summer months. There’s an older girl in her late teens, named Runa— who starts to sit next to Elsa while the younger children play. Runa is mostly blind, but she often requests little ice sculptures from Elsa, a smile always gracing her face as she runs her fingers along the frigid curves of each figurine. Of course, they have plenty of wooden toys that could serve the same purpose. So one day, Elsa can't help but to ask, “Doesn’t the cold bother you?”

Runa shrugs, “I’ve never minded it.”

Perhaps it’s not so much the ice figurines she enjoys, as much as it is the company and kindness of another.

Of course, all the children who have come into the Home hold special places in each of their hearts. It’s a complicated sort of love, as every farewell they have is a bittersweet one (it means they’ll see the child far less, if at all-- but it means they've found a real home, which is so, so good.)

And on a similar vein, every child they watch get passed up by potential families breaks their hearts.

It's Autumn when a lot changes in an incredibly short span of time. By the time the dust fully settles in Arendelle, Anna’s both engaged and coronated as Queen, Elsa lives in the Enchanted Forest with the Northuldra, and there’s an entire chunk of their kingdom’s history that needs retelling. For Anna, in particular, the queendom comes incredibly natural to her— but the journey it took to get there, the mass of secrets their family kept, holding Olaf as he perished, the gripping fear that she was truly alone , followed by nearly dying on the dam-- well, that all is a bit harder to come to terms with.

Eventually, though, things calm down enough for them to fall back in to a mostly normal routine, and they waste no time visiting the Home regularly once more. There, they find a couple new residents, and, unfortunately-- three familiar faces who’ve yet to find homes.

Sylvi, despite most families passing her by, makes great strides-- she warms up to Kristoff through her comfort around Sven, and begins to trust the sisters, too. Elsa, with her calm and composed demeanor, seems to put her at ease. And Anna, though far more excitable than her sister in nature, is always careful to not to overstimulate or stress the child out. Eventually, the first time Sylvi makes proper eye contact with someone is with Anna, her curious little eyes becoming absolutely fixated on the princess’s face as she tells her a story. The little one doesn’t even seem to realize she’s doing it, and yet it takes Anna all the willpower she can muster to stay focused on the tale she’s weaving, and not start to cry right then and there.

Fredrik, meanwhile, is a lovebug with just about everyone, as outgoing as ever and never seeming to run low on energy. He loves nature, always asking to ride Sven, or picking up little snails off the cobblestone path and moving them to safety, or doodling different plants he finds throughout the town. He can almost always be found running around playing with Olaf, or dragging the other children into games, or asking Kristoff and Anna to take him on hikes, or running headfirst into a snow pile Elsa made-- (to which she quickly has to add extra snow to cushion him from hitting the ground beneath, and dear gods , these children will never fail to keep their reflexes sharp.)

Elsa, although no longer living there, still visits Arendelle rather frequently. While it’s their family game night that keeps her coming back weekly, she makes time to visit the Home, as well. Despite it being a regular occurrence, Runa’s face never fails to light up when she hears Elsa’s voice. It always makes her heart feel full-- that is, until the day Gerda pulls her aside and shares that they haven’t had many potential adopters, lately, and those that do visit are almost never interested in Runa.

“Beyond being blind, she’s nearly an adult, in most people’s eyes.” Gerda tells her in a whisper, her voice thick with sadness. “And I fear she may not find a family before that day comes.”

It sticks with Elsa, the words ringing in her ears and refusing to grant her peace. She feels like it’s the siren’s call all over again, something nagging in the back of her mind, except instead of being mysterious and exciting, it’s an echo of a far more grim reality. She returns to the Enchanted Forest that night, and it’s several weeks before she visits the orphanage again.

“You came back!” Runa exclaims when she returns, “I was starting to think you forgot about me.”

“Quite the opposite, actually, I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately. There’s something I need to speak to you about.” A sharp breath, and then: “How would you feel about coming to live with me and the Northuldra?”

A few more months pass, and while the newest children have come and gone from their system in nearly record time, Sylvi and Fredrik still remain. It’s just the two of them in the Home now, and with the holidays only days away, it doesn’t appear they’ll find homes before the new year.

As a result, Kristoff and Anna, in addition to the time they spend with them during the day, have taken to inviting the kids for dinner with them in the castle, most nights. (“They deserve to eat in a proper home, you know?” “Of course, and I’m sure Gerda will enjoy having the afternoon off--” “Right, and Fredrik didn’t get a chance to finish telling us about how he saved that baby bird!”

“And really, no child deserves to feel alone this time of year.”)

It’s not the first time they’ve all eaten in the castle together, but there’s something about the way Sylvi erupts into a fit of loud giggles when Fredrik puts a carrot up his nose to imitate Olaf, or the way Kristoff feigns shock to amuse the kids each time he looks away only to find more and more brussel sprouts being snuck onto his plate, or the way Fredrik, with a belly already full of hearty food, looks at the dessert tray being brought in and says, “Man, I love you guys.”

The moments are happy ones, and yet Anna’s chest aches while watching how well these two children seem to settle into their everyday life. The Home would continue to keep them safe and comfortable, yes, but it’s still not… well, a home .

The short trek back to the orphanage that night is a heavy one, as they know the kids need to be back in their own beds, but find that it’s getting harder and harder to say goodbye each time. Sylvi tucks her nose into the crook of Anna’s neck as she carries her, no longer terrified of touch as she once was (at least, not from Kristoff and Anna.) And Fredrik sits on Kristoff’s shoulders, his boundless energy finally waning as his eyes droop closed.

They tuck them in and say their goodnights, returning home to a castle that suddenly feels far too empty.

It’s only a few hours later, when Kristoff and Anna decide to retire to their room for the night. The two of them are quietly getting ready for bed when Kristoff speaks up, his voice tentative.

“Anna, do you, uh-- do you still want to have kids?”

“I do. Why? Wait, are you having second thoughts—“

“No, no, definitely not! I still do too. I really do.”

Anna watches him, her fingers playing absent-mindedly with his hair as she waits patiently for him to get to the point he’s clearly trying to build toward. He takes a deep breath, and then:

“Do you want only... biological children?”

Her heart swells as it occurs to her where he’s heading with this, and she wonders how she got so lucky, to find someone whose soul aligns so perfectly with her own.

“Not at all," Anna says, and oh, she can already feel the tears building in her eyes, "I’d be happy raising a child with you, however they come into our life.”

“So say there was a boy with curly hair and a kind heart, as feisty as you, to slide down the bannisters with--”

“Or maybe a little blonde like you, who trusts us more than anyone, quiet but brave as can be, who comes out of her shell more and more every day--”

“Or both?” He asks with a sheepish, yet oh-so radiant grin, and Anna mirrors it tenfold.

“Yeah. Both sounds good to me.”

#kristanna fanfic #frohana #kristanna #kristana ff #kristanna fic #(sort of au sort of canonverse idk idk)#kristanna au #frozen #frozen 2 #kristanna fanfiction #frohana fic #adoption fic #my fic

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acrostical · 3 years

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Safe Haven

On December 8, 1941—the day after “a date which will live in infamy”—then-president Aurelia Henry Reinhardt wrote a letter to all Mills families. With the hindsight of nearly 80 years, it’s a surreal read; the main point of the letter was not to offer solace or organize war efforts, but to reassure parents that the Mills campus was unlikely to face any danger from a Japanese attack. “The English Channel is 26 miles wide; New York is 3,500 miles from Europe; California is 5,500 miles from Japan and 2,500 miles from our nearest possession in the Hawaiian group,” she wrote. “May I assure you that there exists no reason to change in any way the schedule and curriculum of this college in the spring term which begins Monday, January 5.”

At that point, no one knew that many students of Japanese descent would soon opt to leave Mills, hoping to avoid separation from their families as they were forced into internment camps across the United States. In the years leading up to World War II, President Reinhardt had approached a number of European artists and intellectuals to offer them a place at Mills as the Third Reich marched across the continent and sent to concentration camps anyone it deemed a threat, including Darius Milhaud and other notable figures in the College’s history, but that welcoming spirit couldn’t protect some of her own students.

When it comes to political and cultural forces outside the campus gates, the College has historically been limited in what it can do to protect its students. But as an institution, Mills has long welcomed members of marginalized communities, and outside restrictions have not altered the campus culture of acceptance.

In recent years, the term “sanctuary” has become a buzzword in our charged political environment. But in a historical sense, the concept originated with the sacred. In ancient Greece, spaces that honored the gods provided some measure of immunity to individuals escaping laws of the state (with limited success), and in Rome, Romulus established a zone on Capitoline Hill where asylum seekers from other places could find refuge. For centuries, places of worship have operated as spaces where people could take shelter, and it’s still happening today—churches around the world house migrants seeking to avoid deportation back to war-torn homelands.

The idea of sanctuary gained popularity in the United States in the 1980s when Central Americans began to flee their home countries in the wake of civil unrest, but Mills took on the responsibility of offering it 60 years earlier in the early days of World War II. In the 1961 book Aurelia Henry Reinhardt: Portrait of a Whole Woman, Chaplain George Hedley wrote that President Reinhardt contacted the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced German Scholars (later Foreign Scholars) to invite intellectuals to Mills as soon as Hitler took power in Germany in 1933. Hedley noted that legends were told of Reinhardt physically transporting those scholars to campus herself.

A number of professors soon made their way to Oakland, including Alfred Neumeyer, who taught art history and directed what was then the Art Gallery, and the married couple Bernhard Blume and Carlotta Rosenberg. A German playwright, Bernhard headed up the German Department at Mills until 1945, and Rosenberg was a proponent of educating workers and women.

Of course, the most well-known Mills expats were the musician Darius Milhaud and his wife, Madeleine. In speaking with the author Roger Nichols in 1991, Madeleine detailed her family’s reaction when the Nazis entered Paris in June 1940: “We knew… that Milhaud was among the first on a list of intellectuals to be arrested because he was well known in Germany as a Jewish composer, and also because he did not share their right-wing ideals.”

The Milhauds made their way to Lisbon with plans to fly to New York, using an invitation from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to obtain visas. But upon arrival in Portugal, their plane tickets were declared invalid because they had been bought with French francs. The three—Darius, Madeleine, and their son—were just about to board an American freighter to cross the Atlantic when a telegram arrived with an offer to teach at Mills. The San Francisco-based French conductor Pierre Monteux had contacted President Reinhardt after learning that Milhaud was fleeing to America and connected the two.

Milhaud cabled his acceptance of the position and, a few months after arriving on campus, Dean of Faculty Dean Rusk (later US Secretary of State during the Vietnam War) wrote to the State Department to plead his case for Milhaud’s continued residency in the United States, which hinged on his history of contribution to the arts. Milhaud taught on and off at Mills from 1940 until 1971.

Milhaud’s influence on the Music Department (and the rest of the College) is well known, though he was not the only academic who molded Mills in indelible ways during this time. Helene Mayer, a champion German fencer at the 1928 Olympics, was studying at Scripps College when Hitler rose to power in her home country. She then enrolled at Mills for a master’s in French. While on campus studying for her MA and, later, teaching German literature, she founded the Mills College Fencing Club, jump-starting an organization that lasted for decades. And it’s to the credit of these scholars that the German Department at Mills built a strong enough foundation to eventually send many of its students abroad as Fulbright scholars.

The situation with students of Japanese descent was not nearly as easy to solve, however, with President Franklin D. Roosevelt establishing internment camps less than three months after the Pearl Harbor attack.

Alumnae who were at Mills during the attack remember that day as a sunny one, with word of the incident filtering in as they arrived back in their residence halls after Sunday chapel service. Japanese American students soon found their freedoms curtailed bit by bit, starting with an Army-ordered curfew that restricted their movement even on the Mills campus.

May Ohmura Watanabe ’44, who was born in California to American citizens, wrote about her experiences in multiple issues of the Quarterly. “I remember Dr. Hedley, the chaplain, was very upset and angry. I can still feel his hand tightly holding mine, his body slightly bent forward as he hurried to look at the curfew proclamation posted on the telephone pole just outside the campus,” she wrote in 1985. “He even took me to the Army’s headquarters in San Francisco to protest and to state his disbelief. All in vain.”

Watanabe soon left Mills and returned home to Chico so that she wouldn’t be sent to a different internment camp than her parents and brother. She spent a year at the Tule Lake Relocation Center near the Oregon border, then was released as part of a program allowing some detainees to work or attend school in special approved zones. Watanabe was allowed to transfer her credits to Syracuse University, where she studied nursing. “I remember the special arrangements Mills made for me before evacuation to take my exams in Chico supervised by my high school dean,” she wrote.

The late Grace Fujii Kikuchi ’42 made a similar choice to leave Mills to avoid separation from her family. As a senior, she was more easily able to bring her time at Mills to a close, though it wasn’t a happy time. “My professors at Mills had arranged for me to take my [exam] at a nearby high school,” she wrote in the same Quarterly issue. “All I know is that I was graduated in absentia with my class. Not to be able to attend my commencement after four hard years of work was a bitter disappointment to me.”

The frustrations of the Mills administration during this era were captured in a play by Catherine Ladnier ’70, which she based on actual letters President Reinhardt received from students who left the College due to World War II, including Japanese American students in internment camps. Titled A Future Day of Radiant Peace, the play details the personal turmoil these students experienced as they abandoned their bustling lives at Mills for the uncertainty of the camps. It also demonstrates what little power anyone on campus had to prevent the exodus.

In the aftermath of the war, however, Mills was able to provide sanctuary to several students whose home countries were suffering. Catherine Cambessedes Colburn ’47 and Noramah Sumakno Peksopoetranto ’56 traveled to the College from France and Indonesia, respectively. In the spring 1997 issue of the Quarterly, Colburn wrote about the strangeness of going from a country recovering from war to a land of plenty.

“Mills had sent a list of what I would need, and I owned next to none of the items, nor could I get them. Coupons, given out rarely, were required to buy anything. Besides, the stores were next to empty,” she wrote. “I exchanged my wine ration with a friend for her fabric coupon and my cigarette ration with another for hers, and got enough material for two clothing items.”

Peksopoetranto earned her opportunity to attend Mills through a one-year scholarship from the Edward H. Hazen Foundation. At the end of the year, Dean Anna Hawkes offered her room and board for a bachelor’s degree in education; she spent that summer staying in the home of Librarian Elizabeth Reynolds.

On October 29, 2018—two days after 11 were killed in a shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania—President Elizabeth L. Hillman sent an email to the Mills community. In it, she harkened back to the College’s history of providing sanctuary to Jewish scholars during World War II and the inspiration they provided to generations of students. “Higher education institutions like Mills have a special role to play in creating and sharing knowledge across boundaries of faith, race, gender, and background,” she wrote. “We can only fulfill our mission when everyone in our community is safe, respected, and able to grow and learn.”

In the last few years, President Hillman has sent a number of similar emails to the campus community after attacks, in the United States and abroad, that have targeted historically marginalized groups. According to Dean of Students Chicora Martin, the typical campus response finds its roots in Mills history. “Whenever an incident happens, we’re among a community where people may not always know what to do, but they are prepared to do something,” they said. “It’s part of our culture.”

“In times of immense crisis and identity-based violence, there is this depth of emotion and despair, but also a desire to be in community,” says Dara Olandt, campus chaplain and director of spiritual and religious life. “It has been very moving for me to see the ways in which students have offered leadership and shown up for each other.”

Olandt attributes the campus-wide attitude of acceptance and protection to the College’s past religiosity—in particular, President Reinhardt was the first woman moderator of the American Unitarian Association. (Olandt herself was ordained by the Unitarian Universalist church.) The chapel “is a refuge, and a place of deep hospitality. That’s what the forebears [who created] this chapel were really about,” Olandt says. “There’s power in this symbolic place where people are welcome in the fullness of their lives, no matter their identities.”

She also counsels those who travel to Mills from outside the country and hail from distinctly different societal and religious backgrounds than their US-born peers. That demographic has naturally been part of the student body for decades, but provides a different set of challenges due to the requirements of F-1 and J-1 student entry visas. Dean Martin serves as the principal designated school official on the Mills campus, so they are the first point of contact for the US government. “Every year, we have someone who can’t make it here because they can’t get a visa,” they say. “There are lots of restrictions with international students, and there’s a lot of documentation that you have to provide just for them to do normal-ish things, like getting a Social Security card or a driver’s license.”

Over the last four years, the legal status of undocumented students has been called into question across the country, and as a Hispanic Serving Institution, Mills has been prompted to respond. Under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which began in 2012, undocumented immigrants who arrived in the US before they turned 18 could be granted renewable two-year periods where they would not be deported. When Donald Trump was elected to the presidency, he pledged to end the program—and set off a chain reaction at colleges and universities across the country, which became known as the “sanctuary campus” movement.

On November 16, 2016, President Hillman was one of hundreds of signatories to the Statement in Support of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Program, which underscored the contributions that its recipients have made to college communities across the country. “America needs talent—and these students, who have been raised and educated in the United States, are already part of our national community,” the statement reads. “They represent what is best about America, and as scholars and leaders they are essential to the future.”

Hillman also joined with more than two dozen college leaders in December 2017 as founding members of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, which advocates for fair treatment of DACA and international students, and she continues to contribute to amicus briefs compiled by the alliance on behalf of DACA students.

In practical terms, Martin says that Mills provides grants to affected DACA students to cover the legal paperwork required to renew their statuses, and the College will provide financial assistance to any undocumented student in the same amount the student would have received from a Pell Grant, which is a federal program and therefore off-limits to non-citizens.

But in terms of sanctuary? If immigration officials asked Mills to turn over student records, the College is theoretically protected by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which prohibits the disclosure of student information, including immigration status, to parties beyond those that need to know for the purposes of that student’s education. Nothing like that has happened yet, but administrators say that it’s really not the point. The last few years have, in the end, cemented the kind of institution Mills wants to be.

“We were asking questions about our own values. The government’s now actively not supporting [these] students, so we have to come out very strongly with concrete statements and actions that clarify for our community where our values lie,” Martin says.

“Aurelia Reinhardt was deeply motivated by her values, which had roots in her religious and spiritual background,” Olandt adds. “She was very much anchored in a spirit of service and what we call today solidarity with marginalized folks. How can we uphold the best of humanity and live a moral and ethical life in the face of challenge?”

#writings

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sparda3g · 5 years

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One Piece Chapter 957 Review

It is chapter like this that gives the fans a reason and answer to the question, “Why are you so invested?” In fact, it gives them a reason to call the mangaka, “Goda.” After 20 years later, the end destination is yet to be seen but the journey continues to please the adventurer. If there’s an example of how fans are greatly rewarded with wonderful prizes, this chapter is the prime example.

It’s no secret that the foundation of One Piece is mesmerizing. The lore, the world, the characters, everything about it is built to keep the fans engaged. Anything can be exciting to them, even when they tell a bedtime story. One would provide a great example to my notion, but we’ll get to that soon. This chapter is pure info dump. After the abolishment of Shichibukai, Akainu speaks to Fujitora about the breaking news of Kaido and Big Mom forming a pact. More importantly, they drop the big hint to what essentially this chapter focus on: the legend of Rocks Pirates.

The Marines are going crazy over the news. They had it rough against Whitebeard, now they have to fight like two in titular speaking. I would quit and off to the deserted island. They didn’t expect this to ever happen since Kaido and Big Mom are unlikely to unite, but here we are. This brings Sengoku to tell the legend of Rocks Pirates, seeing how most marines are uninformed about it. From there on, it’s filled with shocking answers, new questions, and all around hype inducing to the core.

Rocks Pirates’ crew had three Yonko tier members, specifically Whitebeard, Big Mom, and Kaido. That’s unbelievable. That is the crew you absolutely without a doubt don’t want to mess with. Otherwise, you are a complete fool, unless one exception; we’ll get to that soon. There are others that made themselves famous, including the Golden Lion, the one from Strong World. I know it is canon, but it’s pretty neat detail to say that movie has more value than before. As for others, it looks we should be prepared to meet them one day. Color me excited.

Captain Rocks was similar to Gol D. Roger in terms of aiming for the big prize: to be the Pirate King. However, judging by Sengoku’s words, he was absolutely ruthless to the world. He was a serious threat to the World Government; practically seen as a terrorist organization. It was until 38 years ago on God Valley, hell of a title by the way, where Rocks met his end. The man who defeated him was none other than Garp. Holy crap!

It’s the same Garp that wore that doggy hat in his introduction to the series. This is why he is so well respected. This is how he obtained the title “Hero of the Marines.” Some didn’t even know this happened yet they assumed he’s well liked for other reasons. That’s the origin. I would call him a hero too. Every time I see him, I’ll spit shine his shoes.

This revelation had me backtrack on couple of things. If he was that strong, then that absolutely means Luffy has no chance in hell to defeat him back at Marineford War Arc. Luckily for him, he was caught up with emotions. Also, if Sengoku didn’t stop Garp from confronting Akainu, he would have absolutely annihilated him. It would be so badly that all future enemies are going to feel it. This is crazy. It begs the question: why this story was never told publicly? More interesting details, coming up.

It was never reported into the papers for the world to see. Usually, that would translate to conspiracy, only it’s warranted as there is a major detail left unheard of. Garp may have earned the title, but he wasn’t alone on that moment. In fact, there were Celestial Dragons in the midst of chaos. It shouldn’t be problematic since it’s a Marine’s duty; however, Garp’s moral code doesn’t permit him that duty. That’s why he never became Admiral despite his prestigious achievement. I mean he should be deemed as the leader of the Marine period. But it doesn’t work that way and becoming Admiral would mean be associated closely with Celestial Dragons. Good for Garp for sticking to his code. He keeps getting better; probably best grandpa at this rate.

The shocking detail is Garp was working together with a pirate, hence why the news wasn’t printed. But the real shocker is the pirate he worked together with. That pirate is Gol D. Roger. It just so happened that they were in the same location, so they joined to take out Rocks Pirates. It took two behemoths to take them out. That’s incredible. But the idea of those two as one is mind-blowing.

It makes me wonder though. Was it a coincidence for Garp to take care of Ace? Was it Garp’s way to owe Roger a favor? Were they friends before, during, or after the clash against Rocks Pirates? If true for any, Ace’s death will be even more tragic. Garp couldn’t owe up to a friend. It’s a speculation, but there must be more to this story than a simple “common foe” scenario.

The God Valley’s location is pretty interesting, because it’s no longer on the map. It is said that it has disappeared from the face of the Earth, yet it hold many mysteries that the World Government would like to keep it gone for good. What if it’s not really gone, but incredibly difficult to sight it? It’s possible that it also has a different name altogether. I don’t believe it’s gone for good. Maybe it’s under the ocean somehow. Wherever it is, it holds the key to more lore and secrets.

Everything here is very interesting, so I won’t repeat the same thing like the last chapter’s review. That said, the one that pique my interest the most (debatably) is Rocks’ full name. He was Roger’s greatest enemy. He was known as Rocks D. Xebec. The one detail we don’t get here is the mystery of D. We know now when they associate the letter “D,” his appearance springs up to their mind. What caught my attention is his last name. Isn’t Blackbeard’s ship named, “Saber of Xebec?” Is that a coincidence? Is it a tribute to him or something more? It makes me wonder if Blackbeard is related to Rocks. It would definitely give him the “final villain” vibe.

Now we have gone through crap load of info dump, it’s time for fans’ most exciting topic to discuss since power levels in Dragon Ball: bounties! If numbers can excite fans, you know you have a strong foundation built. I too am excited, and Oda goes for broke (no pun intended?). First up, Blackbeard, going for 2,247,600,000 berries. Just started and already made a lot. Next, Shanks, going for 4,048,900,000 berries. What a gap. His origin remains a mystery and I do believe he has nothing to do with Rocks Pirates. Just who the hell is he?

Then, Big Mom, going for 4,388,000,000 berries. At last, Kaido, going for 4,611,100,000 berries. Make no mistake, all of them are mind-numbing to handle. That would explain why Marines stopped the war when Shanks showed up. These guys are too much. If you can get lucky to take one down, you’ll be hailed for the rest of your life. I would love to see Shichibukai’s bounties, but these Yonko’s are incredible. If Luffy beats them, he will be God.

The report doesn’t end there though. Whitebeard and Roger’s bounties are also shown on display. Whitebeard for 5,046,000,000 berries and Roger for 5,564,800,000 berries. The gap is serious. Roger’s power is still a mystery. What makes him so incredible? The only way to beat his numbers is combing force, hence Big Mom and Kaido. What a clever way to tie in to the discussion of what to do with Wano Country. Akainu says they won’t do anything, but something tells me that is not definite. I know there will be something that will have them involved. That aside, one major “coincidence” comes to their mind.

When it’s all said and done, the one thing that caught Sengoku’s interest is the relations to Wano Country; not to mention, Oden. He was last with Roger, sailing along on “the Pirate King’s Last Voyage.” Of course, he is long gone by this point, but the question remains, “Why are so many powerful individuals connected to Wano?” That’s a serious validated question that there’s no way it’s a coincidence. I wonder if this is persuasive way to drag Marines to the main arc. Remember, they have CP0 member there as well. Something is really shady.

It’s truly amazing how much development this intermission can give, even without focusing on Wano itself. I thought we know enough of the country, but now, it appears there’s more than meets the eye. Though I questioned how the hell Orochi killed him, unless he’s that powerful. It could be due to Kaido, but we’ll see. This chapter was a grand prize for fans who adore the lore. From new depth detail of the origin of Yonko to the clarification of their bounties, it’s a trip to heaven. It’s even better with how Oda executed the details in an enticing way. It was delivered in a way to keep you glued and read very carefully because it was that significant. It’s hard to do it justice review wise, which resulted to analysis post. Bottom line, fans will be grateful and to Oda, that’s rewarding itself.

#one piece #chapter 957 #review #spoilers

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oathkeeper-of-tarth · 5 years

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Dreams So Real

For Bispearl Week day 3: Together after the war, and very much inspired by @sakakikaga‘s lovely Bispearl art.

Post-Change Your Mind, Bismuth and Pearl take a stab at sleeping, starting with a proper afternoon nap in a nice patch of sun. Pearl doesn’t have the best of luck in this particular area, perhaps, and the past has a nasty habit of popping up, all light blue and glowing.

But mostly ~2800 words of Gem naps. Enjoy.

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Dreams So Real

Back in the day-

Well, as far back as about a couple of Earth weeks in Bismuth’s reckoning, but she was ready to acknowledge she was something of a special case. And back in the day truly felt like the best way of thinking about it all, if she was to stand a chance of ever making proper use of the now.

So back in the day there’d been brief downtimes, just enough to patch up whoever and whatever could be patched up; there’d been boredom in endless-seeming waits during long, long ambushes and stakeouts; there'd been quiet times to get your remembering and commemorating and mourning done as best as you could; and there'd been, especially early on, tiny, uncertain snatches of being free to try to appreciate the planet you were fighting for. But there hadn’t really been this.

This was a lovely spring afternoon, utterly unoccupied and unspoken for even though Bismuth tended to keep herself pretty busy even now. It was nothing but warm and lazy all over, save, perhaps, for a fresh, lively breeze carrying the tang of the sea on it. Put together, it was all very Earth-y of the Earth, the way Bismuth saw it. A welcome change of pace - or return to form - after their thankfully brief Homeworld jaunt.

It wasn’t exactly a special occasion, but the point was - well, one of the points, at least - that there didn’t need to be one. That you could do something just because you felt like it, because you thought it might be nice to, that it might make you happy, or make someone you cared about happy. All good things, all entirely unthinkable on Homeworld.

So Bismuth stood in the middle of the currently empty beach house, contemplated the way the low afternoon sun lit up her handiwork all over the formerly free patch of floor (also her handiwork), and contemplated taking a very radical nap.

There wasn’t an actual bed present as much as a lot of pillows she’d collected and strategically arranged, and one large blanket, just warm and soft enough to provide a comfortable and comforting sensation, but not heavy enough to be oppressive. Yes, Bismuth could see it all working out very nicely.

She’d tried the sleeping thing a couple of brief times since her return and introduction to ‘new Crystal Gem rituals’, but it seemed she always had more to learn about the whole affair. The latest addition had been Steven introducing her to something called hot cocoa, which he’d termed a traditional bedtime drink. He’d seemed a bit startled when Bismuth immediately chugged the offered mug - but it had been soothing enough, and she’d quite liked feeling its warmth spread through her form. Not quite like a lava bath, but it’d do in a pinch.

Bismuth’s turn towards the kitchen for the purposes of repeating the experience and perhaps continuing her warm beverage experimentation was interrupted by the sound of the house’s near-miraculously insistent creaky door opening.

“Bismuth-? Oh, there you are!”

It was Pearl, of course, always a welcome sight. A bit more unusual, perhaps, to see her wandering around carrying a rather large cushion over which she could barely peek - though she seemed very determined to launch into an explanation immediately.

“I heard Amethyst mention you’d been looking for pillows and the like. So I thought, well, I can absolutely contribute. I’ve re-filed this one-,” she fluffed the comically oversized thing between her arms, barely, “-from where it was sorted under ‘C’ to ‘P’ and then back again several times now. I just can’t seem to make up my mind! It also occurred to me… well, after all the excitement recently… why not join you?”

“Join me? I was going to have a nap.”

Pearl looked up from where she’d just carefully placed her pillowy contribution with an expression of mild concern. “Yes…? That is, if you don’t mind. I can always just...” Her little hand gesture was neither here nor there, and her sudden general air of uncertainty seemed rather strange to Bismuth.

“Of course I don’t mind, Pearl! What an idea.” She hopped over a particularly lumpy pillow in order to be better able to put an encouraging hand on Pearl’s back. “When have you seen me pass up a chance to spend time in the company of my very favourite sword-wielding menace, huh? And with some cuddling possibly involved? Pshhh, it’s like you don’t know me.”

Pearl blushed that lovely blue - and her new jacket brought it out even more, Bismuth felt compelled to notice. Indeed it seemed to highlight and foster Pearl's confidence in a way Bismuth couldn't help but enjoy. Definitely one of her favourite editions of Pearl to date, this one. Grown into herself in a way that really spoke of the years that had passed, both the thousands since the war, and the dozen or so since… well.

Pearl cleared her throat, snapping them both out of their reveries.

“Anyway, yes, it’s something I’ve tried before, this sleep concept, to not much, er, success. And...” She mumbled something Bismuth didn’t manage to catch.

“Sorry, what was that?”

Pearl sighed. “Garnet all but banned me from the Fountain and ordered me to go home and get some rest.”

Of course Garnet had a hand in this. Bismuth chortled, and happily took in the dirty look Pearl was throwing her in response. “Well, she’s not wrong. You have been working hard without stopping... pretty much since we landed.”

“But there’s just so much to do!”

The wide-eyed, harried look on Pearl’s face was sadly familiar, too.

“I know,” Bismuth said softly, and ran a gentle hand down her back. “But it’s all gonna be there when you wake up, too, right? So what’s the harm in trying a bit of this relaxing stuff?”

Pearl heaved another long-suffering sigh. “I suppose it can’t hurt.”

“Not with this masterful cushion assembly it can’t. Hup-!” Bismuth threw herself onto the nearest pile - the one where Pearl’s offering proudly resided, now also graced by a lovely, warm shimmer of sunbeam - and patted the spot next to her. “Come on down here, it’s great.”

Pearl acquiesced with a small smile that Bismuth wouldn’t really describe as anything but tired. And it seemed crystal clear to Bismuth that this was going to do the both of them a world of good. After all, those humans really did have a lot of promising ideas - building material preferences notwithstanding.

Soon enough, Pearl was pressed into Bismuth’s side quite happily, turning her face towards the sun and tugging a corner of the blanket over herself. The feeling of her there, so tangibly present and real, made a weight disappear off Bismuth’s shoulders that she hadn’t even really been aware of.

So she focused on trying to recapture that other feeling, of a very slow, comfortable sinking. Even out and slow down her own unnecessary breathing. Calm and quiet, but nothing like the forced stillness of a bubble. Warm, but not lava-warm. And Pearl, right there all along, snuggling in closer, only half aware she was doing so, making some of the sweetest little noises Bismuth had ever heard.

She looked so relaxed. Pearl was never like this, instead endlessly high strung and tightly wound and always, always so close to some edge or other. Perhaps that was how she liked it and how she found she best fulfilled her own potential... or perhaps she'd just never learned how to be any way else, and thought she needed the excess caution and the constant (over)thinking so much.

That second notion was sad enough that Bismuth hurried to abandon the train of thought altogether. Instead, she took the, yes, alright, rare chance to appreciate the moment for what it was. To appreciate Pearl.

Pearl, and the tiny eyelashes resting on lightly blue dusted cheeks. That long nose that looked best pointed proudly upwards, and that mouth that curled into some damn fine smirks. Long neck framed nicely by the jacket collar and lapels that spoke of elegance repurposed and reclaimed. The shoulders her new form called particular attention to, so much stronger than they looked and capable of bearing so much more weight than should ever have been their due. Those immensely capable hands, so different from Bismuth's own and yet so similar in their efforts and dedication and habitual eager restlessness.

“I know you’re usually supposed to wish people a good night, but it’s hardly night, so I’m not sure what to say,” Pearl mumbled, sounding only barely half awake - it was something of a surprise to hear her at all.

Bismuth smiled and adjusted the pillow under her head, absolutely treasuring the moment. “You don’t have to say anything at all.”

There was truly something profoundly vulnerable about the entire concept of sleep, as well as something uncomfortably familiar about it that popped up in Bismuth’s mind and refused to leave. But there would be no ambushes or raids or a need to hastily abandon the current base anymore. No emergencies, probably, unless Peridot got up to something explosive or flammable again.

It was... okay. To try. As many times as she felt like.

Try peace. That thing they’d all yearned for and half-doubted they’d ever really see - or more than half, really. But here it was and here they were, against all odds, and here was Bismuth preparing to willingly disappear for a little while, and return to the world a tiny bit later.

But she would return, again and again. Nothing could keep her away from this planet she'd chosen, or from the friends and comrades she’d thrown her lot in with so very long ago. That was a certainty, that was something she’d bet her very gem on. And the one very dear companion currently in her arms, sharing this with her and trusting her so openly, only made her resolve stronger.

In the end, the most Bismuth managed was an intermittent doze, but it was pleasant enough. Muddy awareness faded in and out, but Pearl was a constant at her side, a reassuring press of back and limbs against her and a comforting tug on their shared blanket.

Until-

The shrinking pink-orange light of dusk was marred by an odd blue glow Bismuth blinked at and tried to understand. When she shifted a bit, Pearl shifted against her even more, and turned away from burrowing into her side, rolling away just enough to face up-

Oh.

It was a hologram.

“Um… Pearl?” Bismuth mumbled, blearily. “What are you- Pearl?”

There was no answer, and Bismuth realised only then that she was still firmly asleep, and this didn’t appear to be anything voluntary.

The light took definite shape, and Bismuth found herself staring at an old, old battlefield, given shimmery bright blue life. And on it, a very recognisable sharp-edged, looming structure.

It was, it had to be, the battle for the Ziggurat - the battle Bismuth had never seen. It was in full swing, maybe even winding down towards its end, one of those familiar hard-won almost-stalemates. No glorious victory to be celebrated, and no desperate retreat, either. Just… living to fight another day, for whoever was lucky enough to make it.

“Where is Bismuth?” Asked a tinny-voiced hologram of Pearl, looking over the field littered with stones and weapons, and Bismuth felt a sinking feeling wash over her.

She didn’t want to be seeing this. She wasn’t supposed to be watching this- this had to be some kind of… intrusion, and it certainly couldn’t be fair to Pearl.

“Pearl, hey, wake up.” She shook her shoulder lightly, then again a bit more sharply, but both to little effect.

“Where is Bismuth?” Asked a Garnet with that same tinny voice, and that was all kinds of wrong, wasn’t it, Garnet never asked anything-

“Pearl, come on, snap out of it.”

The attempts to shake her awake were clearly not working, caught up as she was in… whatever this was, leaving Bismuth at a loss. And Bismuth didn’t ever want to be any real kind of rough towards Pearl, outside of the familiar setting of perfectly agreed-upon sparring sessions, of course, but that was its own thing - she’d made the mistake of treating Pearl as fragile once, a long time ago, and had quickly learned not to do so again.

Pearl’s brow was furrowed in distress, and the images were growing more disturbing and more abstract at the same time, battlefield now replaced by an endless bobbing sea of bubbles. She even made an upsetting noise or two, nearly drowned out by the insistent voices of the projected Crystal Gems.

Where is Bismuth? Where is Bismuth? Whereisbismuthwhereisbismuth...

Another approach, then. Bismuth untangled the bunched-up blanket from where it had gotten kicked away, and pulled it up and around Pearl - then wrapped herself around Pearl, too, and tried not to think of the thousands of years she’d missed.

“I’m right here, Pearl,” she murmured, with a squeeze and a kiss to her cheek when Pearl whimpered. “Right here and not going anywhere.”

And then, finally, finally, Pearl sprung awake with a gasping cry of Bismuth!, long legs tangling in the blanket, almost elbowing Bismuth in the face. Her narrow chest was heaving, eyes wide and confused, every bit of her distraught.

Bismuth sat up too, and reached over to rub Pearl’s back with one hand as she struggled to calm down.

“I’m alright!” Pearl insisted, not very convincingly at all, as her hands clenched in the blanket on her lap. “It was just a dream! Nothing to worry about! Steven compared them to, oh, strange movies. I'd say it was something like a vision... like when Garnet does her... her…” She trailed off, but her breathing, at least, had evened out somewhat, even as her eyes still seemed to be gazing somewhere thousands of years into the past.

“C’mere,” Bismuth offered gently, arms open, and Pearl eagerly took her up on it, all but throwing herself into the embrace.

“I couldn’t find you anywhere,” Pearl murmured barely audibly somewhere around Bismuth’s left shoulder, clinging to her as if her life depended on it, and Bismuth squeezed back. “I looked and looked and looked and you weren’t there, and I never wanted to stop looking, but-”

“Hey, hey, I’m here now, aren’t I? And there’s no… no war anymore to take me away.” Being very tactful there, good job, Bismuth.

“Yes, you are, you’re here,” Pearl replied in a tiny wail as her shoulders started to shake in a way that was very, very familiar.

“Oh no, no, no, come on, don’t cry, I’m not going anywhere...”

Bismuth tried to distract herself by patting Pearl’s head and gently, soothingly running a hand through her hair, but to little effect - the minute Pearl started tearing up, she knew that was it for both of them.

As Pearl cried into her shoulder, Bismuth scrubbed her own tears away with her free hand, and the light streaming in from outside slowly dimmed, then turned to moonlight.

“Sorry,” Pearl whispered, pulling away and summoning a handkerchief from her gem to dab at her eyes.

“It’s okay,” Bismuth shrugged, keeping her own voice just steady enough. “Best to get it all out, I guess.”

Pearl smiled, tiny and still watery, but there all the same. “Very wise.”

“I’ve been known to be,” Bismuth chuckled. “Once or twice.”

Pearl swatted her arm lightly, then sat back, half-leaning against her. She seemed to be contemplating something with a degree of intensity Bismuth herself didn’t feel entirely capable of at the moment. She felt taken, instead, by the way Pearl’s gem glinted silver in the moonlight.

“We should try to go back to sleep,” Pearl murmured after what could have been a minute just as easily as half an hour. It was an unusually still evening, and they were both in an unusual mood.

Bismuth blinked. “You… want to try again?”

“Yes! Yes I do, I...” Pearl hesitated, then moved to smooth out the blanket once again, freeing it from both of them with a brief yank.

She lay down, pulling a very compliant Bismuth along with her. Then she promptly snuggled back in, Bismuth and blanket and all. “It actually feels very safe here. And very comfortable. And I don’t want to end on… that sour note. Not when we don’t have to.”

“I get you,” Bismuth agreed. She was, if she was being completely honest, immensely flattered. And entirely unopposed to Pearl’s idea, gladly holding her close with both arms and nestling back against the pillows, indulging in the feeling of Pearl’s soft hair tickling her neck and chin. Then, another thought from not so long ago, and a quick glance at the now fully moonlit evening outside. “Good night, Pearl.”

Bismuth felt the smallest, gentlest kiss just above her gem. “Good night.”

They only stirred awake as dawn was breaking.

#steven universe #bismuth #pearl #bispearl #weekofbispearl #fanfiction #oathkeeper writes things #my fic #let's get down to bismuth #bismuth in blankey #technically #i said i was doing gem naps... i hope i have delivered #naps as radical praxis #GOOD NIGHT

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ancientbooshartifacts · 5 years

Text

Ask Naboo

Author: Nonexistantpup

Year: 2010

Rating: PG

Characters/Pairings: Naboo, Bollo, Spider Dijon, Rudi Van DiSarzio, The Braincell, Howince, Moss/Roy

Bollo slid his glasses up to his forehead and rubbed his hairy temples with two fingers. “It no good,” he said with a frown. Naboo looked up, annoyed. He was busy relaxing and smoking and hated to be interrupted. “What’s no good?” “Books no add up,” Bollo said. He sigh. “Bollo warn Naboo that monkeys not make good book keeper.” “What are you saying?” asked Naboo, with an impending feeling of doom. He’d have said he had a bad feeling, but didn’t want to steal Bollo's favourite phrase. “Need money,” Bollo explained. “Stop paying the losers workin’ downstairs then,” said Naboo. “Done that. Sold beach house too. No more money. What else can Naboo spare?” Naboo frowned. There was his submarine, but he never felt comfortable without one of them in the house. His Rudi & Spider memorabilia couldn't go either, of course, and his rug collection was pretty vital. “We better fix this,” he said unhelpfully. “Otherwise I’ll have to sell you, Bollo.” Bollo paled. Or - well, he didn't really pale. His fur remained the same colour. He seemed unnerved, however. “But - Naboo need familiar!” “I know,” said Naboo. He tapped his chin. “We need make money.” Naboo clicked his tongue and took another drag from his hookah. “I suppose I can go back into pop psychiatry,” he said thoughtfully. “I do sort of miss it. Hearing about peoples’ problems. Imparting wisdom. The regular income...” “What about Bollo?” asked Bollo. Naboo shrugged. “You could be my editor.” Bollo seemed appeased by this idea, and put his glasses back down onto the table. “Now,” said Naboo, “Call up the newspapers and tell them I'm willing to reinstate my relationships column." Dear Naboo, I can’t fulfill my partner’s sexual needs anymore; I'm exhausted! If it was just a good, hard romp four or five times a day, it would be no problem, but he’s practically insatiable! He has eight cocks, you see, which means every time we make love, we do it eight times in a row, each time lasting at least a month and a half. Now, I'm not great at mathematics, but I contacted a local mathematician, who informs me that 4 x 8 x 1.5 equals 48. Which means that every day, I have sex for over forty-eight months - in other words, more than four years! I'm exhausted! What should I do? - A Worn-Out Woman ‘Worn-Out Woman’, As I see it, your options are threefold. 1. Dump the freak and get some sleep. 2. Let me tell you the story of the broken flute. Once upon a time, there was a flute. One day, he tripped over one of his shoelaces and fell onto the footpath, breaking to pieces instantly. All the little shards of flute were scattered all over the place, causing passing bare-footed pedestrians to cut their feet. One of these pedestrians happened to be a passing eccentric billionare, who limped home, not realising the shard was still in his foot. The shard of flute had never been in a mansion before, and hopped off gleefully to look around, and liked the place so much that, that night, it cut the millionaire's throat while he slept and inherited his entire fortune. See what I'm sayin’? 3. Get over it. Sure, it may be hard to deal with at times. I get that. But think about it, yeah? You’ve got a man who alters the very laws of physics, the axioms of reality, just in order to have enough time to spend in the sack with you every day. There’s not many men who would do that. Love, Naboo

= =

To Naboo, How can I make my boyfriend take our relationship more seriously? I mean, we have so much fun together and I know he cares about me, and yet whenever people ask him about me, he lies as if he’s ashamed, saying he is merely changing one of my strings. I love him, but if this doesn’t change, I don’t think I can go on seeing him. Please save our relationship? - Irritated Instrument Irritated Instrument, I had a similar conundrum in the forties, as it happens, when my girlfriend at the time wouldn't admit to being deeply in love with our cutlery drawer. They got together eventually, and are still together today, I believe, and expecting their second child. There are two options I can reccommend: 1. Don’t give up! If he cares for you, he will come through. Speak to him openly and honestly and tell him how you feel. 2. Give up! He’s a loser who seems to enjoy getting off with inanimate objects anyway. Find somebody more your type - a cello or perhaps a ukulele if you’re strung that way. Love, Naboo = = Deer Naboo, It’s got to the point where I just don’t no what to do anymore. I am married with children, yet I can’t seem to think of anything except the other people I’d like to shag and how much the drudgery of an unhappy marriage is marring my carefully pampered image. It would be alright, you know, but the person I’d really ideally like to fool around with just sees me as her boss. I’ve tried everything! I invited her to work late, and she worked late. I told her she was cute and she said ‘thank you’. I even custom-designed a sparkly soot, just to get her attention, but she still doesn't notice me. I'm starting to doubt my dead sexiness and although I know I have quite an important job, my work ethic is crumbling like a fresh piece of shortbread. What can I do?! - Suffering Cell Suffering Cell, I have some words of wisdom for you, although I can’t be sure they will be anything new. You have not been specific about many of your problems, but my crystal ball has kindly filled in most of the blanks. What you must consider very seriously is this tale - the tale of the ant and the grasshopper. Once upon a time, there was an ant and a grasshopper. They were experiencing a fruitful summer. For the whole season, the ant worked hard, storing up food for the winter while the grasshopper just hung around smoking joints and watching the telly, not collecting any food except for what he wanted to eat that day. The ant warned him that laziness came with consequences, but the grasshopper didn't care. When winter came, the ant had a huge stockpile of food - enough to keep it and its family nourished all the way through until spring, while the grasshopper was left outside, cold and hungry. He had run out of weed and the electric company disconnected his telly. Desperate, he knocked on the ant’s front door to beg for food, but frustrated with the grasshopper’s lack of responsibility, the ant said he would only share his family’s food if the grasshopper sold his body, prostituting himself off to the ant in exchange for food. The grasshopper, who wasn’t into that kind of thing (in fact, he was a bit of a prude) turned away in disgust, and the very next day he hopped aboard a plane, smuggling himself in the luggage of a slightly inebriated badger. He found himself on the other side of the world, where it was summer and food was plentiful, paid his way out of debt quickly and hired a lawyer so he could sue the ant for sexual harassment. I hope this has cleared some things up for you. Love, Naboo.

= = Alright, Naboo? Probably are. You seem to be pretty on top of things, being a shaman and that. Anyway, I live with a friend of mine who drives me nuts. He has no taste in clothes or music (ie. wears tweed and listens to jazz), is finicky (ie. Control Freak!) and I just fancy the pants off him. Well - not literally. Do you think it would be possible for me to actually do that though? But that’s not my question. See, he's taken to walking around the place wearing nothing. Well, nothing except this monocle of his - something to do with ‘going au naturale with class’. Whatever the reason behind it, it’s making me mental. I can’t even fancy the pants off him from afar, because a whole lot of the time he ain’t wearing them to begin with! So, what do you reckon? - A Very Randy Socialite Very Randy Socialite, You batty crease. Can't you tell? He's trying to seduce you. Just don't do anything unless you're sure there’s nobody else in the house, yeah? Love, Naboo P.S. I mean it. If I hear you two humping away in the next room, I'm throwing you out on your naked arses. I don't need that shit.

= =

Dear Naboo, I'm having the most awful trouble getting girls. See, I'm not bad to look at and I'm a clever, sensitive man, but none of them will look past my career. I am a homocidal maniac (hoping to climb the ladder and become an official genocidal maniac). I can't give that up! How can I get girls to accept me? - Bloody Lonely Bloody Lonely, I had a friend with the same problem. He worked in Dickson’s and girls could never come to terms with it, judging him and all that. Here's some wisdom that helped him and will hopefully do the same for you. This is the story of the green crow. Once upon a time, there was a crow. He was a normal crow, except for the fact that he was green and looked like a big, feathered, mouldy potato. In fact, one day Marilyn Manson saw him and was so disgusted that he kicked the poor crow into the recycling bin at a local primary school. The green crow was very upset, especially since he was such a huge Marilyn Manson fan he had a milky lens in one eye and hadn't drunk any water since 1997. Depressed, he sat in the recycling bin for days, ‘caw’ing miserably. On the fourth day, however, a whole lot of colourful craft paper cuttings rained down on him. The green crow was newly inspired. He found some old chewing gum and made himself a turban and cloak out of the colourful paper. From that day on, everybody treated him with respect because they thought he was a mouldy, green, feathered shaman and Marilyn Manson issued a public apology. That should clear up your problems. Love, Naboo.

= =

To Sir/Madam (I'm sorry, your name is quite androgynous), I must admit I am quite distressed. My best friend and I are always doing things together. We should be seeing girls but instead we’re always in each other’s company like an old married couple. I'm at the end of my tether. Thank you in advance, - In A Flippin’ Rut In A Flippin’ Rut, The answer to your problem is so simple, I'm frankly staggered that you’ve even found the need to ask my advice. Obviously, you and your best friend are meant to be together. The real problem is just that you have all the elements of a successful marriage except for a healthy sex life. So, you know. Get it on. Duh! Love, Naboo P.S. I do have more specific advice regarding what you should do, but it is inappropriate material to have published here. Send me a private email and I shall tell you the story of the phallus-shaped coral.

= =

Dear Naboo, Just what kind of an advice columnist are you? My friend wrote to you, complaining that we can't meet anyone because we're "like an old married couple" and you send him some story about coral willies and tell him to seduce me in the most disgusting way imaginable. You are obviously a pervert and shouldn't be allowed to give advice to anyone. -Thoroughly Repulsed P.S. Just to clear things up, we are NOT like a married couple in any way.

= =

Thoroughly Repulsed, That’s gratitude for you. From your indignation, it’s pretty clear to me that the seduction worked. If you wanted it to happen in another way - one that perhaps didn't involve an aquarium, smelling salts or three feet of chicken wire - you should have stepped up and made the first move on your ‘friend’ long ago. What are you, some kind of selfish, absent-minded, narcissistic slacker? You pompous bloody wanker. Love, Naboo P.S. Whatever. P.P.S. Bite me. P.P.P.S. Prick. P.P.P.P.S. Watch your step, yeah? Or I will turn my back on you.

= =

Naboo, I'll have you know that the seduction did NOT work. What I saw when I got into work this morning made me want to vomit. It's pretty clear to me that you're a wanker with nothing better to do than corrupt perfectly nice people with your kinky fantasies. My friend and I haven't spoken to each other all day and it's been very awkward for the both of us. I hope you're happy. -Repulsed P.S. You're the prick. And how dare you call me narcissistic.

#the mighty boosh #mighty boosh #boosh #naboo #naboo the enigma #the braincell #rudi van disarzio #spider dijon #vince noir #howard moon #howince #vince noir/howard moon #vince/howard #the it crowd #it crowd #maurice moss #roy trenneman #moss/roy #maurice moss/roy trenneman

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solarflarefanfiction · 5 years

Text

Solar Flare 6

AN: So there’s some timeline stuff in here, which may not be perfect. In terms of Paul, in particular, the information seems to disagree. I’m pretty sure he is mentioned as being one of the wolves present to rescue Bella (or at least she remembers 3 tall figures, one of whom was Sam). But on the Wiki page it says he turned in 2006. Anyway, I find a lot of the timeline stuff in the Twilight Saga confusing/odd, so while for the most part I am going to try to keep it relatively canon, I’m might discard it whenever it doesn’t make sense. Or because I want to.

Thanks for reading, and I still don’t own Twilight.

-------

It was a few days later when the reality of Jacob and the pack’s fears was driven home for me.

Charlie’s harrumph over his newspaper drew my attention off of the novel I was reading. Charlie and I had reached a comfortable, if unconventional accord, which allowed us to avoid awkward breakfast conversation, when neither of us were really awake enough to appreciate the effort of making small talk.

While Charlie often huffed over sports losses, or a particularly frustrating current event, I usually took little notice, preferring my escape into romance, fantasy, or both.

But today, something about his wordless distress compelled me to respond.

“What’s wrong, Dad?”

“It’s this situation in Seattle,” He made the noise again, then looked at me across the table from him.

“I don’t want you going up there by yourself, you understand, Bella?” Since Charlie rarely attempted to curtail my activities in any way, I was surprised. A cold feeling of dread stirred in the back of my mind, like part of me knew what he was talking about already.

“Why? What’s going on in Seattle?”

“Well, it’s not just Seattle, really, Portland too, and-”

“Dad! What is it?”

“I don’t want to scare you too much, Bella, it just, it looks like they’ve got some kind of serial killer or something up there.” The cold feeling intensified. A serial killer…or something.

“They’ve had quite a few disappearances up there, the last few weeks. At first it was just some disappearances among the homeless, a couple runaways, so they couldn’t be sure if there was really something…going on. But now…” He sighed, and turned the portion of the paper he’d been reading so that I could see it. It was a picture of several young people, under a headline that read. Disappearances and Deaths Continue to Rock Pacific Northwest.

Charlie pointed to one picture, separated from the others.

“This boy, Riley Biers, he disappeared last year from Oregon, but a couple witnesses claim he’s been spotted in Seattle, near where some of the more recent bodies were found. Not that witnesses are necessarily that reliable on stuff like that. ”

Charlie looked sad and grim.

“Talked to the Department up there, not sure if it has anything to do with the missing hikers. Thought they were animal attacks, but the bodies they’ve recovered up there have some similarities.” He frowned at me in concern. “Now, don’t go telling your school friends Bella, we’re trying to avoid causing a panic.”

“Yeah, don’t worry, it’s not exactly good lunch room talk.”

“Just be careful, kid, okay.” Charlie said, carefully not looking at me, as he ventured onto the dangerous ground of emotional talk (now that I seemed to not currently be in a mental breakdown of any kind, we had gratefully returned to avoiding discussing overly personal topics). Much better to talk gruesome murder than to express emotion to your teenage daughter. I smiled fondly at Charlie, then glanced away.

“You too Dad.”

The upside of this rash of murders and disappearances being tied together, callous though it seemed to think it, was that Charlie and his deputies had officially ceased hunting for out of control wolves in the woods, making both them and the pack more safe.

On the other hand, seeing those faces was haunting somehow. Probably because I had a much better idea than Charlie how and why these people were dying. And why some of them weren’t dying at all.

In school I struggled to focus, thinking about the pictures of the missing persons. The relatively few, odd bodies.

I was very, very afraid that I knew what might be going on.

I said as much to Kim and Emily that afternoon

Kim looked surprised, but Emily just sighed.

“Sam’s been worried about this. It would explain a lot, actually.”

“Explain what?”

I glanced at the window, Quil and Seth were on house patrol today, and playing some wolfy game at the edge of the woods. Jacob, Sam, and Jared were on patrol, since them running patrol together made it easier to consolidate their major vulnerabilities, us, into one spot, which could be easily guarded.

“It doesn’t make sense, that the shifts kept happening, after…they... left. The one leech passing through, three or four wolves could have easily taken it out. Sam was a little surprised when Jacob showed signs that he was going to shift, actually, but he figured he was just so close already, it was too late for him. Plus, of all of them, he has maybe the best lineage for it.”

I felt cold suddenly.

“Even once we knew that the other one, the female, was here, was hanging around…It doesn’t make sense. Why do we need eight wolves, for one bloodsucker?” I could hear Sam’s voice, underlying Emily’s words. Leech, bloodsucker, the calm logistical sense, the instinct.

“The Cullens were here for almost three years. Sam thinks just one or two vampires, passing through the area, it wouldn’t necessarily activate the wolf genes, unless they were hunting nearby, or came onto our land. Which is rare actually, almost as if it might be instinctual...anyway...A large family, living nearby, you’d think it would have activated more quickly… Sam shifted for the first time a little over a year after the Cullens arrived. But Jared only shifted in spring the next year, about sixth months later-”

Oh, God.

“When the nomads came through.” Kim and Emily give me blank expressions.

“Victoria, Laurent, and James. They were a group of vampires, the Cullens called them nomads, came to Forks in March, last year- James wanted to kill me. The Cullens killed him in Phoenix. That’s why Victoria… and Laurent was the one they killed earlier this year.”

“Right. Well, Paul shifted about week or so after Jared, then nothing for almost a year, and then Embry shifted, then Jake, then Seth and Leah, then Quil, about one a month. It was spread out, but now this rapid increase. The Cullens are gone. It could just be some sort of flaw in the shifter genes, that it takes a while for it to get going-“

“Which doesn’t make any sense, because it’s magic, as much as it’s a gene, right?” asked Kim, suddenly, looking frustrated. “They turn into giant wolves to protect our land, and you’re saying they didn’t turn much when the Cullens were here for three years, but now they’re turning like crazy.”

“Because Victoria, or someone, is turning a bunch of people, and they are holed up in Seattle?”

“Yes, but why would pack magic care about Seattle. Unless…”

Unless they weren’t just in Seattle. Or unless there were so many of them that whatever mystical power or energy controlled the wolf transformations considered it a risk.

Or both.

They were here, or had been here, or coming here. Watching. Hunting.

To kill me. And anyone who got in their way.

How many vampires could the wolves really fight against and win?

I looked at Emily’s scarred, still somehow beautiful face. At Kim’s startled round face, which made her look years younger than she was.

They’d become my friends.

To Victoria they would only be "in the way”.

I ran out of the house

“Bella!”

“Bella, wait!”

Why hadn’t I thought? This was all because of me, and now an army of vampires was gathering in Seattle. Because of me.

I wanted to run and run. Not until Victoria wouldn’t find me, because she always would; I was pretty much doomed. But until she would never find this cosy little house, where they let me be quiet and alone when I needed it, or where I could talk and laugh over books with Kim, seek warm counsel over muffins with Emily, where Leah would burst in with her scathing attitude hiding her soft, damaged heart. Where the peace would be happily shattered by a rough and rowdy tumble of the overgrown wolf boys, weary and too brave, filling the house with welcome and family. Away from Jacob, who’d somehow pulled me back from endless despair, and who made the future look beautiful and full of sunlight, instead of dark nothing.

I stopped on the front porch.

I had nowhere to go.

I couldn’t protect myself. I couldn’t protect anyone

The wolves would come, to rescue me, no matter where I ran, because they’d promised me.

Because Jake loved me.

I didn’t have to leave. Relief

But it was only because I’d already doomed us all.

I sat down on the front porch and stared off into the forest. Waiting.

------

Of course, the world refused to stop for the impending doom of almost everyone in the world I loved.

I tried to shake off the fears I’d awakened, or at least to not think about it, but that had never been my strength, and I felt myself slipping, not into the despair of last fall, but into a sort of vague melancholy, which made the world recede a bit. Now that I’d been without it, I recognized it as the odd numbing sense of distance between me and the world, like I was reaching to it through plastic wrap, or wrapped up in thick, stiffling, wool.

“Death Toll on the Rise, Police Fear Looming Gang War” the morning paper had announced. The article had detailed several homicides from the last two weeks alone. No one I knew. Not yet.

It shouldn’t have surprised me when I noticed the brightly colored flyers that appeared all over the school one morning. But the bright pink and black flyers still caught me off guard, because of one potentially terrifying word, spelled out in big, overly cheerful lettering (in which I suspected the hand of Jessica).

“Only 3 weeks to PROM!” the poster’s exclaimed.

“A Night to Remember!’ Don’t miss Fork’s High School’s Senior Prom. Saturday, June 3rd! Tickets for sale at lunch in the cafeteria!"

I stared at the posters, cheeks hot and throat dry.

“Bella!” said a soft, but cheerful and welcoming voice beside me. I spun around, blush deepening.

“Do you think you’ll go? Ben and I are so excited, and I know Jessica is already making a list of possible dates!" Angela asked, smiling at my flustered face.

“Oh, um, well. Dancing you know…"

“Of course,” she replied, comprehension clear on her face. “But you should come you know, senior year and all. And I think your boyfriend would like it."

“Jacob?”

Would Jacob like it? I had not considered that. The only time I’d danced with Jacob had been when he was still an awkward, non-supernatural human. Plus he’d been delivering a warning he didn’t understand. And I’d been dating--

It was almost an afterthought to push aside the thought of his name now. A familiar ripple of pain across a familiar worn path in my brain. Funny how it was almost comforting, compared to the thoughts I’d been keeping company with lately. At least he was, as far as I knew, safe.

“Bella? Bella? Are you alright?” Angela touched my shoulder gently.

“What? Yes! I…I never thought about it before, prom." Jake, smiling down at me. Holding me, Saving me.

Jake, dying for me.

“Well, no need to worry too much about it. But think about it?"

“Yeah,” I said, sounding vague and ditzy to myself. “I, um, gotta go."

Angela smiled and patted me on the shoulder.

-----

Two days later I slumped down on the couch at Emily's feeling exhausted. All aside from the possibility of impending disaster, figuring out what to do after graduation was looming more and more eminently. I hadn't applied to any colleges, or even spent anytime thinking about the future since even before the Cullens had left. And now that I was thinking again, it seemed clear that that had been a bad idea. I was tired, and the thought that if Victoria had her way it wouldn’t matter what I planned, was panic inducing rather than relieving, which was at least proof that I wasn’t totally lost.

“-Bella?” I heard, coming out of my unhappy reverie.

“Huh? Sorry...."

“I was just wondering if everything was okay. You seem distracted.” Emily looked concerned and I wondered if she knew as much about me as I knew about her, and thought she probably did.

“I just…” my eyes were stinging. I pushed away my more painful worries and instead asked “Do you think Jake wants me to ask him to prom?” It sounded so stupid.

“Prom?” Emily blinked at me, surprised.

“You know, dancing, badly decorated gyms…” I mumbled, feeling more and more foolish. “I’m not really a dance kind of person...but do you think...I thought maybe Jake might want…would he like it?”

Emily’s face softened, and she smiled encouragingly.

“I think Jake would love to go to prom with you, Bella. But I think he’d also love to not go with you.”

My face felt so hot. Why couldn’t I ever stop blushing?

“I know they’ve been busy, and that you’re worried, Bella. But you know he loves you.”

I nodded. Yes, I knew. The fears I’d entertained about imprinting, or my persistent sense of inferiority had been pushed to the background, and it gave me an odd clarity.

If I wasn’t so selfish, so needy, would I be able to push him away, to get him out of my life, of the fight? I wouldn’t. And I knew it.

And the worst part was, that I was glad that it was too late anyway, that Victoria would come and the wolves would fight no matter what I did.

No part of me was ready to say goodbye to Jacob Black. And if it came down to it. If I needed to say cutting things in order to keep him safe, like I had an infinite year ago to Charlie, well, I was pretty sure I couldn’t do it.

A tentative, gentle hand on my arm pulled me back to the present yet again.

“I think I hear them coming back.” A benediction and a curse.

Sure enough, a moment later the door banged open and four boys stomped in, laughing and shoving and taking up much more room than seemed possible.

It was a comforting distraction. It was hard to feel as afraid when they were here, filling up the kitchen, seemingly without fear, enormous and healthy.

Sam, sweeping in, his usually serious face collapsing into a boyish grin as he swept across the room to Emily.

Paul, making a beeline for the food, only pausing to wink at me, to tug one of Kim’s braids.

Quil, making a ridiculous bow and then sweeping me up into a bear hug.

And Jake, growling, but his eyes smiling, as he pulled me out of Quil’s arms, into his own.

“I’m not a doll, you know.” I protested, not upset in the slightest, raising my face for a kiss.

“Sure, sure, Bells,” he murmurs, bringing his burning lips down to mine.

Suddenly I was not out of step with the world, even if it was just for this moment.

I pushed my head into Jake’s warm shoulder. Even though he was the person I was most worried about, in moments like this I still felt like somehow...I felt safe.

---

“Do you want to go to Senior Prom?” I asked, out of the blue, blush safely concealed by the dark of my truck’s interior. I felt Jake look over in surprise, but kept looking straight ahead, eyes on the road serving as an excellent excuse to not melt in embarrassment.

“You want to go to prom?” he laughed, “Bella Swan, who hates crowds, dancing, and dressing up?”

“Well,” No. That was the truth, so it doesn’t make any sense why I’ve asked. Except, they’d wanted so badly for her to go, last year, even with my leg in a cast. It made them happy, having me do normal things, even if I grumbled and complained.

I wanted to make Jacob happy. Wanted to give him all the happy memories he might want, just in case…

It felt like all the air had been violently sucked from the truck’s interior, like I might collapse in on myself, like a dying star. But I’ve had a lot of practice now, and I don’t want Jacob to know how I’m slipping to being...damaged again, so I managed to hold still enough that my hands barely shook, and when I gripped the steering wheel tighter, they couldn’t even do that.

“Bella…” Jacob murmured, gently. “If-if you want to go…”

I blew out a breath.

“I don’t Jacob, I just thought...you’re right, prom is kind of my least favorite things all rolled up together, but I thought...something romantic...you might...want...”

Oh crap, this was humiliating. What was I even saying?

Jacob laughed though, looking pleased instead of confused or annoyed.

“Awww, that’s sweet Bells.” he grinned at me, and I wanted to turn my head to look more fully at that grin, but familiarity with the limits of my own driving skills kept my eyes (mostly) on the road.

“You’re a jerk” But the tight discomfort in my chest fades.

“Tell you what,” he slings an arm across my shoulders. Holy crow his arms are long.

“Let’s do something that night. Just the two of us, or we can do something with the pack, or with your friends. But we won’t go to the dance. We’ll spare the town of Forks that much at least.”

I’m too pleased with this new scenario to care about the teasing. “Like a date?”

He’s grinning again, and just for a moment I turn to bask in that glow.

“Yeah, like a date. It’s about time, right?”

—

The warmth of that moment dispelled the half-gloom I had been stuck in, at least for the evening.

I saw something imperceptible relax in Charlie’s face at dinner, and I knew that he’d noticed.

I went to bed humming, hoping that this was one of those nights when Jake would sneak in during his patrol, waking me up in his arms.

Naturally, this was the night my nightmare came back.

It was dark, but not full night dark, more like a deep in the forest dark. I knew, somehow, that a battle was going on somewhere, in the distance. I needed to get there. To protect them.

A growl, behind me, and I spun. I recognized that growl.

“Jake?”

“Isabella”

I turned back and an angel was standing in front of me.

“Edward!” He smiled his angel’s smile and something in my heart (still) leapt.

“You shouldn’t trust them Bella. They’re animals. They can’t control themselves.”

“Who?”

The growl again, and this time when I turned A familiar red-brown wolf was there, muzzle curled back, teeth as long as my forearm.

“It’s for your own good.”

“Wha-“

“Bella” the wolf said, gasping and broken for a moment, somehow speaking human words without moving his muzzle. Still snarling at Edward, Who snarls back a lion’s roar.

Hurtling toward each other, with death in their eyes.

A too loud crash. Blood.

Jacob, falling.

“Edward, no!”

I jerked awake, panting, swallowing a scream.

There was someone in the room.

Before I knew what I was doing I was cringing back, curling my legs under myself. Preparing to- to run? Jump out the window?

Yes. Outside, away from Charlie. Away. Jake would find me.

Large hands caught me as I leapt. I started automatically, fruitlessly, to twist.

“Bella - Jesus. What are you doing? Bella!”

“Jacob?” I relaxed marginally, then all the way as he pulled me into his warm chest. I curled into him. Safe.

And started crying.

“Bella, shh, you’ll wake Charlie. It’s okay, shh, I’ve got you. Just don’t want to be murdered, Bella”

He kept up a stream of comforting nonsense, mixed with my name, his hand stroking down my back.

I raised my still probably splotchy tear streaked face to look at his. Reassuring myself that he was real, and here.

There was something in his eyes, something broken.

“Jacob? What’s wrong?”

He blinked down at me, shakes his head.

When he looked at me again, his eyes were clear of whatever I saw before.

He scowled, still gently stroking one hand down my back.

“What were you thinking Bella?”

“Thinking? About what?”

Oh right, my aborted leap for the window.

“Someone was here. But I didn’t see you. I thought- I thought- ” I’d barely been thinking, the combination of the dream, the shock of feeling myself not alone.

I pulled Jacob more firmly to me, with all my pathetic strength.

“Can you stay?” I asked, pressing my face into his chest to hide my blushing. Even though what I was asking was totally innocent.

He sighed against me, and seemed to sag a bit. All the wolves were getting tired, with this endless high alert.

“Yeah… I’ll stay.”

He moved easily toward the bed, lowering us both down, and the relief was so great that I no longer even felt embarrassed.

I was already drifting off, curled firmly into Jacob, still holding onto him, like I could keep him safe from my nightmares.

“I love you, Bella.” He murmured, and there was something, something I was missing…

“Love you” I sighed, and fell asleep.

—

When the sun made one of it’s rare, full appearances in Forks and La Push, it was hard to remember to feel worried, or haunted by nightmares.

I woke up as the sun was rising, completely warm, and with only the fading traces of pleasant dreams.

I was curled against Jacob’s side, in a way that should have been strange, but wasn’t, knees resting against his thigh, my hands curled between my chest and his side, and my forehead resting against his rib cage. I could feel his arm resting behind me, by the radiating heat.

I tilted my head up to look at his face, still relaxed in sleep, bathed in the unusually bright morning sun.

I’d told Jacob before that he was sort of beautiful, but in truth that was an understatement. I’d always found his skin beautiful, not only because it was a warm, sun-kissed rich brown, even in the gloomy La Push weather, so different from (and therefore interesting compared to) my own nearly translucent pale. But it was also so smooth and even (heaven forbid a supernatural creature ever suffer a pimple or dry skin). His face was a bit too broad, as was his nose, and his wide mouth and soft lips a bit too generous for the classic Hollywood beauty Edward had possessed. His high cheekbones could have made his face look stern, especially in combination with his straight nose, and his thick, dark eyebrows, but in contrast with his lush mouth and luminous skin, they made him breathtaking. It was a face made for emotion - meant to be laughing, talking, or as I’d realized lately- looking at me in the intent way that made my face flame and heat curl inside me.

But then again, I was in love with him.

I knew when other people saw Jacob these days, they saw his body - ridiculously tall, prematurely mature, supernaturally muscled, usually shirtless- I ran a hand up his chest to cover his heart.

I forgot sometimes, or took for granted, how beautiful he was. Because he’d brought so much beauty into my life that had nothing to do with the strength of his arms and abs, or the masculine beauty of his face.

“Mm. Bella?” he mumbled sleepily, blinking his eyes at me in sleepy affection, their deep brown a shade or two darker than my own.

I leaned up to press my mouth against his. The dream the night before and this perfect morning stirred something in me, between peace and desperation.

His hand curled around my back.

“Good morning, Jacob” I said against his lips, propping myself up to brace against his chest.

His chest rumbled under my hand with laughter.

He picked me up, and sat my on his stomach.

“You can say that again, Bells. Watch out, I could get used to this kind of morning.”

“Me too”

I wanted him. I blushed hard at the thought but there it was.

I leaned down over him, pressing my lips to his chest. It was so warm, his heart beat strong and true.

Jake’s body stiffened beneath me and he closed his eyes like he was in pain.

His hands ran up my legs to squeeze my hips (such as they were) and he sighed.

Several interesting parts of me went up in flames.

I groaned and dropped my head against his chest.

“We can’t do this, Jake. Charlie.”

“I’m not doing anything, Bella, this is all you.” he chuckled again. I kissed his chest again.

He sucked in a breath and his fingers spasmed against my hips. I smiled in satisfaction, not lifting my head.

“Charlie’s not here. Maybe he had an early shift?” He was still laughing at me.

I kissed him again, sliding lower on his body, until his hands caught me.

My brief fear of rejection was squashed by the look in his eyes.

He lifted me up as if I weighed nothing, my legs dangling down to the mattress on either side of him.

“Don’t you have to go to school?”

“Oh, shoot! What time is it?” I squirmed until he put me down, then promptly rolled off the bed.

“Ow!”

Now he was definitely laughing at me. He sat up and peered down at me. It really wasn’t fair that almost everyone I hung out with was supernaturally graceful.

“You okay, Bells?”

“Shut up, Jake.” I had about half an hour.

“Don’t you have to go to school too?” he stretched, sliding out of bed and rolling his neck and shoulders.

“Yeah, yeah. Guess I should. Sam’s got me on patrol tonight. Again.”

“You won’t be in trouble for staying with me last night, will you?”

“Nah. I was done when I came by anyway.”

I pulled clothes out of drawers blindly, and remembered just in time that I couldn’t change while Jacob was in my room.

But I didn’t want him to believe this little bubble of safety and happiness we’d woken up to.

“Stay.” I told him, ducking out of my room to the bathroom, grateful to the gods of police department scheduling who’d gotten Charlie out of the house at the right time, yet again.

Jake’s laughter followed me to the bathroom.

We didn’t have time for anything fancy for breakfast. But Jacob happily bolted down the jumbo bowl of cereal I put in front of him, while I ate my own more modest portion.

He drove me to school (in my truck), despite my half-hearted insistence that he leave for his own school day.

So when I stumbled into first period, with just 5 minutes to spare, it was warm and still blushing from a breathless kiss he’d given me in the parking lot before melting into the forest.

Jessica smirked at me as I slid into my seat. I tried to bite back my smile. Smiling too much in pre-calc was never a good idea.

“Morning, Bella. You look happy today. Was that Jacob dropping you off for school?” Angela asked, too innocently. I tried to muster a glare.

“He stopped by this morning...yeah.”

“Oh my God!” Jessica replied, in a restrained shriek.

“Shhh”

“I really want to hate you sometimes, Bella Swan. Are you bringing him to prom? Can he bring some friends, preferably ones that look like him?” Apparently she and Mike were off again. He threw a disgruntled look at her, which she didn’t notice.

I laughed, imagining the chaos of the La Push pack descending on the Forks High prom.

“I think we’re going to do something else, just the two of us, or with some of his friends from La Push.”

“WhA-” but her exclamation was mercifully cut off, by the start of class.

It resumed promptly after, and continued, with more restrained but still supportive input from Angela.

“I think the kids from La Push are allowed to come, as long as they buy tickets, I think they have to be invited by someone from Forks.”

“Yeah, there was like totally a lawsuit or something.”

“I’ll ask Jake and maybe the others. But I hate dancing, and I hate dressing up, and I hate you guys.” I grumbled, walking into last period. They froze for a moment, looking at me.

“Did Bella make a joke, Ang?”

“She really did.”

“Haha.”

---

#Jacob and Bella #jacob x bella fanfiction #Team Jacob #twilight fanfiction #solar flare

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poweredbydietcoke · 4 years

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Favorite books of 2019

A *very* late continuation of my annual tradition … finally got a push to finish this in case you’re looking for book ideas while we find ourselves with plenty of extra time during quarantine. I read a little less in 2019, maybe because I’m working on something new (and have a new kid) or maybe just because I’m getting lazy as I get older? 48 books total, of which 4 were tree books and 23 were audiobooks—I did spend more time in transit last year (yes, it’s possible to listen to audiobooks and talk to ATC at the same time!), but it felt more productive.

Without further ado, my favorite books. (affiliate links get donated to charity at the end of the year). I’ve included some highlights from Kindle books, but many of my favorites this year were audiobooks, where I haven’t found a great solution to highlighting (especially those I get from the library on a variety of crappy - but free! - services).

Destiny Disrupted, by Tamim Ansary - this was probably my favorite book of the year. I liked it so much I cold-emailed the author and invited him over for dinner, and we had a wonderful time with he & his wife and a bunch of friends. Fundamentally, the book is a history of the world told from the point of view of Islam; the point he makes, quite compellingly, was that there are really two (and probably more) different histories of the world, with the same facts, that just depend on your narrative. This is starting to play on a lot of things I’ve been trying to understand recently, including Ben Hunt’s Epsilon Theory and specifically, his idea of the Narrative Machine, and all of the theory of Common Knowledge that includes. And he does all this with an easy-to-read but well-researched writing style. If you like this one, I’m still working my way through his next one, The Invention of Yesterday, and so far so good.

A ruler can never trust a popular man with soldiers of his own. One day, Mansur invited Abu Muslim to come visit him and share a hearty meal. What happened next illustrates the maxim that when an Abbasid ruler invites you to dinner, you should arrange to be busy that night.

On the Sunni side, four slightly different versions of this code took shape, and the Shi’i developed yet another one of their own, similar to the Sunni ones in spirit and equally vast in scope. These various codes differ in details, but I doubt that one Muslim in a thousand can name even five such details.

Let me emphasize that the ulama were not (and are not) appointed by anyone. Islam has no pope and no official clerical apparatus. How, then, did someone get to be a member of the ulama? By gaining the respect of people who were already established ulama. It was a gradual process. There was no license, no certificate, no “shingle” to hang up to prove that one was an alim. The ulama were (and are) a self-selecting, self-regulating class, bound entirely by the river of established doctrine. No single alim could modify this current or change its course. It was too old, too powerful, too established, and besides, no one could become a member of the ulama until he had absorbed the doctrine so thoroughly that it had become a part of him. By the time a person acquired the status to question the doctrine, he would have no inclination to do so. Incorrigible dissenters who simply would not stop questioning the doctrine probably wouldn’t make it through the process.

If a man commits a grave sin, is he a non-Muslim, or is he (just) a bad Muslim? The question might seem like a semantic game, except that in the Muslim world, as a point of law, the religious scholars divided the world between the community and the nonbelievers. One set of rules applied among believers, another set for interactions between believers and nonbelievers. It was important, therefore, to know if any particular person was in the community or outside it.

Range, by David Epstein. Thomas Layton recommended this to me (he was reading a derivative work on how to coach basketball while applying this theory), and it was fun. The fundamental thesis is that you can split environments into “nice” and “wicked” learning environments. In nice environments, feedback is quick and accurate, and rewards specialization early (eg golf ... you can practice every possible shot by yourself). In wicked environments, feedback is delayed (if available at all), and the rules — let alone the situation — are fluid. This rewards “range”, or a variety of experiences (Epstein uses tennis as an example, but much of life is even more obvious). The return of the Renaissance Man (or Woman) — yay!

When I began to write about these studies, I was met with thoughtful criticism, but also denial. “Maybe in some other sport,” fans often said, “but that’s not true of our sport.” The community of the world’s most popular sport, soccer, was the loudest. And then, as if on cue, in late 2014 a team of German scientists published a study showing that members of their national team, which had just won the World Cup, were typically late specializers who didn’t play more organized soccer than amateur-league players until age twenty-two or later.

A recent study found that cardiac patients were actually less likely to die if they were admitted during a national cardiology meeting, when thousands of cardiologists were away; the researchers suggested it could be because common treatments of dubious effect were less likely to be performed.

Whether or not experience inevitably led to expertise, they agreed, depended entirely on the domain in question. Narrow experience made for better chess and poker players and firefighters, but not for better predictors of financial or political trends, or of how employees or patients would perform. The domains Klein studied, in which instinctive pattern recognition worked powerfully, are what psychologist Robin Hogarth termed “kind” learning environments. Patterns repeat over and over, and feedback is extremely accurate and usually very rapid.

...

In wicked domains, the rules of the game are often unclear or incomplete, there may or may not be repetitive patterns and they may not be obvious, and feedback is often delayed, inaccurate, or both.

When younger students bring home problems that force them to make connections, Richland told me, “parents are like, ‘Lemme show you, there’s a faster, easier way.’” If the teacher didn’t already turn the work into using-procedures practice, well-meaning parents will. They aren’t comfortable with bewildered kids, and they want understanding to come quickly and easily. But for learning that is both durable (it sticks) and flexible (it can be applied broadly), fast and easy is precisely the problem.

Programs like Head Start did give a head start, but academically that was about it. The researchers found a pervasive “fadeout” effect, where a temporary academic advantage quickly diminished and often completely vanished. On a graph, it looks eerily like the kind that show future elite athletes catching up to their peers who got a head start in deliberate practice.

Hilariously, predictors were willing to pay an average of $129 a ticket for a show ten years away by their current favorite band, while reflectors would only pay $80 to see a show today by their favorite band from ten years ago.

In the spring of 2001, Bingham collected twenty-one problems that had stymied Eli Lilly scientists and asked a top executive if he could post them on a website for anyone to see. The executive would only consider it if the consulting firm McKinsey thought it was a good idea. “McKinsey’s opinion,” Bingham recalled, “was, ‘Who knows? Why don’t you launch it and tell us the answer.’”

There was also a “perverse inverse relationship” between fame and accuracy. The more likely an expert was to have his or her predictions featured on op-ed pages and television, the more likely they were always wrong. Or, not always wrong. Rather, as Tetlock and his coauthor succinctly put it in their book Superforecasting, “roughly as accurate as a dart-throwing chimpanzee.”

Deep Work by Cal Newport - this was an easy listen while on a couple of long runs in Palm Springs during Indian Wells weekend, and definitely worth it. Like classics such as How to Win Friends And Influence People, there’s not a lot fundamentally groundbreaking here, but he articulates some really fundamental principles well enough that you stop and take notice and ask, “I know that ... why am I not doing that?” Now I just need to review my notes...

Age of Ambition, Chasing Fortune in China - Evan Osnos. I think Scott Cannon originally recommended this book to me, and it was fascinating. It’s a bit of a long, slow read but a lot of insight into China’s evolution over the last few decades. I’m not sure what I’ll do with this knowledge (or the many other China books I’ve read recently) but it feels important for the coming decades. If only I could learn Mandarin like Matt MacInnis

Every country has corruption, but China’s was approaching a level of its own. For those at the top, the scale of temptation had reached a level unlike anything ever encountered in the West. It was not always easy to say which Bare-Handed Fortunes were legitimate and which were not, but political office was a reliable pathway to wealth on a scale of its own. By 2012 the richest seventy members of China’s national legislature had a net worth of almost ninety billion dollars—more than ten times the combined net worth of the entire U.S. Congress.

But unlike Zaire, China punished many people for it; in a five-year stretch, China punished 668,000 Party members for bribery, graft, and embezzlement; it handed down 350 death sentences for corruption, and Wedeman concluded, “At a very basic level, it appears to have prevented corruption from spiraling out of control.”

The Central Propaganda Department let it be known that reports that suggested a shortage of happiness were not to receive attention. In April 2012 my phone buzzed: All websites are not to repost the news headlined, “UN Releases World Happiness Report, and China Ranks No. 112.”

Over the years, the risk of being blamed for helping someone was a scenario that appeared over and over in the headlines. In November 2006 an elderly woman in Nanjing fell at a bus stop, and a young man named Peng Yu stopped to help her get to the hospital. In recovery, she accused Peng of causing her fall, and a local judge agreed, ordering him to pay more than seven thousand dollars—a judgment based not on evidence, but on what the verdict called “logical thinking”: that Peng would never have helped if he hadn’t been motivated by guilt.

At one point, Chinese programmers were barred from updating a popular software system called Node.js because the version number, 0.6.4, corresponded with June 4, the date of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

he vowed to punish not only low-ranking “flies” but also powerful “tigers.” He called on his comrades to be “diligent and thrifty,” and when Xi took his first official trip, state television reported that he checked into a “normal suite” and dined not at a banquet, but at a buffet—a revelation so radical in Chinese political culture that the word buffet took on metaphysical significance. The state news service ran a banner headline: XI JINPING VISITS POOR FAMILIES IN HEBEI: DINNER IS JUST FOUR DISHES AND ONE SOUP, NO ALCOHOL.

...

It didn’t take long for the abrupt drop-off in gluttony to affect the economy: sales of shark fin (de rigueur for banquets) sank more than 70 percent; casinos in Macau recorded a drop in VIPs, and Swiss watch exports dropped by a quarter from the year before. Luxury goods makers mourned.

Economists point to a historic correlation between “world’s tallest” debuts and economic slowdowns. There is no cause and effect, but such projects are a sign of easy credit, excessive optimism, and inflated land prices—a pattern that dates to the world’s first skyscraper, the Equitable Life Building. Built in New York at the height of the Gilded Age, it was completed in 1873, the start of a five-year slump that became known as the Long Depression, and the pattern repeated in decades to follow. Skyscraper magazine, a Shanghai publication that treated tall buildings like celebrities, reported in 2012 that China would finish a new skyscraper every five days for the next three years; China was home to 40 percent of the skyscrapers under construction in the world.

Billion Dollar Whale by Tom Wright & Bradley Hope - Mike Vernal told me to drop most things to read this, and he wasn’t wrong. A well-written account of the 1MDB scandal that I’d only vaguely followed, and tries to put it into context when it basically can’t … something like $5.XB stolen over the course of a few years.

Heads in Beds by Jacob Tomsky & Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain - I put these two together, both recommended by Robert MacCloy, because they’re quick and fun. I listened to both on audio and they were both “mindless” but interesting…sort of the inside baseball of both the hospitality and restaurant industries. Don’t use a UV light...anywhere.

Smokejumpers by Jason Ramos - recommended by one of our fire captain neighbors at Oxbow and figured it would be good to understand a little more about wildland firefighting … this took me down a long digression of firefighting books that were interesting but if you want one, this one’s fun.

American icon by Bryce Hoffman - great audiobook that Scott Cannon recommended about Alan Mulaly’s turnaround of the Ford. The single most memorable part — after a couple of years working on turning the company around, a reporter asked him what his priorities for the next year were, and he responded with the same three things he’d said from the beginning. The reporter said something to the affect of “I can’t write about that again, it’s boring, you need something new!” And Mulaly responded “when we’ve got these three things done right, then we’ll have something new. We haven’t finished them yet."

Bad Blood by John Carreyrou - my wife raved about this book after she listened to it, and it was all the rage, so I did too…and it lived up to the hype! Fascinating but managed not to be a tabloid-y gossip-y tale of excess so much as a “yeah, each individual step was only a little over the line, and look where it lead them.” A surprisingly poignant reminder about how “fake it til you make it” in Silicon Valley can be idealized until it’s not. This is the next generation in a line started by Barbarians at the Gate and continued by Smartest Guys In The Room.

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kitgilmore · 7 years

Text

ONE // WHERE YOU LEAD.

Kit Gilmore wasn't sure if yellow was her colour but she knew today was a sweater and tights kind of day. From downstairs she could hear her sister riffling around, their three bedroom house was located in the small town of Stars Hollow. When Kit was thirteen, during her Stephen King phase she often thought about it in terms of a social experiment, she was sure, given isolation from the outside world, the residence would turn on each other. Her mother laughed when she told her, her sister, however, scolded her. Told her not be so rude. She pulls her long dark hair into a ponytail before shaking it loose, checked herself in the mirror one last time, grabbed her music journal and yellow rain jacket, and bounced her way down the stairs, trying to fake some enthusiasm for this day.

"Do you have my Macy Grey CD?" Rory asked. Rory was her twins sister, she was older by 6 minutes and therefore had the privilege of being named after their mother Lorelai, while Kit was named after their father Christopher. Lorelai Leigh Gilmore and Christine Emma Gilmore were born on the 8th October 1984 when their parents were only 16, to say that everyone reacted badly would be an understatement.

"Why would I have your Macy Grey CD." Kit replied, as they made their way out the door, Rory just hummed in acknowledgment, her sister wasn't really much for pop music, Kit rather get lost in Mozart than Macy Grey.

Kit rubbed her hands together as she said "I need coffee" as they made their way through the square. Both sisters beam with joy when they saw Luke's, the faded yellow sign that always brought them comfort. The bell chimed over head as they crossed the through the old diner towards their mother, although Rory and Kit were not identical, all three Gilmore's shared similar features, dark brown hair, blue eyes, bright smiles. Kit's hair was longer than Rory's and she had freckles across her nose she's inherited from her father. While Rory was bookish, Kit was musical. Kit had been playing the Cello since she was 7, one night after a piano lesson with Missy Patty, Kit wondered down the hall and saw a beautiful blonde girl, hair pulled back with a thin headband, she was playing the cello. Kit was mesmerised, the way her hands moved back and forth, pulling the bow across the strings it looks like she was spilling out her soul, Kit thought if only she could concentrate she would see colour. Peter Yogorov cellist turned music teacher, at Stars Hollow High, he taught the more advantaged students while Miss Lucas taught at the middle school. If Kit was being honest she was much better at playing the piano than Rory who even at seven would find ways to read C.S Lewis rather than sheet music. Her hands were born to play their mother would say, and Kit didn't mind letting her sister catch up but watching Rory learn the same piece over and over often left her feeling bored. But from that day she knew she wanted to play like that, with heart, with soul.

Peter was a beautiful man with grey hair, whose heart you could hear in every note. The first time Kit had met Peter she was so nervous, when she told her mother she wanted to play the Cello, she had mentioned it to Miss Patty who said Peter has to teach you, he's amazing and he was. During the spring recital, Kit play To a Wild Rose, Peter's quartet played along side the ballet, Kit can't even remember what ballet they were performing, she spent the whole performance watching Peter hold the other three together with his passion. Kit was addicted. He looked so much bigger than anyone she'd ever met, of course, he wasn’t at 6ft. He didn't let her play for him, Didn’t let her touch a cello just looked at her hands, turning them over in his larger calloused hands for what felt like hours, asked her if she could read the music she was just playing, she told him she could with a small nod than he presented her with biographies of Luigi Boccherini, Julian Lloyd Webber, Yo-Yo Ma, & Ludwig Beethoven, told her to read them, study them, learn them And she did. It had taken her nearly two months but that summer he taught her, three days a week for the next 8 years.

"Hey. It's freezing" Rory greeted their mother.

"Oh, What do you need? Hot Tea, Coffee?" Kit nodded in agreement, sliding off her coat, taking the seat next to her sister.

"Lipgloss?" Rory asked.

"Donuts"

Lorelai bent down to rummage through her purse "Aha" she declared pulling out a makeup bag filled to the brim. "I have vanilla, chocolate, strawberry and toasted marshmallow."

Kit sniggered at her mother and wondered if it was too early for ice cream.

"Anything in there not resembling a breakfast cereal?" Rory questioned her eyes widen, while Kit grabbed the bag looking for her a mascara she knew her mother had.

"Yes" Lorelai retorted simply pulling out another bag, "It has not smell but changes colours with your mood."

"God, RuPaul doesn't need this much make up." Rory complied as Kit found a mirror, her hair just wasn't doing what she wanted it to do today.

Their mother let out a sigh "Wow, you're crabby." Kit playfully nudged her sister.

"I'm sorry. I lost my Macy Gray CD and I need caffeine." Rory apologised.

"Ohh, I have your CD." she admitted, pulling it out.

“Wow, Mom Mary Poppin's much" Kit laughed

"Thief" Rory scolded lightly

"Sorry, and I will get you go coffee." Kit handed her mother the mug on the table, who made her way up to the counter while. Kit turned back to the makeup selection that was now covering half the table, Pocketing a red lipstick, Rory watched as Luke refused to serve her mother, she could only imagine the conversation that took place before they arrived.

"What? It's not for me. It's for the girls, I swear." she argued.

"You're shameless," Luke told her.

Both sisters were equally distracted when an older guy in plaid approached their table, Rory smiled politely at his attempt of flirting while Kit simply said "You not from around are you."

"No, I've never been here before" The man who introduced himself as Joey smiled, at the girls, who both just laughed.

"Oh, you have, too." Their mother said as she returned with fresh coffee.

Joey stood up straight to face her "Oh, hi" he returned with a flirtatious smirk, Kit took the blue mug, that matched her nail varnish from her mother, and lightly blew on the liquid, trying to hold back her amusement.

"I was just. uhh" Joey began

"Getting to knew my daughters.." she filled in, placing her arm on the back of Kit chair.

"Your.." Joey gaped

"Are our new Daddy?" Rory asked in her sweetest voice, smirking at her sister as the man struggled to speak.

"Wow. You don't look old enough to have daughters. No, I mean it" Joey said before looking down at the pair "And you two do not look like daughters."

"Every girl's someone daughter." Kit said under her breath.

"That's possibly very sweet of you. Thanks." Their mother told him.

"So... daughters." He stated at Lorelai who nodded in confirmation, Kit could see where this was going. Don't say it.

"You know, I am traveling with a couple of friends" he finished gesturing to the two men at the counter.

"They're fifteen," Lorelai informed him.

"Bye," Joey muffled quickly before grabbing his friend and leaving the dinner.

"Drive safe" Kit called after them, causing the three girls to break out in laughter.

Kit caught up the Rory and Lane before school, Rory had been to visit their mother at the Dragonfly Inn where she worked but Kit was having trouble picking out an outfit, this September weather was not her friend she was waiting for winter. Finally, she slipped on her favourite deep blue sweater and polka dot navy skirt, tights, and combat boots, winning combination in Kit's eyes. Kit chuckled as her friend slip a Woodstock 99' tie dye shirt over her plain pink long sleeved one she'd left home in.

"One day Lane, one day." Kit chuckled as the three of them walked through the streets of Stars Hollow.

Lane groaned, Rory sighed before saying "When are you going to let your parent's know you listen to evil rock music? You're an American teenager, for God's sake."

"But if you parents let you would you still like it.. that is the question?" Kit stated, readjusting her backpack.

"Guys, if my parents still get upset over the obscene portion size of American food, I seriously doubt I'm gonna make any inroads with Eminem." As the three stopped so Lane could put on her denim jacket, the young Korean pointed to the sign for annual 'Teen Hayride' "I have to go to that"

Kit sniggered in response "You're kidding".

"My parents set me up with the son of a business associate. He's gonna be a doctor"

Kit frowned, slightly confused. "How old is he?"

"Sixteen"

"Seriously, he's not gonna be a doctor in a hundred years." Rory laughed.

"Well, my parents like to plan ahead."

Rory cringed as she watched students pass by. "God, you have to go to the hayride with him."

"There's a rolling around in the hay joke in there somewhere I'm just too tired to find it." Kit commented, walking a head of them slightly, noticing the cute boy in the leather jacket leaning against the school entrance, before descending into a sea of red uniforms.

Writing music scores in the margins of her English notebook had become a habit Kit was always trying to break, but she couldn't help it when there was silence her mind flooded with notes. "For those of you who have not finished the final chapters of Huckleberry Finn you may use this time to do so. For those of you who have, you can start on your essay now. Whichever task you choose, do it silently." Mrs. Traister said she wondered how this early in the school year, her teacher could be this annoyed. Kit had already read Huckleberry Finn, she read it with Rory, over the years she found that no one likes to discuss books like Rory, it made it easy with books Kit didn't really like and Mark Twain wasn't one of her favourite authors. Her concentration broke when a bottle of nail polish landed on her desk. Kit wasn't unpopular but she wasn't a red uniform, football player, cheerleader. She wasn't even in the marching band, because well, cellos are heavy, her popularity stemmed more from the fact that she was the first of her friends to kiss a boy in middle school. Elliott Young, during a game of truth or dare.

"Maybe it's a love letter."

"Or her dairy."

"Could be a slam book."

Instead of painting her already blue nails red she simply held her her hands to show the other girls, passing the nail polish back she rolled her eyes and said "It's the assignment".

The girls turned away, disappointed as Rory sent her sister a smile for before rolling her eyes at her sister as she pulled out her beat up copy of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

"Well, was it a good colour at least?" Lane asked after Rory had finished telling the story from English class on the way home. Kit laughed at her sister when she said

"It has sparkles in it"

"Wow," Lane said slightly sarcastic.

"It smelled like bubble gum when it dried"

"It was red.. Minute men red.. Whatever that means," Kit said, Rory rolled her eyes at her sisters lack of school spirit, it wasn't as if she had a lot but Kit was very against organised sports.

"Mom, we're home" Lane called into the cluttered store she called home. Looking between the twins her eye brows raised as she said "Did you hear something."

They both struggled in unison. "I'm not sure." Said Rory.

"Mom" Lane called out, this time a little louder, this was a scene Kit had seen play out a hundred times but it would not be funny.

"We're Open" Mrs Kim called from somewhere in the house. "Everything's half off!"

"Oh No, Not Again". Kit laughed to herself, as the three girls made their way through the organised mess.

"Mom?"

"Lane?"

"Mom?"

"Lane?"

The mother and daughter continued to call out, trying to find each other.

"Mom, where are you?"

"Back Here!"

"Over Here!"

Rory pointed towards the kitchen "I think she's that way."

Lane looked around "Are we closer?"

"You really need to work on your communication skills."

"I'm by the table!."

Kit rolled her eyes, being in an Antique store they were many, many tables.

"She's Joking, Right?" Rory asked, Kit just looked at her and said "I'm sure, you know Mrs. Kim. Quite the prankster."

Lane signed in defeat before yelling out "Look, we'll meet you in the kitchen!"

"What!"

"The Kitchen" the twins called out.

There was an almost deafening silence before Mrs. Kim said "Who's that?"

"It's Kit and Rory mama".

"Oh"

Rory smiled awkwardly while Kit sign "Gee, I can feel the disappointment from here".

"Oh, come on. Stop it." Lane said looking back at her, Kit raised her eyebrows.

Rory frowned while they made their way through what felt like it could have been a living room but instead was filled with tables with chairs and stools pilled upon them, sideboards and chests. The whole room looked like an intricate game of Tetris, and had it been anyone else Kit might have had fun with it, but Mrs. Kim was deeply against games of any kind.

"You know, it sucks that after all these years your mom still hates us." Rory

"She doesn't hate you guys" Lane quickly stated as if rehearsed.

"Just our mother then?" Kit said filling her part.

Lane smiled, "She doesn't trust married women."

"You're unmarried" Rory pointed out.

"I have a hayride with a future proctologist" Lane grinned "I have potential"

"Potentially a terrible date." Kit snubbed.

When the three finally found Mrs. Kim in the kitchen which was cluttered in a different way, they were a sweet smell that was comforted when Mrs. Kim said. "Go upstairs. Tea is ready. I have muffins - no dairy, no sugar, no wheat." Kit knew Mrs. Kim was a sweet lady underneath her hard exterior, she saw it once after Mrs. Kim actually compliment her after seeing a cello performance "You have to soak them in tea to make them soft enough to bite but there but they're very healthy. So, how was school? None of the girls get pregnant, drop out?" Kit pursed her lips to save her from saying something sarcastic.

"Not that we know of" Lane shrugged.

"I'm sure statistics will catch up soon" Kit smirked.

"Joanna Posner was glowing a little," Rory added, smiling at her sister, who just nudged their shoulder against one another.

What!".

"Nothing, Mama, she was just kidding" Lane looked at her friends with annoyance. Mrs Kim clenched the dish towel she was holding turned towards the girls, her face taught as she said "Boys don't like funny girls."

Kit swallowed under her gaze, while Rory said "Noted."

"Hello" a customer called out after the bell above the door rang. "Anybody here?"

"We're here! We're coming!" she called out over their heads before turning to the girls and saying "Have the muffins. Made from sprouted wheat.Only good 24 hours." before disappearing into the clutter.

"Everything's half off!" They heard her yell.

"Where are you?"

"Over here!"

"Where?"

"By the chair!"

"What chair?”

"Seriously you need a road map" Kit said picking at one of the muffins.

"I need fudge." Kit complained to her sister, on the way to the Dragonfly Inn. Mrs Kim had practically forced the twins to eat her sprouted wheat muffins, Kit wasn't even sure what sprouted wheat was but she knew she never wanted to eat it again. The familiar kitchen housed Sookie St James, who was always fulfilling her sweet tooth with different flavours of fudge. As Kit opened one of the large fridges, she found the sweets she was looking for. Smiling to herself as she turned towards her sister, mother, and the chef.

"You're Happy?" Rory asked.

Lorelai continued to grin, as she nodded, it wasn't that the twins didn't often see their mother happy, in fact, she was rarely not the upbeat sarcastic women they loved, but this was something else.

"Did you do something slutty?" Kit asked, unwrapping the sweet. "No.. your not that happy"

The older women looked at each other and giggled, leading the twins to gaze at one other in confusion.

"What's going on?" Rory asked as Kit slipped the buttery fudge into her mouth, feeling satisfied with the white chocolate flavour.

"Here," their mother said holding out a large gift bag. Kit's eyes widen as Rory pulled out one of two plaid blue skirts.

"Oh baby, baby." Kit began to sing.

Rory raised an eyebrow, trying to contain her laughter "We're going to be in a Britney Spears video"

"Which sounds more fun in theory." Kit added.

"You're going to Chilton!" Sookie blurted out before her best friend slightly hit her in annoyance.

The twins looked at each other before looking at their mother. "Mom?"

Lorelai beamed at them proudly "You did it, girls. You got it."

"How did this happen?" Kit gasped

"You didn't. .with the principal, did you?" Rory asked her head slightly turned in that way she always did.

"No, honey, that was a joke." Lorelai rolled her eyes. "They have two spots, you're gonna start on Monday."

"Really?" Rory beamed.

"Really." their mother nodded with a grin.

"I don't believe this! Oh my God, we're going to Chilton!" Rory screamed with excitement

"Yeah."

Academically Kit and Rory weren't so different while Rory had been getting As in all her subjects since elementary school, Kit would sometimes get a B. Both getting As in Math and History, Geography, Sciences Rory pulled ahead in English, taking creative writing as an elective, while Kit had was more skilled in music and languages taking both French and Russian but that was at stars hollow high where the curve was vast even in AP classes. Where the twins differed the most was social activities, Kit was in Choir, had founded the Russian club, played in the orchestra for school plays, for some strange reason AV club and also a peer mentor. Rory Gilmore was very decided on her future, Harvard, Journalist. Kit was a little more unsure. On any given day she was torn between Bach and H.G Wells.

"I'll make cookies. Protestants love oatmeal." Sookie burst out, the three Gilmores jumping up and down.

"I have to call Lane," Rory said, laughing. Rory begins to leave before turning back towards her mother and saying "I love you"

"I love you both" Their mother said, as she stroked the back of her youngest daughter who was smiling.

Later that night Kit was sitting in the yellow and blue cozy bohemian of her bedroom, her room was placed on the second floor of their quaint blue house, facing their yard, the walls were coved in posters, The Hobbit, Ferris Bueller’s day off and an old map of St Petersburg upon the flyers for The Echo park time travel mart, The Last Bookstore and Track 61 along side many other quirky attractions the girls would visit with their father Christopher. Music scores and post it notes with her favourite quotes, ticket stubs from various, plays, concerts and symphonies she’d been to with her mother and sister. Her small brown desk cluttered with texts books, sheet music and various shades of blue nail varnish, a dish shaped like a whale filled with silver rings, Disney mugs with pens, coloured pencils and way too many highlighters for any one person. The dark wooden bedside table covered with Stephen King, Charles Bukowski, Nick Hornby and a very well read copy of The Prisoner of Azkaban mixed with a sketchbook her music journal. In the corner sat her Cello, an antique fade, she'd had for 6 years. Bookshelves filled with Science fiction, Russian classics and Epic Fantasies, assorted vinyl records from classics to classic rocks. Candles that smelled like Christmas and bonfires, piles of sweaters and knitted socks. Under her twin bed was the bass guitar her father bought her one Christmas and the black Taylor acoustic guitar she brought from Morey for $75. She was listening to music trying to phantom perfect Beethoven's Cello Sonata no. 3, her fingers twitched as she began to think about her new school, not just the academics but music, she knew that Chilton had a great orchestra but how many cellists would she have to compete with, she would have to audition, what would she perform. What if she was taught concerto's she wasn't ready for or worse one's she knew backward. The blue plaid skirt hung over her mirror tautening her. She would miss Peter. Just then Rory walked in, blue skirt drowning her. Kit tried not to laugh before switching her polka dots for plaid.

"Mom?" Rory called out and they made their way downstairs.

"So what do you think? Kit asked, her mother and Sookie were on the pouch

"Wow, it makes you both look much smarter!" Sookie exclaimed, with so much enthusiasm it warmed Kit's, heart.

"Okay, no more wine for you." Rory joked.

"Mom?"

"You look like you were swallowed by a kilt." She answered.

"Fine, you can hem it. A little." Rory told her as she pointed a finger.

"Mine a little more than hers" Rory looked at her sister with disapproval, "What?"

"I could hem it a lot." Their mother told them.

"No, you're not. I don't want it to be too short." Rory told them as she followed the other three into the living room. Kit jumped up on the wooden stool.

"I can't believe tomorrow's our last day at Stars Hollow High." she said with glee.

"I know."

"Today I was so excited I dressed for gym," Rory told them

"She played volleyball" Lorelai began to pin the material into the hem sat just above her knee.

"With other people," her mother asked, looking over at her daughter.

"And I learned that all this time I was avoiding group sports?" Kit was lucky at her state school she hadn't had to take gym since 5th grade due to music.

"Yeah?"

"Was very smart because you suck at them." Kit finished, her mother tapped her leg lightly.

"Well, yeah, you got that from me." she said to Rory.

Sookie interrupted the girls laughing when she asked "Where's your paté?

"At Zsa Zsa Gabor's house." their mother answered her best friend.

"Right. I'm going to the store because you have nothing."The chef told them as she wasn't used to the lack of fresh produce in the Gilmore house. She checked her handbag and put on her coat before saying "You feel like duck".

Kit nodded, eagerly.

"Ooh, if it's made with chicken, absolutely." her mother answered.

"I'll be back."

"Bye."

"All right. This will give you an idea. Go see how you like it" Kit jumped off the stool, and twirled before running up the stairs.

"Okay now your turn missy." she heard their mother say from the living room.

#Kit Gilmore #Gilmore Girls #Gilmore Girls OC #Gilmore Girls Fanfiction #The Adaptation of Kit Gilmore #Where You Lead #Rory Gilmore #Lorelai Gilmore #Sookie St James

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hrsuccess · 5 years

Text

Management Lessons from India’s Most Loved Sport ,Cricket

I requested Mr. Ramkumar to present his views on Cricket and Management on The Other View.

He wrote back asking me to write the article myself instead of him. I, at this point in time, felt like Sachin Tendulkar when he was handed over the ball by his captain, Mohammad Azharuddin, in a packed Eden Gardens to bowl the last over of the Hero Cup finals against South Africa way back in 1993.

Of course I had no idea about what I would write but having been given the opportunity and honour to write, I have made an attempt based on my limited experience both as a fan of the “gentlemen’s game” and of having served three of India’s leading companies: HCL Infosystems, Genpact and ICICI Bank.

Over the past few days I have been thinking about the incredible similarities between management themes, strategies and philosophies in the sports field and in our workplaces.

Since we are part of a nation where cricket is the only sport, I will focus the discussion on the striking similarities between cricket and the workplace and the key takeaways and management lessons from cricket. For the sake of simplicity, I will leave the readers to draw the parallel to their workplaces in comments section.

Game is all About Winning not Popularity:

The game is replete with instances of successful captains building their teams on the back on unpopular choices and dropping legendary players from the playing eleven.

This has come at the expense of media bashing and pushback. But more often than not it has led to a meritocracy and a positive competitive environment, which fosters talent and healthy competition.

Adequate bench strength is critical for continuity and of course to counter exigencies like injury during key series. The game has taught us that it is not possible if we do not weed out people who are not contributing and at the same time take risks with young budding talent.

Good Success Plans always works

The Australian Team is famous for grooming their captains several years in advance and has produced some of the best teams of all times.

Whether it is the present One Day captain George Bailey (whom I, for one, had not even the faintest idea about even an year back) or Michael Clarke who was groomed for years to take on the mantle. Another credible example in this context is that of South African captain Graeme Smith, and closer home MS Dhoni, who was groomed for a year by Anil Kumble and Tendulkar.

Growth and talent need not be restricted to big cities:

Today’s Indian team has only 20-30% of its members coming from the Top 10 cities of the country which boast of the best cricketing infrastructure. The rest come from the hinterland. There are many world class stadiums now in these cities whether it is Ranchi or Rajkot or even Dharamshala. This clearly shows that where there is a will, there is a way.

The Afghanistan Team making it to the World Cup is another case in point. On the same note, it is fabled that Imran Khan used to go to the villages in the North West provinces of Pakistan and scout for boys whom he would turn into ace fast bowlers. Our own Sourav Ganguly was the first captain to break the monopoly of Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. Places like Baroda, Najafgarh, Jalandhar, Chandigarh and Ranchi took their place.

Continuous improvement and creation of infrastructure:

Credit goes to the BCCI for having an able system of selection, plenty of domestic tournaments and a variety of formats which bring this talent to the core, and of course new infrastructure which is being created in Tier II and Tier III Cities.

Technology is key to success:

Talent and passion are all fine but we would be living in a fool’s paradise if we did not use advances in technology to our advantage.

Commentators and conventionalists often mock at the many laptops that now line the dressing rooms and the pavilions, but it is important to use data and analyse it to your advantage and be ahead of competition.

Freedom to take your decisions:

While of course there is always a strategy but at times, it is the bowler who knows best where to bowl and the captain should back him and help with the field placements accordingly.

Ability to think on the feet by using years of experience becomes critical to success. Remember how the lesser known Joginder Sharma bowled the last over in the 2007 T20 World Cup and how Sreesanth was placed perfectly to take the catch of Misbah-ul-Haq.

Support teams are critical:

Very often we have seen a player getting injured and after the physio’s intervention (the magic spray of course and a couple of stretching exercises) he springs back to life almost immediately.

They all add up to the final performance as a team. A catch gets a wicket for the bowler and it is the partner running for the batsman’s stroke which gets him the run. One should not underestimate the importance of the bowling coach, the fielding coach and of course in today’s teams the sports psychologist.

Need both all-rounders and specialists:

A well built and competent team needs both specialists and all-rounders to provide balance to the team. A team full of all-rounders without the right specialists will count for very little.

So while no one can diminish the fact that Yuvraj’s all round ability contributed significantly to the 2011 World Cup win with 4 Man of the Match awards, the batters at the top of the order and the specialist bowlers (spinners and medium pacers — can’t say fast bowlers because India never produced one) played their well defined roles to ensure the Cup came home after 28 years.

It’s no longer enough to be good in one format – T20, One Days, Test Matches or at home only:

It used to hurt Indian cricket supporters when in the 90’s our team was referred to as “Tigers at home, lambs abroad”. Thankfully, that is a tag we have shed by developing the ability to perform well across formats and across continents. This is what differentiates the great teams from the merely good teams.

The Board decides but the captain has a say:

The boards no longer take the decision solely; they consult with the captain and the coach who pick the best playing eleven because when on the field, it is captain who has to marshal the resources and make key decisions. Hence, rightly the captain has a say in deciding the team composition.

A few bad men don’t take away from the Gentlemen’s Game:

There are always some bad elements who compromise on their integrity for the lure of some quick bucks. But the law catches up with them sooner or later. And they are left with a fall from fame and a lifetime of bad repute. As they say the game moves on without these bad apples.

Fitness is Key: Need I say more here!

Think ahead of time and ahead of competition:

Kris Srikkanth made the most of the first 10 overs through some power hitting much before Kaluwitharana and Jayasuriya made it a strategy. For that matter, the New Zealand team used the unconventional ploy of starting the innings with a spinner way back in 1991 World Cup.

You may not always have the best team:

India’s World Cup T20 Win in 2007 is a classic case of making do with the resources at hand. Dhoni could have fretted and complained about being given a raw deal with a totally inexperienced team but he used their individual strengths and stitched them into a winning combination. Sometimes, it is good to let go off the baggage and back yourself.

Don’t be complacent, never lose temper:

“A swing and a miss” is an oft used term by most commentators to refer to a senseless stroke by a batsmen made in a fit of desperation or anger that yields nothing but air. It is critical to hold on to your nerves and not let the competition run you down. How often have we seen batsmen giving away wickets after an altercation with the bowlers or fielders? How can anyone forget the memories of Javed Miandad hopping and then Kiran More imitating him when Miandad lost his wicket or Aamir Sohail being bowled over just the next bowl after smashing Venkatesh Prasad to the boundary and showing him his bat in the World Cup match in 1995 in Bangalore?

It’s OK to have a bad day at the “office”, but learn from them:

Of course there aren’t many takers for Ishant Sharma after he made sure the Aussies cruised to victory the other day but in a long career everyone will have a bad day once in a while.

It’s during this time that the captain needs to back his team and not reprimand severely and finish someone’s career. Of course the errant player also needs to quickly learn from their mistake and be worthy of their captain’s backing.

I have to conclude with the cliched but nevertheless critical wisdom: “A Leader has to lead by example” as exemplified by our captain — with a captain named Dhoni, there can never be any “unhoni”.

by Sachin Bhagat

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#management #cricket #indian office management #hr

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ibuprofendiplomacy · 5 years

Text

Reliable Modern Dip

Playing as Poland

Ukraine: CLRJames

Spain: Syrcellus

(Original) Egypt: Duaner02

England: Jefe

I joined this game in its early stages as Poland in what I found to be a solid position for a chance at survival. An alliance with Ukraine was clearly already underway, and I made sure to showcase my desire to continue this arrangement with them. While I offered Germany the same proposal, as to branch out as many options as possible, I did not receive a response. This, combined with Ukraine’s open suggestion, prompted me to make a swift stab on Germany as my opening move, as well as continuing the campaign into the remainder of Russia with Ukrainian support.

The war against Germany was quick and efficient. I constructed fleets with the first year’s builds, allowing for an assault on Scandinavia as well as providing some deterrence for the quickly approaching navies of England. It was obvious Germany was to be defeated totally in the next couple of turns, forcing me to choose a new target. England and I had at this point engaged in communication and neither party desired conflict, which began a heavily guarded borderline between the two of us with mutual neutrality. Also here can be seen the beginnings of the annoyance the last remaining Russian unit became, as it took quite some time to kill it off.

Italy and I had also made a similar neutrality agreement, even though they were currently at war with my two allies- Ukraine by positive communication & support and Egypt by association with Ukraine. Although I did get the impression they were a fine player and good person, I saw it probable that Italy could spell doom for both of my allies. Thinking the time of their reckoning nigh and my defenses solid enough, I made a more or less blind stab at Italian Austria, taking the province, and surprising the hell out of Italy.

Here begins an odd dynamic to this game involving the relationship between Ukraine, Egypt and I. After stabbing Italy, I got this horrible feeling about Egypt, having just saved them from Italian annihilation, they were less than grateful. This caused me to rethink my entire stab on Italy, which I had already been so uncertain about. I saw a vision for the future- Italy, myself, and one other vital player. I messaged them about making peace, which they were enthusiastic about. For this third player, I had England in mind. We had our little line of defenses and they were in my mind now without a direction to attack- I suggested they go after Spain, which would be perfect for the alliance, as it was becoming clear Spain had Italy in its sights. England game me no answer whatsoever. It didn’t do wonders for my opinion and intentions with England in the long term, and in the short term, this threw a nice wrench in my “repairing the Italian alliance” plan. I proceeded with the agreed upon move of moving of moving Venice back towards my territory through Austria, with Italy meant to move back into Venice after me. Still no word from England, and on top of that Italy didn’t take back Venice as planned. Ukraine, who I had luckily not yet stabbed, had also begun to seemingly reverse Italy’s advance on their Balkan territory. Sensing I had made an obvious mistake, I decided to take immediate action to return to the previous plan of an alliance with Ukraine. Italy had sealed their fate...Munich was taken and I built an army in Venice.

I had certainly made the right choice, as Italy put up little defense. The other large player that was now becoming obvious as the best choice for a third member of a draw was Spain. Our alliance started more as an assumed one as they and Ukraine had started friendly communications. Simply out of there not being a need, we had not spoken, but eventually I did ask for their assistance in killing off Egypt. As previously mentioned, I felt Egypt was being particularly dickish. As I had no route to take to attack them, I asked permission from my now good close ally Ukraine to move a single unit through Volga to Kazakhstan for an “attack” on Egypt- if not for any tactical reason then to simply pester them. Ukraine allowed me this privilege, and I did so. I had been for some time now encouraging Ukraine to backstab Egypt, as I thought it likely they could win the conflict (although not as likely as I told them I thought it was), and with Italy under control, they finally agreed. This allowance of my unit to enter Kazakhstan was rightfully considered a sign of war between Ukraine and Egypt also, so even with Ukraine’s insistence that I was acting without their previous knowledge and that they were still united together, Egypt sensed the backstab and countered as best they could.

With my problem with Egypt now in the process of being settled and Italy in their final days, I had but one other area to take care of before a draw would be acceptable in my eyes. England had for three years now sent in the exact same moves for their 8 units. While a good strategy per say, as it was a relatively sturdy connection of supports against any attack I could envision, I saw it as nothing but cowardice and boring- definitely not something I would reward with a draw. As I had done with Ukraine and Egypt, I had now asked Spain a number of times to join me in an attack on England as they had access to the soft rear, but they were cautious to start a new front before taking remaining Italian centers I had promised them. Although England’s defenses were formidable, they were not without error, and as they had been sending the same moves each turn, I saw the chink in the armor to be Denmark. In the same Fall turn Ukraine generously supported me into Iran, I made a backstab on England, slamming into Denmark and building many a new Polish fleet. Spain saw the direction the war was headed right after the stab, and built the beginnings of their own anti-english force to come in from the south.

Egypt quickly found a relative stalemate line against Ukraine and I that would only be broken with an extended fleet conflict in the Aegean. After many an option was considered, I saw the solution- a cheeky move out of Iran for a turn, and building a fleet- beautiful! The war with England was surprisingly quick, with good progress being made each turn. After just two years I already had three armies on mainland Britain. With the low countries taken by Spain and I, Italy dying off and Egypt appearing to crack, the game appeared to finally be wrapping up.

Appearances can be deceiving though. On the last turn of Britain’s life, they messaged me, hoping that my intentions were to go for a solo. On the previous turn I had already taken Liverpool and Saudi Arabia as well as a saved build from previous year. I told Britain of course I had considered it but I gave my reasons why I didn’t think I could pull it off and didn’t want to- I truly did enjoy playing with both of my allies. That being said, in the depths of my mind, trying for the solo was the only thing that I wanted. Britain agreed to do the exact same turn as the last, which if I played it right would bring my total yearly gains to +5. My allies suspected nothing, with the assumed ending support chains already in place between us. The areas of automatic concern were Gorky and getting to Volga, holding Venice for as long as possible, and quickly beating Spain out of the Channel and France. In the Fall of 2004, with the correct lies of support given to Spain and with Britain graciously on my side, I advanced units to key spaces that would prove pivotal to the future war, and built the five new units in the previously occupied centers. Cheating Spain out of their British territory and Belgium, as well as a nice convoy to Lapland made it a very effective stab. While a gorgeous turn, for certain, here I also made perhaps my biggest mistake. In supporting Iran to Iraq, I effectively sealed that army off from any return to Kazakhstan, where it was so badly needed....still a beautiful turn though.

The going was slow and steady. As Ukraine didn’t build in Gorky as was expected, the armies in the north were able to take control relatively easily, luckily taking Volga early, and attempting to seal off Kazakhstan (wishing that Iran unit was still there). I saw Podolia as key, and with my first try at it thwarted, I employed a strategy I used several times on a different large Europe map with some friends- to take a tile you know you want hold, Croatia in this case, and and turn by turn, slide it through its adjacent enemy spaces like a battering ram, in this case Hungary, until it reaches its desired location- Podolia. In the Steppe, I felt I had now accumulated enough armies to make Kazakhstan less of a priority, so I cut Kharkov support with Volga and took Kiev. In the turn I took Podolia, I decided to instead take the more defendable Kharkov with Kiev, and with Ukraine forcing Volga to retreat to Donetsk, I found I had enough units around Kiev to take it in the coming year. In the other theater of war, I was doing unexpectedly well. I had predicted Spain to move more fleets towards the Atlantic, but I found my only naval competition to be the three original anit-british fleets. This naval superiority secured the win in the fact that my allowance into the South Atlantic Ocean opened up the necessary few additional centers I needed. I had also predicted the fall of Venice to happen very quickly, as Ukraine and Spain now had units in the Adriatic and Apulia, and although they attempted, they never cut the Austrian support. In France, it was more of a guessing game trying to poke at Spain’s few, yet well positioned armies. Eventually, a crack made in Lyon showed the beginnings of progress there as well.

With Kharkov and Podolia taken, I saw a chance to take Kiev once and for all, as there was a nice stalemate line I had seen if you had Kharkov, Kiev and Volga all captured. With many units circling Volga, I made sure this was the case in the Spring. Ukraine didn’t submit orders this turn unfortunately, so these things went appropriately smoothly. I still held Venice, and exchanged Lyon for Marseilles. More importantly, I had an uncontested convoy into Gibraltar, allowing for the final centers I needed. In the Fall, the final turn of the game, I finally lost Venice, exchanging it in the best way for Hungary as I used it to cut Croatian support. With Marseilles and the newly captured Picardy, I snagged both Paris and Lyon, as well as grabbing Seville with support from the Gibraltar convoy. With Kiev and Kharkov solidly in my control, I ended the year with a total of 33 centers, winning the game. 250 points, finally boosting my total to over 1000!

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