#I have to draw so many chars... | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

reasonsforhope · 6 months

Text

Ancient redwoods recover from fire by sprouting 1000-year-old buds

Article | Paywall free

When lightning ignited fires around California’s Big Basin Redwoods State Park north of Santa Cruz in August 2020, the blaze spread quickly. Redwoods naturally resist burning, but this time flames shot through the canopies of 100-meter-tall trees, incinerating the needles. “It was shocking,” says Drew Peltier, a tree ecophysiologist at Northern Arizona University. “It really seemed like most of the trees were going to die.”

Yet many of them lived. In a paper published yesterday in Nature Plants, Peltier and his colleagues help explain why: The charred survivors, despite being defoliated [aka losing all their needles], mobilized long-held energy reserves—sugars that had been made from sunlight decades earlier—and poured them into buds that had been lying dormant under the bark for centuries.

“This is one of those papers that challenges our previous knowledge on tree growth,” says Adrian Rocha, an ecosystem ecologist at the University of Notre Dame. “It is amazing to learn that carbon taken up decades ago can be used to sustain its growth into the future.” The findings suggest redwoods have the tools to cope with catastrophic fires driven by climate change, Rocha says. Still, it’s unclear whether the trees could withstand the regular infernos that might occur under a warmer climate regime.

Mild fires strike coastal redwood forests about every decade. The giant trees resist burning thanks to the bark, up to about 30 centimeters thick at the base, which contains tannic acids that retard flames. Their branches and needles are normally beyond the reach of flames that consume vegetation on the ground. But the fire in 2020 was so intense that even the uppermost branches of many trees burned and their ability to photosynthesize went up in smoke along with their pine needles.

Trees photosynthesize to create sugars and other carbohydrates, which provide the energy they need to grow and repair tissue. Trees do store some of this energy, which they can call on during a drought or after a fire. Still, scientists weren’t sure these reserves would prove enough for the burned trees of Big Basin.

Visiting the forest a few months after the fire, Peltier and his colleagues found fresh growth emerging from blackened trunks. They knew that shorter lived trees can store sugars for several years. Because redwoods can live for more than 2000 years, the researchers wondered whether the trees were drawing on much older energy reserves to grow the sprouts.

Average age is only part of the story. The mix of carbohydrates also contained some carbon that was much older. The way trees store their sugar is like refueling a car, Peltier says. Most of the gasoline was added recently, but the tank never runs completely dry and so a few molecules from the very first fill-up remain. Based on the age and mass of the trees and their normal rate of photosynthesis, Peltier calculated that the redwoods were calling on carbohydrates photosynthesized nearly 6 decades ago—several hundred kilograms’ worth—to help the sprouts grow. “They allow these trees to be really fire-resilient because they have this big pool of old reserves to draw on,” Peltier says.

It's not just the energy reserves that are old. The sprouts were emerging from buds that began forming centuries ago. Redwoods and other tree species create budlike tissue that remains under the bark. Scientists can trace the paths of these buds, like a worm burrowing outward. In samples taken from a large redwood that had fallen after the fire, Peltier and colleagues found that many of the buds, some of which had sprouted, extended back as much as 1000 years. “That was really surprising for me,” Peltier says. “As far as I know, these are the oldest ones that have been documented.”

... “The fact that the reserves used are so old indicates that they took a long time to build up,” says Susan Trumbore, a radiocarbon expert at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry. “Redwoods are majestic organisms. One cannot help rooting for those resprouts to keep them alive in decades to come.”

-via Science, December 1, 2023

#redwoods #california #wildfire #climate change #extreme heat #natural disasters #botany #plant biology #photosynthesis #santa cruz #hopepunk #sustainability #climate hope #united states #good news #hope

12K notes · View notes

sofilophisaurus · 8 months

Text

Warrior cats truly is one of those things where its like. Yeah its bad and full of ableism and sexism. Compels me tho

#so many of the chars are ALMOST well written #ALMOST have a backstory thats cool as shit #but then its thrown away and forgotten #I suppose thats the draw #I could fix them

1 note · View note

somnambulic-thing · 10 months

Text

This fic is part I of my come as you are universe but can be read as a standalone.

Series Masterlist

greedy Eddie Munson x gn!best friend reader, early 20s, E 18+

Words: 1.8k

| best friends to lovers, fluff, finger sucking, light biting, Eddie comes in his pants, get together, silly and a little cheesy, not proofread |

---

“You need something?”

“Huh?” you look up from your book and right into Eddie’s eyes staring at you over the edge of his mattress the way a nosey neighbour might lurk over a garden fence. You’d been so lost in your thoughts about Eddie that you hadn’t noticed him abandoning his own book to creep up close to you. You, spread out your stomach on his sheets. Eddie, perched on his carpet in increasingly uncomfortable-looking positions as the evening progresses, but never more than an arm’s length away. You always could just reach out and give his hair a thorough ruffling whenever you felt like it.

That’s just how it was, just one of the many shapes your togetherness takes. Rituals established and refined over years. You share the bed during movie nights, or when one of you is reading out loud to the other and you settle down on the armchair without even thinking about it the second Eddie picks up one of his guitars to play for you, leaving the bed to him.

“Ah, finally I caught your attention,” he says, muffled by the mattress, his fingers slowly creeping over the edge. It’s adorable.

“What did you say?” you mumble and snap your book close as if the pages could somehow give away that you had been only pretending to read the whole time. He would see smouldering holes with charred edges where your intense stare had lingered and ask you why your brain was producing such intense heat that you ruined the copy of Howl’s Moving Castle he got you for your unbirthday only a week ago.

His brows draw slightly together. His fingers curl to grab the sheets and then he’s dramatically and labourously pulling himself up like he’s climbing a cliff in a storm, huffing and groaning.

“You need any help?” you chuckle; an insufficient expression for the unbridled affection you harbour for this silly man.

“No… no… almost— ahhh.” Chest now flat on the mattress, back bend in one of those ways that made you certain there wasn’t one solid bone in Eddie Munson’s body. He crosses his arms on the mattress and rests his chin on top of his wrist, so close now you could just dip down to press your lips to his forehead.

He smiles up at you. “Book s’ good then?”

“Huh?”

“Huh?” he mocks you. “You haven’t reacted to a thing I said in the past twenty minutes so I assumed the story must be really captivating.”

“Oh!”

“Stop that!” you huff in faux exasperation, tapping that very kissable-looking spot of forehead lurking through his messy bangs with your index finger.

With an eerie speed, Eddie grabs your finger in his fist. You watch in slow motion as he opens his mouth wide and guides your hand closer and closer, large dark eyes fixed on you, daring and full of mischief.

The routine would be to struggle. To say: no, Eddie, bad Eddie! Maybe shove him a little, maybe curse his ass, have a little wrestle, have him breathing hot against your neck as he tries to pin you down; it’s tempting. So tempting. But you don’t.

You just watch, mesmerized, how your finger slowly disappears inside his mouth, almost two digits deep, watch his lips pull back from his teeth, his jaws close.

He’s gentle, not biting to hurt, just playfully chomping down a few times.

Does his heart pound as fast as yours? Does he know what he’s doing to you?

You want to push in deeper, long for his lips to close around you, to suck you in.

He is hiding his tongue from you and that won’t do.

“Careful,” you say with a grin, “could be poisonous.”

And, oh, how willingly he takes the bate.

The soft, wet tip finds the pad of your finger, slides back and forth over and over while the corners of his mouth twitch wickedly. The routine would be to say: gross, Eddie, eeew Eddie and to free yourself from his hold and coat his cheek in a thick stripe of saliva in revenge, feel him shiver when you blow cool air against his wet skin. But you don’t.

Because this is perfect.

And maybe this was how your problem solved itself. It has been weeks of wracking your brain on how to figure out if Eddie too craved to deepen your friendship the way you did without ruining everything in case he didn’t, but maybe the solution was simply to stick your finger into his mouth and give him free rein over it.

“Gnophe!” he mumbles and shakes his head. His teeth clamp down just a little bit harder.

“No?” you ask softly, “You feel good?”

Eddie nods and as if wasn’t obscene already, the way he looks up at you through his lashes, big eyes playful and excited, the eagerness of the gesture only amplifies the spectacle in front of you.

“No weird tingling? No? Or hot flashes?” He sets to shake his head but doesn't follow through. Instead, his eyes widen for a split second; if you had blinked at that moment, you’d have missed it. You can feel the sheet under you being pulled taut, you follow the movement to Eddie’s hand still resting on the bed, twisting the fabric in a clenched fist.

“Because,” you work hard to keep your breath steady, “your cheeks are so very red, Eddie.”

He swallows loudly. The action forces his lips to close around your knuckle, cool and wet, and your mind goes blank.

“Fuck,” you moan softly.

His fingers around your hand twitch, his eyes flutter and then shut. You press your thighs together and your hips into the mattress, mourning the absence of his gaze and before you know what you’re doing, the knuckle of your middle finger nudges his bottom lip, pulling it down slightly. Eddie groans; a long stretched noise fading out into a high-pitched sound you’d almost call whiny. The pressure of his teeth disappears and his tongue darts out, nudging guiding sweeping your middle finger into his mouth as well. Eddie hums, running the tip of his tongue along the groove between them.

“Look at me.”

Beneath you, on the floor, on his knees, with your fingers in his mouth, Eddie opens his eyes and with that, tells you everything you need to know and more than you hoped for.

You push in deeper, just slightly past the second joint and Eddie sucks in his cheeks, trapping you in the wet heat of his mouth.

“You like that?”

The nod is slow, almost heavy. Saliva collects at the corners of his mouth.

Lifting your hips, you pull your knees under your stomach and start to sit up. Eddie sucks you in harder, brows drooping as if in worry you could end this now.

“Shit, you’re adorable when you’re greedy,” you say and come to sit on the edge of the bed. Eddie moves with you, eyes fixed on your face. He swallows again hard when you settle with your knees apart and pressed into his sides. Large hands settle on your thighs, squeezing softly, then running up up up until they find your hips to hold on to.

Your heart races with the new shape your togetherness is forming, with the trust and longing in Eddie’s eyes. Your free hand cups his cheek and he leans into the touch, sighing softly. It’s perfect.

Then the suction is gone, you draw back just slightly and his tongue prods the edge of your palm.

“You want more?”

A moan.

“You sure?”

A moan and a nod and your insides catch fire. You slide a third finger into his mouth and revel in the smooth slide of his tongue between them, the way he’s drooling for and around you. He bites down a few times, mostly soft but testing you with harder chomps in between. Your other hand winds into his hair at the back of his head, testing him with soft scratches, soft pulls and a few firm tugs in between. He likes those, moans and slides his fingertips under the hem of your shirt, digging into your skin, holding on tight; he’s vibrating.

“Look at you,” you breathe and lean in close, pressing a kiss to his hollowed cheek, to his jaw, close to his ear. “You look so much better like this than I could have ever imagined.”

Teeth clamp down, the sting is delicious. Eddie moans, hips twitching between your knees.

“What pretty things you can do with this big beautiful mouth.”

Eddie draws his head back, releasing your fingers all at once and slumps against you. You embrace him, welcome him where he belongs now. His face is pressed to your neck, hands finding your back under your shirt, nails digging in.

“Keep talking, please,” he groans against your skin and licks a dripping stripe along your throat. “Taste so good… please…”

“Fuck,” you drawl out, overwhelmed and buzzing, desperately rolling your hips against his stomach. “Wanna know what else y-you can do with that mouth, can think of something sweet for that clever tongue to taste—“

“H’lly shiii—“ he nearly pushes you over, jerking and twitching in your arms. You feel teeth grazing your neck, then he’s sucking on your skin and it stings he’s sucking so hard. It lasts a little longer until he stills and goes slack in your arms, breathing heavily. You’re dizzy and hot and you want to have him twitch and writhe for you again. You want to see his face when he does.

“Just…” he pants into your shoulder, pulls your collar aside and kisses it. “Just wanted to know if you needed something from the kitchen…”

You laugh and scratch his neck, desperate to feel him shiver again. He does.

“Did… you just—“

“Fucking come into my pants? Yepp… Was that unclear?”

“Just wanted to hear you say it.”

“Minx.” Eddie draws back, cups your face with both hands and kisses you. His lips are wet and swollen from sucking on your fingers and the moan escaping you vibrates hard against his mouth. Eddie’s tongue pushes past your lips to lick into you. He’s sloppy and excited, nibbling on your lips, licking your teeth, smiling and moaning and he’s just perfect.

“That a good time to tell you that I’m in love with you?” he pants, forehead pressed to yours.

“Oh yeah,” you laugh softly.

“Yeah? Cool,” his warm hands run up your sides. “Because I’m ridiculously in love with you, sweetheart.”

“Got a pretty bad case for you as well—“

“Nuh-uh…,” he pulls back to look at you, smirking. “Say it.”

“I’m in love with you, Eddie Munson.”

He wiggles his head and laughs, mouth wide open and baring teeth. The hands on your back slide down and straight to the waistband of your pants. You almost slip off the bed when he hooks his fingers in and pulls.

“Jesus, you’re eager.”

“Greedy,” he says nervously, blushing, but with so much determination. “And you promised me something sweet.”

#eddie munson x reader #eddie munson #eddie munson x you #eddie munson smut #my fic

2K notes · View notes

dycefic · 1 year

Text

The Hearthstone God

[The sequel to the God of Prophecy, and the Serpent God of Protection]

---

Fire is out of fashion, in this new age.

Some of my kind have found new homes, new names, in factories or forges, in the hearts of wildfires or crystals or volcanoes.

Most of us are simply forgotten.

I was a fire god, once. A god of gathering, a god of communion, a god of song and story. But there are no hearthstones now. No fires around which families gather to eat and talk and tell stories.

I am lucky. I am tied to a great flat stone near a lake. A lake that has survived all the wild exuberance of men, when they learned to change the world around them. Once, this was a place where travellers stopped to rest. At first they travelled on their feet, or on half-wild horses. Then there were carts, and a road. Much later, cars drove down the road. The road was paved.

But some things do not change. People need clean water to drink, and the spring here is good. They need to rest, when they are weary. And even now, when they come to camp in nylon tents, to fish in the lake, or to hunt the ducks, or drive camper-vans to the flat place, their ancient instincts wake, and they turn to fire once more. They light new fires atop my stone, so flat and safe, from which no log will roll to set the woods afire.

Not so many come now. Camping is less popular these days. But some still come. Some still light their fires, and settle around my stone, and talk, or listen to music, or tell stories. So I survive, just barely, on the edges of belief.

I feel it, when things begin to change. Something is happening. Something is drawing old gods back. Not the great ones, risen beyond mortal understanding, but the oldest gods, the small gods, those who rose when humankind were still learning what they were.

Far to the west of me, a god even more ancient than I wakes, and begins to hunt again. I remember the stories that were once told of that old serpent, and tell them over to myself in the long fireless nights.

A god of prophecy, not of this land, settles south and west, and I remember tales of ancient ravens, their wisdom and their guile and their sharp, sharp eyes. There was a raven clan once, who passed this way in the days of skin garments and stone tools, but I have forgotten their name. I only remember the symbol they wore, the black bird with its spread wings, marked in charcoal or charring on wooden talismans or leather garments.

I wait, to see who will awaken next.

To my great surprise, it is me.

The people who come this time aren’t like the campers. They come at night, a ragged family group with few blood ties between them, with a single tent and few possessions carried on devices I haven’t seen before. Bicycles, they’re called, slung over with bags the way ponies used to be. They come at night, and hide when cars pass on the road.

They light a fire on my stone, with wood scavenged from the forest, and huddle around its warmth. They don’t speak much, not at first, but they say enough. They have no home, I learn. They are travellers of a kind I have not known before, who are allowed to stop nowhere, but have no goal but a place to rest. They are thin, and worn, and so tired. So very tired.

They need a hearth.

I am only a weak shadow of a god, now, who once recorded the songs and stories of a thousand generations in my ancient stone, but I am still a god of fire. Their fire burns slow, their little fuel lasting well. The food they heat over it sustains them better. The water of that spring, my spring, puts a little life back in them. This stone has lain in this place since great monsters walked this world, since before humans spoke words to one another, and I came into being with the first fire that burned on it. I am old, old, and though weak, I am not powerless.

They stay.

I cannot speak to them. I am old, and weak, and they do not believe. But slowly, with the power of the fires they build every night, with the tiny offerings of scraps of food spilled into the flames, with their growing confidence in the safety of this place, I am able to do more. I give them dreams and they find the cave not far away, where they can hide. They dream of fish, and begin to try to catch some. A woman remembers that some of the local plants are safe to eat, when I slowly wake a long-forgotten memory of a camping trip from her childhood.

And then a child, a strange, quiet child who rarely speaks, a child without mother or father, in the care of an older brother who is exhausted to the very edge of death but cannot give up while she needs him… that child begins to hear.

She sits on my stone, sometimes for hours, not moving or speaking. It worries the others, but at least she is quiet, at least she is no trouble, and they are beginning to associate their hearth with safety. So they let her sit.

She is *listening*. She is listening to the sound of the water, to the sounds of the forest, to the wind blowing. And because she is listening, where no-one else has listened for so long, I sing to her. I sing to her the songs of thousands of years. From the wordless music of the earliest people, who sang what was in their hearts without words, to the songs I have learned from the fishermen with their radios and bluetooth speakers.

I do not know if she hears me, for some time. But then, one night, while they sit around their fire and eat food the oldest have almost certainly stolen, she sings one of my songs. “In a cavern… on a canyon… excavating for a mine…” she sings in a small voice. The others are startled, confused, for she has not spoken aloud since some bad thing they do not name happened, but one of the older ones knows the song and sings with her.

I have always liked ‘Clementine’. It’s been popular with campers for a long time.

The next day, while she sits on my stone, she sings along to one of the wordless songs the Raven People whose name I no longer remember once sang. It is a lullaby, a soft croon to soothe an infant, passed from mother to mother, and she seems to take pleasure in it.

She can hear me. She can even answer me, as the voice driven away by pain and fear begins to return. And so I grow stronger still. Strong enough to make the raven sign on the stone, one day, in the ashes of the fire of the night before.

She takes a half burned stick, and draws the sign on the stone. Pleased, I show her another sign, a leaping fish. She draws that too.

Soon, I need not shift the ashes. I can show her the pictures in her mind, and she draws them. She draws the wheel of a cart, and into her heart I whisper the stories the travellers in covered wagons once told over my stone. She draws a fish, and I make her laugh silently with the jests of fishermen who boast of fish who escaped them. She draws a horse, and I tell her about the wild horses who once drank at this lake, about the men and women who captured and tamed them and rode them through the forest when it was far greater than it is now. She draws a long-toothed cat, and I show her the great cat that once slept on my stone, and denned in the cave where her new found family sleep.

One night, when all the others are asleep and my fire has burned down to coals, she creeps back to the stone and looks into the coals. “Who are you?” she asks. “Are you real?”

She is afraid that the voice in her mind is the voice of madness, a lie created by a mind that does not work like other minds, that has endured great hardship. I do not want this child to be afraid. To instill fear runs counter to my very nature, save in whoever might threaten those my hearth protects.

I am a god of the hearth. I am a god of food, and communication, and peace, and safety. I am all the things that fire used to mean, before humans learned again to fear the thing they had tamed. I do not often take a form, for fire is my form, but for her I must try.

There was a wise woman once, who knew me, whose clan visited this lake several times every year. I watched her grow up, and grow old. I watched her learn of the god of the fire stone, and I watched her teach others. She slept beside me as a child, and as a woman. She sang her children to sleep beside me, and her grandchildren, and dozed beside me as an old, old woman. To her, I was represented by a sign of a flame in an oval, a fire and a stone.

I build a likeness of her out of the light of the coals and the shadows of smoke, a child with straight dark hair and a simple tunic, and in lines of light I draw the sign of the fire and the stone on the outlined chest. “I am the fire,” I tell her, “and the stone. I am all the fires that have ever burned here, all the stories told, all the songs sung, all the meals eaten. I am the traveler’s hearth, and the rest for the weary, and this is my place.”

“Piedra de fuego,” she says, tracing the symbol with her finger in the air. “The fire stone.”

“Yes. I am the god of this place.”

She frowns at this. “My brother says that God is in the sky.”

“Many gods are in the sky.” I cannot continue to hold the form of the girl, but the coals shift to make my sign. “I am not. I am here. I have always been here, since the first people built a fire on my stone, and warmed themselves.”

She nods slowly. “You are… a small god,” she says thoughtfully. “A place god. Like in movies.”

“Yes.” I’ve heard of movies, which are a new way of telling old, old stories. “Old places, important places, often have gods. And gods who are forgotten return to their old places and wait, until someone believes again.”

“Will you protect us?” she asks. “When the police come, to tell us to move on?”

“I am not strong,” I tell her sadly. “I cannot make men go away from here, if they are dangerous, or even call game here for you as I once did. But what I can do, I will do.”

She sits watching the coals for a long time, thinking. “Can we make you stronger?”

I think too, and she waits patiently. “You have already made me stronger. You listened. You believed. If you can convince the others to believe, that will make me stronger still.”

She sighed. “They don’t believe in anything, anymore. Not good things.”

It is a sad thing, that she knows that. They’ve been trying to hide it from her. “Then,” I tell her, “that means there is a place in their hearts that is ready for me. I am not hope. I am not a happy ending. I am not a god in the sky. I am a stone, and a fire, and a song. I am *real*. They can believe in what is real.”

The next night, she asks for a story, and one of the adults tells her an old fairy-tale from a country far away.

The next night, again, she asks for a story, and another adult tells a funny story about his childhood.

On the third night, she asks her brother to tell her a story. He tries, but he is so tired - not physically, but emotionally - that he runs out of words. So she lays her hand on his arm and offers to tell him a story, instead.

And she tells them all a story about a stone near a lake, flat and strong, that people wearing uncured skins and carrying flint weapons built a fire on. She tells of centuries passing, of people coming to the lake on their feet, on horses, in carts and wagons, in cars and motor-homes. Of thousands of years of fires, of people gathered around them, of the great continuity of humanity, and the Piedra De Fuego that has lain in this place since time began, listening to the stories and the songs and the voices of people long gone. Somewhere in the stone, she says, laying her hand on it, all those stories are remembered. All those songs are still sung. And it will remember us too.

I don’t know if it will work. But I was right. People need to believe in something. They need something to hold onto, when times are hard, when the ties of community and family are broken and they feel alone. And a stone thousands of years old, and a fire endlessly renewed on that stone, always new… that is real. They touch me, and think of those who came before, of thousands of years of history meeting them in this place, and they feel less alone.

It’s not much, not yet. But it is something. My nature, my existence, as explained to them by my small, strange priestess, is a slender lifeline flung to those who are adrift, a tiny certainty in a world they do not trust. And the more they believe in that lifeline, that certainty, then the more they believe in me. I *am* growing stronger.

When the police come, I will not be able to make them leave… but I think I am strong enough now to hide my people from unkind eyes. And if I can do that, then their faith will grow.

Tonight, three more people come. A mother and two children, weary and beaten down with hardship. My people welcome them, give them fish and greens grown by the lake, speak kindly to them. And when they have eaten, my little priestess sits between the two children and tells them a story of a stone, and a fire, and thousands of years of stories and songs, and she sings a wordless lullaby six thousand years forgotten, but living again in a child who draws the sign of the Raven in the dirt while she sings, and the sign of the fire on the stone.

And I grow a little stronger.

#short fiction #original story #i aten't dead #the old gods #small gods #household gods #forgotten gods who do not forget

3K notes · View notes