#litani river

[ragful]

If you are traveling towards the Litani River, please deliver my greetings.

Say Good morning to the people of Nabatieh, and pass by a bit to Khiam.

And tell her that Hajj Muhammad misses his family and friends,

At Hay El Sellom they didn't enjoy their stay, his eyes kept longing for his homeland.

Tell her that his eyes are asleep, but his heart is awake

If you are traveling towards my homeland, please deliver my greetings.

Inform my family and children, that the pigeons flock misses them,

And tell her that its days are always in mind, by God, its days are the dearest to me.

#song lyrics #Ahmad Kaabour #Litani #Nabatieh #Khiyam #Litani river #river #Sob Bladi #motherland freeform

[litaniriver]

🌱| حقول القمح ـــــ 📍| واطي السد

🔹 | نمو جيد ونبات خال من الأمراض، على أمل انتظار الامطار مطلع الاسبوع القادم مما يعزز كمية الانتاج ونوعية المحصول

#لبنان #الليطاني #litani #litani river #photography #المصلحة الوطنية لنهر الليطاني #nature #lebanon #litany #نهر الليطاني

[comfortless]

Only Other

chapter two of three.

content/warnings: 18+. minors do not interact. historical au (set around 350BC); potential inaccuracies as i am no historian!, König speaks some German here (as opposed to Gothic), mutual pining & worship, mentions of an arranged marriage with a large age gap, slight sexism, descriptions of violence & gore, more groping, allusions to abduction, dubious consent to a nonsexual genital inspection, animal death, minor character death, masturbation.

wc: 10.6k.

<- previous.

Everything feels unsound, a thicket of heavy vine curling it’s way up from the dirt to settle over you, in your belly, hair, anywhere. Sharp thorns and sap so thick you could drown.

Gaius is here, again, poised with his arms folded over his chest. You swallow thickly after you ask him to repeat what he’s just said. Something about eyes and ears between every crevice, beneath every board. He had a litany of reasons to believe you were not the sweet little maiden he had promised a halfway decent life to.

Careful as you thought you were, sneaking past the gate to roll in moonlight with the giant men of myth and smell the beasts and their pelts past the wall… The following morning had been the downfall of bliss. People take note when wolves begin to sniff around their cattle, and it’s no surprise that König was noted doing just that when he brought you back here on his horse with some sort of bloated pride when he named you his ‘Göttin’.

“Disrobe,” Gaius commands for the second time. The voice that comes from cracked lips and weathered jowls never falters: always so self-assured, stern, and where it may have sparked an interest in you from anyone else, here… it only feels vile. He’s the embodiment of the city itself: worn, cracking, splintered filth, left alone to wind and twist out of control.

You imagine he must have taken up the demeanor during his days as a centurion, but your head clouds when you try to recall the many times he’s monologued those times to you. Like his proposal, the dowry and arrangements, all of it feels blurry in your mind. You lose yourself to it when the strap is slipped down your shoulder, your body goading you do as asked for the sake of fewer future headaches.

There are no lemures looming over your shoulders these days, they only guide his hand, his voice. They haunt you in the shape of Gaius, an old hawk that screeches the commands you’ve no place to refuse.

The stola drops to your ankles with a dreadfully slow sweep, a century passed in a bolt of lightning. It pools down at your feet in a river of white. Graciously, Gaius doesn’t prompt you to remove the breast band where the truth of your bout lies embedded in little bruises, the mark of teeth scraped right by your areola in a rolling fit of passion.

Your betrothed boxes you in against the bench until the backs of your knees meet the wood, guides you down with weighty palms until you’re seated: feet pressed onto the seat, knees brought back toward your chest. In earnest, your stomach froths with a displeasure and embarrassment, but this is not the first time that the man had taken to inspect your pussy as if it’s your only worth in the world.

Whichever malady he possesses to make him like this… you could only hope that König did not have it. This weak, old soldier would be nothing short of a toothless dog should your bull take to charge him.

What was a dull glimmer of longing for his safety immediately sours to a wish for his goring when those cold fingers tug your loincloth aside and you’re laid bare for him right there on the bench.

The old creep inspects your cunt as though he were a medicinal woman. His fingers part your parched labia, not so much as a dewdrop of arousal there— completely unlike how your body had only seemed to melt and sing its pleas for König. He doesn’t whisper his pleasures in Latin about how pretty it is down there, doesn’t capture your mouth in a kiss that scorches you right through, only probes and prods at your slit to see if there’s any give.

Of course there isn’t.

It wouldn’t have mattered if you let the entire barbarian camp take their turns with you; you wouldn’t be any more blooming for Gaius. Men like him didn’t have the slightest idea of how to make a lady soft and dewing, they only thought that they did.

You knew with a certainty that this wasn’t normal by any stretch. After the first instance, asking the women nestled against their open windows, humming to sleeping infants curled on their chests only prompted sympathetic stares. “Have you no midwife?,” one had replied, face paled as she looked to you: the pitiable woman who had been inspected like a strange fish just for bartering with a man at his market stall for bread. Gaius had not found a thing then, and you had only begun to doubt his intelligence.

… Did he even know what a hymen was?

You will keep your secrets, and he will always play the fool. That’s just how peace would operate once you did share a roof with him.

“Well?,” you prompt, shifting a little in your seat when his cold fingers move to grip the plush of your parted thighs, examining closer with a low, raspy gasp.

A feint that earns no response.

Seemingly satisfied by a lack of a shimmering semen trail or whatever dullards like Gaius sought, he scowls and backs away, hands falling to his sides. There’s no bulge stirring beneath his toga, either. There’s an absence of anything that would make your relationship seem anything more than some strange transaction.

If anything at all, you have become a kept dove, clipped wings and cooing in a gilded cage. No more a wife than a pet or a pretty, glittering jewel. Something meant to waste away its days possessed.

You didn’t even know why he had chosen you, a lady with no gold, silk, or land to her name. Everything you owned he had given to you. Father, mother… whether or not you even had siblings, you were uncertain. Trying to remember only stirs up another aching in your head and you’ve had more than enough to worry about lately without the added sting,

“You’ve done no wrong.” It’s decided in a cold tone of voice. There’s a belief there, but only because the truth of the matter would make him look entirely the part of the fool that he seemed to play without notice.

“As I said.” You won’t run pleading to Juno for her forgiveness this time, or ever again. For the goddess of marriages and women to bless you with… this. Surely she never favored you very much at all.

You wouldn’t waste your bronze coins on fortune tellers anymore, either.

“Mind your words, girl.” He pats your cheek, feigning an affection that has never been present in this villa, in this city at all. You feel little more than like one of the slave girls— not whipped into submission, their plight was always far worse, but if you looked into their eyes for a moment too long, you knew you would find a part of yourself held there.

You nod your head and carry on puppeting yourself as you always have. Conversation comes stiffly as he wanders about your little home, noting what would need fixing before the night of your wedding, checking your food stores and even helping himself to a bone cup filled with wine. Even with it offered to your lips, speaking with him does not come any easier.

Finally, you utter the words that have nagged at the back of your throat since the day of his proposal, “Why do you want for us to be wed?”

The man pauses as he sets the cup aside, finger drumming at the rim momentarily as he regards you with an upturned brow.

“Your father’s dying wish was for us to be married.”

“Yes, but… who was he?”

“A great warrior.” That’s the only explanation you ever get, even when the confusion paves way to a simmering concern. How could you not remember your own kin? It seemed so unfathomable. Seeing so many large families walk these same streets as you… and yet you only had Gaius, hardly better company than a corpse.

“That’s all that you ever tell me.”

“… You will make a great wife.” He concludes the conversation, gives you a firm kiss on the cheek and leaves you to stew in the nothingness that haunts this place as though it were an ancient tomb.

Your days remain the same, nothing ever changing in your eternal cage that only grows ever-colder, more and more like a crypt.

Stitching, weaving, flowing. The animals needed tending, the marketplace was always bustling, and you’ve stopped listening to the poets. Their words only make you feel colder now.

You have met the things that lurk beyond these walls, and they do not speak of bubbling creeks and your gods; they soak their weapons in you, whisper like the trees and bellow like the mountains, ride their horses into battle without a scrap of armor on their hides. They don’t even fear the lemures or Jupiter’s lightning strikes. Maybe not even the changing seasons; harvests must be plentiful when your home isn’t surrounded by chalked clay and ivory.

You don’t turn to Juno any more, but you do turn to Mars. You pray not for the empire, but for his bastard.

Her altar had been tucked away to a corner of your room, replaced now by a stagnant cup of wine you dutifully purge and refill each night, a stray dagger you had acquired from a thieving child on the street, and a strip of red fabric torn away from an old tunic belonging to your betrothed.

When night comes and the weight of it all curls over your shoulders, you find yourself tugged down to the floor on your knees, whispering great fortune for that arrogant beast who had promised to take you to bed when next you meet. It always starts the same, your voice pleads to Mars, only to dither off to murmurings of a different name.

Though he remains distant, barking and bleeding out prey far from you, some semblance of him remains tucked between your ribs. A small echo, one that only seems to grow into a roar when your eyes close and you dream of wolves and their sharp-fanged promises, wisps of wind through low-hanging branches and not paved streets, dirt giving way beneath your feet.

He holds you in those dreams, whispers to you about your false gods when you stand over a stream, points out the only two in existence amidst the reflection with a curled finger.

In those dreams, you think you hear the voice of Mars, a fluttering leaf on the breeze detached from what he’s come to be: it tells you of thyme and rosemary, a foreign glade, of death and longing, and never does it breathe fire.

Then, you wake, ripped from the Elysian and back to wander Orcus with a heavier weight upon your soul.

— — —

Mars answers your prayers in the late autumn.

You do not wake to the sounds of horses or crackling fires outside, only something quieted and peaceful. The street beyond your window is silent as you stretch out to see what’s stirred you; not an animal or a man lies in wait, only the cool gloom of the moon tucked beneath clouds above.

Time only seems to pass more viciously these months. There’s a wedding to be had when the seasons changed; your yellow-red veil had been stitched with trembling fingers nicked several times over by needle, the lectus had been prepared and set on the first floor of the villa. The red cloth covering the modest couch seemed a threat in itself. You don’t hazard it a glance when you wander out of the door to take to the street tonight.

Dim moonlight does little to guide you, only making each shadow seem to stretch and warp in mocking, uninvited guests to set your shivering heart spinning.

There is just no time anymore, not here.

There, sits an owl atop a roof. Its dark wings stretched out as if to begin another flight, to coo its retribution to the sleeping city. You don’t dare to attempt to capture it, there would be no ritual tonight and no care if some harbinger brought doom to this place. It regards you with shimmering yellow eyes, and you think, for just a moment that you see the same feral look in them that you saw in your warrior. The bird wasn’t always the omen that others may claim, sometimes it’s only a sign.

The son of Mars has returned, his horse is waiting to take you upon its broad back and carry you to the mountains and the sea.

The chill on the breeze only guides each step you take as you clamber through that chipping hole in the wall and flee to the field once again. Strangely enough, the air even feels different out here, colder still but devoid of the shadows that climb and crush. The soldiers usually stationed outside the wall are not present now. You only reason that it was rare that they ever were, anyway, always too bathed in wine and kisses from flighty little women slaves to focus on the scape just beyond.

And there, further out from the opposite bank the stream, you see the glow of a fire.

It was strange to see the Goths had returned before your city’s own soldiers. Perhaps you had slept through their march, tucked away at some vast banquet filled with pillaged riches, the finest of wines and the most fresh of smoked meats before you had even begun to stir. Peculiar thing, being so accustomed to the rituals of men that for the most part you had learned not to even bat an eye. It mattered not, anyhow. What you sought was not another Roman to steal away your aspirations to take you as his woman.

Your pace is light and tentative, feeling the earth sink and mold around your bare soles. The thorns risen up from grass dare not poke you with their spines, the owls lurking in the trees do not chase or call, and the horses in the pastures seem at ease.

Even in a world bathed in black and silver, you feel golden, warmed from temple to ankle by that someone other lurking just beyond reach. The other gods could be condemned— it was Mars at your side all along.

The barbarian camp is in a similar state to when you had first seen it, just as you are with the ends of your gown drenched in water from the stream.

There are fewer to their numbers now. You count only three: two busied away with roasting meat over the fire, one running his blade over a flat stone at the mouth of his tent. You recognize them, somewhat, as you step closer, each just as imposing as the first with thick hair and wild eyes, but there’s no sign of König, not here in the open.

You’re stricken by fear immediately, clouding your head with doubt and worry: not for your own safety, but at the thought that your warrior was left to rot in the forests beyond, struck down by some other barbarian king.

You’re stood at the edge of the camp when your breath grows thin, pulse racing as your veins try in earnest not to burst with panic.

One of the men rises from the fire, gruffs something at you in his mother tongue, a deep rumbling like the rocks of old mountain and the timber of trees: like König. He stands before you, a wild mane of dyed hair atop his head, so deeply crimson and maroon you would even think it had been colored with blood from sheep or man, perhaps both.

He claps you on the back with a strong hand, the shove nearly enough to send your shivering form tumbling to the dirt, before you’re righted with a strong grip on your wrist. Then, he laughs.

“Come. König,” the man barks in his heavily accented voice, tugging at your wrist as if you were a mere calf to herd.

Your panic dulls somewhat, enough to wriggle out of his grip and shoot him a glare you had only previously reserved for your betrothed. Intent on playing the part of some strong yet benevolent noble woman it seemed, as you straighten yourself out and ignore the way that the mud and blades of grass stick right to the dirtied hem of your loose robe.

“He is here?” You ask after a moment, feeling a bit misplaced as this other, less familiar giant stares down at you. His eyes are not blue, but gold when the light of the fire pit illuminated him.

This one does not understand as much as you had hoped, because he only murmurs more incomprehensible words and pushes your forward with a palm placed right between your shoulder blades.

You don’t trip, but you had half a mind to hiss at him then, until you realize he is only leading you towards that same ugly tent from before.

The pelts have been changed out, somewhat. There is less gray now and more brown, hides from deer and boar alike, taken from their months of travel. The maroon fabric remains, layered beneath in such a way that seems to make it only seem more alive and bleeding this time.

“Keep warm.” The man speaks up again, and there is no mistaking the amusement in his voice. Insulting, what he dared to insinuate with those two words, yet… there’s a cloud of fuzzy, warm excitement billowing up between your breasts all the same.

The flap of the tent is held up by your own trembling hand, elation tinged with an anxiety, a clustering song played without harmony in your very bones. Though, it settles so easily when the light of the moon mingles with the candles within the cradle of wool and leather.

König is sat, recognizable from his very being, laden with scars and coarse light fur, vast as he had always been. However, his face has changed. Gone is the bleeding shroud you had seen upon him before: the cloth has been tossed away on the mattress, revealing a face that both chills and heats you to the very base of your being.

His face is not unlike others you have seen, maybe upon gladiators a time or two once the helmets were discarded and the dancing with beasts and men alike had subsided. There are scars there, too, a broken face revealing a menagerie of pain from the bump upon his nose to the chip in his tooth as he smiles. His eyelids are still smeared in darkened mud used to make him seem that much more sinister in battle, streaking down his cheeks not unlike the carmine that tended to use to paint your own.

Those eyes though… they stand out above all else, heart wrenching and sullen, and still, they rise to crease at the outer corners when his stare meets your own.

A man with more polish would have concealed the state of himself from a maiden; turned his face away and covered his nudity in the furs lining his mattress. You’re thankful that König is not like those men. His stare is as open as his body’s own articulation: he only lies back into the bed and beckons you near with a curl of his fingers to his calloused palm.

“I made offerings for you.” To you, but thankfully that phrasing doesn’t make its way out. You take your place on his mattress, carefully placing a palm over his chest just to feel— to touch, to be nearer to your god in some way. The time apart hasn’t been entirely cruel, but ‘kind’ would never suit it well either.

Your touch is answered by a heavy grip around your forearm, a gentle yet demanding tug that leaves you sprawled across him like some tiny animal gripping onto a tree: your head presses against his bare stomach, one hand tucked to your chest while the other is quickly pulled up to meet his mouth. König kisses you, right on your palm in some peculiar sort of reverence.

“Your blessing was enough.” You feel his mouth stretch, the brush of teeth against your flesh as he grins, something you’ve missed.

It’s a ruse; there are winding strips of fabric haphazardly tied over his chest, thick with the stench of iron. The blood is dried, but you could only imagine the state of the wound beneath it. Months upon months of travel with a chest wound… your heart crumbles, struck with worry then.

The seax sits intact, however, propped up against one of the wooden poles keeping the shelter in place. Even sheathed, you could assume with how dutifully the barbarian cared for his blade that it had been cleaned, sharpened and greased to keep rust at bay. Though the benevolence he had coaxed from you had not saved him, a part of you was almost pleased to see the weapon unscathed.

“You’re hurt,” you hear yourself say, far away, out amidst the turning leaves that surely watched him take a spear or a dagger, maybe even an arrow, toward his beating heart.

“Hm…? Men get hurt in battles, meine Göttin,” he says, so nonchalant, as though the fear of dying out amongst the trees and hungry animals did not exist for him at all. “You worry?”

You pull your hand away from him when he playfully nips at your fingertips; even wounded König seems more inclined to bite and make you squeal than settle into this expanse of fur to rest and heal.

Of course you’re worried, men fall to mere scrapes in time: grime coaxes its way in, wounds fester with an almost laughable ease, infection paves way for fever and…

“Take care of me…?” König’s voice comes soft, the softest you’ve heard. Gone now is that boyish, mocking lilt, replaced by something akin to trepidation. Fear for him does not come from the shouting of men with blades held high, but in small whispers begging for affection.

“Sure…”

The ruddy bandages are pried away from his chest by gentle hands, uncurled and left on the dirt floor to the side of the bed. The wound in his chest is not as severe as you had expected, a few centimeters deep, jagged as it curves upward… whoever had done this had not had the opportunity to properly pierce him before the offending weapon had been pried from their hands. Crushed. Followed by what you could only imagine was the attacker’s fretful shrieks when König advanced upon him.

Your fingers brush over the wound, gentle, as you inspect the blaze of red around its edges. There’s no clear indication of infection, but when a clay jar of honey is plucked from König’s belongings and brought to your hands, you dutifully dab the wound in its sweetness.

You tell him how it will heal, using the phrases you’ve only heard from the physicians about the city, failing to mention that you had not tended to someone like this before. He breathes his appreciation in a soft rumble when you wrap his chest in strips of cloth, tightening it comfortably just to tie at his side.

“Did you kill the man who did this?,” you ask once you’ve stripped yourself bare, shed your clothing to lie in a heap with the ruined bandages he had previously worn. Your body rests at his side, arm curled over his middle. A woman’s warmth was necessary to heal a warrior… perhaps it could remedy a forgotten god, too.

“All of them,” he hums into your hair, a whisper of a voice harboring words that should chill you to your very bones. König only appears pacified as he speaks, never minding his own madness, nor the blood caked beneath his fingernails.

You ask him what these men were like, who could have been capable of wounding a man as mighty as himself, and in turn he laughs. Surely, the gash must ache, but his voice never falters when he gathers you in two treelike limbs to pull your body ever-closer to his own.

He tells you that they were familiar, that your men in their dye red tunics held their spears and struck down some of his men but could not hope to best him.

He tells you of the cowardly ambush, how the warriors of your city turned upon his own with shouts and anger after a slave woman had been released. The way the woman spoke… as if she knew more about you than you ever had, how he could not bare to watch her suffer when she even resembled you in some ways: older, but still so very much like you. He had felt killing her captor to return her to the forest was the only way he could keep your favor.

While you listen in a stasis, stuck ridged against him as your mind drifts, pulls memory from the darker corners within your skull, he strokes at your shoulder, presses his nose right up to yours.

The man who had struck him was smaller… weaker, he had not survived König’s first blow, but… There’s a frothing madness in his eyes like the sky threatening storms when he tells you that he could not bear the thought of a man that would think to harm anyone like his goddess finding a way to return. His attacker was ripped limb from limb, body burned with the rest of those that followed his order.

You remain entirely silent, taking in this whispered tale as though it were breathed from the mouths of the gods themselves.

You never needed to pray to Mars, to Juno, to Vulcan…any of them. The embodiment of fear lies as a welcomed presence next to you, stroking along your back as though you were a mere kitten while he breathes this gory story against your lips. The smile returns when he finishes, pets at your jaw as if awaiting a reward for his perceived good deed… and you allow his madness to slip right past your teeth.

The touches brush over you like the featherlight breezes of the past spring, fingertips grazing from your waist to neck, nails leaving lightened stripes over the flesh he carefully claws at, gathering your skin, the meat from your bone, to roll between each pad of his digits. There’s further worship, a desperation to ensure that you are still here as he pants into your mouth, grips at your hip to pull you closer to where he aches the most.

There’s no pelt sprawled over his groin to hide himself from you, no thin linen to protect where he wishes to reach most. All you have is your words, and a thumb delicately rubbing over his bandage. When the kiss breaks, only then do you think to speak.

“When you’re better.”

The man makes his protests, gives his cock a few strokes as he hisses into your ear about promises, the horse, how long he’s dreamt and waited. You don’t need to be convinced, but now… your mind is riddled with what’s occurred in your months apart. Though the tension remains thick and wafting in the air between you, the physical could wait until you’re both sorted.

While you remained stuck and forlorn, struck by longing and misery, he had only found some semblance of meaning for all of what has eluded you, slayed every man who he could envision bringing you- anyone like you- harm, came back with another wound to fold over into a puffed scar.

You’ve only been waiting for your own sentencing.

Your warrior softens when your eyes begin to swim, fragile and overwhelmed as you’re tucked away beneath him. He only holds you, protective with an unwavering grip as the moon sweeps through the tent with its melancholic comfort that finally pulls the tears right from your eyes.

“Meine Göttin…,” he whispers against your temple, before you press your face into a broad shoulder, hiding tears and frail hiccuped sobs. “I prayed only to you.”

The words come barely audible, though they were never truly necessary.

You feel them in every touch, every hurried whisper as he coos his apologies in that keening voice, every kiss pressed over your warmed face when relaxation snares your limbs, and you do bloom further against him. The comfort and adoration is near staggering, taking you in and pulling you under, further below than even the rivers of your dreams and the ocean just out of reach could ever hope to.

As though this were the most natural thing…

The altars of your villa before were mere practice for the worship of lying next to your own deity; bastard son or Hercules, a wolf or a wild boar, none of it mattered.

He sighs, cups your face to kiss you just once more, something far more chaste than what you’ve come to know from him; the small peck to your lips holds more weight than the clatter of teeth and tongue from before. When you begin to drift off to a dream of a glade filled with nymphs where the trees breathe sap that tastes of honeysuckle, all bathed in the glow of starlight, you only feel the need to silently pray for one last thing: that he will never let you go.

— — —

It’s only on the seventh morning that you come to a realization over a breakfast of figs and water from the stream just below the hill— one that you haven’t been home. You feel at home enough here. The stuffy villa seems only a distant memory when you’re seated across from him, the giant who showers you in so much love it feels warmer than the great flames of Vulcan’s own fury.

No one has come to seek you out, either. Gaius had to have had an idea, should he have even bothered to search for you in that now desolate home. The few soldiers you have witnessed on their patrolling across the field never seem to turn an eye to the barbarian camp. You fill your pots with water, taking aid from König’s men, and never once have they turned to you.

Judgment always seemed so swift with all apart from destiny. You reason that this is surely what it must be, a destiny painted high above in the stars on nights where the mist does not curl up to conceal them from your gaze. You watch them sometimes, when König relaxes his grip in sleep: you turn to the outside of the tent to stare up at the expanse of stars and hear the stories of this nameless king from the mouths of the very men who have braved each storm with him.

They tell you in shattered language of stories you know with a certainty must not be entirely true. They range from talk of the hundred wives König supposedly had that he released all when he met you, of the temples built in his name all lined with gold and the names of jewels you had never once heard spoken, of how he had even slain your great god Jupiter… You have always listened with great amusement, wondering just how highly he must speak of you to have his men lie for him so brazenly.

Laughter follows you back to König’s tent each night, waiting to hear the cries of their king expending his love upon you that never come. You tend to his wound, observing its healing as the days come and go, and with each rebirth of the sun, his touch only seems to grow more imploring, his words sweeter than even the fruit held up in your palm.

In the haze of the morning sun spilling in from the parted flap of the tent, his eyes seem alight with an unnatural flame when he pulls you in to seat you upon one of his muscular thighs, far too rowdy for an injured man. You think not to refuse him when he laps at the juice from the fruit that has trickled down your chin.

“I love you.” He professes his devotion in that same pleading voice, an arm curled around your middle to keep you securely in place. Another thing that you never needed the words spoken to know.

You bring a fig up to his mouth, feed him with a kiss to his cheek and a whispered confession of your own. From the moment you saw him tending to his seax on the bank, your heart had become a howling, skittering animal in the cage of your ribs. You murmur words stolen from the poets against his jaw, about love and flowers, the mating dances of beasts and gods alike. With each word spun, he clutches you tighter, echoes them in his mother tongue.

The confession ends in a kiss that leaves you cloudy, aloft, a union of tongue and soft panting that leaves each nerve thrumming rapidly. The bowl of fruit slips from your lap, left to scatter over the ground forgotten.

König lowers you to lie back on the bed, teeth nipping and raking down along the column of your throat, over your pulse… back to your breasts that he caresses in two large palms.

“Not yet,” you remind him. His touch grows more insistent, thumbs pressed to your nipples to roll over them until your back arcs and your thighs tremble. “You’ll open your wound…”

“I am fine,” he huffs when he releases you from such delicious torture. “Let me…”

You can not bring yourself to tell him the true reasons as to why you can not. Not yet. You’re a mere stroll away from the city’s beckoning gates, from the place where you’re set to be wed only a fortnight from now. The mouth of Orcus that will drag you back in and keep you caged away from him… it would be too bittersweet to make your passions clear when your doom still imposes upon you with just a glance outside. If it ever comes… and you silently begged to any greater thing that it never would.

“When you’re healed… when you take me away from here,” you promise.

König listens in his own way. You see a flash of mischief when he separates from you with one final generous squeeze to your breast. This isn’t just the casual acceptance that comes with children being scolded, but an urgency to contend your words, a desire to prove himself buried in those shimmering eyes.

“Meine Göttin thinks that I am weak, hm?”

“That is not what I said.”

“I will show you.”

All at once, König rises from the mattress, casually shedding the bandage over his chest to discard it. You want to protest to whatever it is that he’s doing, but you knew very little of the minds of these men, their proclivities and desires, only that above all his intentions only seemed to be to prove himself worthy of worshiping at your feet, between your parted thighs…

As if to taunt you, the stiffened cock between his own legs bounces, drools when he stands. Your head spins as you force yourself to sit up and look into his eyes instead.

“What are you doing?,” you ask when he gathers his seax from the place he’s left it propped up, followed swiftly bu the pelt he usually donned around his middle with its leather straps and worn, gray fur.

“We will go on a hunt, hm? I will show you how…” He trails off with a grunt as he fastens the straps, finally conceals the pale, proud pillar when the fur comes to cover his groin. The seax follows as it’s tied to his narrow hip, the pommel glinting in low light as he approaches the opening of the tent and gestures for you to follow.

He should not be going on a hunt, and you… still did not even possess a weapon to aid in such an endeavor. Still, the thought of seeing him actually in the midst of a heated battle stills your breath for a moment, spurs you forward to follow along behind him.

The men around the camp speak with him for a time, prattling on in their mother tongue, gesturing out towards the trees with grins brimming with excitement. They all seem enticed by the prospect of felling some noble creature to drag back to their camp, make a true sacrifice for the goddess made mortal that lurks here. König dismisses them with a wave of his hand, clearly intent on being the only one to gift you such an offering.

He barks an order to the man that led you to his tent, and within moments this other man brings a Roman spear to your warrior, recognizable by its intricate engravings and barbed tip. König weighs it in his hands for a moment, glances back at you with a grin that simply screams his satisfaction of holding a trophy pried from the grip of one of your own detestable soldiers.

You follow after him through the dense forest bordering the clearing. The trees have long since shed their summer green, replaced instead by reds and golds, the dead falling to bathe the forest floor in bronze and brown. König walks slowly as to not cause too much sound to pass beneath the weight of his bulky body, encouraging you to do the same in a hushed demand with each crunching leaf beneath your soles.

Finally, he comes to a halt overlooking a small ridge that overlooks a small clearing. The brush and thickets rise high here, no doubt the birthing place of brambles and thorns, ground passive and untouched by all except the animals hiding within trees and bedded down in burrows. One still walks, awake and alert, a brilliant red stag with antlers more vast than even the horns of the bulls sent off to play war with the gladiators.

The creature is stationary, chewing cud with each movement of its dainty little jaw. It’s tail twitches, ears flicking on occasion when a bird swoops too close or the sound of a snapping twig out in the distance echoes through the forest. It’s a beautiful, delicate thing, but still strong and sturdy. The stag looks perfectly at peace here, not noting the wolf that watches over the ridge.

By the time that the deer does catch sight of König, it’s already too late. The arm holding the long spear is already pulled back and raised high. When the creature moves to resume its prance, the weapon is sent spiraling through the air, twisting and spinning in the absence of a breeze like a living thing until its point is found bedded in the stag's protruding belly.

The creature bleats in pain, writhes and kicks as it comes crashing down to a bed of brittle leaves that clamor beneath its weight. You close your eyes when you see the ground painted with blood from its seeping wound, and König begins to descend upon it. There are other sounds that follow, thudding blows in quick succession that leaves very little to your imagination; you’re only grateful he brought such a pretty thing a swift death.

You walk ahead of him on the way back to camp as he carries the animal’s corpse, politely telling him that if you look, you will not eat.

He gives his spoils to the other men once you’ve reached the camp again. They cheer, readying their blades to carve the creature up for a meal of venison and whatever amount of wine remains in their stores. The rations had been cut off since the others had failed to return, it wouldn’t be long until there was no wine left without one of them fetching work for coin within the city and purchasing it himself; still, König ensures that your cup is filled to the rim with it’s tart sweetness, grape with notes of something earthy, a mixture of thyme embedded into it to bless it with scent like a pomander.

You seat yourself in his lap, looking every part of a pretty earthen goddess as he presses his face to your bare shoulder, traces shapes into your hip while you sip from your cup. His men do not stare, either, regardless of your state of nudeness. There’s respect here, embedded into their flesh, their beliefs, and you only feel the part of a noblewoman when you take note of it. You are not just any man’s woman, but their leader’s most revered treasure.

The others pick apart your harvest of flesh, hang the skins to dry for further use, the antlers and bone left in a heap to be cleaned, then sharpened and carved. Your stare is appreciative as you watch them work away, never having seen this side of things from your modest villa. A fire is stoked when the usable meat is peeled away from what remains of the bones, ribs and femur, others that you could not hope to name.

“See?” König chimes as he takes hold of your hip, squishing you closer, tighter amidst the space of his palm. “Not weak..,” he hums into the hair at the back of your neck.

His touching grows more persistent, eager as the tips of his fingers graze your inner thigh; though appeased, you were not keen on the idea of straddling him before the eyes of his men as though you were only a breeding pair of foxes, screeching your passions into the forest for birds and bears to hear. When a throb resounds from his stroking, you wind yourself away to sit at his side instead, jaw resting on his knee and cup raised up to hide your breasts from his field of view.

“I did not say you were. Just hurt.”

He gives an impatient grunt in response, but allows you to linger in this new position, taking to stroke at your face and shoulders instead.

When the meat is cooked to their standards, still bloody and near raw to your own, the men chatter away between mouthfuls and thick swallows of their wine. You try to keep up, forcing yourself to commit some of their more common turns of phrase to mind— obvious yeses and nos, the way that they call one another, the names that would sound strange on your tongue but suit the others all the same. When your expression falls to confusion, König whispers translations into your ear; they’re discussing the Romans… what they will do if their rations are cut entirely, something about a deal struck before your interest summers and you resort to eating the venison you hood in silence.

It is not that you feel out of place, only lost. These men live in a separate world entirely: there is no talk of ironed out politics, organized festivities, of weddings an plotting for farmland. There is laughter here, even song when one of the trio seated across from you and König begins to bark out a loud chorus from a tune that your warrior so sweetly explains to you is about a woman who ventured out to elope with a cave-dwelling bear. Peculiar wild men that they were, you don’t even bother to question how that could ever possibly work.

When the afternoon sinks into the coziness of evening, you walk hand in hand with König back to his tent, and just as with any other night, there are cheerful, foreign goads and tedious little sounds elicited behind you. The wine had you peaceful for a time, but its haze has since passed. Your sheepishness is apparent at the implication, but the wolfish grin König shoots back at his men is anything but.

You know he expects to fulfill his promise entirely— make you his lover, wife, whatever he seems to see you as. That could not happen… as much as you thrum for him with each brush of his warm palm against your backside or upon your face, eternally gazing up at him with your dumb and doting stare.

To your credit: when his gaze crawls over you to take every bare expanse of flesh in, he only sees a beauty that he seemingly can not comprehend. The tells range from the tightening of his jaw, the twitch of each digit when they meet your skin, the way his nostrils glare and eyelids sag. His profession from earlier was anything except just that: it was a truth.

As he strips away his pelt and sets his blade aside, your hands rise to press against his shoulders, forbidding him to go any further than this simple reveal. And you speak true, explaining your exasperating engagement with the foul man who made certain you were spied upon, your distaste for your life within the walls itself, and lastly the marriage that would occur once the seasons did change.

Your eyes feel nothing short of pure liquid when you seat yourself upon his mattress for what you assume would be the very last time. Your voice tapers when you reveal that those very reasons were why you had come to him that night for the horse, why you came back even now.

König listens until your voice is reduced to a somber whisper, broken up by weak sniffles. The flirtation in his gaze is lost, and there’s no grin that splits apart his thin lips. You think that, if he asked you if you felt similarly to him then, that you would break down in full, but he doesn’t.

Instead he hisses something in his mother tongue, a singular word: “Scheiße.” Then, another laugh is coaxed from his throat, the dozenth that you must have heard this night alone. He seems fully unperturbed, unbothered when he descends upon you as if you were nothing more than the very deer he had slaughtered earlier.

“It is fine. Alles gut.” He covers your face in kisses, biting at your cheek when you squirm against him. “I can fight him, hm?”

Stupid… so terribly impulsive and cute. You sigh as if exasperated with him, but envelope him in your embrace anyway.

“I just want to be free of all of it,” you explain in a hushed voice.

“Then we will be free,” he confirms. We. No longer just yourself, and you almost bring yourself to ask if he has truly meant it before you're reminded of his declaration with a swift kiss that punches the air from your chest and leaves you shivering.

You hold him tighter still, fingers weaving into his hair to massage at his scalp and draw back in a tug when his head cocks to nip at your jaw. Again, always, he encompasses you, pulls you down into darkened water that warms and thumbs around you. You lose yourself more and more with each touch, thumb brushing over the pulse of your neck, teeth nipping at your clavicle, the brush of his groin as he rolls his hips to meet the plushness of your thigh.

You ache, cry when he guides your nipple into his mouth, languidly lapping over you until his salivating is evident over your tit. He only grows less patient the more vocal you become; one hand remains played to the side of your head while the other steadily slinks down past your naval, trails off to grasp at you hip and steer you closer before descending lower, where only his blade had dared venture before.

“I have dreamt of this, meine Göttin,” he purrs when he shifts his hips. His cock rests heavy over your thigh, weeping the sheerness of its own demand to paint your flesh. He guides your hand there to palm at his steadily growing arousal, curls your hand around his length and guides it up to stroke.

His chest rumbles his pleasure as he groans against your cheek; the sounds are somehow more surprising than the ones you had heard outside the brothels. Before König… never had you heard a man voice his pleasure, and though it may have been emasculating to some, it only makes you wet, there where his fingers reach to pet once he’s satisfied with the pace you’ve set as you pleasure him.

Your thumb grazed over the flushed tip, smearing the preejaculate that drools from it, his hips buck then. Your own sounds join his chorus when he ghosts a fingertip over the hood of your clit, buried his middle finger into your cunt. The entire ordeal is lazy, lazy as the slow kisses that connect your panting mouths.

With each twitch of your wrist as you milk his cock, you’re met with a finger probing deeper. At some point, one becomes two, a try for three before he draws back and realizes you’re too close to begin to take anymore.

“Tight..,” he appraises in a low voice, tongue lapping over your teeth as you writhe at his side.

You pick up pace at his praise, adoringly offering him your love with quickened sweeps of your hand, of your thumb over the weeping head, until he begins to throb in your hold. König mutters a curse against your jaw as he struggles to keep his hand steady then, bludgeoning you with his fingers, circling your clit until you begin to whine.

The heat builds within you so quickly you begin to see the night sky beneath your eyelids— an expanse of stars, of glowing blooms, and all at once the heat becomes too much. You curl into yourself, struggling to keep the demanding cock in your grip as you grind your hips down upon his hand to ride out your orgasm, bleary eyes and weakened by the intensity of it all you merely muffle your cries against his waiting mouth.

It takes no time at all for him to finish then, thick spurts of white seed paint up from your mound to your belly, coating your fingers in its stickiness. He hurts his teeth through it, intent on stifling the desperate little sounds building up in his throat, kisses you with even more fervor when you bless him with another tug to milk out every last viscous drop as it kicks and throbs in your hand.

He settles briefly, trailing kisses from your jaw to shoulder, then rises to part your legs with a strong grip around each thigh. For a moment, you almost think he’s prepared to fuck you proper, but the thought dissipates when he gathers his own seed over the head of his still hardened cock, settles it against your cunt, and grinds his seed against your salivating hole.

Your whine is clipped and almost pained when he brushes over your clit, hips rising to pull away when you feel the tickling burn of overstimulation. It doesn’t last; satisfied that he has left his spend close enough to your pussy that he may as well have laid claim to it, he crashes down over you, head pressed between your breasts.

König’s breath still comes in a pant while he huffs his affection for you: praises, those three wonderful words again and again. His tone is tender, reverent, as he tells you that he loves you… immediately following it with a stout and crude declaration of how roughly he will fuck you when the time does come.

“Do you mean what you said…?” You find your voice when he finally stops whispering the filth of his fantasies to you, when your cunt ceases its pleading for more. Right now… it would not be as special anyhow. Your fate still lies in the grasp of another, and as much as you wished for it to align in full with him, that simply was not so.

“Ja,” he answers immediately, no hesitation when he commits himself in full to you, the Roman woman who had tamed him down with her silly whims and ache for him. “I will take you to the mountains, the sea, …the stars if you ask.”

You comb your fingers through his hair, filled with mirth as he speaks of such impossibilities. There is no place in the stars for two misplaced lovers, but you don’t dare say that. The things that fill your imaginations would leave even the poets balking, scrambling for the words pretty enough to describe a love so peculiar.

— — —

You had not questioned why they remained, that was your folly.

You had never thought that you would even care should you see the city fall. Though… dread immediately strikes your heart with ice and silver when you’re bolted awake by the sound of shrill shrieks and loud crumbling. There’s a war just beyond the veil the tent provides: loud sounds of heavy feet, shouts, even the clash of metal upon metal if only for a single stuttering beat of your heart.

Vulcan has descended, rode right through on flaming steeds with flame rising from his open maw. You know it with a certainty without even approaching the opening to look. But you do. You do move away from the empty mattress, finding the space where König had slept against you, snoring softly and tugging you closer in your bliss, entirely devoid of any warmth. The air is warm, tinged with the heat of coursing flames, but the bed is cold, frigid like the fear that cinches at your heart and steals the breath from fluttering lungs.

There’s ash in the air, falling like the first snows of winter when you make your way out of the tent, coughing into your hand as it clasps over your mouth and nose. The air is so thick, noxious and darker than even the backdrop of velvety sable marking the horizon. Your eyes track the twisting, feathering pillars of flame as they rise even higher than the wall: a gold and red death.

Shadows scramble across the field— men, women, then the horses, the bulls, that come thundering past. The animals trample and shriek: broken bones, hooves driven through skulls to erupt into mush, leaving twitching, scorched corpses in their wake.

Fire billows up only to fall and rain down, back onto the murderous beasts in some abstract punishment. You watch the puppets writhe and squeal; perhaps your own cries join them, wailing and crying out as all you’ve come to know is engulfed, smothered, destroyed. What the fire does not take, the shattering structures do.

Amidst it all is glee.

There are shouts of men on horseback that come out as the victory roars of men amidst battle, yipping and howling as all is reduced to rubble around them. Your feet do not guide you toward the chaos, they do not bring you to peace either, only far— far as you can go.

The smell alone makes it worse than it ever appeared in your dreaming. Blood, oil, cinder and ash that plummets deep down into your stomach, pushing back up to purge what became of the deer. You feel how that creature must have: alone, terrified, certain that death was biting at your heels. If you had fur it would bristle, antlers would plow through the brush to carry you to safety, but… you do not. You’ve only the ability to gather yourself enough to fall. You descend down the hill in a painful roll as your legs give out beneath you.

You want to close your eyes, to sink into the stream and bid the fire away with desperation alone. When you lower to the grass to wretch, fingers digging into the earth, your gaze snaps back to the scene just beyond the stream.

You know, know dreadfully well that the people here that have managed to escape were hunted down in a veil of inky blackness. The ghouls of myth could not compare to this… This was very real, real as the scent of cooking meat and hair and wood.

And you watch and wait for the fire to burn out, for the animals to cease their rampage and fall back to a calm that never comes.

You stand to your feet, meekly trembling before the wrath and chaos, and you wait with splintering nails clawing at your thighs and unshed tears blurring your vision. There was always a price to pay for freedom, you had seen it time and time again in gladiator pits, monetary and dull, but never this…

And you know the price for yours was paid in fire and vengeance, promised before you ever even had the notion to disappear at all. There was always tension between the Goths and your people. This was bound to come about sooner or later, but the guilt of potentially being the catalyst to it all brings you back to your knees.

You don’t know how long you sit there, staring out into the abyss in silenced fear, but eventually all that fills the quiet is the dull roar of the fires still burning and the dull sounds of a horse’s trot growing nearer. Just across the bubbling little stream, untouched by the death beneath the full moon, is König atop his sable steed. The creature huffs just as König cocks his shrouded head, prompting you in his silence to say anything— deliver your blessing, your thanks, your kisses.

Yet, you can not bring yourself to deliver anything but a weak, anguished wail.

The stream is crossed before you’ve even the time to raise your head, limbs gathering you up to pull you against the broad chest of your god in the cruelest tenderness. You feel limp there, atop this frustrated horse, in the arms of the man who had sacked this city. They will come for him, kill him too… You will be alone with nothing and no one, and stupidly, you find yourself longing for the comfort of calling to Juno in that bedroom you would never see again. All of this just for pleading for the very horse you now perch upon.

He lets you cry as holds the reins in one hand and carries you away from this desolation. The horse walks further than you have ever even seen. The stream before the barbarian camp is not the only, there are orchards and glades and fields of tall grass even further beyond it. You take in the beauty as the city becomes a glimmering speck far behind you.

König only remains silent, stroking your back with his free hand, so lovingly and gentle you find it almost impossible to believe him capable of such cruelty. Your mind is tired, limbs weighty and chest aching from breathing in so much smoke. You do not even realize your exhaustion until you find yourself in a fitful sleep.

There are no dreams, no wonderful comforts, only slow breaths and pained whimpers.

When you do wake, the sun has risen in full.

You’re lying on your back amidst withering grass, a pelt thrown over your body and a figure sat at your side. There’s no longer the stench of smoke, no drab gray clouds hanging over your head. The air is light and tinged with the tartness of buckthorn. There are white, puffy clouds hanging up in the vast blue of the sky, and as you blink, a thumb moves to stroke at your cheek. Soft, so soft and even tentative when it rises to your temple.

“You should have slept longer.” König’s voice comes, not reprimanding, but in a gentle surge of breath. He sounds as exhausted as you still feel.

You’re angry… but you know not why. It feels performative, almost, when you shove his hand away. You want to wail for what you’ve lost, but that voice never comes. Gaius? A home you never liked? The lectus that would be used as a stand to consummate a marriage you had begged to avoid for months on end? What was lost?

“You are going to die.” Your whisper comes strained, tight and tinged with your own misery.

“You worry for me again?”

You shake your head at that, fierce as you turn on your side and away from him again. The dying grass digs into your flesh beneath the fur, scraping like claws, like König’s very touch.

“We are not going to die, little one,” he continues as he moves closer to you, trying to gather you up into his arms in an act of comfort. Your tension rigidly leaves you, though you try to force yourself to remain closed off, it does not happen. You mold against him when he lies at your back, hand splayed over your stomach.

“I never said we. Just you,” you huff. Your hand meets his wrist as his thumb begins to stroke at your naval. The desire to push him away again only dissolves when he winds out of your grip to take your hand into his own, forced lower to feel the cold earth and the warmth of each digit beneath your touch. “They will hunt you down.”

“Then I will die at your side.”

You don’t respond to that, finding his desire to further prove whatever this was entirely incomprehensible now. It is not endearing, you force your mind to reason. This man was more than just tedious at times, but dangerous to… To burn an entire city on a whim then curl against you like this… You whimper, keening and sorrowful as you squeeze your eyes shut— force the macabre thoughts out.

“You are like me,” König continues, a low rumble as he lowers his head to press his cheek to the side of your neck. Even amidst the chill of winter, he’s so warm, so soothing, enough to make you melt like wax from candles… perfumed by his own sweat and the ash he left in his wake, so earthy and lofty all the same. “Kleine Göttin…”

“No… I’m not.”

“You come from the mountain,” he urges with a kiss to your shoulder. His grip around you becomes more insistent with each muttered word, the pads of his fingers pressed further to dimple your skin. “The slave woman told me so.”

You didn’t know the woman he spoke of, you didn’t know anyone still living apart from himself and his men. You want to yell, to drill it into his very skull with your words, but even more than that, you want this comfort.

You want to feed him figs, allow his tongue to sip the wine from your own, and to fall asleep against him with his breath tickling at your scalp. More, to share the life with him you once promised to a deceased man buried in ash…

Truth be told you were not even sure of your standing, Roman or barbarian… Though you had never told him that, his resolute tone leads you to believe all of it. You had always longed to bathe in rivers rather than crowded bathhouses, to crest the tops of mountains and taste fresh honey on your tongue… The titan promises you all of those things and more with his tight hold and in a purred, breathy, “I love you.”

All that you could not prevent dissipates in a plume when you twist around to bury your face against that chest, curl your fingers into his hair and breathe out your resistance in its entirety. The most pitiful of surrenders.

#könig #könig x reader #könig x you #konig x reader #konig #konig x you #cod fanfiction #f: only other

[acourtofmishapandmistakes]

Shadowsongs

Summary: After Rhys and Feyre decide to take a trip away to the Summer Court for the night to escape the thralls of their newborn, Azriel is left caring for Nyx and finds that his greatest battle might just be getting him to sleep. I also recently rewatched the Labyrinth and forgot how much that movie slapped so the song from that is included.

As the Velaris tower clock chimed midnight, the sitting room of the River House was enveloped in the soft, ambient glow of faelight. Azriel sunk deeper into the plush, green, velvet couch, his expansive wings draped elegantly over the back of the chair, eyes heavy with exhaustion. His hand rhythmically patted the back of the squirming bundle nestled snugly against his chest. The babe, Nyx, resisted sleep with the tenacity of an Illyrian warrior, his tiny fists punching the air as if to protest the very concept of bedtime. 

The room was a playful mess, strewn with toys - dolls lay abandoned, blankets were tossed aside, and bottles had rolled under chairs. Azriel had assured Feyre and Rhys he could manage babysitting for a day and night. They desperately needed a break after months of non-stop parenting in tandem with running the Night Court, and a trip to the breezy shores of the Summer Court was the only thing keeping Feyre from collapsing into tears. Feyre had sobbed when they left, overwhelming Azriel with reminders of Nyx’s schedule and a litany of do’s and don'ts, which Azriel already knew inside and out. Her maternal instincts flared to the point where Rhys had to gentle pull her away, reassuring her that Nyx would be fine for one night, and, if anything, they should be more concerned about Azriel surviving Nyx than Nyx surviving Azriel. 

Typically, everyone shared babysitting duties throughout the week day, but with Nesta and Cassian off in the Autumn Court, Elain incapacitated by her first fae cycle, and Amren claiming she would rather cut out her own tongue than be left alone with a babe, the responsibility had fallen to Azriel. Leaving Nyx overnight for the first time might have been a tad ambitious. 

“Come on, Nyx,” he coaxed with a whisper of amusement. “You’ve got to give in at some point.” Azriel briefly considered that perhaps this was how the victims of his torture efforts may have felt when they had been kept awake for hours on end. Perhaps he should start having them babysit a fussy Illeryian babe instead of cutting off fingers. He chuckled to himself before pushing the thought away.

Yet, Nyx remained defiant, his violet eyes locked on the ceiling, deep in thought, as if unraveling the secrets of the cosmos rather than giving in to slumber. Azriel exhaled deeply, his fingers threading through his tousled black hair. After learning about Feyre’s pregnancy he had stealthily devoured every parenting book Feyre had purchased, to the perfect formula-to-water ratio, optimal bath temperatures, and baby sensory activities, he had learned it all. When Feyre faced challenges with breastfeeding, Azriel had accidentally revealed his clandestine studies by suggesting a particular latching technique. Cassian had teased him relentlessly since. Despite employing every baby battle strategy known to him, Nyx was relentless.

With a resigned sigh, Azriel sank even further into the plush cushions, resigning himself to a long night. As he watched Nyx’s tiny chest rise and fall with each breath, he couldn’t help but marvel at the sheer stubbornness of the new babe. Azriel couldn’t tell if that was more from Feyre or Rhys, and then decided that that trait most likely came from his Auntie Nesta, whom Nyx had wrapped around his tiny, chubby fingers.

In the dimly lit room, Azriel’s gaze followed his shadows as they danced across the ceiling, capturing Nyx’s rapt attention. With a grin, he watched them twirl and twirl – they were always more playful when Nyx was around. His shadows seemed as curious about Nyx as he was about them. During gatherings at the River House, it wasn’t uncommon for the shadows to envelop Nyx, tickling him and teasing him, eliciting peals of laughter from the delighted babe as he reached out to catch them. 

Elain had said before that the shadows and Nyx reminded her when she and her sisters were young, a black barn cat would seek her out to frolic among the late summer heat. Azriel wondered what Nyx made of these ethereal companions, if they were like an animal to him, or another playmate. He also pondered whether the shadows would maintain their fascination with him as he grew older. Azriel, himself, hadn’t spent much time around children this young, and his shadows seemed to be so gentle with the babe, as though they somehow could sense his innocence and hoped he would keep it forever.

As Azriel and Nyx both kept their gaze to the ceiling, the shadows began to craft intricate shapes and forms, transforming into a mesmerizing puppet show. Nyx’s restless squirming subsided as the shadows danced across the walls, casting enchanting silhouettes that swirled and twirled in their silent ballet creating a tableau of delight.

On the ceiling, an array of animals appeared in what resembled a grand ballroom scene. Pegasus, birds, and sheep mingled before parting to reveal a single swan, its wings unfurling with ethereal grace. The swan bowed elegantly before twirling loftily above its admiring audience. Then, emerging from the gathered shadows, a sly fox approached, gracefully taking the swan’s wings in its paws and spinning it in a delicate dance. Although the room was silent, one could easily imagine the soft strains of music. Nyx reached up excitedly, prompting Azriel to adjust his hold, lifting him slightly higher for a better view.

As the dance continued above, some shadows descended the walls and playfully twirled around Nyx, their cool touch eliciting giggles from the dark-haired babe.

The shadows conjured forth visions of Nyxs’ family, distant echoes of life beyond the cozy sitting room. 

In one corner of the room, the shadows morphed into delicate snowflakes cascading down the wall. Above the floorboard, three figures raced across the scene – two winged Illyrians and one without wings. The winged males playfully lobbed snowballs at their wingless companion, who shielded his head with his hands. Suddenly, a log sprung from the ground, causing the wingless man to trip and tumble face-first into a pile of snow below. The two other males doubled over with laughter, one even dropping to his knees as the snow continued to fall. Nyx’s eyes widened with wonder, his tiny fingers reaching out to grasp the fleeting shapes. The snowball fight between his father and brothers drew excited coos and giggles from him, his laughed echoing around the room.

In the other corner, the shadows drifted into a scene of a woman standing at an easel, the woman's stomach swollen with child. The shadow woman stood before an easel, her brush moving across the canvas, she ran her hand over her stomach, glancing down towards it when a man walked in behind her, twirling her around into an embrace. The man leaned over, placing a tender kiss on the woman's stomach. Nyx babbled joyfully, his tiny feet kicking Azriel’s chest with delight, which while uncomfortable brought a smile to his face.

Across the ceiling, the shadows painted a scene of a great battle, a field of war and chaos as two winged males fight back to back against a vast army, shooting arrows and swinging swords. 

While the shadows swirled the tapestry of memories, Azriel looked only at Nyx, who giggled and babbled in delight at the unfolding scenes. With each passing moment, it became increasingly apparent to Azriel that while the shadows were doing their best to soothe Nyx to sleep, they had only awakened him more. It became glaringly obvious that bedtime stories wouldn’t work. 

Nyx’s giggles and coos echoed through the River House. With a sigh, Azriel gestured for the shadows to cease their dance, and the room was once again plunged into a soft, dim glow. 

“Alright, Nyx,” Azriel murmured, his voice gentle but tinged with exhaustion. “Let’s try something else.”

He drew Nyx back into his arms, cradling him close against his chest. Rising from the enveloping comfort of the couch, Azriel’s footsteps were muted against the plush rug of the sitting room as he began to meander through the house. Moonlight streamed through the towering windows, casting the ornate corridors in a serene silvery light, illuminating the walls adorned with Feyre’s vibrant paintings. 

Feyre and Rhys had both endured their share of sleepless nights, pacing the same halls with Nyx in their arms. Rhys had noted that being the babe of the Night Court it seemed all Nyx wanted to do was explore the world when the sun had set and all had gone quiet. Perhaps Nyx was more bat than babe.

Undeterred, Azriel pressed on, his footsteps echoing through the halls as he swayed in arms in a steady rhythm. But Nyx remained stubbornly awake, his eyes darting from window to window cooing loudly. As he reached the grand staircase that spiraled upwards, a faint cry echoed through the silence. Nyx stirred in his arms, his tiny fists clutching at his shirt as he let out a wail. 

Azriel attempted to shush the fussy baby who now was wailing louder for what seemed no apparent reason. Perhaps Nyx was finally fighting exhaustion as well. With a sigh, Azriel retraced his steps, as he stepped into Nyx’s nursery. 

Feyre had taken months to finally get the nursery the way she envisioned it. She had wanted Nyx’s room to encompass the entirety of Prythian as they were unsure what powers Nyx might hold. 

Each wall of the room was a canvas of vibrant colors and intricate designs including the bay window that Feyre had insisted be where Nyxs’ bassinet be. 

Painting the Spring Court wall had been a battle unto itself with Rhys and Cassian joking constantly that the wall should be burning to the ground, or that she should paint Tamlin being pursued by a dragon. Feyre had just shot them an obscene gesture and instead painted spring blossoms of pastel pinks and greens. Delicate flowers bloomed amidst emerald meadows, their petals unfurling in the warmth of the sun. Amongst the meadow was a warm pool with a waterfall cascading down a mountainside. 

Opposite, the wall of Summer blazed with the fiery hues of the sun, a tapestry of gold and crimson beamed down onto the deep blue sea, where Tarquin’s white castle glistened atop the white sandstone mountain. 

Next to it, the wall of Autumn was a symphony of earthy greens, oranges, reds, and browns. The Autumn Court forest held deep shadows which made the wheat fields protruding from them seem like shining gold. Lucien had helped Feyre paint this wall, and his awkward-looking, disproportionate deer and fawns clearly showed that. 

Beside the Autumn wall, the Winter Court lay shrouded in a blanket of icy blues and silvery whites. Snowflakes danced amidst frost kissed pines, their branches bending beneath the weight of the winter embrace. Bears and arctic foxes scampered on the piles of snow, wearing the traditional colors. Elain had insisted on giving the little foxes scarves. Azriel had reminded her they were made for that sort of weather but Elain had only glanced at him sadly before saying “But what if they get cold” before she painted tiny mittens on the bears. 

On the half of the ceiling closest to the door, Feyre had painted the Dawn and Day courts. Sunlight streamed through branches of ancient oaks as it rose from the corner of the room, and hills of rolling green with children from each court playing amongst them filled out the space. 

Over Nyxs’ crib, Feyre had painted a deep blue color of the sky with a sparkle of stars strewn across it. Rhys had enchanted the space just below the ceiling to be constantly in motion with sparkling star dust which moved in and out of constellations, with the occasional shooting star flying high above. 

As Nyx continued his tirade of shrill cries, Azriel rocked him around the room, shushing him as much as he could. As he continued to sway gently with Nyx in his arms, the baby began to quiet, his tiny body nestled into Azriels chest as his breaths steadied. With a tender smile, he began to sing, his voice a gentle melody through the darkness, like a whispered prayer. 

“I saw my baby, crying hard as babe could cry,” he sang, “What could I do?” 

With each note, Nyx grew more and more relaxed, his eyelids fluttering closed from the gentle cadence and rocking. 

“My baby’s love had gone and left my baby blue” he sang, his voice soft and tender, “Nobody knew.” 

Azriel watched Nyx’s tiny fingers curl against his chest, his breathing slow and steady and sleep drifted closer. 

“What kind of magic spell to use, slime and snails, puppy dog tails, thunder or lightning,” Azriel continued to sing as he wandered carefully over to the crib. 

“Dance magic, dance magic dance, dance magic dance,” He lowered Nyx into the soft blue oasis. “Jump magic, jump, jump magic, put that baby’s spell on me, kiss my baby, make her free,” Azriel placed his palm onto Nyx’s chest and continued to rub back and forth soothingly. 

“I saw my baby,” He continued, softer, more of a whisper, “Trying hard as babe could try, what could I do?” Azriel dropped to his knees, his fingers tracing the lines of the baby's face as he rested his arm on the side of the bassinet and laid his head atop it. “My baby’s fun had gone, and left my baby blue, nobody knew.” Nyx’s soft pink lips fell open slightly as his eyes finally closed and his head fell to the side. Azriel smiled and found his eyes drifting shut as well. 

Feyre found them the next morning that way. Nyx sprawled on his back, his tiny fingers wrapped around Azriels, and Azriel, a piled heap on the floor, his wings splayed on the floor behind him with his head still resting against the crib. 

Rhys walked up behind her as Feyre motioned him silently. “I guess he does sleep,” she whispered.

“Who?” Rhys chuckled, “Az or Nyx?”

Feyre turned her head to look at Rhys, “Both I guess.” 

Rhys asked Feyre if she planned to go in and wake either of them up but Feyre only shook her head, “I think they both could use a little more time.” 

With that, Feyre shut the door quietly, leaving the warrior and the babe to sleep a little longer.

#acotar #a court of thorns and roses #acowar #a court of wings and ruin #acofas #a court of frost and starlight #acomaf #a court of mist and fury #acosf #a court of silver flames #acotar memes #sjm #sjmaas #sjmassbooks #sarahjmaas #acotar funny #incorrect acotar quotes #incorrectacotarquotes #acotar fanfiction #acotar fic #acotar nyx #nyx acotar #nyx archeron #nyx heir of the night court #feyre #feyre archeron #feyre acotar #feyre archeron acotar #azriel #azriel fanart

[matan4il]

Daily update post:

This is Yonatan Shimriz. He's the brother of Alon, one of the 3 Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas, and accidentally killed by the IDF due to mistakenly thinking they're terrorists. Yonatan also survived with his family the massacre of Oct 7. And he just had a baby boy. Life WILL win, despite those who think they have the right to take it away.

It's been announced today that Israel has hired Prof. Malcolm Shaw, a Jewish British law professor, who specializes in the field of human rights and territorial disputes, to represent it at the International Court of Justice in the Hague. He's one of 4 lawyers that will represent Israel.

If I hadn't verified this is true through several news sources, I would not have believed this scenario. Terrorists fired an RPG at an IDF helicopter in Gaza, missed it, and ended up hitting a medical clinic in kibbutz Nirim, inside Israel, though as you might imagine, it's very close to the border. This is what the clinic looks like after the hit:

Lebanon has filed a complaint with the UN Security Council, blaming Israel for killing Saleh al-Arouri on its territory. Because harboring a senior Hamas terrorist, responsible for the murders of countless Israeli civilians, is not an issue, apparently. Lebanon charges that this is the biggest escalation between it and Israel since 2006 (the Second Lebanon War). They have no issue with Lebanon violating UN resolution 1701, which put an end to that war, conditioned on Hezbollah not being present anywhere between the Litani river and Lebanon's border with Israel (of course Hezbollah has been, and has been firing rockets at Israel from this area). Then again, the UN has done nothing to enforce that part of resolution 1701, so I guess if they don't care, why should the terrorists?

After I posted yesterday that the most likely scenario for who caused the blasts in Iran that killed 84 people is ISIS, the terrorist organization did take responsibility for the terrorist attack. Guess who Iran is still blaming for the attack, and swearing revenge against? The Jewish state. This is what antisemitism looks like. Well. It's one of its many looks.

On a different note, I wanted to see what the American media said about Claudine Gay's resignation, and I was horrified to hear that it's all painted in terms of liberals vs conservatives. Here's the thing, that may be completely true, but I just don't care. Antisemitism is a real issue, and the way the resignation is talked about, it's like the safety of Jewish students is nothing. Antisemitism is just a tool, and sometimes one political camp uses it against its rival, while at other times, that happens in the opposite direction. But it's like Jews are not even a part of the conversation. IDK, maybe it's because I'm an outsider, but the way Jews don't seem to matter even when antisemitism is supposedly finally being discussed, is truly startling. I'm in the middle of an active war zone, and I'm honestly sat here, worried for Jews abroad.

After a lot of work to gather information about their fate, the last 3 Israeli men missing since Oct 7 are now defined as hostages, which brings the total number of those kidnapped to 136, including bodies, and Israelis kidnapped before the massacre (2 living men and 2 bodies). There's one more missing Israeli woman, whose fate is still to be determined. We're 3 months into this nightmare, and there are still so many question marks. Even with those defined as murdered or kidnapped at a certain point, we've seen that sometimes there's new info, which changes what we believe happened to them.

And here's an example for the latter. This is 38 years old Tamir Adar.

Until yesterday, he was believed to be held hostage in Gaza. As new information was gathered, it was determined that he had been murdered on Oct 7. Tamir is the grandson of Holocaust survivor Yafa Adar, who was herself kidnapped, and released in the hostage deal. His body is still being held by the terrorists. Yafa herself was filmed as she was being taken to Gaza, holding her head up, and not crying. In an interview she gave after her release, she said that she refused to cry, because she wanted her family to be proud of her if they saw the footage. She also said that she's still not free, because her grandson is still in Gaza. I can't imagine what Yafa and her family feel after the news about Tamir's fate. May his memory be a blessing.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

#israel #israeli #israel news #israel under attack #israel under fire #israelunderattack #terrorism #anti terrorism #antisemitism #hamas #antisemitic #antisemites #jews #jew #judaism #jumblr #frumblr #jewish

[mapsontheweb]

Israel and Palestine

by danmaps_org 

The region known as Palestine is a complex geopolitical situation with multiple entities exerting control. The main areas of control are:

-State of Israel: The Israeli government controls significant parts of the West Bank, maintains a blockade on the Gaza Strip and occupies the Golan Heights since 1967.

-Palestinian Authority (PA): The PA, led by the Fatah political party, has limited self-rule in parts of the West Bank, but its authority is subject to various restrictions.

-Hamas: The militant and terrorist group Hamas controls the Gaza Strip. It won the legislative elections in 2006 and took control of Gaza in 2007.

What do you think about the current situation in Palestine?

The word "Palestine" is used referring to the geographical region comprised between the Sinai Peninsula, the Red Sea, the Jordan River and the Dead Sea and the Litani River.

#maps #danmaps_org #igsourced #israel #palestine

[deadlyflames]

Dec 31st: 1910s in NOLA: Lovers in Denial

But even that hardest of hearts unhardened Suddenly, when he saw her there Persephone in her mother’s garden Sun on her shoulders, wind in her hair The smell of the flowers she held in her hand And the pollen that fell from her fingertips And suddenly Hades was only a man with the taste of nectar upon his lips

Klaus Mikaelson has been attempting to bring the four main species of New Orleans together in order to create the Faction. In order to succeed in this endeavour, he needs to broker a peace with the Regent of the nine covens.

However, this plan is endangered when he meets the Regent’s granddaughter in the old witch’s garden and an attraction sparks between the two of them.

Love was when he came to me Begging on his bended knees To please have pity on his heart And let him lay me in the dirt… I felt his arms around me then We didn’t need a wedding bed Dark seeds scattered on the ground The wild birds were flying around

After secretly meeting with the original hybrid in her grandmother’s garden for months, Klaus asks Bonnie to be his wife. She says she won’t become a vampire and he tells her he would never ask that of her. He’s met plenty of witches who can forestall aging process over the years. While she may never be an immortal, he would protect her from anything that may harm her. So moved by his declaration, Bonnie follows him into the darkness.

He fell in love with Persephone Who was gathering flowers in the light of the sun And he took her home to become his queen Where the sun never shone on anyone The lady loved him and the kingdom they shared But without her above, not one flower would grow So, King Hades agreed that for half of each year She would stay with him there in his world down below

After Sheila Bennett discovers that her granddaughter has eloped with an ancient vampire, she falls into despair and the ancestors shake the foundation of the city. Wind, rain, lighting, earthquakes and hurricanes.

When Bonnie sees the destruction her absence has brought, she attempts to return home. But Klaus to refuses to let her leave.

It is only thanks to Elijah that New Orleans manages to survive the litany of disasters. Through a negotiation with the witches, terms were determined for the marriage to continue. Bonnie would go home and live among her people for one half of the year and then stay with Klaus for the other half.

After days of being persuaded by both his brother and his wife, Klaus Mikaelson reluctantly agrees to the terms.

But the other half, she could walk in the sun And the sun in turn, burned twice as bright Which is where the seasons come from And with them, the cycle Of the seed and the sickle And the lives of the people And the birds in their flight

Klaus stood at Bonnie’s side through the entirety of Sheila Bennett’s funeral. Even as witches hiss and glare. He had never gotten along with Sheila, but he had respected her. And he knew Bonnie loved her.

However, he was not allowed to attend the meeting of the witches choosing their new regent. The witches want Bonnie to be their leader. After all, a Bennett has served as regent for the past 100 years.

Bonnie only accepts the responsibility of becoming Regent if the witches agree she can keep her arrangement with Klaus. Bonnie will lives among her coven for six months until the autumn equinox. Then she would return to Klaus and live with him in his compound during the next six months. Until the spring equinox, her friend Vincent Griffith will act as Regent in her stead.

Neither Klaus nor the witches are pleased with this decision.

Hades is king of oil and coal And the riches that flow where the rivers are found But for half of the year with Persephone gone His loneliness moves in him, crude and black He thinks of his wife in the arms of the sun And jealousy fuels him and feeds him and fills him With doubt that she’ll ever come Dread that she’ll never come Doubt that his lover will ever come back

Klaus is certain the witches made their decision to spite him. Sheila was gone and the deal should have been broken. He would no longer need to send his wife away for half the year. Bonnie should have been his alone now. But the witches and the ancestors have ensured that their claws will remain buried deep in her.

When his wife leaves as the season turns, Klaus indulges in blood and mayhem. When his family inquires about his behaviour, he refuses to give voice to the fear that crawls into his mind every time Bonnie leaves. The fear that she may be gone forever this time.

When the sun is high, brother, so am I Drinking dandelion wine Brother, I’m as free as a honeybee In a summertime frame of mind And when my man comes around Oh, I know he’s gonna bring me down But for now I’m livin' it Livin' it, livin' it up

Over the years, the relationship between Bonnie and Klaus becomes strained. He is filled with possessiveness and jealousy each time she leaves him. She is filled with frustration and restlessness when he tries to keep her caged.

Vincent suggests that Bonnie should return to the covens indefinitely. As a Bennett witch and their Regent, she is expected to lead them and to do what is best for the witches.

Bonnie assures him that she is thinking of what is best for the witches. Klaus will fight for her if she never returns and the fragile peace between the factions will crumble. Witches will die and she can’t allow that. If she gives up the leadership to be with Klaus, the ancestors will cause chaos, especially now that her Grams is among them.

Bonnie does not tell him the true reason engrained in her heart that she will always return to Klaus. She does not want to leave him.

How long? Just as long as I am your wife It's true the earth must die But then the earth comes back to life And the sun just goes on rising And how does the sun even fit in the sky? It just burns like a fire in the pit of the sky And the earth is a bird on a spit in the sky How long, how long, how long?

All hail the King and Queen of New Orleans.

Neither wants to admit how much they miss the other. So they are trapped in the cycle of leaving and returning. The cycle of loneliness and love. Until someone brings the world back into tune, that is how it is.

#klonnie #klonnieweek2023 #bonnie bennett #klaus mikaelson #tvd #the vampire diaries #trust me to include a hadestown themed post lol #don’t ask me who Orpheus would be cause I don’t know

[jeeyuns]

✍️ Litany In Which Certain Things are Crossed Out | Richard Siken

You said I could have anything I wanted, but I just couldn’t say it out loud. here’s the pencil, make it work If the window is on your right, you are in your own bed. If the window is over your heart, and it is painted shut, then we are breathing river water.

#911 abc #buddie #eddie diaz #911edit #eddiediazedit #t gifs #t creates

[workersolidarity]

[ 📹 Scenes from Al-Rashid Street where the Israeli occupation army opened fire with artillery shells, toxic tear gas, and live bullets towards displaced Palestinian civilians hoping to cross into the northern Gaza Strip to return to their damaged and destroyed homes in Gaza City. Social media rumors had suggested some civilians were being allowed to cross into the north. However, the information was incorrect and occupation forces immediately opened fire on the civilians. 📸 Just some of the results in the town of Duma following an unprecedented scale attack on several Palestinian towns and villages in the occupied West Bank, where Zionist colonial settlers burned Palestinian homes and vehicles.]

🇮🇱⚔️🇵🇸 🚀🚀🚀 🚨

DAY 191: IRAN LAUNCHES MISSILE STRIKE ON ISRAELI OCCUPATION, SETTLER VIOLENCE IN THE WEST BANK, IOF TARGETS DISPLACED CIVILIANS

On the 191st day of Israel's ongoing special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) committed a total of 4 new massacres of Palestinian families, resulting in the deaths of no less than 43 Palestinians, mostly women and children, while another 62 others have been wounded over the previous 24-hours.

Beginning in the early morning hours of Sunday, Iran launched a large-scale combined missile and drone strike targeting the occupied Palestinian territories in response for the Israeli occupation's missile strike on the Consulate section of the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria, killing at least two high-ranking IRGC commanders and at least 5 others.

According to some sources, as many as 300 missiles and drones were fired by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) into the occupied territories, with at least 7 missiles successfully hitting targets at the Ramon Airbase in the Negev desert, while another 15 missiles are said to have reached the Nevatim Airbase in the south of the occupied territories, also in the Negev desert, near Beersheba, where the Zionist occupation keeps most of its fleet of F-35 fighter jets.

As the missiles and drones flew over the heads of the civilian populations of Israeli-occupied Palestine, as well as the West Bank and Gaza, hundreds of Israeli civilians could be seen screaming and panicking in the streets, stampeding one another to reach shelter from the missiles, which were precisely targeted to avoid civilian harm, while the Palestinian civilian population celebrated in the streets, waving the Palestinian flag and honking their car horns.

In response to the Iranian missile strikes, which coincided with several rocket barrages fired from southern Lebanon to help drain the Israeli occupation's supply of interceptor missiles from its vaunted Iron Dome air defense system, at dawn, the Israeli occupation air forces bombarded several towns and villages in the south of Lebanon.

According to reports published in the Lebanese National News Agency and expounded upon by the Palestinian news outlet, WAFA, the Israeli occupation bombed a building in the town of Nabi Chit in the Barqaa Governate, in the east of central Lebanon, while occupation warplanes bombed the outskirts of the Mount Safi area, as well as the town of Jbaa in the Tuffah region and in the Deliton area, also on the outskirts of Jbaa, in the south of Lebanon.

Occupation aircraft also fired several missiles and bombs into the towns of Khiam, Kafr Kila, and Al-Odaisseh, while also bombing near several other villages, including Hula, Wadi al-Sluqi, in the vicinity of Deir Mimas, and near the Litani River.

Meanwhile, in occupied Palestine, as a result of Israeli settler violence against the Al-Mughayir Village over the weekend, a village located to the northeast of Ramallah, in the northern occupied West Bank, at least one Palestinian was killed, and at least 45 others were wounded.

Deputy Chairman of the Al-Mughayir Village Council, Marzouq Abu Naim told Palestinian media outlet, WAFA, that in addition to the dead and wounded, at least 16 Palestinian homes were burned, including 10 homes completely burned, while more than 60 Palestinian civilian vehicles were also burned.

The Deputy Chairman added that Israeli colonial settlers had also stolen at least 120 heads of sheep belonging to Palestinian citizen Imad Abu Alia after being assaulted by the settlers, who were backed by IOF soldiers during the attacks.

Settlers also burned 15 sheep pens, in addition to slaughtering 31 sheep belonging to citizen Saleh Suleiman Nasr.

Terrorist attacks by Zionist colonial settlers were also recorded in several towns and villages south of Nablus, including the towns of Duma, Burin, Qaryut, Qasr, and Beit Furik, while to the north and east of Ramallah, settlers attacked the towns of Al-Mughayir, Beitin, Deir Jarir, Silwad, Ein Sinya, Abu Falah, Burqa, Atara, and Al-Mazraa Al-Gharbiyya.

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, 464 Palestinian civilians have been killed, while at least 4'800 others have been wounded in the occupied West Bank since the start of Israeli aggression beginning on October 7th, 2023.

In the meantime in the Gaza Strip, a new war crime was recorded, committed by the Israeli occupation army, when Zionist forces opened fire on displaced Palestinian civilians trying to return to Gaza City, leading to the death of at least one woman, while dozens of others were wounded in the attack.

According to local sources, occupation forces stationed near Al-Rashid Street fired artillery shells, live bullets and toxic tear gas towards hundreds of displaced civilians as they made their way towards Gaza City, attempting to return to their destroyed homes in the northern Gaza Strip via the Wadi Gaza Bridge. Only a small number of the civilians succeeded in crossing into the north of Gaza.

According to some sources, social media had reported that the occupation army was allowing small numbers of civilians to cross into the north. However, the information turned out to be false and the IOF soldiers immediately opened fire on anyone that moved near the crossing.

At the same time, IOF warplanes renewed their bombing in the northern Gaza Strip, targeting at least three civilian residences in the city of Beit Hanoun, and wounding at least 8 Palestinian civilians.

Similarly, local civil defense crews recovered the bodies of several Palestinians killed following an Israeli occupation airstrike targeting a residential home belonging to the Abu Ghula family in the New Camp area of the Nuseirat Refugee Camp, in the central Gaza Strip.

As though the horrors inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza by the Zionist forces weren't enough, at least one child was killed and three others wounded after humanitarian aid that had been air dropped into the Gaza Strip failed to open their parachutes, tumbling violently to the ground where it hit a child and injured several others.

Local paramedic crews confirmed the death of a child by the name of Zain Mahmoud Arouq, whom they said died as a result of humanitarian aid falling on him in northern Gaza.

Similarly, it was also reported that three Palestinian children were wounded while attempting to reach humanitarian aid that had fallen into the sea, west of Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip.

In one of the latest atrocities, the Zionist occupation army bombed several civilian residences in the Nuseirat and Al-Maghazi refugee camps, as well as the town of al-Zahra'a, in the central Gaza Strip, resulting in the martyredom of at least 10 Palestinian civilians, and wounding no less than 20 others, most of whom were transported to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in nearby Deir al-Balah.

"Israel's" criminal behavior continued when Zionist gunboats fired several artillery shells into residential homes west of the cities of Deir al-Balah and Khan Yunis, destroying the targeted buildings, as well as local civilian infrastructure.

At the same time, Israeli artillery detatchments fired several shells towards residential homes in the towns of Bani Suheila, Abasan and the Al-Zanna neighborhood of Khan Yunis, wounding a number of civilians who were transferred to the Gaza European Hospital near Khan Yunis.

IOF fighter jets also bombarded four residential homes in areas of the Al-Zaytoun, Tal al-Hawa, and Sheikh Ajlin neighborhoods of Gaza City, in the northern Gaza Strip, resulting in various injuries to several civilians.

As a result of "Israel's" ongoing special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, the death toll among the Palestinian population in Gaza has risen in excess of 33'729 Palestinians martyred, including upwards of 14'500 children and 9'500 women, while an additional 76'371 others have been wounded since the start of the current round of Zionist aggression beginning with the events of October 7th, 2023.

April 14th, 2024.

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@WorkerSolidarityNews

#israeli occupation forces #israeli occupation #palestine #palestine news #palestinians #free palestine #gaza #genocide in gaza #israeli genocide #war crimes #crimes against humanity #gaza news #arab israeli conflict #israel palestine conflict #war #israel #iran #iran news #middle east #regional war #israeli military #genocide #politics #news #geopolitics #world news #global news #international news #breaking news #current events

[litaniriver]

🚜| استكمال أعمال التنظيفات والرعاية بالحدائق المحيطة لمركز المصلحة في خربة قنفار من قبل فريق عمل التجهيز الريفي

#المصلحة الوطنية لنهر الليطاني #nature #litani #litani river #photography #الليطاني #lebanon #لبنان #نهر الليطاني

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Ben Cohen

As Morris explains it, the dilemma for Israel revolves around how to withdraw from the West Bank without turning it into a Hamas stronghold. Israel has been able to weather two decades of rocket and missile attacks from Gaza, but similar salvos from Ramallah, which is just a short drive from Tel Aviv, would amount to an “existential threat,” Morris said. “In the West Bank, there is no way of assuring the benign nature of a Palestinian state,” he said. “They want all of Palestine. That’s the essence of the problem.” Additionally, Morris has little faith in international guarantees, citing Hezbollah’s refusal to move its armed forces north of Lebanon’s Litani River, as part of a broader disarmament process envisioned by UN Security Council Resolution 1701 of Aug. 2006, as an example of the difficulty of implementing compromises that are not enforced.

“The sense among Israelis is that, along with the rapes of Oct. 7, Israel itself was raped,” Morris said. “The world didn’t seem to care about that, and there was an instant rise in antisemitic abuse and anti-Israel rhetoric even before the military response.” The political context is also changing, he observed. “The further away the western world gets from the Holocaust, particularly the younger generations, the less they know and care about World War II,” he said. At the same time, “Islam contains a large antisemitic element” that stems from the bombastic accounts in the Qur’an of the battles in the seventh century between the Jewish tribes of Hijaz and the prophet Muhammad and his followers. “There’s this inherent anti-Jewish element that’s been reinforced by Israel’s existence in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries,” Morris said. “Israel is an innovation in that sense  — a Jewish state projecting power at the Muslims. That was not the situation for 1400 years since the rise of Islam.”

Israel’s future moves in this environment will be largely determined by its government. Morris does not believe that elections, which are not due for another three years, will be called early, blaming that on the “combination of crooks and cowards supporting Netanyahu.”

#benny morris #israel #hamas #gaza #donald trump #joe biden #two state solution #united nations

[patronsaintofelsewhere]

'snow & dirty rain' by richard siken is so aziracrow-coded (the good omens brain-rot is so strong and so crippling)

Close your eyes. A lover is standing too close to focus on. Leave me blurry and fall toward me with your entire body. Lie under the covers, pretending to sleep, while I'm in the other room. Imagine my legs crossed, my hair combed, the shine of my boots in the slatted light. I'm thinking My plant, his chair, the ashtray that we bought together. I'm thinking This is where we live. When we were little we made houses out of cardboard boxes. We can do anything. It's not because our hearts are large, they're not, it's what we struggle with. The attempt to say Come over. Bring your friends. It's a potluck, I'm making pork chops, I'm making those long noodles you love so much. My dragonfly, my black-eyed fire, the knives in the kitchen are singing for blood, but we are the crossroads, my little outlaw, and this is the map of my heart, the landscape after cruelty which is, of course, a garden, which is a tenderness, which is a room, a lover saying Hold me tight, it's getting cold. 

We have not touched the stars, nor are we forgiven, which brings us back to the hero's shoulders and the gentleness that comes, not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it. The lawn drowned, the sky on fire, the gold light falling backward through the glass of every room. I'll give you my heart to make a place for it to happen, evidence of a love that transcends hunger. Is that too much to expect? That I would name the stars for you? That I would take you there? The splash of my tongue melting you like a sugar cube? We've read the back of the book, we know what's going to happen. The fields burned, the land destroyed, the lovers left broken in the brown dirt. And then it's gone.

Makes you sad. All your friends are gone. Goodbye Goodbye. No more tears. I would like to meet you all in Heaven. But there's a litany of dreams that happens somewhere in the middle. Moonlight spilling on the bathroom floor. A page of the book where we transcend the story of our lives, past the taco stands and record stores. Moonlight making crosses on your body, and me putting my mouth on every one. We have been very brave, we have wanted to know the worst, wanted the curtain to be lifted from our eyes. This dream going on with all of us in it. Penciling in the bighearted slob. Penciling in his outstretched arms. Our father who art in Heaven. Our father who art buried in the yard. Someone is digging your grave right now. Someone is drawing a bath to wash you clean, he said, so think of the wind, so happy, so warm. It's a fairy tale, the story underneath the story, sliding down the polished halls, lightning here and gone. We make these ridiculous idols so we can pray to what's behind them, but what happens after we get up the ladder? Do we simply stare at what's horrible and forgive it?

Here is the river, and here is the box, and here are the monsters we put in the box to test our strength against. Here is the cake, and here is the fork, and here's the desire to put it inside us, and then the question behind every question: What happens next? The way you slam your body into mine reminds me I'm alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling, and they're only a few steps behind you, finding the flaw, the poor weld, the place where we weren't stitched up quite right, the place they could almost slip right through if the skin wasn't trying to keep them out, to keep them here, on the other side of the theater where the curtain keeps rising. I crawled out the window and ran into the woods. I had to make up all the words myself. The way they taste, the way they sound in the air.

I passed through the narrow gate, stumbled in, stumbled around for a while, and stumbled back out. I made this place for you. A place for you to love me. If this isn't a kingdom then I don't know what is. So how would you catalog it? Dawn in the fields? Snow and dirty rain? Light brought in in buckets? I was trying to describe the kingdom, but the letters kept smudging as I wrote them: the hunter's heart, the hunter's mouth, the trees and the trees and the space between the trees, swimming in gold. The words frozen. The creatures frozen. The plum sauce leaking out of the bag. Explaining will get us nowhere. I was away, I don't know where, lying on the floor, pretending I was dead. I wanted to hurt you but the victory is that I could not stomach it. We have swallowed him up, they said. It's beautiful. It really is. I had a dream about you. We were in the gold room where everyone finally gets what they want. You said Tell me about your books, your visions made of flesh and light and I said This is the Moon. This is the Sun. Let me name the stars for you. Let me take you there. The splash of my tongue melting you like a sugar cube... 

We were in the gold room where everyone finally gets what they want, so I said What do you want, sweetheart? and you said Kiss me. Here I am leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack, my silent night, just mash your lips against me. We are all going forward. None of us are going back.

#good omens #aziraphale x crowley #ineffable husbands #aziracrow #richard siken #ineffable idiots

[rayan12sworld]

🧡Every River, Every Stream

By:athena_crikey

Summary:

Wei Ying scrolls out of the long list of dating and marriage-facilitation apps, and into the news. The top-trending Weibo item in his region is the one Jiang Yanli mentioned. Last chance for love! Lan Zhan seeks perfect match. There’s a picture beside it, tiny on Wei Ying’s screen, of a man in white with dark hair combed in an elegantly-feathered pattern standing at a microphone, singing.

He begins to thumb past it, until the first few lines of text show up: Cerulean blue, snow white – match these colours to save a man’s life!

Or: Wei Ying, rookie architect and chronically unable to prioritize his love life, in a moment of madness turns out to be tested for compatibility with famous new entertainer Lan Zhan, struggling with the after-effects of chemo. Unexpectedly matched with a man on a very different career trajectory, he's presented with a litany of unappealing choices. Oh, and also love.

Chapter:11/11

Words;54,668

Status:completed

#wangxian #wangxian recommendations #mdzs #mxtx mdzs #wangxian fanfic #ao3 recs #the untamed #mdzs fanfic rec #lwj x wwx #wangxian fic rec #wangxian f #Every River Every Stream

[mariacallous]

From Israel’s founding to the present, no concept has so thoroughly dominated the country’s strategic imagination as much as deterrence. Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon once said deterrence was the country’s “main weapon—the fear of us.” “Israel,” remarked the fabled Israeli general Moshe Dayan, “must be seen as a mad dog; too dangerous to bother.”

That’s why, after the attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, an unprecedented existential urgency was placed on reestablishing the country’s deterrence, which had been steadily waning since Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000. “What happened today has never before been seen in Israel,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israelis after the Oct. 7 attack. The military, he vowed, would attack Hamas with a force “like never before.” Since the Oct. 7 attack was unprecedented, it then followed that Israel’s response, too, had to be at least equally so, a paroxysm of violence unparalleled in both scope and intensity.

But on these basic terms, the war has been a failure. Israel’s unprecedented displays of military might in Gaza—and the associated efforts elsewhere in the region—have failed to restore Israeli deterrence.

The most basic reason for this failure is that a major military victory, such as decisively crippling Hamas, is still not in sight. Instead, the ground offensives of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have drawn international condemnation, and the IDF’s alarmingly high casualty rates have exacerbated earlier concerns about the vulnerability of Israel’s land forces. None of this has communicated a message of strength to Israel’s foes—especially not to Hezbollah.

Ever since the Israeli onslaught on Gaza began in October 2023, Hezbollah and Israel have been involved in a measured escalation of tit-for-tat exchanges of fire along the Israeli-Lebanese border. Despite Hezbollah’s battlefield losses, with at least 240 fighters killed, the organization has managed to portray itself as standing in solidarity with the Palestinians while keeping tensions below a certain threshold. Furthermore, without entering into a full-scale war, the organization has so far tied a sizable portion of the IDF ground forces down along Israel’s northern front. Moreover, instead of withdrawing north of the Litani River, just as U.N. Resolution 1701 calls for, Hezbollah has pushed more than 80,000 Israeli civilians farther south, away from the border. In other words, Hezbollah has imposed its own terms of engagement by creating a buffer zone inside Israel, essentially forcing Israel to do internally what Resolution 1701 could not make Hezbollah do: relocate away from southern Lebanon.

This constitutes a grave affront to Israeli deterrence, even prompting IDF Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen to describe the IDF’s conduct in the north as “embarrassing.” “Hezbollah managed to make a move here, with limited fighting, that embarrasses the state of Israel,” Hacohen said, while adding that Hezbollah “conditions everything that will happen in the future by ending the war in the Gaza Strip. In fact, Hezbollah is the ones who are currently deciding whether they will stop.”

With neither Gaza nor Lebanon offering a realistic path to redemption, Netanyahu appears to have sought to escalate pressure on Iranian military assets in Syria, most likely in an effort to stem the flow of Iranian military aid to Hezbollah, project Israeli power, and possibly provoke an Iranian response that could draw the United States into a broader regional conflict. But Israel’s bombing of Iran’s embassy complex in Damascus and the killing of high-level officers appear to have unwittingly exposed not only the limits of Iranian patience, but also the limits of Israel’s operational latitude, military capacity, and impunity, factors that are likely to have serious ramifications for Israel’s long-term threat perception.

Iran promised retaliation almost immediately after Israel’s airstrike on the Iranian complex. It finally made good on its promise about 12 days later with a barrage of at least 300 drones, ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles fired at Israel from inside Iranian territory. Iran’s deliberate pace kept Israel on edge before the ultimate retaliation. It also gave Israel and its allies time to prepare defenses. As noted by Israeli defense analyst Tal Inbar, despite spending billions on underground missile cities, the Iranians chose to launch their largest ballistic missile attack with above-ground missiles, making them detectable to various intelligence-gathering platforms.

The scope, pace, timing, and official communication of the Iranian attack suggest that it was designed to be a largely theatrical show of force to inspire fear while minimizing the risk of casualties. Significantly, several Iranian projectiles penetrated Israeli airspace, reaching the country’s southernmost regions, including an Israeli air base. Despite official Israeli claims that 99 percent of Iran’s projectiles were intercepted, this was achieved with significant assistance from the French, Jordanian, American, and British militaries.

In stark contrast, Israel’s response to Iran’s retaliation now appears extremely underwhelming, both in terms of substance and theatrics. Unlike Iran, which communicated its intentions through various channels, including the United Nations, Israel’s response to Iran’s retaliation appeared disjointed and lacking in clarity. The nature and origin of the Israeli strike remain unclear, with no definitive statement from Israeli officials or iconic images to convey its impact. There is also no conclusive evidence of the Israeli weapons used, whether they were warplanes or drones. Even Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir could not help but ridicule the half-hearted Israeli strike, calling it “lame.”

Despite having a sophisticated, multilayered air defense system costing billions to construct, maintain, and replenish, it took a Herculean effort involving Israeli, French, Jordanian, British, and American forces—along with billions of dollars of interception costs—to shoot down Iran’s barrage. This was despite advance preparation and reports that half of Iran’s missiles failed either at launch or during flight. Nevertheless, an unknown number of Iranian missiles did penetrate Israel’s thick defensive wall. Ironically, had the Netanyahu government not provoked Iran’s attack by targeting the Iranian consular complex in Damascus, and had the Biden administration not made clear to Netanyahu that the United States would not participate in an all-out war against Iran, the vulnerabilities of Israel’s defenses may very well have remained hidden. The scope and scale of Iran’s attack, coupled with the meekness of Israel’s underwhelming response, may thrust Israeli military planners into a strategic introspection that could reshape the country’s security calculus for years to come.

For decades, Israeli strategic doctrine has been dominated by a unique notion of deterrence, what Sharon referred to as the region’s “fear of us.” But with the enduring image of Iranian warheads soaring over Israeli skies now etched firmly into the region’s consciousness, that fear has become ever more difficult to preserve. Israel’s future engagements and tactical decisions will be calibrated by the humbling realization that what remained of Israel’s aura of invincibility has been profoundly shaken.

This could force Israeli leaders to intensify their efforts to rebuild deterrence in a full-scale war with Hezbollah, even though the prospects for success will be slim without robust U.S. involvement in such a war. It may also prompt Israel either to escalate military operations in Gaza, potentially triggering increased international criticism and its own isolation, or to push to develop next-generation air defense systems, such as cutting-edge laser technologies. More hopefully, it could catalyze a move toward more diplomatic avenues as a means of securing lasting peace and stability. What’s clear, however, is that Israel’s bid to reestablish its security is nowhere near over.

[matan4il]

Daily update post:

Yesterday, a suicide drone crashed in the Golan Heights. The IDF estimates that it was launched from Syria (though earlier, there was an Iranian funded militia in Iraq that claimed responsibility for firing at a target in the Golan Heights). the alarm didn't go off, and it wasn't intercepted, which is a reminder that no warning and defence system, not even the best one, is impenetrable. There was then a wave of sirens going off through Israel's north, likely because of debris from the interception, falling on different commeunities.

Today, another attack drone was intercepted over Israel's north. Over the area where my paternal grandparents lived, when they were still with us. Thankfully, there are no known injuries, but on top of that, there were no less than five more warnings of a drone crossing into Israel. If there will be no diplomatic solution for the situation in the north, meaning if the world doesn't intervene and FINALLY implement UN resolution 1701, which says that Hezbollah will not operate next to the Israeli border, or anywhere south of the Litani river, then things will get worse. One Israeli Aramean expert I was listening to, was talking about how much ammunition, and how many weapons, Hezbollah has aimed at Israel. Let's put it this way, they make Hamas look like kids.

Three more soldiers were killed in Gaza yesterday. We get news like this every single day now. Usually we get the names once or twice a day (morning and evening), depending on how many have died. You see people tense up around the time when the news is about to drop. I wanted to share with you that Israeli civilians have starting doing something so often, that it's almost like a new custom. When people learn about where a funeral will be held, they stand by the sides of the road with Israeli flags, to escrot the fallen soldier on his or her last journey, even when they didn't know the soldier at all.

I wrote a whole post about why Oct 7, despite all of the differences, and the fact that there is no comparison, bears similarities for Jewish people to the Holocaust. I was reminded of that post again today. I saw a vid with Holocaust survivor and famous Israeli actress, Lea Koenig. Knowing of her history, when I heard the start of her testimony, I was sure I was listening to her recounting her experiences during the Hoolocaust. It turns out that no, she's reading a testimony from Oct 7. The fact that some of these testimonies are indistinguishable should explain why the massacre, shocking as it is all on its own, is also deeply triggering for Jews. Here's the vid:

Australia says it will look into whether an Australian citizen who was killed in an Israeli counter strike in Lebanon yesterday, was a Hezbollah terrorist, as the organization claims. If he was, then fighting for a terrorist organization (as Hezbollah is defined in Australia) is a criminal offense under Australian law.

The IDF has destroyed a whole network of terror tunnels underneath the Rantisi hospital in Gaza. It says the length of the tunnels is several kilometers. Reminder: it's a war crime to build a terror tunnel underneath a hospital. It is NOT a war crime, to act against the terror tunnel used to attack a country's innocent civilians, even if it is built underneath a hospital.

This is 19 years old Agam Berger.

On Oct 7, she was kidnapped to Gaza. Her family identified her in a vid posted by Hamas, as she was being led away, handcuffed, and with blood stains on her pyjama pants (left side of the pic). Her father said that as released hostages talked about sexual abuse, Agam's family are terrified for her. He also wanted people to know that she was a gifted violinist, and used to volunteer with people who have special needs. So, in accordance with his wishes, here is Agam playing Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah on violin:

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

#israel #antisemitism #israeli #israel news #israel under attack #israel under fire #israelunderattack #terrorism #anti terrorism #hamas #antisemitic #antisemites #jews #jew #judaism #jumblr #frumblr #jewish #Instagram

[girlactionfigure]

SPECIAL REPORT ON NORTHERN ISRAEL - WAR OF DRUMS

⚠️ Israeli and US media are reporting that the Israeli Security Cabinet had put a “deadline” for the end of January for the diplomatic efforts to make Hizbullah move north to the Litani river, if this will not be achieved till the end of January - Israel will begin a military operation against Hizbullah in southern Lebanon.

⚠️ Kann News quotes a Lebanese newspaper “Al-Jumhoriya” saying that an “ambassador of a major European country” conveyed a message to Lebanese officials that "a war is fast approaching Lebanon" and there is a growing fear that the situation will “go out of control”, as he put it. 

It was also reported that the American and French efforts prevented the expansion of the war as of now after pressuring Israel into giving diplomatic efforts a chance, but even this measure is reaching its end.

⚠️ Kann News reports that in an overnight telephone call with US Defense Secretary Austin, DM Galant had reiterated “Israel’s commitment to return the evacuated communities along the Lebanon border” and that “crucial decision point on the matter” is “approaching” DM Galant emphasized that Israel prefers to do this in a diplomatic manner, but at the same time is “prepared to do so through military force as well”

⚠️ DM Galant held another situational assessment yesterday on the Lebanon border with the troops stationed there:

"I estimate that as long as fighting continues in the south, there will be fighting in the north. But we will not accept this situation for an extended period of time. There will come a moment when, if we do not reach a diplomatic agreement in which Hezbollah respects the right of the residents to live here in security - we will have to bring security by force. I don't wish for war, I don't want to take it as a first choice, so we are trying to exhaust the diplomatic option. But if we have to use force in order to return our people to their homes - we will use force. This army is ready to protect the citizens of the country”

DM Galant also added :”If and when we’ll do it, we have to act properly. Like a knife, with great power, with high coordination. And I very much trust the fighters, the regulars, the reservists, the commanders, the brigadier general, the division commander - I hope we don't get to that, but I estimate that we’re approaching a military option.”

⚠️ Hizbullah deputy leader Naeem Qassem :”We do not care nor fear about the threats of the Israeli enemy. If and when it will expand its aggression it will receive a resounding and forceful response that will have a beginning but could have no ending”

The Hizbullah terrorist Ali Damush (deputy head of Hezbollah's executive council) said that “it is true that the "resistance" does not want to be dragged into war” but if it is “forced into one” it will not fear it and is “already fully prepared to confront it with all its strength and courage”

⚠️ Levi also heavily criticized both local and national governments, lack of preparedness to a war: ”We were presented with assessments of a 7 day blackout. No phone services, no electricity, no water, possibly no working sirens. No ones relaying this to the public” He urged Israelis to “purchase small generators, fuel, non perishable foods, batteries” 

⚠️ Minister Eli Cohen: "Establishing a Palestinian state is a reward for terrorism and a danger to the State of Israel. It will encourage the murder of Jews."

#Israel #October 7 #Hamas Massacre #Iron Sword #Realtime Updates