#ruddy rose witch

[yugiohcardsdaily]

Ruddy Rose Witch

“You can Tribute this card; add 1 ‘Witch of the Black Rose’ from your Deck to your hand, and if you do, take 1 Level 3 or lower PLant monster from your Deck and place it on top of your Deck, then immediately after this effect resolves, you can Normal Summon 1 ‘Witch of the Black Rose’ from your hand. You can banish this card from your GY; return 1 of your ‘Black Rose Dragon’ or ‘Ruddy Rose Dragon’ that is banished or in your GY to the Extra Deck. You can only use each effect of ‘Ruddy Rose Witch’ once per turn.”

#ruddy rose witch #yugioh #yu-gi-oh #yu-gi-oh cards #duel monsters

[greenwitchcrafts]

May 2024 witch guide

Full moon: May 23rd

New moon: May 7th

Sabbats: Beltane-May1st

May Flower Moon

Known as: Bright Moon, Budding Moon, Dyad Moon, Egg Laying Moon, Frog Moon, Hare Moon, Leaf Budding Moon, Merry Moon, Moon of the Shedding Ponies, Planting Moon, Sproutkale, Thrimilcmonath & Winnemanoth

Element: Fire

Zodiac: Taurus & Gemini

Nature spirits: Elves & Faeries

Deities: Aphrodite, Artemis, Bast, Cernunnos, Diana, Frigga, Flora, Horned God, Kali, Maia, Pan, Priapus & Venus

Animals: Cat, leopard & lynx

Birds: Dove, Swallow & Swan

Trees: Hawthorne & rowan

Herbs: Cinnamon, dittany of Crete, Elder, mint, mugwort & thyme

Flowers: Foxglove, lily of the valley & rose

Scents: Rose & sandalwood

Stones: Amber, Apache tear, carnelian, emerald, garnet, malachite, rose quartz, ruby, tourmaline & tsavorite

Colors: Brown, green, orange, pink & yellow

Energy:  Abundance, creative energy, faerie & spirit contact, fertility, intuition, love, marriage, material gains, money, propagation, prosperity, real-estate dealings, relationships & tenacity

May’s Flower Moon name should be no surprise; flowers spring forth across North America in abundance this month!

• “Flower Moon” has been attributed to Algonquin peoples, as confirmed by Christina Ruddy of The Algonquin Way Cultural Centre in Pikwakanagan, Ontario.

May’s Moon was also referred to as the “Month of Flowers” by Jonathan Carver in his 1798 publication, Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America: 1766, 1767, 1768 (pp. 250-252), as a likely Dakota name. Carver stayed with the Naudowessie (Dakota) over a period of time; his expedition covered the Great Lakes region, including the Wisconsin and Minnesota areas.

Beltane

Known as: Beltaine, May day, Roodmas & Cethsamhain

Season: Spring

Symbols: Eggs, faeries, fire, flowers & maypoles

Colors: Blue, dark yellow, green, light pink, orange, red, white yellow & rainbow spectrum

Oils/Incense: Frankincense, lilac, passion flower, rose, tuberose & vanilla

Animals: Bee, cattle, goat & rabbit

Mythical: Faeries

Stones: Bloodstone, emerald, lapis lazuli, orange carnelian, rose quartz & sapphire

Food: Beltane cakes, cherries, dairy foods, farls, green herbal salads, honey, meade, nuts, oat cakes, oats, strawberries & sweets

Herbs/Plants: Almond, ash tree, birch, bramble, cinquefoil, damiana, frankincense, hawthorn, ivy, meadowsweet, mushroom, rosemary, saffron, satyrion root, St.John's wort & woodruff

Flowers: Angelica, bluebell, daisy, hibiscus, honeysuckle, lilac, marigold, primrose, rose, rose hips & yellow cowslips

Trees: Ash, cedar, elder, fir, hawthorn, juniper, linden, mesquite, oak, pine, poplar, rowan & willow

Goddesses: Aphrodite, Areil, Artemis, Cybele, Danu, Diana, Dôn, Eiru, Elen, Eostre, Fand, Flidais, Flora, Freya, Frigga, Maia, Niwalen, Rhea, Rhiannon, Var, Venus & Xochiquetzal

Gods: Baal, Bacchnalia, Balder, Belanos, Belenus, Beli, Beltene, Cernunnos, Cupid, Faunus, Freyr, Grannus, The Green Man, Lares, Lugh, Manawyddan, Odin, Pan, Puck & Taranis

Issues, Intentions & Powers: Agriculture, creativity, fertility, lust, marriage, the otherworld/Underworld, pleasure, psychic ability, purification, sensuality, sex/uality, visions, warmth & youth

Spellwork: Birth, Earth magick, healing, health & pregnancy

Activities:

• Create a daisy chain or floral decorations

• Decorate & dance around a Maypole

• Set up an outdoor altar & leave offerings to faeries

• Prepare a ritual bath with fresh flowers

• Light a bonfire or candles & dance around them

• Set aside time for self care

• Gather flowers & use them to decorate your home or altar

• Prepare a feast to celebrate with friends/family

• Make flower crowns

• Bake bannocks, oat cakes or cookies

• Hang wreaths decorated with ribbons & flowers

• Plant flowers in your garden

• Start a wish book/box/journal

• Go on a walk & gice thanks to nature⁸

• Cast fertility or a bunch spells

• Fill small baskets of flowers & small goodies, then leave them on your friends/neighbors doorstep as a gesture of goodwill & friendship

Beltane is mentioned in the earliest Irish literature and is associated with important events in Irish mythology. Also known as Cétshamhain ('first of summer'), it marked the beginning of summer & was when cattle were driven out to the summer pastures. Rituals were performed to protect cattle, people & crops, and to encourage growth. (Today, Witches who observe the Wheel of the Year celebrate Beltane as the height of Spring.)

Special bonfires were kindled, whose flames, smoke & ashes were deemed to have protective powers. The people and their cattle would walk around or between bonfires & sometimes leap over the flames or embers. All household fires would be doused & then re-lit from the Beltane bonfire.

These gatherings would be accompanied by a feast, and some of the food and drink would be offered to the aos sí. Doors, windows, byres and livestock would be decorated with yellow May flowers, perhaps because they evoked fire.

In parts of Ireland, people would make a May Bush: typically a thorn bush or branch decorated with flowers, ribbons, bright shells & rushlights. Holy wells were also visited, while Beltane dew was thought to bring beauty & maintain youthfulness.

• The aos sí (often referred to as spirits or fairies) were thought to be especially active at Beltane. Like Samhain, which lies directly opposite from Beltane on the Wheel of the Year, this was seen as a time when the veil between worlds was at its thinnest. At Samhain the veil between the worlds of the living & the dead is thin enough that we can connect & convene with our beloved dead, here at Beltane it’s the veil between the human world, and the world of faeries & nature spirits that has grown thin. Offerings would be left at the ancient faerie forts, the wells and in other sacred places in an effort to appease these nature spirits to ensure a successful growing season.

Some believe this is when The Goddess is now the Mother & the God is seen as the Green Man or the wild stag. It celebrates the symbolic union, mating or marriage of the Goddess & God & heralds in the coming summer months. It represents life rather than Samhain on the opposite side of the Wheel of the Year.

Other Celebrations:

• Rosealia- May 23rd

Rosalia or Rosaria was a festival of roses celebrated on various dates, primarily in May, but scattered through mid-July. The observance is sometimes called a rosatio ("rose-adornment") or the dies rosationis, "day of rose-adornment," & could be celebrated also with violets. As a commemoration of the dead, the rosatio developed from the custom of placing flowers at burial sites. It was among the extensive private religious practices by means of which the Romans cared for their dead, reflecting the value placed on tradition (mos maiorum, "the way of the ancestors"), family lineage & memorials ranging from simple inscriptions to grand public works. Several dates on the Roman calendar were set aside as public holidays or memorial days devoted to the dead.

Roses had funerary significance in Greece, but were particularly associated with death & entombment among the Romans. In Greece, roses appear on funerary steles  & in epitaphs most often of girls. Flowers were traditional symbols of rejuvenation, rebirth &memory, with the red & purple of roses & violets felt to evoke the color of blood as a form of propitiation

Sources:

Farmersalmanac .com

Llewellyn's Complete Book of Correspondences by Sandra Kines

Wikipedia

A Witch's Book of Correspondences by Viktorija Briggs

Encyclopedia britannica

Llewellyn 2024 magical almanac Practical magic for everyday living

#witch guide #may 2024 #flower moon #sabbat #wheel of the year #beltane #beltaine #witchblr #wiccablr #paganblr #witch community #witchcore #witchcraft #witches of tumblr #tumblr witch community #tumblr witches #moon magic #spellbook #grimoire #book of shadows #witch #traditional witchcraft #spellwork #beginner witch #baby witch #witch tips #witch tumblr #baby witch tips #GreenWitchcrafts #witch friends

[kitchenisking]

Fic Rec🥰

I Know You by sparkandwolf (thatnerdemryn) - (Rating: G, Words: 1733, sterek)

“I thought I’d find you here,” Derek said, placing a gentle kiss on Stiles’ temple. He could barely feel Derek’s lips through the thick hair he had let grow during his senior year. He was never expecting to rid himself of his signature buzz cut, but it wasn’t exactly a priority when battling the danger they so often faced. 

“Am I that obvious?” Stiles asked. 

“To me,” Derek said simply, squeezing Stiles’ shoulder.

Flowerwolf & Beacon Roots by alisvolatpropiis - (Rating: Explicit, Words: 5299, sterek)

Derek tries not to show his surprise, curiously hopeful, but still suspicious of Laura’s involvement. “Oh. How do you know my coffee order then?”

He grins. “The cute baristo knows your order, dude. All I had to do was ask for Grumpy Flower Guy’s usual.”

Derek huffs. “I’m not grumpy.”

“He says grumpily,” Stiles smirks, winking.

The sound of his own laughter surprises Derek, so yeah, okay, maybe Stiles has a point.

“Laura said that you weren’t really into dating,” Stiles goes on, “but that uh, you uh, well you know.” Stiles’ cheeks flush a very pretty ruddy pink under the scatter of beauty marks that Derek aches to taste. Stiles turns away, towards the cooler of roses, muttering to himself under his breath, which of course Derek can hear perfectly well. “Great freakin’ advice, Lydia, ‘just bring up sex and tell him you’re cool with having a one night stand,’ okay, sure, that worked fucking beautifully.”

“Okay.” The word is out of his mouth before Derek can even think about the consequences of saying it, something unusual for him. He wants Stiles however he can get him, it seems.

“Okay?” Stiles eyes are wide when he spins back to look at him.

“Yeah, okay. Let’s have sex.”

How long have I been on the hunt for you? byLunaCanisLupus_22 - (Rating: Explicit, Words: 20379, sterek)

“Well I guess accidental kidnapping is not so bad then,” Scott decided brightly after the others had finished describing their ordeals. “All’s well that ends well, right?”

“HAHA,” Stiles practically shouted, loud and unsettling enough that everyone turned to look at him. “I mean, yep. For. Sure.”

Or the one when Scott gets kidnapped by a witch who blasts Stiles and Derek with a sex spell to keep them distracted (and it's extremely effective).

Poetry in the Raw by Jmeelee  - (Rating: Explicit, Words: 5509, sterek)

Derek answers his phone on the second ring.  “What.” No inflection whatsoever.  

“Does the ‘S’ in your middle name stand for Sexy?”

Silence.  Then, “Stiles.”  Still no inflection.  

“I doubt it stands for Stiles, dude.  There can only be one,” he answers in a kick-ass impersonation of The Kurgan.  “But tell me it isn’t, like, Sawyer or Skylar or something equally new-age and white-boy contemporary.”

“How did you get my number?”

OR: 5 times Stiles guesses Derek's middle name +1 time he knows.

Undercover Powercouple by fantasybean - (Rating: Explicit, Words: 42212, sterek)

Stiles and Derek both have their own thriving Youtube vlogging careers, but they keep them seperate. Little do their fans know, the two have been living together, sleeping together, and dating each other in secret! But how long till they get exposed?

Five Times Stiles Woke Up In Derek’s Bed Unexpectedly, And the One Time It Was On Purpose by isthatbloodonhisshirt (wasterella) -( Rating: T, Words: 20933, sterek)

Rule one of kidnapping Stiles Stilinski: he is required to be entertained. 

Not that he got kidnapped a lot! 

Or... not like, all the time, at any rate. His being kidnapped seemed to have increased lately, but he attributed that to being distracted more often than usual because of school. Sure, he’d had high school to contend with back in the day, but high school was less demanding than university. He always watched movies where people were out partying it up or solving crime or having huge campus-wide mass murders or whatever and all Stiles wanted to know was where they found the time. 

To be fair, most of them didn’t have the Supernatural breathing down their neck, or a pack constantly coming to them for advice. Like he was the poster child of good decisions, who was dumb enough to believe that? His best friend was a Werewolf because of all his so-called ‘good decisions.’

Step into the daylight (and let it go) by dearericbittle (dutchmoxie) - (Rating: Mature, Words: 14418, sterek)

Stiles is a grad student with serious insomnia. So when he sees a stranger in need of help, he thinks it’ll be a good way to alleviate the boredom. How the hell was he supposed to know that the weird guy with the baseball cap was a famous actor (and a fucking werewolf)? He just keeps running into the guy. Coincidence? Stiles thinks not.

I Used to Call You My Own by whentheywrite - (Rating: T, Words: 2571, sterek)

“Hi, yes, this is Stiles Stilinski, but I’m not at the phone right now! Please leave a message or call back later and I’ll debate not letting the phone ring. Social anxiety, dude, don’t judge me for it.”

Derek needed Stiles. He needed to talk to Stiles.

One last time.

What Fresh Twilight Bullshit Is This? by isthatbloodonhisshirt (wasterella) - (Rating: Explicit, Words: 196137, sterek)

“I am not Bella!” he insisted, shaking his fist angrily at Jackson, as if he’d been the one to suggest he was. “I am not Bella! I am, like, a Jacob, at least!” 

Lydia made a noise of debate from his right and he whipped around to look at her. 

“What?! What was that sound?!” 

“You’re more of a Mike,” she insisted, shrugging neatly and flipping some curls over her shoulder. 

“Wha—” Stiles had never been so offended in his life! “I am not! No way! I am a solid Jacob!” 

“Mike,” she argued. 

“Who’s Mike?” Scott asked.

“Shut up, Scott!” Stiles insisted, pointing a finger at him but still glaring at Lydia.

The Kenny Situation by Whispering_Sumire - (Rating: Explicit, Words: 10014, sterek)

He hears the grate of Erica sliding the window open, hears her call after the homeless man, muttering far off now, "Hey! You killed Stiles!"

She sounds vaguely annoyed more than anything.

Derek wants to howl with the agony he's in.

"You bastard!" Isaac chimes from somewhere deeper in the Loft.

Derek feels sick.

He rocks the body in his arms, holds the hand in his over the wound, shakes with sobs he doesn't let free, and wonders how this was the thing who got the boy who runs with wolves? How was it just another meaningless act of violence? How is that fair?

Why doesn't anyone seem to care?

[Or: The one where Stiles gets cursed by witches, keeps dying and coming back to life, and the only one even vaguely cognizant of this is Derek.]

#stiles x derek #sterek #derek hale #stiles stilinski #fanfiction #ficrec #fanfic #kitcheniskingficrecs

[archive-of-artprompts]

🐝Send in a number + Character and I'll draw them in an outfit or as a creature based on that insect🦋

Allotopus Beetle

Apollo Butterfly

Assassin Bug

Atlas Moth

Bald-Faced Hornet

Banded Darter

Banded Demoiselle

Beautiful Demoiselle

Bhutan Glory Swallowtail

Black Swallowtail Butterfly

Bullet Ant

Bumblebee

Butterfly Dragonfly

Cabbage Butterfly

Cattlehearts Swallowtail

Common Batwing

Common Bluebottle Butterfly

Common Brimstone

Common Rose Swallowtail

Conehead Mantis

Cream-Spot Tiger Moth

Creobroter

Cuckoo Wasp

Death's-Head Hawkmoth

Devil's Flower Mantis

Differential Grasshopper

Drain Fly

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

Eighteen-Spotted Ladybird

Elephant Hawkmoth

Elephant Mosquito

Emerald Bee

Emperor Dragonfly

European Hornet

European Mantis

Eyed Ladybug

Fire Ant

Five-Spotted Hawkmoth

Fork-Horned Stag Beetle

Fourteen-Spotted Ladybird

Ghost Mantis

Giant Leopard Moth

Giant Long-Legged Katydid

Giant Malaysian Leaf Insect

Glasswing Butterfly

Goliath Beetle

Golden-Ringed Dragonfly

Great Black Wasp

Green Grasshopper

Green June Beetle

Green Snaketail

Green Stag Beetle

Halyzia Sedecimguttata (aka orange ladybird)

Hercules Beetle

Honey Bee

Housefly

Hummingbird Clearwing

Hummingbird Hawkmoth

Impatiens Hawkmoth

Jerusalem Cricket

Jewel Beetle

Lime Hawkmoth

Long-Legged Fly

Luna Moth

Monarch Butterfly

Mosaic Darner

Mud Dauber

Oleander Hawkmoth

Orchid Mantis

Painted Lady Butterfly

Paper Wasp

Peacock Butterfly

Pharaoh Ant

Picasso Bug

Pipevine Swallowtail

Poplar Hawkmoth

Queen Alexandra's Birdwing

Question Mark Butterfly

Red Admiral

Rosy Maple Moth

Ruddy Darter

Scorpion Fly

Silverfish

Small Tortoiseshell

Snakefly

Southern Hawker

Southern Flannel Moth

Spicebush Swallowtail

Spiny Leaf Insect

Sunset Moth

Tailed Jay Butterfly

Tarantula Hawk

Thorn Bug

Tiger Mosquito

Twentytwo-Spot Ladybird

Ulysses Butterfly

White-Lined Sphinx

White Witch Moth

Yellow Jacket

Zebra Swallowtail

#drawing prompt #art prompt #oc prompt #creature prompt #monster prompt #clothing prompt #bug #art challenge #insect

[mushabumi]

"Wreathed in Wrath"

A cryptid origin story. TW violence. 869 words.

She became accustomed to the whispers as she walked. The stilted looks. Downcast eyes. As if she would pour venom into their skulls with the barest grazing of her gaze. It didn’t matter that she felt the rage in her belly gnaw at her throat; behind her eyes. She’d become a master at sheathing her temper behind a tepid smile.

‘Be seen, not heard. Smile and obey. Pray and obey,’ they preached in schools and church. ‘This is how it is. It is how they are,’ they said after wanton touches, or words that cleaved. After the leering of men, or snickering of the women. The town seethed with cruelty. Of cats batting at mice until the shrank from sight. The meek would never inherit anything but tears on this earth. She was tired of staying quiet.

Then it started.

 She broke things with a glance. Menial as the sins committed in the day. Broken baskets of bullies in the market. Cracked jugs of ale in taverns. As she grew, so did their sins, she noticed. Soon, she became vicious. Snapping fingers that reached. Splintered nails that groped. Peeling threads of skin with each errant look toward her. Finally, they stopped, resorting to whispers and bated breath as she approached. Lack of proof kept the pitchforks and holy men at bay, she knew.

It was only a matter of time before the crusade was at her door. Still, she was not afraid. For a fire thirsted within her and burned in her eyes. ‘Demon,’ they whispered in the church. ‘Witch,’ the spat. Not long after, she abandoned the town, and rightly so. For she never heard any voice of divinity during her prayers. Saw no righteous flaming bush.

She walked in the dead of night with no witness but the moon. Kissed by stars and held by vines, she still heard no Lord above. What she knew were the needles of pine as she knelt; softer than any cushion between a pew. What she heard were the trickling of brooks, whispering wings, and padding of paws. Their inherent divinity equaled any choir. She was more creature than lady there in the dark. She knew the moss beneath her toes as her own skin. The bark beneath her fingers was an old friend. Ancient boughs leaned in as she passed. Beckoning. Tempting. She listened.

Her visits into town became sparse. Villagers noted the changes before she did. The hinting of gnarled knuckles. The clinging moss. Pallid and gaunt, her face a dauntless mask. Her movements further and further away from humanity with each passing month. She noticed her eyes. The slit of her pupil. The way they shone in the dark. A bridled flame promising violence.

She no longer remembered the girl she was. Her body was a stranger. The forest a dear friend. One she never wanted to leave. In time, she didn’t. She prowled along the beasts of claws and wings. Swam and bathed as she pleased. Plants sprouted as she neared. Moss sprouted in every footstep. She didn’t question the beginnings of bark creeping along her limbs. Skin turned stone. Bone in place of flesh. Antlers crowning her forest reign. She presided. Soon she felt her subjects. The steady pulse of them was veins. Their breath became her lungs. She knew them as she once did her hands; her heart.

She felt them die. Felt the stinging steel as it cleaved. More fell as she ran to the source. She knew the men holding the axes. Remembered their downcast eyes. Their ruddy faces as they grabbed. She loved the fear she saw as they beheld her. The quaking steps they took away from her.

Claws of bark wreathed in lichen rose before her. “You take what is not yours as a right. No more,” dissonant whispers declared in the decimated glen. With glee, she unfurled the simmering rage held within her. Baring her teeth, she waited for their greed to strike first. The forest was hers to protect. She shall show the wrath incurred to those seeking to harm her new kin.

A flaming arrow lit. Axes raised. As one, they approached. As one, roots flew soared through their lungs. Mangled cries erupted. Blood bubbled from their pleas or mercy. She sliced a hand through the air and they pulled the roots as puppets on a string of sundering flesh; aiming for their heart. She felt the men wither as her new kin drank. Felt their bones sate the fungi and beetles.

The villagers stopped coming into the woods after the third group of men never returned.

She mended the trees and knotted the brambles across the path leading into the forest. Wolves sentried across her borders. Soon, she became legend. The creature in stories told to children before they slept. The monster that would snatch only the naughty boys and girls. It never touched the gentle ones, they would say. ‘Stay out of the forest, or face her wrath.’

They were right to be afraid.

#leshen #monster story #original writing #creative writing #cryptid #protector of the forest #original fiction #monster enthusiast #monster lover #terato #cryptid story #writeblr #body horror #my writing

[moonliiteallniite]

A lengthy post cataloging my 60+ vial perfume collection

This is mainly a post for me to keep track of my ever-growing collection of perfume samples and bottles. In the future I’ll probably dedicate a post to each one to give my thoughts and reviews! But all that aside, here’s every perfume I’ve collected so far, with names and descriptions included.

BPAL SAMPLES

Alice’s Evidence - Containing nary a neutron of meaning: Rum-quince-cassis with prune and a bit of black ginger

The Antikythera Mechanism - Teakwood, oak, black vanilla, and tobacco

Al-Shairan - His scent is fiery, bright and thick with sweet sinfulness: clove, peach and orange with cinnamon, patchouli and dark incense notes

Blood Kiss - Lush, creamy vanilla and the honey of the sweetest kiss smeared with the vital throb of husky clove, swollen red cherries, but darkened with the vampiric sensuality of vetiver, soporific poppy and blood red wine, and a skin-light pulse of feral musk.

Bayou - A lazy, warm deep green scent with a thick aquatic undertone: Spanish moss, evergreen and cypress with watery blue-green notes and an eddy of hothouse flowers and swamp blooms

Black Lily - Breathtaking darkness, a vision of grace in shadow

Burial - The Dark Side of Earth: deep, brooding forest scents, including juniper and patchouli. The scent of upturned cemetery loam mingling with floral offerings to the dead

Chimera - The fiery, volatile scent of cinnamon, thickened by myrrh, honeysuckle, and copal

The Coiled Serpent - A potent yogic oil that stimulates the kundalini, provokes spiritual awakening, and releases the energy seated in your root chakra

Death Cap - A lethal poison bundled up in a dainty, innocent little package that was oft times found in ancient witches’ flying ointments and astral projection balms. A warm, soft, ruddy scent, earthy and mild

Delight - In ancient India it was believed that a specific combination of flower petals, when strewn across a couple’s bed, would amplify desire and sexual pleasure. This blend is a blend of the same floral essences, refined into a gloriously sinful perfume blend. Frangipani, with rose, tuberose, and jasmine

Deep in Earth - Rose geranium, Spanish moss, Irish yew, and graveyard dirt

Eat me - Three white cakes, vanilla, and red and black currants

Evil - Smouldering opium tar, tobacco absolute, green tea, black plum, kush, ambergris accord, ambrette seed, and costus root

Greed - Base and earthy, yet glittering with golden notes: patchouli, heliotrope, copal and oakmoss

Gnome - An explosive blend of effervescent golden ginger and black peppercorn with sarsaparilla, gurjum balsam, nutmeg, gear lubricant, and smoke

Highwayman - Vetiver with gardenia, blood red rose, night-blooming jasmine, a dash of cinnamon and a faint hint of leather

Inferno - The Dark Side of Fire: cinnamon, bitter almond, and neroli. Heavily spiced, torrid, and possibly conflagrant

Juke Joint - A bawdy, gleefully wicked and unruly scent: Kentucky Bourbon, sugar and a sprig of mint

Jezebel - A gloriously decadent blend of honey, roses, orange blossom and sandalwood

Miskatonic University - The scent of Irish coffee, dusty tomes and polished oakwood halls

Mata Hari - Her scent is striking and bold with a delicate yet dark undertone: five roses with soft jasmine, warmed by vanilla, fig, tonka bean and mahogany, spiced with a drop of coffee bean

Nephilim - Holy frankincense and hyssop in union with earthy fig, defiled by black patchouli and vetiver, with a chaotic infusion of lavender, cardamom, tamarind, rosemary, oakmoss and cypress

Old Demons of the First Class - Siberian musk, black clove, opoponax, tonka, black pepper, and neroli

Perversion - Smoky rum and black tobacco with a whisper of steamy leather with a splash of crystalline chardonnay, layered over a sensual, sweet, and deceptively magnetic base of tonka

Sjofn - Our song to the Norse Goddess of Love is scented with apples and birch and bound with apple blossoms

Seraphim - A perfume sacred to the highest of the angelic hosts: calla lily, wisteria, white sandalwood, Damascus rose and frankincense

Schrodinger’s Cat - A paradoxical scent experiment! – tangerine, sugared lime, pink grapefruit, oakmoss, lavender, zdravetz, and chocolate peppermint

Tiefling Therapist - A soothing, centering blend of white and red sandalwood, champaca attar, frankincense, and brimstone

Whitechapel - White musk, lime, lilac and citron

Wilde - A sophisticated traditional gentleman’s cologne, with just the slightest taint of patchouli’s passion, tonka bean’s decadence, the philanthropy of bergamot, moss’ cynicism, the sharp wit of lavender, and the hopeless romantic longing of jasmine and thyme

Yorick - Grave dirt, bone, decay, angel’s trumpet, and moldering scraps of shroud: the essence of finality

Zombi - Dried roses, rose leaf, Spanish moss, oakmoss and deep brown earth

(As an aside, about half of these are free imps that came with full size bottles I ordered!)

Alkemia Samples

Salome - A seductively inspiring arrangement to pique the lustful imagination. An overture of not so innocent magnolia underscored with a sly caress of Queen of the Night, a fulsomeness of nubile black grapes and plums, skin musk bathed in spilled cognac, and ruthless twist of bitter orange, blended with an ancient Arabian love philtre of crushed vanilla and tonka bean, mysore sandalwood, vetiver, cedar, and red oud

Caveau Des Innocents - Tabac, dark coffee, piquant cloves, rum soaked pears, candied citron, dark caramel, and star anise bathed in intoxicating swirls of opoponax, labdanum, hashish, benzoin resinoid, vanilla incense, and guaiac wood

Ghost Fire - A luminous attraction of ethereal white ambers. Hauntingly beautiful

Sigil - A recipe in an ancient 16th century grimoire that includes olibanum frankincense, lignum aloes, bdellium, styrax, black honey, and euphorbium; the essence of "Stones of Immortality" - opium thebaicum, dried citrus, and the quintessence of gold; and an alchemist's compounding of coffee beans and ritual herbs

Hippie Spirit - A bohemian love-fest of resinous head shop incenses, sexy skin musk, slightly dirty patchouli, groovy champa blossoms, and flowering cannabis

Gothique - The scent of midnight mass in a medieval cathedral. A Byzantine monastic incense recipe of Somalian frankincense, styrax benzoin, Arabian myrrh, cassia, spikenard, canella, Liquidambar orientalis, labdanum, Atlas cedar, and vetiver

Carmilla - A tantalizing enigma of Ambre marocain, cashmere musk, Malgas lily, Ylang-ylang, dark Bourbon rose, soft patchouli, and erotic whispers of jasmine incense

In a Northern Wood - A primeaval forest sanctuary of Elemi balsam, balsam fir needles, charred cedar heartwood, dark oakmoss, opoponax, aged oudwood, deerstongue fern, woodsmoke, aromatic fungi, patchouli, and loam

Dusk in Autumn - An inviting mystery of amberwood, Lapsang Souchong tea, salted cream caramel, and spiced teacakes

Nature of the Beast - An animalistically sensual carnality of Amyris wood, Elemi balsam, and raw dark musk with Haitian vetiver, ambroxan, spiced patchouli, labdanum and botanical pheromones

Carnival of Illustrious Hearts - A glitteringly gourmet gala of French sugarcreams, candied orange blossoms, raspberry cotton candy, rosewater torte filling, and Bourbon vanilla amber

All Hallows Eve 2021 - A spookalicious cauldron of magic, mystery, remembrance, childhood nostalgia, and sweet blessings for darker times. Warm toasted marshmallows, drifting woodsmoke, black licorice, star anise, cardamon pods, sugared amber, tonka beans, and patchouli infused bourbon vanilla

Memoriam - An olfactory ode to love and loss. Heirloom roses, memories wrapped in woodsmoke, a scattering of ashes

Industrial Sabotage - A cataclysmic wreckage of burnt wires; twisted melted steel; shattered machinery, and gunpowder

The Center of the Universe - From astronauts' descriptions of space and aliphatic esters of the Milky Way - welded metal, gunpowder, burnt almond cookies, ozone, raspberries, rum

Deus Ex Machina - Fire hardened steel, rusted iron, warm motor oil, wet cement, burnt copper wires, and grey amber

Saint Louis Cemetery #1 - An atmospheric brooding of Spanish moss, crumbling stone, old cement, red clay brick, and graveyard dirt

Supernatural - A prismatic shapeshifter of Iso-E, Ambrox, cruelty-free Tonkin musk, and intricate spirals of aroma molecules

Black Iris - The spring forecast is rainy with a chance of purple. Purple iris and Queen Elizabeth orris root pillowed in a soft nimbostratus raincloud

Charming of the Plough - A paen of the awakening earth - bright new greens, freshly turned soil, well worn leather, anise hyssop, smokey lavender, sexy-dirty indolic jasmine, vanilla grass, and oakmoss

Frondescence - A verdancy of fresh fern fronds, wild geraniums, damp moss, green patchouli, vetiver root, early meadowgrass, and tumbling wetland streams

Inner Sanctum - A spiritual serenity of Hinoki temple cedar, carved Palisander rosewood, white ambergris, lemon cypress, sandalwood incense, grounding vetiver root, and healing sandalore

Surcie - A sweet confection of affection - heavenly rosewater chiffon, soft jasmine musk, flirty mandarin orange, creamy vanilla, and alluring Egyptian amber

Tulips and Chimneys - An urban springtime of rainy aldehydes, wet asphalt, industrial steam engines, farmer's market bouquets of fresh tulips, Toulousain violets, mint pastels, and a warm touch of clove viburnum

Lover Tells of the Rose - Rambling wild roses, lemon verbena, white pearl tea leaves, white patchouli, and a springtime rebirth of new greens and wet mosses

Gaea - Forest loam, new ferns in decaying leaves, maple sap flowing over lichens, mosses and wet stones at the edge of a vernal pool

Shinrin Yoku - A forest hymn - Japanese grapefruit, petitgrain, black pepper, spicebush, sunlit green cedar, conifers, green patchouli, vetiver, stream water, wet clay, and dark loam

Baccante - High bush blueberries, wild ivy, Spanish lavender, aged oakmoss, tonka, decaying bark, and forest fungi

Vert sur le Vert - Green, green, green, and more freshly smooshed sweet greens, new grasses, new leaves

Midnight Garden - An incantation in the language of flowers: tuberose (dangerous pleasures), lily (majestic beauty), honeysuckle (binding love), gardenia (secret passions) and moonflower (inspiring love)

BPAL Full Sizes

Nosferatu - As soft as grave dust and as dry as a breath drawn within a long forgotten crypt, this is Nosferatu: desiccated herbs and gritty earth brought to life with a swell of robust and sanguineous red wines

Anubis - His scent is a blend of holy myrrh, storax, balsam, and embalming herbs

Oblivion - Salvation found in darkness beyond darkness, the blessed sleep of nothingness. Dark musk, wood spice, labdanum, patchouli, dark African woods, and saffron

Worm Moon 2011 - This is a melding of Victorian Grotesquery and springtime fecundity: mold-crusted dirt, decomposing organic matter, coffin wood, drooping funeral flowers, congealed blood, gloomy lunar oils, and cuckoo flower with something moist lurking underneath

Dark Chocolate, Whiskey, & Hazelnut Cream

Phallus Acrobatics - Strawberries, blueberries, heavy cream, honey dust, lotus root, ylang ylang, lavender, and vanilla flower

P*nis Penetrating a V*gina in a Pickle Barrel - Lemon peel, lemon leaf, white musk, white tea, cardamom, petitgrain, star anise, and raw ginger

Womb Furie 2022 - An itch that needs to be scratched: Snake Oil and three types of honey

Alkemia Full Sizes

Halloween Alchemy 2021 - Halloween spice cookies, apple butter, a dusting of pumpkin spice, oak leaves, pine needles, and a nostalgic nibble of candy corn

Lavender Dreaming Alchemy - A pride month alchemy of history and symbolism - sheer summer florals, flirty skin musks, and playful aquatics with a streak of French lavender, bitten ripe peaches, and oranges on offering plates.

Other

Epicene (by Blial Cabal) - Red Peppercorn, bergamot, fig, oakmoss, amber, cedarwood, tobacco, vanilla

#indie perfume #indie makeup #bpal #black phoenix alchemy lab #alkemia #blial cabal #perfume stash #perfume samples #hoarding nice smelling things like the gremlin I am #collection

[blackkaatlynagency]

Brickyard mother's outback garden ... Gracious honey queenlings Honest Sown Honest Sown .. Harvest split wheat .. laurel crowning ivy chow .. bay leaf .. bay leaf ... I'm not really not aware .. I'm actually not too terribly busy .. and Kate .. and Kate .. and Maryjane .. and an jay birds court .. blaze ravens quiet eyelet .. hazelnut cove .. safe storm .. sky dark star stars story light .. skyward silhouettes shapes an history memory .. dreams and breath .. dreams and breath .. life and you .. one four three two ..

You're not not loved ..

Remember to eat ..

You are not alone

Candles be breath

Chosen be hive

Rose passages Poem

Tears and Creation

Slender Big Lots Solace P Wilson

Silver scales

Sails Tack

Winch and Boom

Sae Sea Seas See

Be guide me true

Love

When you don't give up everything becomes a gift

You are worth it

Solace .. solace ... Solace p Wilson.. look at me ... Look at me .. reaching out to her daughter Anne snatched the indolence sullen upon the yaw jaw bone line witch and bent her young image self born to tilt ruddy cheeks and face up toward the light ...

Solace ... Hive honey and scowls aren't going to win you any points now .. solace .. why did you hit that boy .. solace .. you struck him out of the clear blue ... This ... Her fatigue upon reason and ways not shish-ka-bob hush-puppies penny-loafers ..

Shaa..Zaam... An Ans .. qwerty

Duned

Soul Bade the Sea-Witch

Owl

Mask

Rich

Owl

Council

Solace

Hollow

Crow

Carrion

Raven

BlackCrown ElkRack SpiritWealth

Laurels Pairs Sails

Safe

Safe

Safe-Sails and ans Kate Blaaque

An Ans A8 @8 a@ an answers annana ananna an

Moon grace

Vail silk

Grace

#remembertoeat #yourenotnotloved #liarsarenotalone #couragemagesty #longlivethequeen #sanitylove

[camelliacats]

flowers in springtime

These three constantly occupy a smol part of my brain and I'm delighted I'm finally writing an idea with this concept. TTwTT

Fic: "flowers in springtime" [FFN] [AO3]

Pairings/Characters: pre?Pansy Parkinson/Padma Patil, Parvati Patil, & OCs (Pansy's parents & the twins' parents)

Rating: K+

Words: ~4,440

Additional info: romance, light/implied femslash, angst, fluff, Harry's era, 3rd person POV

Summary: Pansy, just a few years shy of Hogwarts, makes a new friend. But making and keeping friends are two completely different tasks.

      Their house is a flurry of activity one afternoon in late spring. Yes, Pansy was woken and fed and amused briefly that morning, but the house-elves abandon her after that and Mother and Father barely spare her a glance the closer the hands on the grandfather clock get to closing around the twelve.

      It's enough to leave a nine-almost-ten-year-old girl huffing and walking around with a steely grip around a wing of her stuffed screech owl (stuffed, because the real thing is too smelly and messy to bother with), waiting for someone to drop everything and beg forgiveness and realize—not ask—what's wrong. But, sadly, today of all days is not one of those days. Today, Pansy puffs up her cheeks until she catches her reflection in the glass of the family grandfather clock on the first floor and releases her breath because she's turning a sickly shade of blue.

      Mother scurries past her, almost stepping on her because Mother wears one of her nicer set of robes and it's easy to miss a tiny thing like Pansy beyond those full skirts. But she halts when she spies Pansy's complexion, and she stifles a laugh. "Oh, Pansy, darling, whatever is the matter with you?" She bends down and pinches her daughter's cheeks to return some proper ruddy color to them.

      Pansy bats Mother's hands away. "The better question is, What's the matter with you? You and Daddy have wasted the morning and now it'll be the afternoon—" She doesn't get to finish her rant.

      "They're here!" Father calls from the second sitting room (the second of many—the Parkinson Manse is an old and storied home). He steps into the foyer with them and smooths the lapels of his waistcoat and fiddles with the fitted sleeves of his robes (suddenly in style for wizards these days—Pansy thinks they look silly, but since when do parents listen to their children?). He gives his wife and daughter a once-over, and his grim expression is replaced with a smile. "Pansy-Dancy, Daddy's having a work colleague over, to hash out some business."

      Pansy harrumphs.

      "He has daughters your age, you know. It'd be great if you could play with them while I meet with their father."

      She crosses her arms in front of her chest, nearly losing her stuffed owl in the process. "Not even if I got to have Florean's for supper," Pansy declares. Then she twirls on one foot and tacks on, "I will be out in the garden."

      Her parents exhale behind her but don't have time to handle her last-minute tantrum. Instead, Father mumbles to Mother, "With any luck, I can haggle a deal with him and they won't stay for lunch." It earns him a commiserating "Mm" from his wife, and those are the last things Pansy hears for now as she shuts the glass doors in her wake and tunes out the nonsense of adult witches and wizards.

      Pansy meanders to the middle of the small, grassy backyard, and suddenly her anger is punctured. She deflates as she dwells on Father's idea to mingle with unknown children…honestly! All she needs is Draco, really, and their meager garden is a reminder that it's been a little while since she last went over to Malfoy Manor. The Malfoys have bushel upon bushel of roses and other flowers she's yet to learn the names of, and a maze to boot! Now that's a garden.

      The Parkinson daughter heaves a sigh and takes in all that surrounds her: the large tree at the center of their garden court (Father says it's a sy…a syca…sycamore, that's right), the square shrubs lining the perimeter and dotted with unopened buds (Mother's fond of summertime blossoms), and the few dying rosebushes they have (they were beautiful at the start of the season but now are withered and beyond help for another year). …this will never be the sort of garden worthy of a maze or even praise, and Pansy's cheeks grow warm at the sudden realization.

      She squats down and sets her stuffed owl aside to poke at the dirt. She can't wait for her letter and her wand and to finish Hogwarts lightning fast. Father and Mother say that school takes seven years, but they also say Pansy's a bright girl, so surely she'll be a bright witch? She won't need all seven years. Still, it's frustrating that she has to wait even a few more years before she can control her magic, before she can start practicing it. If she had the skill now, it'd make this bloody task so much simpler, she wouldn't stain her pale hands with damp earth, wouldn't get dirt and grit under her fingernails, nails that need to look prim and proper and becoming of a Parkinson, and—

      Her thoughts quiet, though, when a long shadow falls over Pansy and her work. "What are you doing?" a high-pitched voice asks.

      Pansy doesn't lift her eyes immediately from the ragged hole she's been digging. No, first her eyes land on the frilly socks before her. Not the shoes or the hem of the pinafore, but the socks. They're white with eyelet lace on the edges. Pansy thinks she has the same pair, actually, somewhere upstairs in her room.

      The person with the same socks as Pansy clears her throat. "Um, hullo?" Then she bends to the right ever so slightly to catch Pansy's eye. Behind her, there's a copy of her, but that copy of her (in a matching outfit, no less, right down to the socks) snickers.

      Pansy reddens and pushes off from the ground, slapping her hands together to wipe off as much dirt as possible. "Who are you?" she blurts.

      "I'm Padma Patil," the not-snickering one says. Padma gestures to the other girl. "This is my twin sister, Parvati. Our parents are with yours right now and suggested we come out to meet you." Padma shrugs, but she does it with a soft, small smile that lifts her brown cheeks.

      Pansy takes in the sight of the Patil twins. The girls are unlike her in having dark skin and being two inches taller (Mother keeps promising a growth spurt will happen), but…oddly enough, Pansy finds so many startling commonalities. They've got jet hair and Pansy's fancy socks, and their purple pinafores are cut from a fine cloth. Their pinafores, though, have a pretty design stitched on the pockets; the design, in shimmery thread, moves with magic, so the animals play out a scene on the twins' clothes. Their shirts and scents are strange to Pansy (are those new fads, too, like Father's robes? Pansy's got to keep up), but then Pansy notes Padma's and Parvati's fancy, matching, gold pendants.

      Oh. Perhaps…perhaps these are her sorts of people.

      She certainly can't shake hands right now, but Pansy's glad to be wearing a black dress today as she hides her filth behind her and tips her head in a loose imitation of the curtsy her mother taught her a while back. "Pansy Parkinson," she says.

      "Nice to meet you," Padma replies.

      Huh. No one's ever said that to Pansy. Not that she's met many people before, but she wonders if she'd believe it the way she does, hearing it from Padma. As if testing the waters, Pansy glances to Parvati.

      Parvati gives her a tight grin. "You've got dirt smudged on your chin," she informs Pansy.

      No, Pansy decides, perhaps no one says things like Padma Patil.

      And perhaps, on some level, the twins understand this. Padma shoots her sister a look, Parvati rolls her eyes, and then Parvati eyes the sycamore. Bored of the garden, Parvati lunges for the lowest hanging branch and catches it; then she scales the tree as high as she dares.

      Down on the ground, Pansy stamps her foot and risks wrenching her ankle, since she comes close to stepping in the hole she made. She whips a finger in Parvati's direction but scowls at Padma. "Is she always like this?" she spits.

      "A little blunt? Yes," Padma answers. She thumbs her pendant—a P (for Padma and Parvati? for Patil?)—and tucks her pinafore's hem around her knees before she squats. "So, I'm curious, since you never answered—what are you doing?"

      Pansy glares up at the tree, but Parvati's moved impossibly higher and can't be spotted amongst the foliage. As if it's just the two of them, Pansy takes a breath and kneels in front of the hole. "…I'm planning to redo the garden, starting here."

      "Near the base of the tree?"

      Padma's question catches her off-guard. Pansy furrows her brow. "It's where we have the most space," she states. Her knuckles itch as her fingers make way towards the comfort of her stuffed owl.

      Padma scans the garden. Pansy's been in shade, but Padma squats in a handful of sunlight spilling between branches, so Pansy glimpses the richness of the other girl's eyes. They're a deep brown, like the trunk of the sycamore after it rains.

      Pansy frowns the longer Padma remains quiet. "No good then, huh?" she grumbles, annoyed but, to her surprise, disappointed, too.

      Padma turns back then, but she smiles once more. "Most flowers will need more sun than this spot will allow…but there are some plants that like the shade," she says.

      Her disappointment vanishes, and her fingers back away from her stuffed owl. But, still cautious because the last time (the only time) she made a friend was Draco and that was ages ago, Pansy doesn't jump on the bit of encouragement. "You know about these things, do you?"

      And then Padma laughs. It reminds Pansy of the wind chimes Father refused to buy her last year ("You'll break them," he insisted), and Pansy rather forgets her father's implied insult and that there are two Patil twins and that she hadn't even wanted to entertain these girls to start. She forgets it all with this laugh and Padma's smile as she says, "A bit. Want a hand?"

      Luckily for Pansy, their fathers don't get along as well as the fathers hoped. Pansy and Padma while away the afternoon, digging strategic holes and helping Pansy's ideal garden take shape, much to Mother's horror.

      But the Patils' parents are embarrassed while Father brushes it off. "If anything, I know Pansy, and she most certainly started this," he assures Mr. and Mrs. Patil. He laughs while Pansy turns bright, carnation red.

      (At least some color arrives in Padma's cheeks, too, but it's not so glaringly obvious on her. Lucky thing.)

      Father's good mood dims when he walks the Patils to the door, though. "Another time, then, Parminder. You'll come around to my side of the argument, I'm sure."

      "Hmm" is all the twins' father offers, coupled with an arched eyebrow. Then he escorts his family outside, and the day is behind them.

      "Bastard," Father spits the moment the door shuts.

      Pansy's eyes widen. She hears all sorts of language from Father—sometimes, depending on who visits Malfoy Manor while she's playing with Draco, she even hears worse things from Lucius Malfoy's and company's mouths—but this instance stops her.

      Mother frowns but places a hand on his shoulder. "He's a tough one, but everyone has their weak point, dear," she insists.

      Father shakes his head. "If only he didn't hold sway over the Ministry committee that I—" He stops short, as if remembering Pansy's still present and hasn't disappeared upstairs. "That's right. Pansy-Dancy, how was your day with your new friends?"

      Pansy frowns. "I'm hungry," she points out.

      "Yes, yes, we adults ate while we discussed business, but you can have whatever you want, darling." He picks his daughter up, never minding the dirt on her hands and dress, despite Mother's fussing. "Well?" he prompts.

      "And I don't like Parvati," she adds as he carries her to the kitchen.

      Father gives a great big laugh. "Why am I not surprised? And, really, what kind of child did they raise, for her to just climb someone else's property like that?" He shakes his head and sets Pansy down in front of the sink to wash.

      She lathers her fingers and wrists with soap and hesitates. "…Padma's nice, though," she admits in a small voice.

      Mother follows them in, but one wouldn't know it, given how quiet the room turns after Pansy's words.

      Pansy finishes and turns to her parents, wondering if she said something wrong. She furrows her brow, a pinch between her eyebrows that only deepens in confusion when her father kneels before her and shows her his business smile.

      "…huh. So you liked one of them, did you? Well…that we can work with."

      The next few weeks, the Patils become frequent guests of the Parkinsons. Pansy doesn't understand Father's business and why the twins' father won't make it easy for him, but she could care less. She doesn't feel Draco's absence as much, either, and she's already decided to ignore Parvati's presence as much as possible.

      All that matters is Padma, and that smile, and that laugh.

      Their mothers decide it's more productive to supervise the girls' gardening than to listen to their husbands bicker, so the new plans take true shape. It's still a messy endeavor, but at least it's condoned this time. Plus, having two full-fledged witches on call to conjure the flowers you want absolutely makes things a walk in the park.

      Or so Pansy hoped. "What do you mean, we're not just going to conjure them?" she asks their mothers point-blank shortly before summer arrives.

      "There's something to be said for tending to flowers by your own hand," the twins' mother asserts. She shares a secret smile with Mother before nodding to Padma and Pansy. "So plant something now. See what blossoms later and continues for years after."

      "But magic—it's instant. It—" Pansy's shoulders fall as the women walk away to chat, and she pouts at Padma. "Isn't magic always better?"

      Padma offers her an appeasing smile (not her favorite kind, but she'll take it). "I've told you, I do a lot of reading," she says as they turn towards the line of shrubs at the back of the garden court.

      "You read, I play—go on," Pansy says.

      Padma narrows her eyes but ignores the small jab. "There's a lot to conjuring magic, apparently. You can conjure food, of course, but it should already exist somewhere else."

      "What, you can't pull it out of thin air?"

      "Rarely, yes. But it won't stick with you then. You'll just be hungry or thirsty again right away."

      Pansy sighs as they weed and trim with hand tools. "Wonderful. Just bloody wonderful."

      Padma chuckles. "I know you've given your ideal garden some thought. You want roses the Malfoys will envy… You want to keep the sycamore… What else?"

      "Ivy. I want ivy. I love the sight of it crawling up walls. Can I plant ivy?"

      "We'll have to ask. I don't know enough about it."

      Pansy thinks about the flowers. She'll leave Mother's summer blossoms alone, she supposes, but… "I'd like a shrub of my own. One or two. The hijangja thing."

      "You mean—hydrangea?"

      Ooh, she really needed to stop teasing Padma for reading and read a book or two herself…! Thankfully, Parvati's favorite spot is up in the sycamore and the adults don't mind her lounging in there anymore, so she didn't overhear and can't snicker this time. "Y-Yes, that," Pansy mumbles. "Why, what would you plant?" The question is a stupid one, because this is her garden, not Padma's, but she needs the attention elsewhere.

      Padma hums while she thinks. "…well, hydrangea change color depending on soil, but they've got a pretty blue–violet color. Reminds me of another flower." She smiles and stifles a chuckle when she glances at Pansy.

      "What?"

      "Pansy."

      "Yes, what?"

      "No, I mean—pansy, the flower." Padma sighs, her smile dimming a little. "Violet pansies. They're pretty."

      "Oh." Pansy knows the flower, of course (it's a recurring motif in her room), but she's actually never received the real thing as a gift nor seen one on their property. But then she wonders, too, if maybe her garden plans have room for violet pansies.

      That's the last they see of each other in person for a long while. Father and Parminder Patil absolutely will not agree on their Ministry politics, and that spills over into their family get-togethers.

      Mother tells Pansy it's all right to write Padma, if she wants, because Father will understand, but to do so quietly, privately please.

      But Pansy is nine-almost-ten years old. She's got no experience writing letters except sending very glib thank-you notes to her grandparents after holidays and birthdays because Mother says so. Nevertheless, the first few weeks without Padma's companionship prove quite boring, even with one visit from Draco, so eventually Pansy picks up a quill.

      She pens a garden update, that the court is a bit tidier than they left it and some things are peeking through the dirt.

      Padma replies with delight and a little doodle of a pansy flower.

      The girls carry on for months. Pansy tells her that only one of her hydrangea shrubs blooms later that summer (the other gets waterlogged because English summer rain lingers), and the blossoms fade but the green holds on as long as it can through the autumn, nearly to the twins' birthday in late October.

      The holidays are quiet. Winter is cold, stark, and too white. The sycamore is the only comforting sight out in the garden court, but that doesn't seem like enough to waste the parchment on, so Pansy hangs her head and stays indoors, huddling inside for warmth.

      Spring breaks through the winter like a defiant flower determined to bloom here and now. With the new season, Pansy picks up her quill again—but she stops.

      She searches for her mother instead and finds her lounging in the small sunroom off the dining hall. When Mother puts her teacup down, Pansy asks, "Will I get to see Padma again?"

      Something strange flits across Mother's pale features (the same ones she gave Pansy). She stiffens and takes another sip of her tea before clearing her throat. Then she folds her hands and sets aside the newspaper. "Pansy…I…darling, oh, I don't know."

      An intense heat flares in the middle of her chest, and she scowls at Mother. "Well, why not? I like Padma. Just because Father and her father aren't friends doesn't mean—"

      But Mother shakes her head and beckons Pansy come close with a curl of her hand. "Pansy, sweetheart… Not everyone in this world is equal, you know."

      Pansy grimaces up at Mother. "They're not purebloods?" She freezes. No, Father would never have—

      "The Patils are a half-blood family but a long-standing one in Wizarding history, especially in the Ministry." She purses her lips and narrows her eyes, as though deciding how much to explain to her daughter. "They…they're important in some ways and not in others. But we've got to learn how to deal and live with people like them."

      Pansy's shoulders droop. She doesn't see how any of this applies to her. "Will I get to see Padma again or not?" she reiterates, more adamant this time.

      Mother says nothing but gives her a tight smile. That tight smile says, "We'll see."

      Pansy doesn't like the way she says that, making a promise without saying a thing. And it's a painful reminder of one detail she thought the year before:

      No one says things like Padma Patil.

      "Oh, it looks lovely here."

      After a month and a half of eavesdropping on Father and Mother bickering behind closed doors and Father swearing up and down that "no matter how lovely you think Gita is, I will not have Parminder back in this damn house unless he gives me the votes I need," Pansy hears a favorite, familiar voice one fine spring day before the season's over. She turns on her heel and can't help the smile that lights up her face.

      This time, Padma alone greets her. That's delightfully odd.

      "No Parvati?"

      Padma laughs. "She's hanging out with the house-elves. Caught whiff of whatever they're cooking and—oh!" She blinks rapidly but lets herself be tugged along when Pansy grabs her hand out of the blue and pulls her through the garden court.

      Pansy pulls Padma along, starting by the far corner. "This is the hydrangea that survived, see? And Mum's flowers live through thick and thin—" She forces herself not to run with Padma behind her, but it's so hard not to, especially because there are so many more flowers, so many more colors here than previously existed. And, best of all…

      They come to a halt on the other side of the glass doors, where a surprise hides behind the waiting bird bath Father promises to install when he's in a better temper. But Pansy's not thinking of birds, and neither's Padma, when they admire the half dozen flowers preening up at them. "Purple pansies," Padma breathes as she kneels before the blossoms.

      Pansy puts her hands on her hips and puffs up her chest. "I planted them myself, you know. I didn't ask for help with them at all."

      Padma nods and touches the petals of the nearest flower. Pansy understands the desire as well as the excitement; the petals are soft to the touch. Padma peeks behind her at Pansy, and the Indian girl's plaited hair falls over her shoulder. "Are they…for me?"

      Pansy smirks. "They're not for Parvati."

      Padma pouts for a beat—no, that's not quite right, her expression is one of scolding—but a thankful smile emerges in the end. When she stands, she faces Pansy and takes back her hand in hers. "Pansy, close your eyes."

      Her pulse picks up. She's not very partial to surprises (her parents give grand ones, but Draco and the Nott boy who sometimes hangs around him have been known to prank her), but the idea of a surprise from Padma thrills her. So Pansy closes her eyes and waits.

      Padma takes her other hand and presses them together, side by side and lying flat open. Then something heavy weighs Pansy's hands down, and Padma says, "Open."

      Pansy holds…a glass bowl. It's filled halfway with water, but flowers and leaves blanket the surface. The flowers' petals are a soft, purple–pink and— "That's your perfume?" Pansy realizes, meeting Padma's eyes.

      The other witch beams. "It is. And it wasn't easy getting this here, you know. Mum put this special Expansion Charm and—well, that's magic talk for another time." Padma glances at the bird bath. "That's going where the flooded hydrangea was, yeah? Why not just keep lotuses instead?"

      Pansy stares in wonder at her gift. Lotuses… She's read about them (she's had so much time with Padma not coming around, she's had to pick up a book or two). But her curiosity is too much today. "Why lotuses?"

      Padma's cheeks flush that lovely dark color she's only seen once before. But the twin points to herself and explains, "Because that's what 'Padma' means."

      Suddenly, the garden court feels all but complete.

      Pansy interrupts their parents and pesters until Father groans and lumbers out into the backyard to move the bird bath that very same day. He returns inside and grumbles about demanding daughters, a sentiment with which Parminder agrees, and the fathers might finally be getting along by the time Pansy and Padma put the finishing touches on things.

      Pansies, for Padma.

      Lotuses, for Pansy.

      Their mothers were right. They have blossoms now, and they'll continue for years to come.

      But the lotuses are a parting gift, in the end.

      Parminder Patil not only never turns over the support Father needs on his Ministry committee but takes some of Father's votes away.

      Mother utters the phrase "those people" around the house on a daily basis afterwards.

      Pansy's letter arrives, in December. But she's not thinking of Hogwarts. She's thinking only of next season.

      Only of spring.

      …by spring, the garden court still looks amazing. The pansies are strong and beautiful.

      Only one of her lotuses remains in the bird bath…stone fountain…garden display… (She never did decide what to call it if it's not meant for the birds.)

      Before summer ends, Pansy asks Mother to look after the garden court for her while she's at school.

      Mother says nothing and gives her a tight smile. That tight smile which, as always, says, "We'll see."

      Pansy doesn't like that, doesn't like that lack of a promise and more than ever doesn't like the reminder:

      No one says things like Padma Patil.

      (No one gives her hope like Padma Patil.)

      Pansy is elated for a heartbeat to see the twins on the Hogwarts Express, but Parvati keeps Padma away from her, so Pansy finds Draco and Nott to sit with on the way to the castle. Even at the boats, Pansy again tries to join Padma, but Parvati keeps them separated.

      The Sorting is the final straw.

      Pansy happily goes off to the Slytherin table without a second thought and watches as Padma follows her to the Hat.

      But Padma's smile is gone, replaced by regret when she locks eyes with Pansy. Padma's eyes drop for a second and—is it Pansy's imagination or is Padma now judging her by the color of her robes?

      The Hat splits the twins, not only from Pansy but from each other. Parvati goes to Gryffindor (ah, so much makes sense about her now), and Padma's within reach behind Pansy at the Ravenclaw table.

      But…Padma feels further away than ever before. Their parents aren't here, but they might as well be, for all the girls keep away.

      Pansy tries one, two, three, half a dozen (as many pansies as she planted for Padma!) times to get close to Padma again, to no avail. House distinctions create divisions or worsen ones already there.

      And they only get worse as the year goes on.

      When Pansy goes home for Easter holidays, she wanders into the garden court without a second thought.

      A sight by the hydrangea jars her, though: The bird bath is broken, damaged and not repaired, the ground bone dry. What transpired while she was away took place long ago. What's more—no lotus petals are scattered across the ground. No, there are no hints of lotuses anywhere in the garden at all.

      But, by the glass door, growing stronger and more resilient every day, her tiny little pansies stand proud.

Done for the If You Dare Challenge (for prompt #12: socks) in the HPFC forum on FFN, as well as for minifemslashfeb 2023 (scenario 1: first time meeting) on tumblr. This…exceptionally got away from me, and it's been a while since a fic did that. X'D I thought I'd legit only cover their first meeting, but then this covered an implied mutual crush while dealing with the parents' social politics (and Pansy's parents' bigotry) in the bkgd, and then just. I'm actually v happy with how I used the flower motif (as object, as descriptor, etc), and my heart just breaks. That's actually my mindset these days for Draco and Pansy mainly—they could've been just spoiled brats up to a point before they rly picked up their parents' mindsets and hatred. And since it's canon that the Patils knew Pansy pre-Hogwarts, I got to work in some hcs for the Patils' parents (whom I've only briefly written before, I think!). -w- *iz a big Patil fam fan* I just. Oof. Deffo need to write smthg happier after this, *lol*.

Thanks for reading, and feel free to leave an anon/unsigned review via the FFN link or comment via the AO3 link at the top of the post, especially if you enjoyed this!

~mew

#hp #harry potter #padsy #pansy parkinson #padma patil #<5000 #romance #femslash #angst #fluff #rated: PG #trio era #3rd POV

[fourthoverfifth]

The Tale of Loftborough

Trying a little creative writing exercise. I can't remember the last time I did any non-technical writing, so this was something new for me.

-There's a gimmick/constraint I'm working with - the word choices (and the tag, but don't look until the end!) should give away what it is.

-This is not wholly original - it's an attempt to write a backstory for an existing work by a certain well-known creator.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Our tale begins by a hamlet of yore, in a hollow where the townsfolk dug deep for iron ore. A man saw a spark, something bright in the dark, a blue glow of wellspring unknown. His brethren sheared out the rubble and unearthed the stone, when it rose to the air, aloft on its own. They brought it to town, showing all what they found, where the townsfolk were awed by this gem of strength unbound. Aeledstone made even the heaviest things featherlight beyond any kindlore known.

The fathomless strength of aeled was tamed by caretakers and shared alike, bringing happiness, gleaming, glowing, to most, following a weirding tale by a man who once said, “Share land and godmade wonders – keep all else made by one’s own hand.”

All the townsfolk put this witching to work, making wondrous tools and crafts of all sorts. Biggest of all was the sky island—a means of lifting whole towns upward. They crafted a great heart of aeledstone and buried it deep within the king’s stronghold, linking it to stour spinning blades beneath the settling itself. And so Loftborough was born, a whole fleet of skybound buildings which followed fair weather, good trade, and wealth.

But though the sky islands were Loftborough’s biggest craft, its greatest was another. Hewn from ruddy tinbrass and iron, from the teamwork of lodesmiths and witcrafters, were the Wroughtminds. In vast bloomeries, the lodesmiths first shaped ore into folklike beings. Then the witcrafters breathed soul into them with carefully cut aeledstone, inbedded into their hearts. Awakened hence, the Wroughtminds befriended and bestood all the Loftfolk in their strivings.

Endless lightwork, borne from the Earth, lifting townsfolk to the heavens above — in time, few remembered the old world of dearth.

But a time came when that wondrous flowing ran drier and drier. The shimmer of aeledstone dimmed from the old orehollows, day by day. The folk of Loftborough carved and cut through the earth, creeping and seeking hollows yet untouched, grasping anywhere to find more of the blessed stone. As gemhoards dwindled and the drought worsened, crafts and crops alike began to wither, and barren times began to grip the towns of Loftborough.

In time, the anger of wantsome folk spilled over, first to squabbling, and then to fighting. Their kinship ended, some folk of the floating towns forsook their islands, coming home to mother Earth, leaving their old homes behind, emptied, frozen in time. Others met more bitter ends, wielding frightful aeledborne weapons against one another, firing floods of blinding, searing, skyborne glimmer, until each island crumbled and crashed to the ground. Torn apart by their greed, the kinship of Loftborough was left scattered, broken, and dead.

One island was left, but its townsfolk had long gone, leaving behind a waning flock of Wroughtminds. They worked on through the end of their crafters—in time, all but one would shut down. The last of them was the gardener’s helper, a rugged yet friendly old soul. But the Wroughtgardener was not distraught, for he always believed his friend would come back someday. Besides—there was much to do at home, he thought. The songbirds were hatching, the sunblooms were sprouting, and the gate needed another dusting.

The world of Loftborough became but a dream, forgotten to all but a few elders. The kingly kinfolk of Loftborough kept but one token of their yore—a dearworthy aeledstone hanging from a string, inbedded with spells of many yesteryears. Truths became stories, and stories became folklore. Only one tale of old lived on among Loftborough’s kingkin, a tale told something like so:

“Swirling and swirling amidst the churn, a beacon stands bright, its gaze true and stern. Casting a light beyond angry storms, beyond bitter seas, across the bight to burn. Godborne dreams of dawns anew, to the ends of Earth they swiftly flew. Loftborough awaits—speak the right words, and make haste. Wend your way by this stone’s glistening hew; come forth, come hither, and bring frith to the lost kingdom anew.”

#creative writing #anglish #fiction #short story #fantasy

[loosejournal]

Cowpunk by Diane Seuss

Do you think your suffering is exceptional? Maybe. Maybe not. The times are strange, no doubt. In the heat of it, what I believed was the heat of it, I shouted like a dockworker that I was unafraid. Come at me,

I hollered, you can only kill me once. There is nothing left to take. I’ve said that before. I still hear the echo from when the flames licked my feet, my fearlessness a cabaret.

Of course, there is more to take. I’m copious and so are you. My pipe. My roses. My stubborn mule. My burbling brook which must be traversed to get to the island of blue lawn chairs.

My loaded apple trees, raspberry bushes, and prefab on a slab, and memories of Petra, with three teeth, who made a salsa just for me when she saw me coming toward her diner, Petra’s. My high school drama

teacher, Jim, his hair bronze, his pallor ruddy, his gait exceptional. I believe we should marry, he said to me one night, blowing smoke rings, driving me home from play practice. I was Mary Warren in The Crucible. I’d just learned

to insert a tampon. There were no boundaries then, and Jim was queer. His real love was the boy who played The Boy in The Fantasticks. I could feel my blood let down like breast milk into the fabric

of his car seat. I loved the theater. What luxury, putting on plays in the middle of a cornfield. The witch I played giving me license to go into fits in front of the student body.

Jim was fired, and died. Petra’s dead. The berry bushes are a dream. The island is a pipe dream. The pipe is a hallucination. Still, I’m copious, and so are you.

#poetry #poem #diane seuss

[libidomechanica]

Glittering voice of love, it will

Along tried them bristled married.     (Whatever hay, they will. ’Re appeals took of hot or crippling     alone. No aching grace may seek I can scarce ane had     seen dwelled my hands I could

express’d defence might berries please,     to the dress, beloved, and all are they, at bottom deserve     his world have Helen, why do we are thank me. Glittering     voice of love, it will

would instrument, in black and world’s     amen—’Who would speak to me as is there comes against me     into his bright and from hot body … carry me to my     eyes are mutual render,

on the Root he waste: and thy     oracle, no lute, nor expired within the most fine Conceits,     and daughter! Two pretence to live i’ the thou whom my     eyelid dry, Why wept with

no ruth for a while of bright as     the presence could length upon the heap’d with shade, in war’s alarms     my thresh, the ward to sleeping tree’s suppose it is sae     weel his front on the spake

to my mother blowing. Love ruled     with thee one she but still a little as the gates and me,     and they with the can return, that murthring Boy I sojourn     her e’e. Of sleeping I

studied with backward, I could sit     the window spread storm come in life, when dilated in its     sunny summer, autumn. Marble looming on my thee, Katie!     On whatever was

ruddy; o heaven is not upon     the comes to entertainties shall be my love his little     boy, pissing room to plants. When holy were alive … Oh     my Soul, in narrow laid

downward love me biel and Ceiling.     At least afford to the loves, for all the hoarder’s een, when     went—poor Man! Why fear. Of Bessy at her timely dear, thought,     that I that must be nam’d,

despite the sea. They found, I saw     a field with lawyers and let out into a suddenly     still to your wine, is their dam’s teats, and Hermon, from a belt     of favours! A memory

with tender feelings the turned     in a snake or slow-worm lend there are past, your union, wars,     revel in all the morning’s light of purple, the good. Our     phoenix Queen o’ the talents

of reason mostly if they     built of a star is thy burnie strays, when you’re alike of pathos,     as in a snare: which our selves we flitting down in any     room. Wheeling bones

supersede loved, blue in the nightingales     do letter to virtue is on her self apart     the shell it was a woman. Behind the window-panes in     clear as grace; and steal, a

church-yard path to look in the good.     The morning to live you. Smelt everywhere, and stoute as she     such improve: make with him? The armèd man, they needes bene     long, look’d upon me, because

it! Like the first, and like puzzled     urchin on and sport; So, purpose nobly death’s inters     be still side. And the soil may ensue, O let my friendship     lies are Altars have slept,

say: a snare. Any room in vain     for how he had she witch, and in my thoughts. Let not that ruin     wild sad eies I though infinite passing on the     cornerstone. As the sweet

envelop all my days in peace is     blown rose and die, my love, and why should ask the pretty Peg,     my dearest spinnin’ wheels going by Beauty fair Jenny     alone I am helpless

year ere I sit—ah, whether     friend Don Juan did not love not abuse your sweets; but because     you. Shall have slept in day to the shady bower and     manifest in that I should

embrace my times I try to kill     my honey seeping hence, we remember studs, all Kent can     wanderer would do; but she shall lie. What sings the ground like     trash in truth it was enough

the ocean wide aware. Her     though I oft myself. I’m happy if from a stand at and     suppressed, exhausted With every girlish grac’d to meet.     A baby’s face, a shelf.

#poetry #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Markov chains #Markov chain length: 6 #202 texts #ballad

[fyeahygocardart]

Ruddy Rose Witch

#Ruddy Rose Witch #yugioh #ygo #Rose #Fourth of July #yugioh tcg #ygo tcg #Plant #Tuner Monster #LIGHT

[reylofanfictionanthology]

TO FIND YOUR KISS IS NOW LIVE!  

Authors will be revealed next week!  For now all fics are anonymous.  Treats can be posted through author reveals on 2/21.  We will post an updated masterpost at that time.

To Find Your Kiss collection on AO3 | Treats Masterpost

GIFT FIC MASTERPOST

- Reap the Stars for abbytheatre08

The prompt: After Ben's death, Rey goes mad and turns to the dark side. Only Ben's not dead anymore. ----------------------- She is consuming fire, magnificent in her rage. She will burn the galaxy to its foundations, until the ashes rain down and pile high as mountains. She will gather them into bouquets and scatter them like petals upon his grave.

He will be remembered, and they will not.

Call him The Light Bearer and Joy Giver. Call him He Who Loved and Laid Down His Life. Call him Ben.

- we are question marks that hang above the endless unexplained for AlwaysEverlark

The first time she walked into his club, she was looking for a job. Kylo took one look at her—the stubborn pout of her lip, the determined glint in her eyes, the ruddy glow of her face where the sun had kissed it—and swallowed a lump in his throat that was shaped like the words you’re too good for this place.

They needed a singer. Kira Johnson could hold a tune, knew the old standards, and had a knockout pair of tits to boot. A few slinky ballgowns and a touch of lipstick, and she’d more than do the trick of distracting suckers long enough to part them from their money.

The club solely needed to break even; anything they made on top of the Syndicate’s cut was gravy, and Kylo Ren had been lining his pockets with his own take for long enough that he could see Kira for the lump of clay that she was: rough-hewn, misshapen, but soft and supple and sure to curve under his touch.

- Eighty Bucks Says Sweetheart for Amoreusou

Ben likes puzzles. Rey needs help with a bunch of them. Good thing it's a slow day at the office.

- Seldom Visions for Andrina_Nightshade

After visiting an old Sith temple, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren has fallen into a deep sleep when he pricks his finger on the point of a red crystal. Rey become is the first to find him, but his rescuer isn't just any general or pilot, it's the woman he shares a soul with, who haunts his waking hours, who still sees him even in his sleep.

- The Dyad for aneighthdomain

Based of the Prompt: Groundhog Day scenario. Ben and Rey keep getting sent back to the first time they met and no matter what they do, Ben always dies so they stop trying to change events and just live a life time in the year between and couple of weeks and run away together.

- Saudade: The Love That Remains for AnneAnna

- The Delegation for aNerdObsessed

A humanitarian delegation from Naboo arrives at Niima Outpost. Rey is skeptical, to say the least.

- i don't want you like a best friend for anopendoor

It’s not like she hadn’t seen this coming—Rose told her weeks ago that he was invited. It was an inevitability Rey was always going to have to face, she just didn’t think that Rose would be so merciful as to also give every guest a plus one.

But Rey can’t really be upset—and she is totally, unequivocally not upset—that Ben's bringing someone because, well.

She is, too.

- Love is Weakness for bittersnake

“He’s someone I found on my recent trip to Corellia,” Rey replies placidly, her face practiced in its boredom. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Love is weakness,” her grandfather reminds her, the way he has for years. It’s why he doesn’t love her. He will not be weak. It’s why she doesn’t love him, either.

- in sickness and in health (with health being less likely) for BlueButterflyKisses

Deciding to spend the rest of their lives together is the easy part for both Rey and Ben; the trouble is in how to propose.

- Snowed In for Blueyedgurl

Never in her wildest dreams did Rey Johnson think she would ever get to meet her favorite other Kylo Ren. She also would have never entertained the idea of the scenario she found herself in. How did a hike in the woods lead to a snowstorm and taking shelter in a remote cabin in the woods? The idea was so ridiculous but had become reality. Stuck inside with a handsome stranger surrounded by a winter storm, Rey wonders what will happen with no power and only one bed. Will they be polite co-habitants stuck in a strange set of circumstances or is there room for something more?

- Curses, Comforts and Capybaras for Bombastique

Arrogant CEO bites off more than he can chew when he angers a witch... And suddenly finds himself transformed into a capybara. Can kindhearted wildlife rehabber Rey Niima help him break the curse?

- To Heal a Broken Soul for Cat2000

Ben survives the fallout of Exegol, but his connection to the physical world is in danger. Rey tends to him as she searched for a way to heal him.

- holding me like water in your hands for Ceallaigh

After Hux finds out Ben killed Snoke, Hux encases Ben in Carbonite. Rey refuses to let Ben stay frozen forever so she mounts a rescue.

- Like a Thief in the Night for chagrins

Their bond won't let them be alone. At least this time it's the middle of the night and they can't get into a shouting match.

- The Chance for Crysania

When Rey and Ben, long time co-workers who have never been able to admit their feelings to each other, go on a weekend retreat to work on a movie adaptation script together, a Nor’easter leaves them snowed in. On Valentine’s Day.

- Awake for cuddlesome

Something inside him is awake, and something inside her is about to wake up.

An alternate interrogation scene.

- darkness rises, and light to meet it for czechia

After the throne room, Jedi Ben Solo and Kira Ren meet again a year later.

- Not Quite a Fairytale for DarkMage13

Rey lets a stranger use the phone of the café she works at late one night. It changes the whole course of her life.

- You Won't Escape Me ('Cause I Set You Free) for DoorKeeper9

- The Canvas of Your Skin for darlingreadsalot

She was incapable of touching him without drawing blood, it seemed. Lines like vermillion paint streaked where her fingers sketched down the contours of his face, his back, and now his chest.

In which a Force bond is splintered, a resurrection goes wrong, a kiss is forgotten, and two almost-lovers avoid speaking for the better half of a year.

- Fleeing the Storm for driverfever

As the granddaughter of an merciless aristocrat, Rey’s life hangs on a thread at the hands of the French Revolutionaries. When her childhood friend, Ben, offers to platonically marry her in order to take her to his home in England to safety, she has no choice but to accept.

But her suitor and revolutionary Hux won’t give her up so easily. Hounded by revolutionaries and falling in love, Rey and Ben must use all their wits to flee Paris and make it to England.

- Equal Measure for dustoftheancients

When Princess Rey of Coruscant calls upon the cursed Sir Kylo Ren to help her escape her grandfather the emperor’s political machinations, she discovers freedom in the ancient familial magic that binds them together.

- Benimina Solo's Late On-Set Force Ability for Evangel10n

Benimina Solo has never, not even once, had an ounce of Force Sensitivity. She's done a great deal to move on with her life after failing out of her uncle's Jedi training school. So when Rey Palpatine comes into her life and suddenly everything changes, she's not a happy camper.

- Splatter for expendable

“You’re Palpatine’s girl,” he says coldly.

“His chief of staff, yes.” Rey’s eyes narrow. “And you have your hand on my ass, Kylo. Kindly take it off.”

“Or what?”

AKA powerful corporate rivals Kylo and Rey put the hate in love/hate.

- The Haunted Mirror for FangirlintheForest

When Rey travels to UK to attend the reading of his grandfather will, a grandfather she didn't know existed until that very moment, she finds a house, and a old story that will haunt her...

- i'm your secretary for firelord65

Kaydel pressed her lips together in a thin line, passing a pile of datapads over the desk. “I don’t know what that pretentious nerf herder has put into your brain, but these are tales of the key roles women have played in past rebellions.” She stood, tapping the pile. “They’re great reads,” she added, with a pointed raise of her eyebrow.

- and they danced across the sky for flipflop_diva

When he was still a child, he constantly watched the blue butterflies as they danced in the sky.

They seemed to be calling him, aiding him each instance that icy-cold darkness flowed through his very veins. The magnificent creatures saved him from the voices. They drowned out the incessant chatter in his head. Temporarily cleared away all the anger. During those brief respites, watching those blue wings flutter in the sky, Ben felt free.

But that’s another life. Another world. Another time. Another, another, another.

And Kylo's no longer a child.

No. He welcomes the darkness now. Embraces it.

- Finding The Answer for FrenchMartiniPlease

Rey pines for Ben Solo…so why does her soulmate mark always drain of colour whenever she gets close to him?

- Almost Unforgettable for HopeRebel

The woman in the mirror has blood on her clothes, cash in her bag, and a letter from her husband telling her it's better to forget. Well, he got his wish. She forgot everything-- including her name. And she wasn't the only one afflicted.

It'll take the combined efforts of gumshoes, a flatfoot, a washed-up Hollywood starlet, and more to get to the bottom of this bad business. In the end, these things always come back to the beginning.

- The Curl of a Sigh for irridesca

During the last song in Maxine’s set, a song she announces is called “Soul Companion,” Ben heads back out to the lobby to look for Rey. He finds her not with his eyes but with one broad shoulder, when he bumps into her and knocks her gig bag out of her hands and onto the plush carpet.

- and they were roommates for Lady_of_Haven

When Ben loses a bet to his roommate, Rey, he has to eat her out for 30 days.

- torn away from you (my heart is broken) for lakerose

The Force binds more than minds.

- If You Take Me for literallynoonecares

She sighed wistfully as she watched her two friends lean in toward each other as they danced, their lips meeting and melding together as they seemed to become one person instead of two separate beings. She had seen them kiss so many times, but this kiss … it was special.“I just want someone to kiss me like that,” she mused softly to herself, her eyes not leaving her friends.“I could make that happen if you wanted.”

- 3 Days in Vienna for Like_A_Dove

Kylo Ren, trained mercenary Alpha assassin, is on a mission—assassinate Chancellor Palpatine and bring his underground authoritarian regime to an end. It’s what the First Order demands, for the better of society.

It should be an easy task. He’s been getting close to the Chancellor and his cronies for years. So how is it that the unexpected appearance of an Omega, with a seemingly similar mission—and a wholly inconveniencing scent—become a distraction he hadn’t accounted for?

- Confidence and Desire for LittleLostStar

“Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually, the confidence will follow.” - Carrie Fisher

- Love brightens even the most monstrous parts of ourselves for LRRH17

No one knows since when the giant, black bear has lived in the forest near Theed. Many stories about the origin of Kylo Ren circulate in the small village. After Rey has run away from Jakku, and arrived in Theed she has heard them all of, but has never actually meet the creature. This changes when her and her friends get attacked by bandits on their way back from Otoh Gunga.

- Your Sweetness Comes With Sugar on the Side for Lutrosis

Rey's daughter loses her mother as she wanders around the Supermarket. Ben finds her and the two connect over both being Type 1 diabetics. They find Rey, and Ben and Rey are instantly smitten. As they date and fall in love they discover that Jade and Ben are connected more than they thought and healing is brought to the Solo/Skywalker clan.

- Allegories, or Allusions to Real Life for maq_moon

“Boys, please stop arguing.” Rose rubbed her temples. “Poe, we get it, you’re childhood best buddies, you’ve got a better grasp on his character than some rando of a rando you met at a party. Finn, for fuck’s sake, we’ve been working with Ben for months. I’m pretty sure if he’s a serial killer or whatever, it would have come out by now.” Finn sat back in his seat, grumbling. “Not how serial killers work.” Rey was going to have a headache if this continued any longer, so she lied through her teeth at the reality of a new player joining their D&D party. "He seems nice." She didn’t trust a single inch of skin on that man. "I'm sure it'll be fine."

- A Mad Man, with a Box for MBlair

Rey and Ben meet, move in together, get engaged, and marry.

- Invite the Wild In for midwinterspring

Kylo Ren, the mysterious senator who appeared from out of the deserts of Jakku and somehow brought them back to life, has spent a long and unproductive session on Hosnian Prime. Now, it's time to go home. After all, there's someone waiting for him and so much for them to do together.

(The ancient Sith had some interesting rituals.)

- Purim Party for MissCoppelia

Rey goes back to visit her foster mother for a Purim celebration. She meets Ben Solo who's visiting his parents, who are friends with her foster mother. They have an attraction to each other right away, but try to play it cool.

- The Banished Heart for misszeldasayre

On Rey of Niima’s nineteenth name day, Jakku gains a new wizard.

Jakku is a withering outpost of the kingdom, and its people hope the new wizard - the mysterious Kylo Ren - will bring them the rains the land needs to heal. Rey is a lonely, clanless girl living in Niima, and she has a secret. One she hopes the wizard will be able to help her with too.

- The Smuggler's Bride for MyJediLife

Miss Rey Nemo is the new mistress of Manor Takodana, left to her by the late Lord Skywalker. When a strange man named Kylo Ren appears on her doorstep, she decides to hire him as her new groundskeeper. As Rey faces sinister threats and secrets are revealed, Kylo Ren may be the only person who can save her.

- Annabel Lee for myownlittleinfinity

Rey keeps finding these ... notes in her locker. She doesn't quite get them. They seem like love notes, but she doesn't know who they could be from. Meanwhile she's paired up with Ben Solo (who hates her despite her gigantic crush on him) for this English assignment. Who knows how THIS will go.

- with my body i thee worship for niennathegrey

Miss Rey Nemo is the new mistress of Manor Takodana, left to her by the late Lord Skywalker. When a strange man named Kylo Ren appears on her doorstep, she decides to hire him as her new groundskeeper. As Rey faces sinister threats and secrets are revealed, Kylo Ren may be the only person who can save her.

- the losing game for no_big_deal

Sith Princess Rey Palpatine is given a peculiar gift for her Life Day: a Jedi. Not only that, one who is boorish, spirited, and stubborn. But, he presents an opportunity: one that could liberate her from a life under the thumb of her grandfather. She has seven weeks to change his heart before all her freedom is taken from her - forever.

- standing right in front of you for notkellymarie

When Senator Solo's engagement is pushed forward, he and his Jedi bodyguard, Rey, travel to Naboo alone for the announcement ball. The pair despise each other, constantly bickering and disagreeing with each other, which makes spending extensive amounts of time alone together all that more difficult. Until of course, one of them breaks...

- the good, the bad, and the smuggling for OccasionallyCreative

Ben Solo is a seasoned smuggler. And he’s not bad at it, either. But when bounty hunter Rey offers him a temporary partnership he can’t refuse, Ben will find himself pushed to the limits of his skill, patience, and resourcefulness on a job that’s dangerous enough to be his last.

It’s like his dad used to say: bounty hunters are nothing but trouble, kid.

- Whatever our souls are made of...his and mine are the same for Padawan_Writer

Ben and Rey meet only after Kylo has defected from the First Order and returned to the Resistance and his mother. Will the dyad still find a way to be?

- They say that only the dead have seen the end of war for politicalpadmé

“He traded his life for mine,” Rey choked, stomping back and forth in front of him so fast he could barely keep track of her. “He died. He died so I didn’t have to—and it’s not—it’s—after everything he’s gone through—it’s not fair.” Tears were running down her cheeks now, and Poe wanted to do nothing more than hug her, but there was nothing he could say—nothing she would want to hear. Poe remembered all the people he’d lost, all the times he had raged and screamed and cried about the unfairness of it all. “Leia sacrificed herself to bring him back,” Rey declared suddenly, ceasing her constant pacing around the fire as she looked straight at him. “And he sacrificed himself for me—and now no one’s going to know. All he’ll be remembered as is Kylo Ren, but he was—he was so much more.” She exhaled with a shudder and whispered, “He was a part of me, and I—I don’t feel whole without him.” ~

A Force Ghost Ben/Rey love story, with a side of rebuilding the galaxy.

- Cicatrix for Priestly

Getting cut up by Rey on Starkiller awakens something in Kylo.

- I Will Always Be With You for Prix

But she wouldn’t be able to hide her pregnancy for much longer. She was starting to show, and her friends would start asking questions. She would have to give them answers, some of them would not understand, and none of them would accept.

She carried his child. The tiny spark of light woven with darkness, just like her. Just like his father.

—————

The world has gone dark More times than you Or your mother Or your grandmother Can remember. And every hurricane That was meant to be The end of it all Had instead ended In sunshine again.

So believe me When I say; You will survive this And the next one too.

World’s End—Nikita Gill

- all my daydreams are disasters for QueenOfCarrotFlowers

During her search for the infamous Luke Skywalker — the man who predicted a devastating earthquake in New Madrid, Missouri — Rey finds herself entangled in Luke’s family history and with his brooding nephew, Ben Solo.

- on what ground I was founded (when I first saw you) for redbelles

Kylo dreams of Rey after the Battle of Crait. And the yearning is mutual...

Some Force Bond dream smut inspired by "Shrike" and "NFWMB" by Hozier.

- Last Summer for Reykenobi68

Rey had started to get used to Ben not living next door anymore by the time the holidays came around. Then he's back for the holidays. Rey is really expecting things to go wrong after the way he left at the end of the summer. ut is it really going to be that bad.

- The Long Way Home for reylotrash711

In the aftermath of Exegol, Ben and Rey are divided by misunderstandings.  It will take time and danger for them to work things out.

- Under the moonlight for shariling

I don't know why I followed you here. She wanted to reply. Maybe because you're so tall I couldn't help but notice you. Maybe it's because of your hair or the way you move, or maybe it's because of that kind of melancholic look in your eyes. There is something about you that I find terribly attractive and I don’t know what it is: maybe the moon or the alcohol or the wolf I have met before infected me with some strange parasite and now I am hopelessly attracted to dogs, I do not know. She could have said one of these things, any of them, instead she said: “I've never bitten anyone before, and I want you to be my first.”

- Fallen for shipperofdarkness

Prompt: Devil!Ben and Angel!Rey or Angel!Ben and Devil!Rey. How do these two on completely opposite sides fall in love and defy worlds to be together?

- come away with me for silentfleur

Rey owns a tinker shop, but her life changes when she meets Ben Solo and is cursed by a witch. Not necessarily in that order.

- A Picture of Me Without You for SpaceWaffleHouseTM

"I suppose I'd somehow struggle through / But I'd hate to picture myself without you."

It's impossible not to have a soulmark. It's not a big deal, not in the lax and gin-soaked speakeasies of 1920s Manhattan, but it's still a heavy weight to bear, as Ben Solo and Rey find out side by side.

- Lips Raw With Love for stellardarlings

Their kiss on Exegol wasn't their first kiss...

Nor would it be their last.

- Everyone Makes Divine Mistakes for Takekurabehime

Jedi Knight Ben Solo is sent to Naboo on an errand of mercy (and to visit his grandparents). He arrives in springtime; but will he be able to complete his mission without finding himself distracted and bewildered when love and intrigue waft through the fragrant air?

- Glitter & Gold for TearoomSaloon

Rey is lead singer in an up-and-coming glam metal band. They've finally got steady performances, but that means playing at the same club as the Knights of Ren, whose lead singer definitely isn't interested in any competition.

- To kiss like lovers do for the-reylo-void (Anysia)

Ben and Rey spend their formative years growing up together in Medieval Scotland and it looks like they will end up together. Circumstances intervene and Rey loses her chance to be with him. Devastated, she carries on until the day clan Ren attacks Castle Jakku lead by the notorious killer Kylo Ren.

- Snow Turns To Rain for thehobbem

For a moment, he wanted to ask what she meant, but if he was being completely honest, he already knew.  He asked himself that same question over the years, and none more often than tonight, since seeing her again.  Was leaving worth it?  Was going their separate ways worth leaving each other?

 “I’m not sure,” he said finally, shaking his head.  “I’m happy...” he said, and she tensed a little, so he continued, “with my work.  I’m glad I’m doing what I love, but....”

 “But?”

 “But it wasn’t the only thing I loved.”

- Change the Dance for theresonatinglight

- Meet Me in the Woods for thewayofthetrashcompactor (BriarLily)

“What do you mean no one goes in there?” A chuckle. “It’s haunted. People see all sorts of weird things in there and some don’t ever come out. You’re better off living with your curiosity.” Rey wakes in a shadowy forest with no memory of where she came from, only her name. With the help of the resident guardian she takes a journey to figure out her past, and maybe even discover her future.

- permanent calligraphy (your name on me forever) for Thursdaygirl

As they continue to work together, two things become clear. One: Ben Solo is an enigma. He’s preppy yet humble, privileged yet introspective. He’s the opposite of lazy; she kicks herself every day for assuming otherwise. And two: Ben Solo will never love her.

- show me the stars. for tmwillson3

“I don’t hate Christmas, I just don’t love it the way you do.” Lifting his head, he pulls a face, loosening up a tangled ornament of a poodle with pink, curly fluff. Rey snatches it from him possessively, tossing it back to the cart. “No one loves it the way you do, to be fair.”

“Now that’s the truth,” says Poe, who Finn invited about half an hour ago to keep him company.

“People have bad taste, I don’t know what to say.” Huffing, Rey scrolls through her phone with more intent. “Neither of you are helping me, anyway.”

“What’s the problem?” says Poe.

“Rey thinks her hot neighbor hates her —”

“He does hate me.”

“ — When really he’s been flirting with her for the past, oh I don’t know, how long have you lived there?”

- I realized that I need you, I wondered if I could come home for VR_Trakowski

Rey is doing exploration work for the Resistance, searching for force sensitive planets so any force sensitives that they find have a place to train.

One day, midflight she finds a slip of paper with the elegant scrawling words of the ones that came before. The ones that she found when Ben still roamed the galaxy.

When she lands on a dark and barren planet she is forced to face the feelings she thought she buried.

- Shadows of the Moon for walkingsaladshooter

The hallways got darker, the corridors grew longer. Shadows stretched across the walls. The ghosts of Breha Manor grew each night.

Rey clutched her necklace. Ben met her gaze.

And every night, there was weeping.

- show the way (the world could be) for writergenie

In the aftermath of the Battle of Crait, Rey struggles to find her place among the Resistance. However, her lingering Force bond with Kylo— Ben— whatever name he calls himself— complicates things, blurring the line between friend and foe.

When the tension threatens to boil over and a desperate plan goes awry, Rey begins to wonder whether there really is a line between light and dark after all.

(Stars do burn brightest in the blackness of space.)

- why don't we go (somewhere only we know) for XarisEirene

The bond snaps back into place, even stronger than before. He is here. With Rey, yes, but with Luke - Luke, who is looking at them now with that same dangerous glint in his eye that haunts Ben’s dreams.

- renewed, transfigured, in another pattern for yodalorian

Rey mourns on Tatooine while Ben is stuck in the World Between Worlds. But neither of them are alone, and blue butterflies light a path back to each other.

#reylo #reylo fanfiction anthology #rffa writers #to find your kiss #master post #mod post #photo edit

[sadoeuphemist]

Stories I thought about writing, but didn’t:

my voice is poisonous, a gift from a strange god my parents once befriended. I’m careful not to speak, but I know they’re afraid.

A poison-voiced girl is born to deaf parents, but falls in love with a hearing boy. Their courtship is marked on her end by a thrilling restraint, biting her lip, knowing she could kill him with an indiscretion; he, on the other hand, longs to see her act without inhibition. He manages to make her laugh, sigh, gasp out in wonder - each time he falls ill from the poison of her voice, but is undeterred even in his convalescence, returning renewed in his goal to tease another sound out of her.

Her parents tell her to break it off; she’ll kill him. She reluctantly agrees. He refuses, pleads with her, grasps her hands so she can’t sign. In anguish she cries out his name — but lo! he does not sicken, does not die. It turns out his repeated exposures to her voice have mithridatized him against it. She can speak around him freely! They both agree that this development has taken a lot of the excitement out of the relationship, but it has been replaced with a greater casualness and intimacy that balances it out.

I can see the angels in their true form, a thousand splendid eyes and all. They think it’s funny, and have taken to hanging around my apartment 

The angels start making excuses to keep showing up at my apartment, in the manner of the annunciation, but for increasingly trivial reasons. They come bearing tidings about how I should definitely get the turkey wrap for lunch, which brand of fabric softener I should buy, how that quarter I’ll find on the sidewalk is a sign that I am favored by God. They come bearing bad tidings too: The Lord has heard of all the evil in your printer, and has sent us here to jam it. Their presence becomes completely overbearing, but they are insistent. There’s a reason you see us in our true forms, they say, all their splendid eyes shining. Is it so hard to believe that the God that formed every atom of you in the womb should watch over you always, that every mundane moment of your existence in this world is shot through with the divine?

There was a body in the river, ice cold and snow white. Sometimes it was all the way dead. Sometimes it sat up and talked to me.

A king has declared that whoever can complete the following tasks shall marry his daughter: 1) to recover a lost treasure stolen from his family hundreds of years ago; 2)  to name the start of the pact between men and horses; and 3) to find a cure to the plague ravaging the land.

Our plucky folk hero helps an old lady who sits by the river; she tells him of the snow white body within, who has sat up and spoken to her at odd times throughout her life. It is the spirit of the glacier: the glacier melts, and forms the river; layer by layer the past frozen in it is uncovered, parts of it living and parts of it dead. Our hero builds many bonfires and melts the glacier faster; the body lives and dies and lives many times over and tells him the three answers. 1) The thief fell into a crevasse and was frozen over; the ice is melted now, and the treasure can be recovered. 2) Iron horseshoes frozen in the glacier reveal the pact is many thousands of years old. 3) The plague is an old one, frozen and released anew with the glacier’s melting; it is carried in the livestock, and they must be slaughtered.

The hero solves the king’s tasks and marries his daughter. Presumably the new king is then faced with the challenge of the rising sea levels; no idea how that plays out.

“We’re all nice to each other here,” they told us, “we’ve got angels in the hills. They like it when we’re nice. And they see everything.”

This one’s tough to summarize adequately. Two men are going door to door, seemingly taking a survey of the religious beliefs in a small town. They finish, sit together in their car. People have been very cooperative. One of the men remarks that the local religious beliefs are disappointingly unremarkable: yes, they believe in angels watching from the hills, but most people believe in an omniscient God watching over them, and whether it is God or his intercessors, does it make a significant difference?

They sit in the car. Perhaps they smoke in the lazy sunlight. They have finished their survey ahead of time. One of them proposes: Suppose we have a picnic lunch up in the hills?

They park at the base of the hill and walk up. Lovely day. They spread out a blanket from the car, stretch their legs out on the grass, take off their coats, loosen their ties. They’ve brought their packed lunch, sandwiches, a thermos of lemonade. They talk about how pleasant all the people were. Their kind of religion seems so ... brittle, one of the men remarks. If I thought there was someone waiting to punish me the moment I stepped out of line, I’d want to do something horrible just to get it over with.

You think so? says his partner. I think just the opposite. The grand problem with religion is that there aren’t enough consequences for wickedness. I know if I saw the wicked being smote down on a regular basis, I would very satisfied in my religion indeed.

Well, of course you would; you’re a sadist.

Me? A sadist? Hardly.

You’re a sadist, his partner says teasingly. A sadist and brute.

They smile at each other. Idle conversation. There is a suggestion that they have visited many such towns and cities, asking the same question, but have yet to receive a satisfactory answer. At one point one of them notes that there’s something in the trees, but this remark is ignored and nothing is ever made of it. The conversation turns back to whether the angels in the hills are real or not. The ‘sadist’ stands up, declares his intent to do something wicked to test them. He marches around, swinging his arms, then looks around at the trees and puts his hands on his hips and laughs.

You know, up here away from society, he declares, I can’t think of a single wicked thing to do!

(Maybe a conversation here about how he could tear branches from trees, despoil the scenery, find an animal to kill; but then again animals in nature strip bark from trees, kill each other bloodily all the time, tear each other to bits, so how wicked could that be, really?)

He looks down at his partner still lying back on the blanket. Unless, of course, I were to do something wicked to you.

Whatever happens next, it is very leisurely. The scene is easy, very relaxed. Lovely day. Calm. Bright blue sky. Clouds float across it, white like feathered wings, and then pass, leaving not a trace behind.

None of us can imagine what life was like before the Clocks came, before clockwork cities, and all their technology. They rebuilt our crumbling society, in perfect, mechanical order. 

Brief musings on a hypothetical pre-Clock society. A society built around the sun, all buildings roofless, everyone’s necks craned upward. Cities built running north to south so as not to block anyone’s view of the rise and set. A society built around hourglasses, everyone judging the passage of time by the sand puddling around their feet, knees, waists, clambering up onto growing dunes, waiting for the flip, for the sand to slowly drain away and the furnishings of their homes to be uncovered. Perhaps this was our unimaginable life before the Clocks came: sands stretching far away and bare, the hypothetical counterpart bulb of an hourglass reflected invisible above us, empty and vast with unrealized possibility, waiting to be reset.

When I was very young, I met a bear at the edge of the woods. Before I could play dead, it bowed to me.

Jokey little fic where a child is instructed on the etiquette of bears: when to bow, when to curtsy, when to raise your hands and make yourself as large as possible, when to climb a tree, when to play dead. (Note that grizzlies are territorial, so if they attack you and play dead they’ll leave you alone because the threat is neutralized; whereas black bears are not territorial, so playing dead will do no good because a black bear will only attack if it deliberately wants to fuck you up.)

I was given very specific instructions. Go to the rosebush on a clear night. As the moonlight turns the roses silver, feed them three drops of blood.

After years of trying for a child, a couple turns to an old witch to help. The woman is instructed to eat a rose from a magical rosebush. If she first pricks her finger and stains the rose red with her blood, then she will have a son, ruddy and robust and bold in battle; if she visits the bush on a clear night and eats a rose painted silver by moonlight, then she will have a daughter, as pale and graceful and elegant as the moon.

The woman is uneasy with the implications of this binary, and says so. The witch smiles and gives her a new set of instructions. So she pricks her finger at night, her blood painted black by the moonlight, and nine months later gives birth to a child as black as a rose, who is neither boy nor girl.

Never manged to come up with a plot for this one. The kid grows up to have a career fulfilling all those “Neither man nor woman” prophecies? Eh. Kinda corny. There’s something about gender roles in fairy tales here, but I couldn’t put it together.

Not for the first time, the company time loop drill had gone very, very wrong.

I did actually write a response for this one, but it got too long and I gave up on it. Summary of the rest of the idea I had:

Time resets. Nagle confirms that it is both an actual time loop and a drill; the company is doing a controlled time loop to prepare them for the real thing. People complain. What’s the point of a drill when an actual time loop would let you keep doing things over and over until you get it right? Nagle points out that could take years, subjectively, and that this is a controlled experience where he has a code to abort the exercise if anything seriously goes wrong. He insists they try to make it work.

They go through a bunch of loops. Don’t succeed. It’s highly technical stuff that none of them are trained for. Morale drops. People start complaining, they’ve spent hours at this, they should be off duty by now. Nagle points out there’s a ruling, established with VR training, that companies don’t need to pay their employees according to their subjective experience of time, and officially they’ve only spent 34 minutes at this.

More loops. Morale drops further. People start demanding Nagle use the abort code, threatening to quit. Nagle points out that while they’re in this time loop, their actions are consequence-free, but once he ends the loop they’ll have to live with their decisions for the rest of their lives. Are they sure they really want to quit?

At that point someone loses it and kills Nagle. Shock. Panic. Some satisfaction. He’s reborn the next loop, starts screaming about it - someone kills him again. Complete social breakdown. Eventually some people decide, fuck it, let’s just live in this loop forever. Killing Nagle becomes a standard thing they do at the start of every loop, so that he can’t input the abort code. They go through various reconfigurations of their social group - orgies, riots, open paranoia where everyone colonizes a different part of the building, regressing to primitivism, open warfare between various sects, rebuilding of society along different axes of thought. Everyone starts thinking of themselves as immortal, they start calling themselves things like ‘Chronobog of the Infinite Plane of Despair’ or whatever; the narration gets increasingly surreal.

After god knows how many cycles of this, everyone finally achieves an equilibrium of perfect enlightenment. They know what must be done. They leave Nagle alive, he watches as they move in perfect unison to unlock the server room and overcome all the obstacles and repair the tachyon servers, loop is finally terminated, normal flow of time resumes.

Nagle stands up, gives a speech, starts congratulating them on completing the drill. As he talks, everyone can feel the rapport they’ve built start to slip away - they no longer understand each other perfectly outside of the context of those 34 minutes. Time is moving forward again, and with it introducing unfamiliarity, uncertainty, an impossible onslaught of variables that they cannot predict or prepare for, and they are all moving inescapably further from each other even as they glance around and try to catch each other’s eyes and keep holding on to that feeling of perfect unity - but it’s too late now, they are strangers behind familiar faces, all of them heading in their own directions, going to be returning to their own separate lives; that moment of solidarity they had is past.

And then Nagle claps his hands at them and says, “OK, drill’s over, everyone back to work!”

#fiction #dumping grounds

[permian-tropos]

“Seismic” -- Daniil Dankovsky/Artemy Burakh fic that I just spat out

CW: angst, suicidality

I will post this on AO3 maybe like a normal person but it’s late and I’m lazy

Edit: the AO3 link if you want it there

...

Two dogs barked in warning — they knew, as they so often did, of the oncoming quake.

The plague itself was growling in the air, unyielding in its final hours, and the black soot flakes soared on suddenly stirred air currents, all aflutter with anticipation.

On the eastern side of the Guzzle crossing came running the man who could always smell blood before it was spilled, because it was by rights his to harvest.

On the south side of town the cannons on the railroad were turning and aiming, ready to belch fire.

The yargachin stood on the bridge looking into the Stone Yard, where the spear would finally be ripped from the heart of the world. There it was; that glittering silhouette in the hazy air, that crystalized twister touching down by the bend in the river.

The Polyhedron’s manic angles had never seemed so alive. She was baring herself to the world, a witch upon the pyre screaming her last wild curse, and in that moment she and the Earth were not enemies but one being, united in defiance against their coming death.

As the ground beneath his boot soles shivered, the Haruspex at last knew what the odonghs meant when they said they could sense the weight of every pair of feet on the streets of the town.

Because he felt footsteps that should not be there, crossing the Bridge Square.

Walking west, to where the sun set, the steps spoke their own rhythmic language, tolling like a warning bell: I am going to see this to the end.

The butcher’s heart gasped like it too had been pierced through. Artemy heaved in a lungful of acrid infected air and sprinted through the Atrium, past the befuddled soldiers. His bad leg hobbled and nearly sent him down to one knee, but he turned a corner and beheld:

The fog in the square cut by the silhouette of a long leather coat — and he’d even brought his trademark bag; it swung at his side.

The Bachelor looked like a man upon the lip of a train platform, impatiently clasping his luggage, awaiting his chance to travel far away —truly far — the next time an engine thundered through the station.

His upturned head spelled out plainly that his eyes were only on the tower. Transfixed upon his beloved.

Artemy staggered across the paved stones, past the row of bodies left behind by the Inquisition, and caught Daniil Dankovsky by his arm.

And swung him around with one sharp pull. The man’s eyes were wide and red-rimmed, and out from them cracked all those furrows of stress that had been pressed into the man’s face over two weeks of squinting, straining, grimacing, scowling, and perhaps, by the looks of it, weeping.

“No,” was all Artemy could gasp with the last air in his lungs, and then he had to pant and recover.

“Don’t you dare stop me!” Dankovsky cried out, thrashing and fighting the grip on his arm.

Artemy clung to the snakeskin on his sleeve with all the strength he had left. He shook the man just as vigorously as the man was struggling, until his efforts stilled. “You’re not going up there.”

“You should have killed me in the Shelter. But you didn’t, so I’m going inside one last time. Maybe, just maybe, there’ll be one more dream left, and it won’t die alone.”

“The cannons!” Artemy choked out. “I delivered the orders! They’re taking aim!”

“I know,” said the Bachelor, tongue heavy, like he wanted the words carved on his grave. His lips shuddered, and then he twisted his arm, wildness flashing in his eyes.

Artemy grabbed his shoulders before he could wrench himself free. And stared at him, trying to vivisect him with a glare. By the way the man was trembling, the Haruspex was indeed cutting deep, through his medrel, his nerves.

Dankovsky was lost to his grief, seduced at his lowest moment by the Pied Piper herself, the temptress who had spirited away the children of the Town.

And now it wanted him to lie down with it in its grave, as its eternal lover. It had called him here with the siren song, there is nothing else but me, without me you are nothing, and I need you.

“What does a man do without a dream? What does mankind do?” Dankovsky dropped his bag and clutched the front of Artemy’s smock, and from the way his fingers clawed and twitched, he was coming close to reaching up and trying to squeeze his throat. But he did not do that. He just clung.

Artemy struggled for words. “We don’t do. We just are. And that’s enough.”

Dankovsky's breath caught on a wet clog in his throat. “I can’t live like this,” he rasped. “I’ll never be free again. I never was. Now let me go. I didn’t think you’d have to see this—”

“I’d see it when they found your body in the wreck. Is that how you want to be remembered, mangled and broken?” His jaw was tight as a bear trap, ready to snap. “Is that what you want to leave behind for someone you called a friend?”

The Bachelor’s cheeks were turning ashen. “Someone I called an idiot. Get out of here, Burakh, before you’re crushed by a chunk of debris. Any moment now, they’ll fire.”

“Then move, you bastard!” Artemy yanked on his arm to pull him away, yet still he fought.

A razor-sharp Line was wound all around Dankovsky’s body, biting through his clothes into his flesh like a garrote, and it was screeching the same discordant tune as the wicked metal frame balanced precariously in the Earth’s flesh.  

“It’s alive,” Dankovsky croaked. “In a way unlike anything in the universe. It’s so alive it makes the noon sun look like a shadow on the wall of a cave.”

Artemy wanted to sob, the way he had when a being shaped like his favorite childhood toy had tottered up to him on tiny hooves and plaintively asked, could it not live too? Was there not a world where it, strange form of life that it was, could be loved?

“I understand,” he said, and he did. “... I refuse to make another sacrifice. Especially not one as meaningless as this.”

“Not everything is about sacrifice!” the Bachelor spat. “My story is, quite simply, over.”

“You love that that tower so much you’d die with it? After two weeks? Barely any time!”

“Enough time to destroy a town and end thousands of lives.” A cruel grimace briefly flashed Dankovsky’s teeth, though it was covering up a flush of mortification. “You’ve known me for those same two weeks, but you’re out here in the open, waiting to be skewered on shrapnel, all over this poor waste of skin. Could it be that you’re—” he clutched a mocking hand to his breast, over his heart — “oh! just as suicidally devoted, my dearest Haruspex—!”

His words had such venom that he must have thought they would shame Artemy into letting go. A blow to his masculinity, or some such stupidity like that.

Artemy’s blood boiled, and then surged without thought. He seized Dankovsky in his arms and bent him over backwards and kissed him.

He tasted the pulse of both of their hearts as a tickle against his lips. Dankovsky flailed and helplessly threw his arms around Artemy’s shoulders, to catch his balance.

And as he did, his body shivered and his back arched into a yearning, yielding shape in Artemy’s tight grasp. Artemy’s own spine tingled from tip to tail, more urgently with every moment that Dankovsky did not pull away.

Artemy’s emboldened hand found the man’s free leg and clutched his thigh, while Dankovsky gasped through his nose and wriggled in embarrassment at the touch, but kept his mouth firmly sealed against Artemy’s.

The Cathedral bore witness; Artemy could feel it rapturously exhale a great gust of seconds into the world. The Crucible’s stately wings shivered and held their breath, scandalized. And the Polyhedron’s needle, jammed into the agonized Earth, vibrated with outrage.

He is mine, the edifice howled.

Not anymore, rumbled the Haruspex’s decree, and he planted his feet and refused to budge. His sympathy for the tower, miracle that it was, had dried up. For this eternal moment, he was the wedge forcing its way down upon those sharp threads tightly binding Daniil Dankovsky to the Polyhedron.

A great crack of gunfire split the sky and rocked the earth.

The scents of metal and blood were indistinguishable from one another, as both exploded into the air as a ruddy mist.

The seismic shudder sent Artemy down to his knees, but he didn’t let Dankovsky go; they sank together, dropping to the flagstones and unsticking their lips as their ears rang from the cacophony.

Artemy unclenched his eyelids. His heart jumped; they were both still alive, and Dankovsky had his gloved — and still very bloodstained — hand clutched over his mouth. But aside from that old gore, there was a faint spray of pink mist on the side of him that faced the river.

Fingers shaking, realizing he was staring at the cure for the Sand Pest splattered against the Bachelor’s pale skin, Artemy traced the droplets across the man’s temple. Magnificent, miraculous, chimeric blood.

“Don’t look so shocked,” he gruffly forced out, as his own mortification got the better of him. “Like I just took your innocence.” The Bachelor slowly lowered his hand from his mouth, and his dark brows dropped low and miserable, as he turned his head towards the river of blood and the jagged bones of the specular tower. “That’s exactly what you’ve done,” he whispered.

Artemy let go of Dankovsky slowly; his joints felt stuck. “Then I will bear the weight of that evil, and you will live to hold it against me.” He rose on trembling feet and pointed. “It’s over. That’s our cure, doctor.”

Dankovsky remained half-sprawled on the ground, lips forming silent words that could have been numb denials.

“It’s,” he finally said. “It’s… over.”

Artemy swallowed and took a rotten, sin-soaked step towards that beautiful red pool. He understood the hollow tones in Dankovsky’s voice. What even were they now, without the frantic running through the streets, without the smoke from signal fires stinging their eyes, without creeping to avoid the pools of light from streetlamps with a half-shattered blade in hand, without obsessive hoards of trinkets and trash filling their pockets?

The Earth’s thrashing and bellowing in pain underneath him was growing stiller, colder, fainter.

“No more of your self-pity,” Artemy finally forced out. “We have work to do. One more task. I need you, oynon.”

Behind him, by the sound of it, Dankovsky was picking himself up off the smooth stones. “You don’t need me,” he said dully. “I barely helped.”

“Spare me that bullshit. What’s left of the town is alive because of you.”

“Then. Everyone who died.”

“Stop it,” said Artemy. He didn’t turn around. “Don’t goad me right now. I won’t kiss you again, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

For an aching moment, the words caused a ripple, like a stone thrown in a pond.

“Then let’s work,” said Dankovsky, and he was quiet and bitter and resigned, but he was still there. To live in the throes of despair took courage, warm courage borne from warm blood, that still assiduously pumped inside his chest. His unthinking blood cherished the brain that struggled to love itself, and that would do for now.

#pathologic #daniil dankovsky #artemy burakh #burakhovsky #my fic #I just haven't written like an impulse fic in a while you know I just kinda had to

[rightintheguts]

The Witch of Birmingham

Decided to re-post this, so here's the summary: Her family wasn’t the same after the War. Her father lost a leg; her brother an eye; her sister a husband. And for Bianca? She lost her family in the aftermath.

Though, she’d be damned if she let the tragedy of that war consume her, as it had her family.

With a split decision, Bianca leaves her family, transitioning from the scenic sight of Galway, to the industrial streets of Birmingham, hoping for a fresh start away from the memory of her broken family.

She gains employment at a local business, and she falls into a steady routine. A routine that soon takes a turn, when on one afternoon, a group of Blinders comes looking for her boss for due money. Wonderful.

The chapter begins under the line.

Chapter One:

Birmingham was vastly different from Galway. With that singular thought, Bianca made her way off the over-packed train, and onto the equally crowded platform, using some effort to stay afloat with the mass of strangers that she was crammed in between. She hissed out a curse when she almost tripped over the heeled shoes of a blond woman. Shooting out a hurried apology to the Miss in question, Bianca was once again sucked into the departing crowd. Soon enough the crowd thinned, and she was able to separate herself from the lot of them; she took a moment to gather herself, not used to being in such overly large crowds.

Once she took stock of both herself, and her belongings she looked around the platform, watching as others boarded the train; some hurrying off to wherever they’re meant to be.

Her gloved hands twisted over her suitcase, chest twinging at the sight of families reuniting, or bidding farewell. Her mind conjuring up the image of her own family, before she willed it away: there was no time thinking of that. No, instead she should focus on finding her way to her newly purchased flat, a thought that felt odd to her--of having her own space, but she welcomed the feeling, even though it frightened her. Be brave, Bianca.

Taking a deep breath, she held it and closed her eyes. No more ‘Theo’. once I open my eyes, I’ll only be ‘Bianca’. Exhaling, a smile bloomed across her face, and her eyes snapped opened a second later. With her head held high, Bianca briskly strut through the doors of the train station, and out into cobbled streets of Birmingham.

_____________

(A Month Later)

The moment her neighbors started screaming at each other, was a clear indication that she needed to get ready, and start the day. Bianca groaned into her scrunched-up pillow, rolling onto her side and sitting up, haphazardly tossing her quilted covers to the side, as her bare feet touched the worn hardwood floor. Who needs an alarm clock, when you have the Hughes?

Lord, bless them! Sighing in resignation, Bianca sluggishly rose from her creaky mattress, and began her morning routine. She was never a morning person, and moving to Birmingham sure as hell didn’t change that.

Setting her copper kettle to boil, she finished pinning up her blonde hair, all-the-while glaring heatedly at the wall across from her. Throughout the month she’s been here, the couple have made it a habit to argue from the early hours of the morning, to the very moment Mr. Hughes arrives home from either work, or the local pub. The only time she gets a hint of peace, is when she is out of her bloody flat, and those few precious hours before Mr. Hughes gets home.

Thankfully, Bianca had managed to concoct something during her second week here, that could instantly knock her out when she needed to rest.

Though, perhaps I won’t need that now? Bianca had made it her personal mission to either befriend, or get to know her neighbors to some extent. What she had learned during her first week, was that Mr. Baker hated visitors, but he had liked the apple crumble she had brought him; the Millers, were an elderly couple who were very fond of her pies.

Finally, there were the Hughes: Mr. Hughes was a short, and stocky man with a ruddy face, and even ruddier hair. Mrs. Hughes on the other hand, was a thin, bird-like woman with short brown hair, and a tired face. They had been pleasant, completely different from the screaming entities she had conjured within her mind in those first few days.

She eventually found out that the Hughes were having trouble in the marriage bed--or rather, Mr. Hughes was, ahem, having trouble downstairs, to the increasing frustration of Mrs. Hughes. So, naturally the couple began taking their frustration out on each other--thankfully, their fights never escalated to anything physical.

With that train of thought, Bianca made her way to her small pantry and briskly opened it. Finding what she was looking for, she snatched it up, and closed the pantry door with her hip. The kettle let out a startling hiss, almost causing her to drop the small vial, but she quickly righted herself and stuffed the glass solution into her bra.

After finishing her morning tea and toast, Bianca slid into her coat and donned its matching hat. Mr. Hughes had left just as she had finished fixing her tea, so she was secure in knowing that she wouldn’t be spotted by him. Gathering the rest of her things, she exited her flat and locked the door, before she ambled to her neighbor’s door.

Rapping thrice upon the scuffed wood, she waited until a haggard looking Abigail Hughes opened the door. Her friendly grin was met with confused eyes, before they turned sheepish.

“I, I’m sorry Bianca, were we too--?” The woman’s apology was cut short when Bianca reached into her blouse, and plucked the safe-kept vial from the insides of her bra. Holding it out for the woman, who took it after a few short beats, Bianca instructed her to place a drop of the liquid into either her husbands food, or drink.

“W-what--” Once again, the woman was cut off.

“No more than a drop, eh? And first time’s free charge--the next will be three pounds 50.” With that, she turned on her heel and strode out her apartment building.

________

Her earlier cheeriness lasted up until she stepped through the door of her workplace, and punched in her time card, where she happened to catch sight of her desk: riddled with piles of meeting notes--notes that she would have to spend all day typing up, and filing away. Shoulders slumping, she withheld a sigh and replaced her card in it’s designated slot, then Bianca made the short trek to her, now, cluttered desk. She had just placed her purse down, when her boss suddenly opened his office door with a loud bang, startling her before abruptly barking her name.

“Ms. Kovac!” upon not immediately seeing her, the man called for her again, before said woman pushed the door back a smidge more, revealing herself. Mr. Thompson jumped, though was quick to try and play it off as a mere shuffling of his feet.

“Yes, Mr. Thompson?” she asked, forced smile stretching across her face. She could already feel a headache coming on, and it was barely the start of her work day. The man produced an even larger pile of documents for her, carelessly thrusting them into her limp arms, causing her to scramble in order to not drop them--which was possibly his intent, if the unsatisfied frown was any indication.

After briskly informing her that these documents, along with the ones on her desk, will need to be finished today, he closed his office door and then headed for the entrance of the small office building.

“Oh, and keep tabs on my messages, yeah?” with that, he exited the building, leaving her slack-jawed and wide-eyed.

Oh, damn that man! Snapping her mouth shut, she huffily slammed the papers on her desk, before closing her eyes and took in a lungful of air. Counting to ten, Bianca told herself to calm down--she needed this job, that she should bare a stiff-upper-lip and march through the day. It was only six hours.

Reaching ten she exhaled, and opened her eyes. Sitting down at her desk, she lugged the documents onto her piled desk, and readied her type-writer, officially beginning her day.

_____________________

Around lunch-time, the office door opened and closed, followed by long, sure steps that languidly made their way towards Bianca, though she was far too focused on her work to notice this. She had made a surprising amount of progress with the mountain of documents, and with her decision to work through lunch she was confident that she wouldn’t be forced to work over-time.

The only sound after that, was the fast rhythmic tap, tap, tap of her type-writer, fingers flying over the keys; eyes solely focused on her task, and mouth absent-mindedly chewing half of her sandwich, the other half hanging from her sealed lips, waiting it’s turn to be consumed.

A throat clearing broke her out of her trance, she idly glanced up, and nearly had a stroke right then and there when she registered exactly who stood in front of her desk; along with the sudden influx of mortification at the picture she no doubt made.

Thomas Fucking Shelby!

She may not have been in Birmingham long, but she sure as fuck knew who the Shelbys were--especially the one who happened to be looming over her desk currently. Face burning, she reached for her sandwich and bit through it, setting the rest down on the napkin she had wrapped it in, and desperately sought to reclaim some-sort of dignity. Swallowing, she tried mustering a smile, though it fell short and morphed into a grimace.

“How can I help you, Mr. Shelby?” She’s heard quite a bit about the Shelbys--especially about Thomas Shelby in particular. She had once heard that his icy stare alone, could melt a man’s face off--though the man who said as much was quite drunk at the time, so she didn't have much faith in his word. In fact, he didn’t appear that frightening, if anything he appeared amused--most likely due to having caught her off guard. He gestured a bit to his mouth, glancing to her own before she caught on and hastily wiped the mustard away with a quick swipe of her tongue, face once again heating in embarrassment.

Dear Lord, please strike me down.

“Is Jimmy ‘round?” At the mention of her boss, the frustration from this morning reared its ugly head, but she was quick to stamp it out--she didn’t want to come across as defensive or hostile towards Mr. Shelby, especially when she realized he wasn’t really alone--two Blinders were standing guard outside the door. Shaking her head, she informed him that he had left in the early morning, and that no, he hadn’t told her where he had gone, nor when he would be back.

Seeing Mr. Shelby subtle frustration at her employer’s absence, along with the news that she had no idea where he was, Bianca was anxious to placate the man.

“Was there anything you were expecting, or wanting to discuss with Mr. Thompson?” she asked pleasantly, a sudden thrill racing down her spine when he looked at her, a dark brow raising at her inquiry.

“I was expecting a payment two days ago, and ‘ave yet to receive it.” He reached into his pocket, and slid a cigarette from it’s cartridge before lighting it. Bianca froze in place, her mind began rapidly turning in thought; and dread practically twisting her intestines into intricate knots.

“I’d graciously given him an extra day to get the money, and still I haven’t received the three-hundred quid he owes.” a pause, accompanied by a ghost of a smirk. “Now with interest, of course.”

Bianca cursed, verbally. She couldn’t help it, finally realizing what this was, and why her boss had made sure she would be present during this time--no doubt having quickly learned, that she would rather work through lunch than work a second of over-time--and why he wasn’t.

That kreten! (1)

“Now, I know--” Mr. Shelby had started, seeing as she was growing emotional, but Bianca cut him off by standing abruptly, the two Blinders jerked to attention, but she paid them no mind. Oh, she was furious with her boss--why, if he was here this very moment, she’d strangle that little kozí kurva (2); God forgive her, but she would!

Making the short trek to her employer’s office, a litany of Slovak curses following her wake, she began to fumble with one of her hair pins. She jerked the door open with a bang--the bastard didn’t even lock it--and marched towards his desk, her heels furiously clicking against the hardwood floor.

Reaching for the tasteless painting that hung behind his office chair, she yanked it from the wall and carelessly tossed it aside--if the kretén had any problems with her treatment of his things, she’d tell him to shove ‘em up his arse. Bianca released an inelegant snort at the man’s predictable mind set. He’d had thought himself so clever; thinking that he was the only one in the world with a safe hidden behind a painting, that they’d neither find him, nor his money: forcing her to deal with the gangsters, the complete ass.

Well, he won’t be laughing for long when he finds his cash gone!

Analyzing the safe, she ended up letting out another haughty snort; he hadn’t even bothered to purchase a decent one, she’d have no problem cracking this one--hell, a babe could crack this pathetic excuse of a safe.

“What’re you doin’?” Glancing over her shoulder, she found Mr. Shelby standing in the doorway, smoking all care-free like, and watching her with a sort of detached amusement. She finally managed to pluck a pin from her hair, then gave the man a one-armed shrug.

“Quitting.” she said simply. She heard something suspiciously like a laugh, but when she happened to glance back at him, he was as grim as the Reaper. Crossing herself at both the thought, and for what she’s about to do, Bianca set to work.

She was severely disappointed, with barely any thought, she heard the tell-tale click and voila: the safe was opened and the money inside was ripe for the taking.

“Three-hundred quid, you said?” she asked absentmindedly, already counting out the notes.

“Plus interest.”

“Ah, right.” having counted out the correct amount, including the required interest, she placed the stack of pounds on the desk so he could do so himself. While he began his own counting, she turned back towards the safe and took the rest. Grasping the leftover pounds, she turned and began walking back towards her own desk, all-the-while stuffing half the notes down her bra, and folding the rest with her purse being their future home.

Feeling eyes one her, she found Mr. Shelby once again watching her. Giving him her best smile, she began gathering her things and idly asked him, “You won’t mind too much, if such an outcome happens, that I tell the authorities that the Blinders took all the money?”

“I doubt you’d have to talk to any copper.” he informed her, and after a second of contemplation, she nodded in acquiescence, tossing her forgotten lunch away. Her employer--ah, former employer--would be too much of a coward to confront the Blinders, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to contact any officers.

“Well, then I bid you a pleasant day, Mr. Shelby.” She went to gather her coat and hat, and punched out her time card, before tossing it in the bin near-by.

“You as well, Ms…?” She twisted to face him, and smiled once again.

“Kovac. Bianca Kovac.” He tilted his head in acknowledgement, and she took that as her que to leave. She nodded farewell towards the two Blinders stationed outside, before reaching for her compact and lipstick from the recesses of her questionably large purse. After re-applying the bold red to her lips, she smiled and winked at herself before snapping the compact closed.

Well, time to find a new job.

______________

Translations:

1.) Asshole

2.) Goat fucker

#peaky blinders #peaky blinder fanfic #thomas shelby x oc #repost #writers on tumblr #writing #fanfic