#sister clement

[tidesages]

<<beneath the tidesblood>>

(six tales, for connected moments)

with all the luck you've had, why are your songs so sad? sing from a book you were reading in bed and took to heart

(a tale for brother zander)

“Maybe if you didn’t get so much ink on your robes, they wouldn’t take so long to get back from the laundry halls. The soap elementals can only work so many wonders before all your sleeves are too grey and have to be replaced entirely,” Brother Zander Bowline pointed out crisply. He was busy wrapping small little bandages around the papercuts he’d earned from their newest venture into an untouched corner of the stacks.

Brother Mathwell’s glance up at him was startling, if only because the movement was magnified twenty times in the thick-lensed glasses perched on his nose. When he looked at you, suddenly all you could see was rheumy eyes. “My dear chap, you were the one who pointed out how empty the aumbry was. You know I’m chief scribe. I can’t help having to write for my job.”

It had been nearly two years - because time always flowed oddly between tunnels, pools, and rain, from Matins to Vespers, since the archives had burned, and yet they were still in varying degrees of disarray. The archivists had tried to make some sense of things and restore missing documents, mind you, but they only comprised so much of the Shrine. And with the continued need to teach and pull out pieces for circulation, as well as getting in older pieces, they were struggling.

Zander Bowline had always doubted his fellow brother could actually see him from a few feet away, glasses or not, but he did his best to arrange his features into a more pleasant expression than a scowl. Patience was a virtue, and one he’d always needed more work on. “My apologies, brother. Being understaffed leaves me a little… stressed.”

The watery gaze turned from him, back to the breviary tome he’d pulled from the stacks. “You do not need to apologize to me on that, my lad,” he murmured as his attention was once more pulled toward the written word. “The office of Sacrist is a thankless one, and they do not send any more new fellows to join our ranks any more. Not since the Renault’s passing, at least… no respect for books, these days.”

The hooded heads turned briefly, Mathwell’s to check for sounds while Zander’s checked for movement among the stacks and desks. “The lad, Brannon, wouldn’t have much of a say in how the Shrine is run,” the latter admitted beneath his breath. For all that the elder sage couldn’t see, he had quite the ear for voices. “It’s really Pike and his ilk, and that fellow’s never run anything more complex than a merchant town. Nothing alike.”

“This wouldn’t have been a problem if the old lord had given a child that could hear the tides. He was so focused on… other things… that he forgot his duty to pass on his strength to the valley. This is why we’re inundated with a lack of tradition!” Mathwell’s stamp came down hard on the page of the breviary, with an ink-laden smack.

The younger man’s gaze narrowed. “That’s not what I heard,” he murmured, “though his… fixations led him to pick an option as wouldn’t have him.”

He strode to the aumbry, pulling open its doors and rifling through the books and vessels. He could feel the old sage’s ears on him while he worked, patiently waiting for him to continue. Finally, as he pulled out a pile of loose papers with writing on them, Mathwell’s patience came to an end and he gave a rattling cough. “By the salt embrace, lad, don’t leave me strung out like a sentence.”

At least recounting old gossip was a good respite from the despair of sorting through hymnals. “Sister Taggin,” he recounted with relish, hearing old Mathwell grumble for a few moments as he tried to remember which sage that was. “The coppercurls with the haunted look. Depthsbringer, the one who failed the loyalty rite.”

Mathwell was tearing through the breviary with a bit more vigor than he usually showed, the walnut-like lines of his face glowing by candlelight. “Ah, yes. She always hung out down here, didn’t she? Thought she was bound to become part of the archivists at one point, ‘til she disappeared.”

Between the flipping of pages, he answered, “I heard Renault was hounding her to give up the path and become the Tidewife.” His fellow’s gasp rang out, along with the sound of something dropping, and he flashed an idle smile over to the other sage before continuing. “Turned him down then and there, and fled the Shrine on some hairbrained notion that she was needed elsewhere. Of course, if he hadn’t spent his energy on a woman as didn’t want him, he’d have had time to bring an heir before the Shrine was broken, aye?”

Zander’s gaze was ripped from the pages by the hand that gripped his upper arm, trembling slightly still. He hadn’t heard the limping steps that usually heralded their fellow archivist’s arrival with mead and cheese - when had Theriot arrived? He didn’t have time to wonder, though, at the stricken stare of the k’thir. His brother’s face was a pale, taut lavender behind his spectacles, and the tentacles curled in a way he’d never seen before.

“Aye, one would think he’d have better t-” Mathwell’s voice cut off, aware of the change in the air even if he could barely see the shapes of the sages frozen in the candlelight. He squinted, setting the book down gently on the desk. “...Cecil? Is that you?”

Theriot had always been a polite presence, Zander thought dimly as sage gave his trapped arm a little shake and pulled him deeper between the stacks. One of the few k’thir that were a more easily-seen staple of the Shrine, and one of the most agreeable sages he’d known, he’d become little more than a shadow in the archives afterward. Amber eyes narrowed behind glasses, distinctly inhuman, and for the first time he remembered that his brother had transcended that step long ago. “Where,” the k’thir murmured, his voice low and rasping, “is she?”

His arms were stiff, hackles raised from the interrogation before his brain realized that was occurring. “She?” he echoed, voice rising a little as he tried to pull out of the grip. Theriot’s fingers tightened, beard of tendrips snaking out to grip the unlucky archivist’s collar.

“Taggin. Where did she go?” He could hear the strain in his brother’s voice, too. This conversation had swept like a riptide into dangerous waters.

Zander gulped on air, and his throat bobbed. “She - she failed the test. That’s all I know, Brother, she failed the loyalty test and she’s gone. That’s it. Please don’t hurt me, Brother.” He raised both hands, letting the papers fall from them… his wellbeing was more important than the writings, now.

As if his words had broken a spell, Theriot released him. The elder staggered back a little, tears shining in the dull glow of his eyes, and he shook his head a little wildly. “She couldn’t - no. I don’t know what I want to believe.” He turned, and without even an apology or farewell took uneven steps to disappear behind another shelf. On another row, Zander could see a fallen tray, where mead spilled over the graven stones to disappear into the cracks.

He didn’t move, whether to run after Theriot or to rejoin the wizened sage. Instead, he knelt down to pick up his papers with hands that shook slightly from unused adrenaline. “Brother Bowline?” Mathwell called after him. “What did he want? Are you well, my good lad?”

the sea moves so slowly she holds your heart so closely though the tide leaves so lonely she returns your mind so holy

(a tale for sister clement)

The line drifted lazily across the waters, bobber mostly visible above the waves. Then, barely perceptibly, it vanished. The line tugged at Ira Driftstone’s hands and she sat up a little more in the boat. “Clement, come and help,” she commanded as she began to reel it in.

“I don’t understand why you don’t want to call the fish in with the water.” It wasn’t exactly petulant, or at least Clement wasn’t trying to be. At least it helped the tideguard feel more at use as she carefully knelt in the dinghy’s bottom boards and did the work of reeling while the tidesage angled the rod.

“For the same reason we don’t just pull up the fish for the fishermen, really. It would be a waste of energy, and unfair to the fish.” A sheen of sweat rose on the sage’s forehead, hood lowered to reveal many braids tied back at the nape of her neck. “If you were a fish, wouldn’t you feel awful if someone just plucked you out of the water without a chance to run away? At least this allows them to try to trick me or run away. And I get to eat stupid fish for my supper.”

Now that brought sweat to Clement’s neck, beneath the lip of the helm. She reached up with one hand, keeping the other reeling while she felt lightly at her face to make sure her visage was holding. It wouldn’t do to show her tentacled face on the outside of the Shrine. A jerk from the rod made her start, and she reached back down to help take the rod in both hands.

Ira’s fingers brushed against her knuckles, making her hands tremble slightly as she finally reeled in the fish. The snapper thrashed against the hook, making it sink in deeper, and blood began to slide down on the deck. Clement just dug her heels and held onto the rod while the sage ran her hands down the thin filament to stop its struggling.

“Oh, it’s dying,” came the soft murmur. Everything about Ira was soft, she thought, from her careful voice to her skin and eyes, as dark as the sea at night. Even her Drustvari accent held a nice lilt to it that Clement couldn’t hope to compete with, not with her home-grown northern clip to her words. Not that she wanted to complete with a sage, but it still made her feel inadequate. “Sister Clement, please put it out of its misery.”

“...Right. Aye, Sister!” Dropping the rod, since Ira had it controlled, Clement reached for the sharp knife at her side. She turned the fish over with a gauntleted hand, then pressed the tip of the blade into the top of the head. A quick blow to the pommel made it sink in, instantly killing the fish without pain. The struggling faded, and the snapper lay against the deck as its blood seeped into the wood. There was nothing special about the fish, really - a simple lane snapper with reddened scales, common around the Shrine area, though usually fished up in bigger numbers than this. “We could bring this to the kitchen, have it processed into oil,” she suggested.

Those dark eyes glanced up at Clement briefly, and she could feel a flush rising in the chromatophores on her cheeks. “I think I’d like to grill it,” the sage murmured, not judging, but with enough empathy that the hidden purple skin seemed to burn underneath the helm. “If you can take us back to the shore, and get a fire started, I brought some supplies from the kitchens.”

After thinking about it, the tideguard was starting to realize that the sudden outing was a bit more planned than first realized. Not that this was a bad thing, in the slightest. With a murmur of obedience, she took her place once again at the stern and fumbled with the ropes. The small boat had a single sail, a rudder, and a pair of oars just in case. For now, though, they’d be fine. As she unfurled the sail and started toward the shore of the Shrine’s isle, Ira took up the abandoned blade and began the process of cutting the gills. She dipped the fish into the running water beside the boat, holding on tightly as the current swept the blood away. “Let your soul wash away from its mortal shell,” the sage whispered, her voice carrying on the wind, “and flow into the waters.”

Clement should have been watching the bow of the ship, but her eyes flicked back to the tidesage sitting at the side. The silver wisps of soul from the fish drifted off into the currents, quickly vanishing as they passed onward. Her attention only went back when the hull bumped against the sand, and she stopped herself from cursing. Of course she should be paying more attention, and not mooning over what she couldn’t have!

“You handle that well,” Ira murmured as Clement tied up the sail and dropped onto the beachhead, pulling the boat up further so it wouldn’t be washed out to sea. “Your strength and reactions always amaze me. Like nothing could faze you.”

Pale golden eyes blinked up at Ira - the sage was now standing on the bow and dangling the fish over like some sort of bloody figurehead. “I don’t think I react to things well,” she said, perhaps a trifle blankly, before offering a hand to help the other woman down. “I just bumble along where I can, and look for orders when I can’t.” The boat tipped slightly, and she glanced over her shoulder.

Behind them, a dull purple tentacle as long as two ship lengths played with the rudder of the ship. A large, round, curious eye stared at them from the waters. Ira had staggered slightly, turned, then gave a quiet laugh that made Clement feel warm all over. The sage and leviathan stared for a few moments before the latter flipped a little splash of water at the boat and let go. The tendrils slipped off into the waves and vanished into dark smudges.

“He was probably checking which sage I was,” the sage joked, then took Clement’s hand. With much more grace than she felt, she helped the shorter woman down from the boat and then went back in to check for those supplies.

“Why would he need to check?” There they were, tucked under Ira’s seat where they weren’t immediately evident.

The gentle voice drifted over the side of the boat as Clement hoisted the large bag over her shoulder. “Well, there’s a funny story about that. Put those things out on the sand and I’ll get them set up, then I’ll tell you over the fire.”

Being included by Ira kept that warmth from earlier, only curled up in a tight ball in her chest that refused to go away. She couldn’t help but sneak another glance at the sage as she clambered out of the boat and dumped the bag onto the sand. The robed woman flashed a grateful smile at her, and untied the sack to pull out a grey blanket and even smaller little bags. Even a little metal grate came out of the sack, presumably for the fish still bleeding out at her side.

Right. She was getting distracted again. Trudging off along the sand, Clement picked up pieces of driftwood and collected clumps of seagrass. The shores around the Shrine were worn away somewhat with the currents that swept around the islet, and a past lord had decreed that more plants needed to be added to prevent the stone and sand from being washed away. No gardeners kept these shores beyond the occasional warder wandering with an elemental to trim things up. It ran wild and free, slightly overgrown, much like the sages that she guarded.

Her boots left impressions on the tide-soaked coast as she returned. The grasses went down first, along with a tuft of cotton. Ira leaned over and dug in Clement’s hip pocket, eliciting a startled harrumph from the tideguard before flint and tinder were produced. “Thanks,” Ira added unnecessarily, striking sparks on the cotton with the tools. All Clement could do was give a nod and hope that she didn’t look constipated while her heart beat wildly in her throat.

They worked in silence for a minute more, Clement adding sticks to the fire while Ira gutted and descaled the fish. It would take a while for the flames to die down enough to be cookable, but she wasn’t going to complain. Really, it was enough to be here, working together, and not feel like a shackle for the other woman. Not a burden, or an annoyance. Finally, though, she spoke up. “You mentioned a story behind that little kraken checking who you were?”

Ira never startled. “Ah, I’d almost forgotten.” She gave a little smile, directed toward the flames, that made Clement’s stomach do a flip. “It was Practicals season, early this year when ice was still riming the peaks. It was the very first initiate we were testing for the Trial of the Flame’s Passage.”

At the blink from the tideguard she clarified, “I can’t go into details, but it’s the one where they close out the entirety of the Shrine of Shadows. You know, the one with the inner gate that leads to the outside.”

The tideguard winced. She’d kept guard on the inside of the Shrine of Shadows before, when a visiting C’Thrax had needed a special welcome. The usual tunnels weren’t nearly big enough for brethren of that size, and the hullabaloo had gone on for weeks.

“This initiate was one of the older ones we’ve had, so expectations were already… different,” Ira said delicately. She probably hadn’t noticed the movement from Clement, who covered it with a  cough and tossed in a few more sticks.  “I think he was personally mentored outside the Shrine? All I know is that I never saw him before the Flame’s Passage. They brought me in to do some of the waterworks and slap him around with some waves.”

At Clement’s amused snort, Ira flashed her a slow and deep smile. Maybe her organs were actually doing somersaults instead of flips. “He was doing better than expected, really,” the sage added, “and my current wasn’t working to drag him away from the next shrine he had to visit. I could see some of my fellow wavespeakers were getting frustrated and were throwing the tides a little harder than they should have been.”

Blinking, she asked, “What happens if the testers go a little overboard?”

“Oh, they usually get a light scolding afterward, but it doesn’t generally throw off the test. We just factor in the added difficulty afterward in our huddle,” she replied breezily. “Anyways, he was getting near the end and didn’t seem to be struggling as much as he should have, apart from being scared out of his wits. Suddenly, Little Levi-“ Clement laughed, and Ira grinned, “pops up in front of the poor sage, having apparently been sleeping at the bottom before we disturbed him. I thought the lad was going to piss his robes. Apparently his first reaction was to brute-force through it, though, because the next thing I knew he’d ripped the entire. Water. Out of our hands.”

“What.”

“Entire. Water.” Ira’s lips thinned in an attempt to be serious, but Clement had watched her enough to know when she was holding back laughter. “He left us flopping around like beached whales! And - and the ENTIRE water, just got thrown against the leviathan like a battering ram!” She gave an indelicate snort, her voice shaking as she continued, “The next thing we see, the doors had been blown open from the pressure, and the leviathan was skipping over the water’s surface like some sort of demented, tentacled rock. The boy dropped the water back into the basin with a bang, and stumbled onto the shrine. And passed!”

The mock-outrage in the sister’s voice was enough to set Clement off into a fit of giggles, rocking back in the sand that clung to her armor and cloak. The flames crackled merrily as Ira leaned over, resting one hand on the silver chestplate and taking off Clement’s helm with the other. There wasn’t enough time for the tideguard to protest, to reapply her visage, before the helmet dropped. Soft fingers brushed through her tentacles and pulled them up a little, and a warm mouth pressed up against her own.

Clement completely forgot what they were talking about, frankly, and tilted her head to accommodate the other woman’s searching kisses. Her own hands reached up to touch Ira’s collar, reverently, and brush braids away from her face.

It was a good thing her sage knew what she wanted, because she had no intention of remembering the fish still on the ground while there were more interesting topics to explore.

and it’s peaceful in the deep ‘cause either way you cannot breathe no need to pray, no need to speak now i am under

(a tale for brother theriot)

Cecil Theriot hadn’t seen this place since his own ritual.

The thought stopped him in his tracks, robes falling about him in a familiar rustle as he peered across the room and past the lectern. It had been many years since he’d been called to serve the Master irrevocably, and he had traversed the length and depths of the Shrine since then, but never come back to this specific chamber.

He’d been a younger man, then, full of fire and zeal for the Master’s purpose. So sure of himself that he’d known that he could make it, even as they’d poured the mixture down his throat and bound him fast.

Now, stepping forward felt as if the stones were attached to his ankles instead. He idly reached up to touch the long-healed scars on either side of his throat. Whoever was slated to guard this chamber wasn’t here… he’d checked, and the name on the roster was some tideguard pulled away on other duties. It wasn’t like this place was used, but the Wakestorm Council didn’t want anyone to perform any sort of ritual, even accidentally, related to the Master.

The memories weren’t fresh enough to make him forget his bones creaking as he stepped into the water, along the shelf that led to the drop-off. He was different now, older, wiser, less likely to worry about what others thought of his conduct. Speaking of which… why was he here?

If Faygia was living, and that was a very big if, she’d likely fled far away from the Shrine with her knowledge of what awaited her. There was no way she’d come back for him, or anything else that could have been. He could go back to the archives, apologize, and pretend nothing could happen. He wouldn’t even be late for dinner.

He had to know. She was worth leaving his doubt behind.

Entering the water feet-first gave him an unhappy twinge from one knee that always hated these sorts of things. Theriot had the presence of mind to reach up with one hand and hold his glasses in place as the water drew him in. The corner of his mind that had once held His gaze was as silent as ever, sleeping eternally with no signs of waking. 

His robes hadn’t been bathed in saltwater for years, now, not while he’d languished in the candlelight Archives. It should have been good to return to his roots. This water wasn’t clean, though, and it held a taste that made his tendrils curl uncomfortably. It was at this point that he remembered that these pools hadn’t been cleaned out in over two years. Not since before the raid on the Shrine, before she would have left. If there was a trace of her, then it would still be there.

Dim waters swallowed him whole, even dimmer from beneath, and he was absurdly grateful that his change once more left him able to breathe in the depths. Tentacles swirled idly in the water and he took in a deep lungful, then expelled it to draw him further down. Every sound down here felt both curiously muffled and magnified, from the beat of his heart to the swirl of the current he made to draw him down to the bottom. It was good that he was now cold-blooded, or the icy waters underneath would have sapped his strength and left him helpless.

He’d remembered the corpses that awaited him at the bottom, though nothing could prepare him for the sight a second time. Whatever bodies had been down there when he’d performed the rite had been either shoved back or removed, because the bodies resting on the bottom now were different. The light seemed to make them more greyish, robes fluttering idly in the wake of his movements as what hair they had left wafted gently out of their hoods. Their skin was waxy, bloated, barely recognizable.

Still, this was why he was here, wasn’t it?

While afraid of what he might find, he was more afraid of never knowing. He made his way between the bodies, peering at each face to try to recall who might have been there. Here was Brother Jeremy, his face twisted with fear in a way that contorted the adipocere of his skin and showed his crooked teeth. Over there was Sister Marley, face half-tentacled, the k’thired sections of her face partially rotted over years in the depths. Hullwarden Wade made a large corpse in the back, bloated and nearly blackish. He’d managed to free his hands before he’d finished drowning, and they reached up toward the surface like a silent chorus of applause. Encore.

Surely Faygia would have been noticeable by her hair in the sea of corpses - depths knew he’d looked at it long enough as it tried to escape her hood. Would she be still human, down at the bottom, or half-transformed? Surely the Master would have welcomed her into His eternal arms, no matter how far she’d gotten, and she had always been one of the most sensitive to the all-encompassing will.

Still, as he carefully picked his way through the bodies of his former brethren, sorrow wrapped around his bones in a gentle embrace. Sorrow wound through with a lightning core of panic. She wasn’t there, as a corpse or otherwise. Wherever she was, she hadn’t died down in this hole, tainted with her lifeblood.

Cecil stared unseeingly toward the surface above, tilting his head in an echo of the fallen sages around him. For once, he allowed himself to hope.

some ancient call that i've answered before it lives in my walls and it's under the floor if this was meant for me, why does it hurt so much?

(a tale for brother zander)

It was always a welcome moment when Galecaller Aldry visited the Archives, Zander Bowline decided. The short sage always remained draped in their robes, winds held tight around them to prevent the books from rustling, and they asked the lovely sorts of questions.

Questions like, what sorts of books would you recommend for someone interested in the intricacies of storm rituals? Like, what are the oldest ceremonies for certain liturgies, or do we have any psalms to the Tidemother you like that are in stock? These sorts of questions could send him wandering through the books for a while on a mission, while still talking with Aldry about whatever topics they’d brought to mind for the day.

This conversation wasn’t nearly as intellectually stimulating as usual, and slightly more aggravating.

“They cut through the initiates like a hot knife through butter,” Aldry pointed out, “and left them piled through the Shrine like driftwood. And then of the ones who were left, all of the Depthsbringer ones were dragged to Uldum and the Vale like lamblings driven off a cliff.”

“The ones who are here now aren’t part of the old heresies,” Zander replied, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “We’ve been given the opportunity to start the Shrine afresh, free from corruption.”

Aldry’s eyes, as grey as a squall, were all too sharp for his liking, and he turned away to continue flipping through books for the one they’d asked for. “We still bear the pollution of the previous Lord’s indiscretions, don’t we? And with our order basically crippled, there’s few in the nation as would want to join, even if they hear the Tidemother’s call. Without a steady flow of initiates, and the ones we have mostly decimated, the only internal solution is a call for sages to pair up. And even then, that would take a generation.”

“Well then, what do we do?” The option of being paired off with some faceless Sister to do his duty sounded intolerable, frankly. Like the whole Tidewives business, only this time it was affecting him. He almost felt sorry for them, come to think of it, and he threw out without thinking, “I dunno, recruit mainlanders?”

When Zander looked up at the silence, the galecaller’s meaningful glance made him set the book down a bit harder than he’d meant to. “Absolutely not,” he answered after the decisive thump. “We’ve already had enough trouble with mainlanders, and you’d want them to come in with their outsider traditions that we can only hope to override?!” He waved dismissively at them.

“If we don’t change with the times, Brother, we will be washed out.” Moving beside him, they carefully sorted through books as well, with a gentleness and grace that would do any archivist proud. “We need new blood, and faster than we can produce children for it. Perhaps not many will come from the mainland, but there’s enough out there that at least a few will be amenable to hearing the call. We can’t afford to be the exclusive and secretive order we were in the past, and we need to…”

Their voice trailed off as someone walked between the stacks near them, with the rustle of scrolls. Zander’s heart briefly leapt into his throat as Brother Theriot walked past. His body hadn’t forgotten that frantic grip, and he tensed as Aldry called out. “Cecil! Where are you off to, in such a hurry?”

He’d barely even noticed that the k’thir had a satchel tucked over an elbow, and his robes were strangely damp. “I’m going out,” Theriot replied shortly. “I’m doing what I should have done before, and finding Taggin.”

“What?” Perhaps it was some fault of his mouth for flying open, but Zander pressed onward. “Why would you find her? She’s not even welcomed by the Shrine, if she’s even alive!” The touch of the galecaller’s hand at his elbow halted him, even as Theriot’s expression darkened.

“I understand.” Perhaps that was Aldry’s flaw, benign too understanding. Still, the shorter sage gave the old scholar a little smile. “I think it’s best that you leave now, and find her. Just… remember to send letters back, okay? You can address them to me, and I’ll make sure that they get to whoever needs them, if you want to talk with someone else.”

“I will. Thank you, Aldry…” With that, trailing off, the k’thir walked once more with purpose. He vanished between the stacks, sounds trailing off while Zander tried to draw himself back into a veneer of composure.

When he glanced over, the smile had receded like low tide. Aldry stared at the empty stacks with a pensiveness usually reserved for the most complex of hypothetical problems. At Zander’s questioning look, they shook their head.

“It’s for the best, Zander. I’m surprised he’s lasted this long in the Archives, but he needed to get out while he still can.”

“What do you -” “Pardon,” came a quiet voice, the sound of footsteps along the flagstones nearly silent. Zander dearly hoped he didn’t get a heart attack from all of the sudden and unexpected guests. Rounding on the newcomer, he nearly stuck his face into a blue Wake tabard.

Two sages stood there, hands tucked into their midnight blue robesleeves. Their robes were strangely thick, embroidered with protective runes in silver thread. Their hoods were so deep that only the feeling of being watched and the hint of their chins showed that people were within the robes. Behind them stood a tall, familiar sage in a pale mask with lenses.

While Zander gaped, Aldry spoke up. “Sister Pyre. Brothers. I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.” The shortest sage kept their chin lifted, voice perfectly even and polite as the scholar tried to collect himself.

Stepping apart, the two in the front allowed the sister to move forward. Thin, silver-hued chains dangled between them in a loop, one that brushed the front of the woman’s robeskirts. “Aldry. Brother Bowline.” With pleasantries summarily dismissed, Pyre replied, “Where would Theriot’s office happen to be? We need to speak with him.”

Glancing behind the pair, he could see the trail of dampness left by the fleeing tidesage. Unease and the intense feeling that he could not betray his fellow archivist warred with the inherent fear of the two Brothers on either side. Fortunately, it looked like the galecaller had taken up the mantle to answer. “I believe it’s back there, isn’t it, Brother Bowline?” That was enough to spur him to speak.

“Oh. Er, yes. Yes, it’s back there, though it may be locked while he’s studying.” He jerked his thumb behind him, adding, “Just go through the stacks, take the second left, and look for the door with his name on it.” That door was altogether too close to his own study, now that he thought of it. He didn’t smile, as that would be suspicious.

Still, as the two brothers surveyed him, Aldry continued, “Brother Bowline and I were just collaborating on some research. We don’t want to hinder you, Sister.” A surprisingly strong grip pulled him back against the stacks, and book spines dug into his own spine. With an unseen nod, the two brothers moved onward past them and back together, as if of one mind. The gaze behind the octopodean mask lingered on the two, and with a quick exchange of “Aldry,” “Marianne,” the worst had passed. He sagged against the shelves, taking in a shaky breath through his nose and trying not to look after the three.

It was long moments later that Aldry finally relaxed from their poise, their hunch more evocative of a frightened rabbit. “Don’t tell a soul where he went,” the galecaller hissed between their teeth, and he Zander could only nod.

it's never sunny but i don't even need the sun i don't need anything i'll just make something beautiful of all the ugliness I've done

(a tale for sister morgan)

Rolling waves slowed to a softer surf, one that left dark lines in the sand when it receded. The dampness shifted to a paler tan, only for water to once more roll in across the smooth surface and leave nearly imperceptible ripples on the face of the shoreline. Not too far back, the seagrasses waved in the incoming breeze and tapped silently against salt-stained boots.

Mother Edith had brought a stool for Morgan to sit on as they watched the surf, wordlessly carrying it under one arm until it came time to sit. They’d never mention it to her, but the immediate and unasked-for empathy was one of the many reasons they were thankful the older sage had joined them in the Wharf. This was much easier on their spine, and saved them from getting an eternal crick in their neck. Plus, this far out on the beach they were less likely to be stumbled upon by a sailor or townsperson, so they could let their hoods down and breathe a bit.

“Front’s coming in soon,” Edith remarked, tipping her head up to sniff at the air. “We’ll get a sharp drop in temperatures, and should make tomorrow less of a heat wave. It’d be a good day to set out.”

Morgan frowned at the low line of clouds on the horizon. “Your skills in being subtle are lacking,” they pointed out, perhaps a bit bluntly in turn. “Maybe you need to get yourself checked for that.”

Instead of the typical chastening, the former abbess laughed. The sound was far younger than her years, soft and light. “I only need to soften my words when talking to students, Morgan. You’re a grown person who can take a hint.”

While the smaller sage immediately froze, face darkening like thunder, Edith continued. “You’re not as settled a sage as you pretend to be. Sitting around as a village sage doesn’t make you happy, even though I know teaching is one of your strong suits.” She removed the furred cloak from around her robes, folding it to rest over her knees.

“Unnecessarily observant,” Morgan retorted. “You know why I stay here, and you have no right to judge me.” Their tone was straying toward acerbic, despite their usual attempt to remain friendly with the other tidesage.

A brow rose slowly. “Do I? You’re no longer wanted for crimes, and you’re no longer pretending to be dead. Worth passed his Practicals, and has gone off to other things. Xue has issues that following the Tidemother can’t help with, and needs to find her own path. You don’t have to pack up and move, and you certainly don’t have to go out for long, but the Wharf won’t fall to pieces if you’re not here.”

She had a point, loath as they were to admit it. Morgan had been ready to start arguing the opposite, but they instead slumped in their seat and sighed. “I enjoy teaching people,” they muttered finally.

“Which baffles me, since you dislike people in general,” Edith commented wryly. At the glower from the gnome she winked. It was easy to forget what she’d been through if one didn’t see the scars that crossed over the occasional wrinkle, and the silvery-grey hair of one who’d followed the storm’s call for many years. Not for the first time did they wonder if the loss of Wavespring Monastery had hardened Edith in the same way, or left a lingering bitterness in her. If it did, it never showed around others. “You are terrific at explaining things, though. Would that I had a teacher like you back in Wavespring. Still…”

As she trailed off, Morgan turned to stare once more at the waves. Each tug back of the water was met with a rolling tide, tumbling over itself to spread out along the sand once more. The water left behind trinkets of affection for its stained shore lover, bits of driftwood and stones and shells, and even the occasional piece of seaglass. The collection Worth had picked up still lined one of the windowsills in the Pelagic house.

“Still, you’ve gotten… a reputation. Not a bad one, exactly, but the Shrine sees you as a sort of workhorse for certain tasks. You take on an unconventional student once, and now you’re the person they send ‘lost causes’ along to, since you worked what they see as a miracle. You’ve shown that you’ll grudgingly accept tasks like guarding artifacts, too. So they’ve been foisting off work to you, along with the occasional student when things don’t work out. And if you fail, what thanks will you get?”

That got a snort. “I didn’t do it for the Shrine,” Morgan answered, resisting the urge to roll their eyes. They carefully unwound one bun that had fallen loose, finger-coming the dark and wavy strands before beginning to wrap it back up. “I did it because when I found them, they looked… lost. They needed help.”

“They did,” Edith agreed quietly. “And you were the best one to give it. They needed someone with your expertise, but also your desire to do what’s best for them. You’ll need to leave anyways at some point, don’t you? You said Xue’s trail leads back to Pandaria.”

With the smaller sage’s nod she added, “Take Ronney with you and make a vacation out of it, but go and visit the Boralus monastery first by yourself. Check on things out there, and respond to that odd message we got. Just, don’t take the poor woman with you for the worst of the work. I always had a feeling I’d have to eventually take over as the Wharf’s sage. …Don’t look at me like that, Morgan, now that my students are gone I can take over all of the duties you’re ambivalent about at best.”

Now they did roll their eyes, while they worked on the other bun. “I don’t like the usual town’s sage duties. But it was nice to be appreciated.” Edith’s stare made them admit after, “And the occasional terrorizing of rude sailors is fun.” The two of them chuckled quietly together, lapsing back into an easy silence.

This time it was the abbess who looked back out to sea, letting the wind curl along her face with the promise of cold air rolling in. Morgan remembered how the other woman’s hair had lost the last of its red strands into grey about a year ago, and how the sage had held the reputation of being a spitfire until practically forced into leadership of the old monastery to the north. It was easy to forget that the gentle galecaller held a core of steel and had dragged her way out of certain death not so many years ago.

Eventually, they whispered, “What will I do, after?” From any other person, it would sound like a plea.

Glancing back, Edith gave a smile. It was the sort of smile Morgan detested, full of compassion and understanding. “You could go back to the Shrine, or anywhere, really. If I ever get around to pulling enough sages together for a second Wavespring, maybe you could teach? It would be a shame to waste your gift, and I’d be sure to give you time off to do as you like.”

The gnome looked down at their hands, lily-white and trembling faintly. The reminder of failure was hidden by the half-gloves, only the hint of a scar peeking out on the back of the right one. “Edith, I always hate when you’re right.” Not that they’d admit it to anyone but the older sage, but it was pleasant to have someone sensible to bounce conversation off of and be told when they were being unreasonable.

A carefree chuckle made the woman’s shoulders shake. “You told me that when you sent Worth off to the Shrine, too. I’ll say it again: you give yourself too little credit.”

shallow, rolling holy water rise and slowly fell swallowing a foreign body, rose red holes to show and tell she was washed away with the tide we saw the water in her eyes

(a tale for sister taggin)

This wasn’t the usual flavor of dream that Faygia preferred. After all, there wasn’t nearly enough screaming involved.

Oh, there certainly was some screaming, but it wasn’t the fun sort that was directed in a frenzy of worship toward the Master Below. This sort of screaming was frantic. Sobbing, pleading for one’s life, and rattles that died out into silence with the sound of hacking flesh.

The familiar walkways of the Shrine found her eyes, with fountains spraying out water faintly tinted red as a wounded initiate lay partly submerged in the water. Their hood rendered them faceless, the only thing registering being the neat robes spattered in dark crimson.

It all was both strangely clear and fuzzy, the way her mind skipped along the familiar details and focused on pieces here and there. A cut belt, discarded in the grass with the torn-apart remains of what had been a large tendril. Splashes of spilled void energy pooled here and there, with craters torn from the ground and columns, with the occasional scorchmark.

She hurried along the stones, avoiding the distant cries for now. There was something she needed to find. Was it people? The Master’s will was deadly silent within her head as she searched. When she tripped over an outstretched arm, sending it rolling, she caught herself painfully on an elbow. The handprint she left on the stones was rusty. She had been injured, though she couldn’t feel the pain for now. All she knew was that she’d been abandoned, and rightly so.

Picking herself back up, Fay could hear the thump of armored footsteps. She ran without a thought toward the nearest entrance, ducking as an arrow shot over her head. Her curls flew out around the edges of her hood, and she skidded down a ramp to plaster herself behind a column.

There was someone she needed to find. In the Archives, wasn’t it? She could hear the small group of people tramping through on the other side. Filthy Stormwindian accents. The shame of failure stung, right along her head, as if a band had squeezed her tight.

“Say, weren’t there more headed this way?” This voice was gruff, low, and male.

“We don’t care about stragglers, as long as they’re not going to hit us from behind.” That sounded Gilnean, and rough. Fay tried to still her breathing, clapping a hand over her mouth. She just knew that if she came out and tried to fight, she wouldn’t be able to even get a shot off, and the knowledge was a heavy stone of dread resting in her gut. “We need to get to Stormsong first, and take care of other things later.”

The name barely made her twitch, only a mental stab through her forehead (a wound, a hole, an eye socket, a rift) giving her a reaction. She gritted her teeth against the sudden pain, shifting a little in place, and the sudden silence on the other side made her heartbeat skyrocket. All she could do was press her back to the column and wait in dizzying fear. Then their steps moved on, leaving her in peace. Until the cries started again, closer.

Faygia ran, in the opposite direction of the steps, ignoring the new wails and sobbing. Any aid she could give was far too late… she’d known this from the start, and all she could hope was that she made it in time for one thing.

The further she ran, the slower she seemed to move… the Shrine’s walls seemed to move past at a crawl, her feet flying and nearly crashing. There was a commotion up ahead, and as she flew into the chamber, a shout echoed along the walls.

They were already here - how had they gotten here so quickly? - and Worth had fallen, one arm raised to shield his face from the helmeted paladin. His begging stuttered and stumbled, not nearly good enough to spare him. “No!” Her voice rose, power gathering at her fingertips, but a blast of arcane ice from the mage made her stick, solid, to the floor. Her hands were coated, energy wrapped around her up to her neck, leaving her free to watch as the Light-blessed sword rose and fell.

When his head fell from his shoulders, she could still see the surprise painting his expression before it slackened. The body crumpled, letting the paladin straighten up with a murmured prayer behind his visor. 

She was weeping, she realized too late, and hot tears ran across her face in strange patterns. From anger, guilt, or despair, it was hard to say, as a mainlander dressed in furs and spikes brought forward the next victim. Glasses fell from a tentacled face, and as she waited for the familiar voice to speak -

A knock at the door yanked her from her sleep with a jolt. Fay sat up in her bed begrudgingly, reaching up to rub the damp and tearstained results of the night from her cheeks. “I’m coming,” she snapped toward the door, then allowed herself to sniffle and scrub at her face some more. It was clear she looked like shit anyway, but she might as well look like a nightmare hadn’t ground her beneath its boot.

When she stepped out of her bed, she automatically checked the straps buckled to its slats. They kept the box beneath it bound so it wouldn’t knock over anything else when the Anne rocked, and hid the engraved Blinded Eye from any curious person peeping over her shoulder. Everything was as it should be.

Finally, vaguely surprised she hadn’t heard another knock after the first one, the sage shuffled to the door and opened it. Her apprentice stood there sheepishly, flinching as the door was yanked open.

“What.” It was probably morning, but it was still too early for her to say anything more than a few syllables. Something about seeing Worth alive and awkward in front of her was especially jarring, with the murky haze of her nightmares still swimming through her brain. 

This resulted in Worth sticking a letter practically underneath her nose, making her wince as a ripple of pain curled inside of her head. “Sorry! I - I just wanted to give you your mail. This came in for you, and I… sorry, I wanted to make sure you got it.” She was left holding the mail, still blinking, as he fled down the corridor and babbled his goodbyes.

All she could think was, This had better be worth waking me up, as she shut the door once more. The contents of the dream were swiftly forgotten and blurred as she tried to use her higher brain functions to open it. Damn whoever thought it was a good idea to seal this thing so insidiously shut.

When Faygia finally opened the letter, lying back on the bed, she gave a groan at the signature at the bottom. Pelagic. The gnome was probably trying to spite her for the whole ink thing. Only then did she catch the gist of the message, and the rest was suddenly not important.

Standing back up (and wobbling a little), the sage groaned and headed to the dresser to pick up yesterday’s robes. Hopefully Worth had already fixed her coffee…

#fiction #tidesage #warcraft #brother zander #brother theriot #sister clement #sister morgan #sister taggin #sister ira #galecaller aldry #mother edith #sister pyre #since these are all around the same time i figured they needed to be put together just like when originally written

[ophiliaclement]

I know the game isn't even out yet but I've already seen some really lukewarm takes about castti. I'm begging you all don't do to her what everyone did to ophilia. these are actual characters with agency and emotion beyond mom friend-ifying them

#octopath traveler #octopath 2 #ophilia clement #castti florenz #a lot of ophilias stuff was quite between the lines - a child of war who believes she owes her life to the sacred flame + is deeply lonely #she thinks the only worth she has is in being a healer and helpful so she's not a burden to others. so she will shoulder everyone's burdens #as well as her own. she starts a holy pilgrimage because she thinks her sister deserves to stay by their ill father's side more than her. #and when lianna does... chapter 4 things ophilia gets PISSED. like this is the only time shes ever seen as remotely angry. #shes so betrayed in that moment #and then you have castti who is clearly not okay. she's very blunt and talks like a zombie. #she's clearly got something shady going on with Eir's Apothecaries. she has an underlying sharp edge to her. #one of her battle lines is literally #'there is no cure for evil.' #like. please don't mom friend her she has DEPTH she is clearly not an 100% cut and dry Good Kind Person #and thats okay!! your healer can be a dick. look at temenos. #side note is it really a coincidence the male healers get depth to them in this fandom but the female ones get a cookie cutter personality #eh. #anyway thank you for reading my rant.

[lesilence]

Alberto being the youngest of the siblings just makes sense to me

#he would like have ten years to his sister and brother #and they would like have max two years between them #so he’s like the baby of the family literally #he can finally scream at someone #that’s why he’s the way he is. trust me. I was there. #alberto clemente

[mickc-art]

Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights)

My interpretation of Heathcliff is loosely based on Jemaine Clement. I’m gonna start drawing gothic villains based on Jemaine for funsies.

#heathcliff #wuthering heights #emily bronte #bronte sisters #gothic literature #gothic lit #gothic lit art #jemaine clement #fanart #mick c art

[diver5ion]

#sister boniface mysteries #miss thimble #mrs clam #lolz this show is back #fliss forsyth #doesn't look impressed #sarah crowden #belinda lang #rhiannon clements #//

[scarlettblack24]

Jemaine, Sam Rockwell, and Leslie Bibb sandwich 🥪😋🤭

#jemaine clement #jemaine clemonday #I’m late again #sorry #my sister had a baby! #he’s an eight pound bundle #anyway 😁 #i love this photo #total babes #beautiful people being beautiful

[damnation-if]

Was there any particular reason Clement AND his sister were raising servant morale but never made any moves on the PC? IK they’re probably completely inconsequential characters but that got me feeling some type of way 😭

lmfao "raising servant morale" is such a funny way of putting it. i didn't really have any answer prepared beyond "you can't really Force the player to have had a previous relationship that might conflict with their sexuality or worldview" but. the in-universe reason is probably the same as this sort of thing happens in real life... timing and opportunity.

Clement's not that bright so it was probably easy for Mrs Primrose to carefully watch the people she thought were most likely for him to become entangled with waiting to fire them at the slightest provocation (Lewis rarely worked up at the house before everything with the crows started going down) and his sister was more concerned with the ~*teehee* scandal~ of it all to annoy her parents, so she was mainly interested in the like. people with dirtier outdoor jobs like stablehands and gardeners and things like that. having secret liaisons in a thicket beyond the orchard and so forth

i hope this answers your question!

#what does the chaos mirror see #anon #time flows differently in the queue #also i can't stress this enough but they both Suck as people lmfao #lewis is just Bored i don't think he really Likes clement XD #i'm sure clement's sister is busy having affairs with servants wherever she moved after she got married

[krak-house]

Sometimes i wish I had the ego to be a comedian bc I'm really good at impressions and i think I've officially got Con O'Neill down, both his talking and singing voice, and i do a really good Rhys Darby too and chances are this will literally never come up in my life literally ever

#teddy talks #ofmd #literally my biggest dream in life rn is to meet someone who knows con or rhys and trick them into thinking im them #like if i were to ever see jermaine clement at a bar or something im quite confident i could go 'oi jermaine long time no see' #in a good enough rhys impression that he would be Very Confused to turn around and see a 20 something prettyboy there #i just. think it would be fucking hilarious #i do it w my parents all the time too #my mom leaves her phone lying around and ill answer it as her and not even her own husband can tell the difference #she fucking hates it but fuck if its not funny as shit #i trick my sisters friends sometimes too when i see them out places #into thinking im my sister not my mom ofc #i almost got my grandpa once by impersonating my dad but i forgot he calls his dad by his first name not 'dad' #....i suppose i could do podfics actually but thats not the same

[santmat]

“There are likewise amongst the Bactrians, in the Indian countries, immense multitudes of Brahmans, who also themselves, from the tradition of their ancestors, and peaceful customs and laws, neither commit murder nor adultery, nor worship idols, nor have the practice of eating animal food, are never drunk, never do anything maliciously, but always fear God.” (Recognitions of Clement, Book 9, Chapter 22, Brahmans Volume Eight, of the, Ante-Nicene Fathers, page 187, T & T Clark Eerdmans edition.)

#vegan #vegetarian #ebionites #brothers and sisters in the indian countries #india #one God #anti nicene fathers #recognitions of clement

[hypbaest]

come to pittsburgh and we will send you on a funny little quest. you have to find the sister bridges and walk across them, you have to ride up the side of a mountain in a little trolley, you need to go to the place where three rivers meet.

#and most importantly you have to eat at primantis #there really aint shit to do in pgh except go outside walk around and get bewitched by it all #pittsburgh #pgh #412 #mm.txt #the three sister bridges #monongahela incline #duquesne incline #monongahela #allegheny #ohio #roberto clemente bridge #rachel carson bridge #andy warhol bridge

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

When The World Is Crashing Down [Chapter 13: Condemned From The Start] [Series Finale]

Series summary: Your family is House Celtigar, one of Rhaenyra’s wealthiest allies. In the aftermath of Rook’s Rest, Aemond unknowingly conscripts you to save his brother’s life. Now you are in the liar of the enemy, but your loyalties are quickly shifting…

Chapter warnings: Language, warfare, violence, serious injury, alcoholism/addiction, references to sexual content (18+), death, angsttttttt, more children than usual, Wolfman!

Series title is a lyrics from: “7 Minutes In Heaven” by Fall Out Boy.

Chapter title is a lyric from: “Sophomore Slump or Comeback of the Year” by Fall Out Boy.

Word count: 8.1k.

Link to chapter list: HERE.

Taglist (more in comments): @tinykryptonitewerewolf @lauraneedstochill @not-a-glad-gladiator @daenysx @babyblue711 @arcielee @at-a-rax-ia @bhanclegane @jvpit3rs @padfooteyes @marvelescvpe @travelingmypassion @darkenchantress @yeahright0h @poohxlove @trifoliumviridi @bloodyflowerrr @fan-goddess @devynsficrecs @flowerpotmage @thelittleswanao3 @seabasscevans @hiraethrhapsody @libroparaiso @echos-muses @st-eve-barnes @chattylurker @lm-txles @vagharnaur @moonlightfoxx @storiumemporium @insabecs @heliosscribbles @beautifulsweetschaos @namelesslosers @partnerincrime0 @burningcoffeetimetravel-fics @yawneneytiri @marbles-posts @imsolence @maidmerrymint @backyardfolklore @nimaharchive @anxiousdaemon @under-the-aspen-tree @amiraisgoingthruit @dd122004dd @randomdragonfires @jetblack4real @joliettes

Thank you so much for reading. I hope you enjoy the finale.🦀💚

In the Eyrie, one of Rhaena Targaryen’s three dragon eggs has hatched at last; the creature is small and pink, and she has named it Morning. When Rhaena’s tears fall onto the scales of her diminutive wings, they glitter like flecks of rose quartz. Deep within the snow-laden labyrinth of the Mountains of the Moon, Nettles is in hiding with Sheepstealer; already the nearby clans are bringing her offerings of meat and treasure, axes and clubs and daggers, hairpins carved from the ribs of enemies and necklaces made of bear teeth. Silverwing is settling into a lair on an island in the Red Lake at the northwestern corner of the Reach. Word of this has travelled back to King’s Landing, and Borros Baratheon implores Aegon II to seize Silverwing for himself; but the king does not want a new dragon. He wants Sunfyre back. That grim truth aside, Aegon is unable to trek across the continent to tame the beast anyway. Some days he cannot even cross a room. At the bottom of the Gods Eye, bodies are dissolving into bones, threads of long white hair breaking loose to flow in the currents like weightless strands of spider webs torn free by cold drafts. And only a few miles from the border of the Crownlands—preparing to cross the icy waters of the Blackwater Rush—the army of Northmen camps under a full moon in a clear, indigo sky heavy with stars like glinting coins.

“There are passageways under King’s Landing,” Clement Celtigar says. He stands by the bonfire with his sword in his hand, his face flame-bright and eager, forever licking up drops of the Kingmaker’s approval, a stray cat lapping milk splashed in an alley. Increasingly, Cregan Stark finds him tiresome. Clement is brash and dramatic, forever swearing vengeance, reveling in his newfound position as the head of his house. The Warden of the North has never had to beg for attention, admiration, acclaim. These things come to him like snow falls to the earth in winter: effortlessly, inevitably. Yet Cregan tries to be patient. Clement is soon to be his brother-in-law, and it is dishonorable to fail to extend courtesy to one’s kin. Furthermore, it seems, Clement has his uses.

“Are there really?”

Clement nods. He wears the banner of his house on a strip of fabric looped around his upper arm: crabs red like blood, a backdrop of white like snow. “That monster’s disciples used them to kidnap my sister from the Red Keep. But she fought hard. When we searched her rooms, all the furniture was upturned and the sheets ripped from her bed.”

“She is brave,” Cregan murmurs in agreement, though he is distracted now. The air tastes like smoke and ice, the wind rubs raw spots into the soldiers’ faces. They are arriving just in time. The depths of winter is no time to wage war. Cregan Stark imagines how you will greet him when he liberates you: a desperate embrace, hands that refuse to let go, whispered gratitude and breathless kisses on his earth-stained knuckles, bones of steel softened by the innate weakness of womanhood. You will love him, of course you will, fervently and entirely. Then when the realm and succession are secured, the Kingmaker will take you North and wed you in the tradition of his people, under the heart tree where the Old Gods can witness it. And then there will be the wedding night. In Cregan’s understanding, women receive little pleasure from the act itself. It is a burden they bear for the men they love, for the children they are divinely tasked with bringing into existence. Cregan Stark intends to alleviate your suffering in this regard as much as possible…yet he has already begun to choose the names of the sons he will make with you. He especially likes the sound of Brandon, sturdy and grounded and thought to mean leader or prince. “This is the last night your sister will ever spend in the clutches of the Usurper.”

“Praise the Seven.” Then Clement adds diplomatically: “And the Old Gods too, of course.”

“It’s the end of the world,” Cregan Stark says, gazing up into the night sky where constellations tell the stories men deem worthy of remembering. “And the start of a brand new one.”

~~~~~~~~~~

“How did you learn to braid hair?” little Jaehaera asks you in her lilting, reedy voice like a bird’s. You are sitting behind her on the floor in Alicent’s bedchamber. Nearby, Autumn is flipping through a child’s book with Rhaenyra’s ever-solemn son, murmuring as she points to colorful illustrations of ravens, dolphins, bears, dragons, crabs. They are learning to read together.

“My sisters taught me,” you tell the princess. Firelight turns her silver hair to gold, her pale skin to flames. Logs crack and pop as they melt to glowing embers. Alicent glances over at you and sighs despairingly. The dowager queen, so thin she might disappear, is hunched in a chair by the fireplace. She has an unshakeable, rattling sort of cough that reminds you of how Sunfyre sounded on Dragonstone when he was near the end. Her long auburn tresses are falling out in handfuls. She will not survive the winter, this is a certainty.

“You have sisters?” Jaehaera says, surprised. “How many?”

You smile faintly as you weave her hair into one thick braid like the kind Aemond once wore when he went to battle. “Three. Piper, Petra, and Penelope.”

“Where are they now?”

“Back on Claw Isle, where I came from. With our mother.” Mourning Father, mourning Everett, writing letters to Clement to keep his spirits high as he and the Warden of the North march towards King’s Landing to slay the Greens’ king and bind me to a different man’s will.

“What’s Claw Isle like?” Jaehaera asks with a child’s clear, boundless curiosity.

“Rocky, misty, grey. But the ocean is beautiful.” You think of Aegon’s eyes, the same as his daughter’s, a murky storm-blue that is deeper than it looks.

“What brought you here?”

You consider this before you answer. You see it, you feel it: cinders like dark snow in the air, Aemond’s iron grip on your forearm. “When your father was burned at the Battle of Rook’s Rest, he needed someone to help heal him. Your uncle Aemond found me.”

“And he asked you to stay with us?”

He would have slit my throat if I said no. “Yes, he asked very politely, as any gentleman would. And of course I agreed. I wanted to make the king strong again. I wanted to take his pain away.”

Jaehaera stares down at her tiny hands, palms crossed with lines that are long and shadowy in the shifting firelight. She does not speak of Aegon. She does not know him, and he frightens her: the burns on his skin, the suffering in his glazed eyes. She has no memories to impress his true character upon her. If she does not make them herself, she will believe whatever she is told. “I miss Aemond. I miss Daeron.”

“I know, sweetheart.” They were formally laid to rest yesterday on two funeral pyres. Daeron’s bloodied, charred, seafoam green cape was burned to ashes on one. All that was left of Aemond—his favorite books, his quills and ink, small leather eyepatches from when he was a boy—were torched on the other. “I miss them too.”

Jaehaera’s braid is finished. You reach into a pocket of your emerald green velvet gown to retrieve what you have brought for her: a thin golden chain necklace with Aegon’s ring as a pendant. He can’t wear it anymore. His fingers are too swollen. “What is this?” Jaehaera says as you place the chain around her neck. She lifts the ring and peers at it, gold wings and jade eyes.

“It’s supposed to resemble Sunfyre,” you explain. “Your father loves you very much, Jaehaera. He wanted you to have this ring and keep it with you always.” Aegon didn’t say that; he rarely mentions Jaehaera at all. Sometimes you think he forgets she exists. But she is a part of him, she is his legacy, and you cannot look at any piece of her without seeing the man you love.

“He gave it to me? Like a gift?”

“Yes. A gift.” A gift, an inheritance, a relic, a reminder.

Jaehaera turns around and looks up at you hopefully, vast wave-blue eyes like winter oceans. “Do you think I’ll have another dragon someday?”

Her own infant beast, Morghul, was killed in the Dragonpit before Rhaenyra fled the city. “Maybe,” you tell her. “There are eggs that could hatch someday. And there are a few unclaimed adults left, Silverwing and the Cannibal. Perhaps you’ll tame one.”

She wrinkles her nose in confusion. “What’s a cannibal?”

Someone who murders, devours, fuels their body to the detriment of their soul. “Someone who eats their own kind. Like a dragon who feeds on other dragons.”

“So just like in the war. Dragons killing dragons.”

“Exactly,” you say, a shiver crawling down your spine. “Now go show your new necklace to Grandmother.”

Jaehaera wobbles to her feet and dashes across the firelit bedchamber to where Alicent is slumped in her chair. “Look, look! It’s Sunfyre!” you hear Jaehaera chirping. Alicent examines the ring—skeletal hands trembling, large dark eyes slick with tears—and dutifully fawns over it, telling the little girl how beautiful she looks, how brave she has been. Then she bundles Jaehaera into her boney arms and holds her like she’ll never let go. Autumn catches your gaze from the other side of the room, and when you leave to return to Aegon she follows.

“What is your plan if the Greens lose the battle?” she says in the hallway under an arc of grey stones. Her tone is urgent, her hazel eyes sharp. Everyone knows the Northmen are within days of King’s Landing. Borros Baratheon—a large, loud, abrasive man, but with a bottomless appetite for combat—and his soldiers will march out of the city tomorrow to meet Cregan Stark’s army on the fields of the Crownlands, sparse and grey with winter. The Lord of Storm’s End has spent hours locked in the council chamber discussing strategy with Larys Strong, Corlys Velaryon, and the misfortunate yet courageous Tyland Lannister, maimed by his months of torture at the hands of the Blacks.

“We won’t.” We can’t.

Autumn slams her palm against the wall behind you; the sick thud of flesh against stone reminds you of the day Helaena died. “Wake up. We might. You’d better have your options figured out.”

And you recall Larys’ words on Dragonstone: I think it’s time for you to consider what your options are if a Green victory no longer appears to be viable. “We’ll run,” you say weakly. “We’ll take Aegon and we’ll escape through the corridors under the Red Keep, just like he did before. Cregan Stark will kill Aegon if he finds him. I can’t let that happen. We’ll have to run.”

“Run where?” Autumn snaps pointedly, pushing you towards a conclusion you refuse to acknowledge.

“I don’t know.”

“Where? Where could we go that is beyond the grasp of your wolf if he seizes the capital?”

“Dorne, Essos. Somewhere, anywhere.”

“The king won’t survive a journey like that.”

You cover your face with your hands, feel the biting cold of snowflakes melting in your hair, see the stains of earth on your thighs as Cregan Stark forces them apart. How can I lie with a man who hailed the deaths of people I loved? How can I spend the rest of my life listening to him being called a hero for killing Aegon? How can I give him children? How could I love a baby that was half-made of him? “We ran before. We’ll have to do it again.”

Autumn scoffs. “You have no idea what it means to be a woman on your own in the world. What will you become without a great house, without protection? A prostitute? A peasant? Will you eat scraps covered with rot or mold? Will you live in a tree? Will you beg some family to take you in? And then when the father who is oh-so-gallant in daylight starts fumbling under your blankets once the candles are blown out, will you let him inside you? Or will you fight him off and risk a blade in your guts, your throat? You have no fucking idea what it’s like out there.”

“I don’t care what happens to me if Aegon’s gone.”

“You would abandon Jaehaera? You would abandon me?” Autumn demands. “You speak for us now. You are the only one who can. Our fates are twisted up with yours.”

That’s true. And I promised Helaena I would look out for her daughter. You can’t imagine a life without Aegon; there was a time when he was only a name—and an infamous one, a terrible one, soulless and monstrous—but now he has broken down the eaves of what you were once resigned to call your life and painted colors in the sky you’d never glimpsed before, never even dreamed of. You ask Autumn with genuine, painful bewilderment: “What is the point of learning that something exists only to have it taken away? Why would that happen? Where is the justice in it, where is the reason?”

Autumn smiles, sad and patient. “Ah, this is an affliction of the highborn. You still believe that there is a design, and that life has some amount of fairness in it. There is no divine judgment being passed, my lady. There is no god weighing the worth of your dragon or your wolf or yourself. Life is random, and it is ungovernable, and it is very often cruel. And that makes it all the more remarkable that you knew the king for the time you did. That you ever met him.”

It wasn’t enough. And I can never go back to who I was before. “I’m sorry. I should not complain to you. Your losses have been terrible.”

“It is no contest,” Autumn replies, weary now. “But I should go back to check on the children. They need me.”

“No. They love you.”

And now she beams, sparkling eyes and copper ringlets. She doesn’t need to say it, you can both feel it in the winter-cold air. She loves them in return. She loves them fiercely. As long as they live, she will have reasons to.

When you reach Aegon’s bedchamber, Grand Maester Orwyle is just leaving. He bows to you and grins, pleased that you have both survived the fall and retaking of King’s Landing. He is haggard from his months in the dungeons when Rhaenyra ruled the capital, but he endured. Who would have guessed at the start of this war that the old man had more years left than Aemond or Daeron or harmless little Maelor? You wait in the hallway for the maester to amble sluggishly by, but then when he is gone, you peer through the slit of the half-open door to see that Lord Larys Strong is speaking to Aegon, who is propped up in bed on a mountain of pillows and wearing only his cotton sleeping trousers. He is thin, frail, ghostly pale with the exception of the scars that are a mosaic of white and scarlet and bruise-like violet. Aegon and Larys have not noticed you. You linger just outside the doorway, watching, listening.

You can take care of Aegon as much as you wish now: feed him, clothe him, clean sweat from his brow, dose him with milk of the poppy, rub rose oil into his scars, stretch his legs, test the heat of his skin for fever. He’s too weak to stop you. He can’t walk, can’t stand, can’t stay awake for more than an hour or two at a time, can’t even pour his own wine or milk of the poppy; the glass bottles are too heavy when full. Yesterday, Aegon had to be carried outside in a litter to see the remnants of his brothers burned on the pyres. And he had exchanged a brief, somber glance with Autumn that you neither anticipated nor understood. He acknowledges her so rarely. And yet her small hazel eyes had been alarmed, knowing.

Larys is saying with a grave expression and his restless hands propped in the handle of his cane: “Lord Borros Baratheon is asking for your assurance that as soon as the war is won, you will take his eldest daughter Cassandra as your wife.”

Aegon stares at him, incredulously, impatiently. Aegon has not called you his wife in the company of others since his homecoming. You do not ask why. You already know. It is not because his intentions have changed; it is because if he is not the victor, your life is in less danger as his captive than as his queen. “Surely even a man as brainless as Borros can surmise that there would not be much benefit for the lady now. I am a worm. Useless, pathetic, deformed, no longer virile.”

“He is willing to take the chance, I gather. And he is placing his eggs in more than one basket. He would like another daughter, Floris, to be married to me.”

“Seven hells,” Aegon mutters. Then he turns determined. “I cannot marry another. I won’t do it. I am claimed already, body and soul.”

“I fear how enthusiastically Borros’ men will fight for you if you do not agree to the match. He is risking his life for your cause. He will expect generous repayment.”

Aegon is quiet for a long time. He stares fixedly at his bedside table: a full cup, a large glass bottle of milk of the poppy. His dagger is still there from when you cut and braided his hair for him this morning; he cannot do it himself anymore. At last Aegon says, almost too low for you to discern from the doorway: “He’s not cruel, is he?”

“Who? Borros Baratheon?”

Aegon glares at Larys. “No.”

After a moment, Larys realizes what his king means. “Cregan Stark isn’t cruel. I’ve heard many whispers from many mouths, but I’ve never heard that.”

“Look at me. Don’t lie to me.”

“He isn’t cruel,” Larys says again. “Perhaps the truth is worse. He is measured, competent, merciful, wise. He is honorable. The Manderlys want to torture everyone and the Boltons itch to sharpen their flaying knives but Stark forbids it. He respects the laws of war. He tries to avoid the slaughter of noncombatants. He forbids his men from burning farms or raping women. He is devoted to the woman you call your wife. He takes no mistresses, visits no brothels. Cregan Stark is not a monster. He’s not soulless. He’s just on the wrong side.”

Aegon nods slowly, then his face breaks into a humorless smirk. “Tell Borros Baratheon that I’ll marry whichever daughter he wants me to when the war is over. I’ll marry all four if that is his preference, and bed them all on the wedding night too, one right after the other. Agree to anything he asks for. It doesn’t matter anyway.”

It doesn’t matter because none of it will ever happen, even if the Baratheon army does win the Iron Throne for the Greens. It doesn’t matter because Aegon does not believe he’ll still be here in a month, or two weeks, or perhaps even days.

But he can’t mean that. He’s not thinking clearly. He’s confused, he’s exhausted, he’s in pain, you tell yourself, before remembering that Aemond said it first.

“Yes, Your Grace.” Larys is subdued, sorrowful. He bows deeply to his king. Then he turns to depart.

“One more thing,” Aegon says, gesturing to something on the side of his bed you can’t see from where you’re standing. “I hate to impose upon you further, but I can’t manage it myself. Can you take that and empty it somewhere? I don’t care where. But you must keep it hidden from my wife. The red-haired girl Autumn knows, and so do the maesters now. They are all sworn to secrecy. Can I trust you to exercise the same circumspection?”

Larys is gaping down at an object that is a mystery to you. He begins to stammer out a reply, stops to collect himself, and starts again. “Yes. Yes you can.”

“Good.”

Larys picks up the object; you are puzzled to discover that it is a chamber pot, white and porcelain. And as he navigates around Aegon’s bed and towards the door where you wait, you see that the vessel is full of blood.

You gasp before you can stop yourself, a razor-sharp inhale of breath that both men hear. They spot you, lurking in the doorway like someone lost, someone far from home. Shock bolts across Aegon’s face, and then frustration, and then defeat, and then profound misery.

“I didn’t want you to worry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to lie to you, I just knew…I knew you’d be upset and I…I didn’t want to hurt you. I’ve never wanted to hurt you.”

“How long?”

“It doesn’t matter, Angel.”

“How long?” you ask again. “Just since this morning?”

“Four or five days now.”

“Four or five…?” Your mind whirls like storm winds. He’s dying. He’s really dying. His kidneys are failing and there’s nothing I can do. I can’t cut him open and stitch him back together. There’s no wound to scrub clean with vinegar and then bandage with honey and linen. There’s no brew that can restore the rhythm of his blood and bones and nerves. He’s just dying. That’s all there is. That’s the beginning and the end of it.

“Please don’t cry,” Aegon says, reading your face. “Don’t do that, please don’t, I’ve hurt you enough already.”

His hands stretch out to close the space between you, and as Larys slips from the room you go to Aegon, climb into bed beside him, collapse into him as his arms catch you and rest your head against his bare, scarred chest, his feverish skin mottled with the history of wounds you helped close all those months ago. “I’m sorry,” you sob. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have let you go after Baela and Moondancer on Dragonstone. I should have stopped you. I should have dragged you inside the castle to wait until Aemond and Vhagar could help you. I shouldn’t have let Aemond go to Harrenhal. I shouldn’t have let Daeron fly south. I shouldn’t have let Autumn go back to King’s Landing, and I shouldn’t have let Everett stay there. I shouldn’t have let Helaena leap from the window. I should have stopped Maelor from being sent to the Reach. I should have stopped Rhaenys and the Red Queen from taking flight to burn you in your armor at Rook’s Rest. I should have stopped this! I should have done something! The only good thing I’ve ever had to offer the world was healing but I can’t save anyone, I can’t stop their suffering, I can’t do anything!”

“None of it was within your control, and none of it was your responsibility. I am the king. The fate of my kingdom and my followers rests with me. I wear their spilled blood, not you. I am so full of red I’m overflowing with it.” And he chuckles, sardonic, exhausted. He’s already battling unconsciousness again; you can hear his heartbeat slackening, the slow laborious expanding and contracting of his lungs.

“Aegon,” you say softly, as if afraid to speak it into existence. “What happens if the Baratheons don’t win tomorrow?”

“They will. They have to. There’s nothing I can do for you if they lose.” Then he winces and groans. It’s his back again, his failing kidneys, overrun with so much ruin—burns and breaks and pressure and heartache—that their cadence faltered and then ceased. You grab his cup of milk of the poppy and tilt it against his lips; and how many times have you done this since you met him, burned nearly to death and half-mad at Rook’s Rest? A hundred? Aegon drinks it down, his arms still tight around your waist. They do not loosen until he’s out like a snuffed candle.

You refill the cup on his bedside table with milk of the poppy in case he needs more when he wakes, pick up the dagger you use to cut his disheveled hair, take it to the dresser. And in the cascade of silver moonlight flooding in through the windows, you practice laying the gleaming blade against your wrists, pressing it to the throbbing arteries of your throat, angling the sharpened point of it between a gap in your ribs and towards your racing heart.

Autumn. Jaehaera. Aemond’s child that Alys carries. I still have promises to keep. I still have tasks that cannot be left unfinished.

Helaena’s words surface like a drowned man dredged from the waves: You must whisper into the right ears.

You set the dagger down on top of the dresser and roam to the castle library where Aemond once spent so many hours. You collect a stack of anatomy books and carry them back to Aegon’s bedchamber. There, before the roaring fireplace, you devour them for any scrap of hope, any last resort. You turn pages until one illustration stops you. It is an unclothed man, his major veins etched in blue and his arteries in red, his nerves a faded yellow, his bones white and unshattered, his body a roadmap of the bricks and mortar used by the architects of nature. You have seen this image before. It is the same page Aegon teased you for studying when you were travelling by carriage back to the capital from Rook’s Rest.

You rip out the page, crumple it violently, pitch it into the fire and watch it burn.

~~~~~~~~~~

At dawn, Lord Borros Baratheon leads his men out of the city. You hear them through the glass panes of the windows, closed against the winter chill and flecked with frost: boots marching, hooves of warhorses clomping against cobblestones. They carry with them swords and spears and bows and morning stars like the one Criston Cole was famed for using. Meanwhile, throughout the city, civilians are arming themselves with anything they can find to ward off an invasion of Northmen, creatures they believe to be bestial and mindless. Men carry kitchen knives and clubs fashioned out of bits of furniture or driftwood. Women hide their young children in cupboards and under creaking wooden floors.

“I should be going with them,” Aegon says. He’s just taken another dose of milk of the poppy and is struggling to keep his eyes open. His long, slow blinks close his vacant eyes for ever-increasing intervals. You’ve changed his clothes and cleaned the sweat from his skin as best you can, but he’s burning from the inside out.

“You’re not able to fight, Aegon. Nobody faults you for that. Everyone knows you were wounded in battle.”

“They must think I’m a coward.”

“No, you inspire them. They love you. I love you.”

Aegon doesn’t say it back. He never says it back. He only offers you the same drowsy, mournful phrase of High Valyrian he always does, not knowing that Aemond told you what it means: To your misfortune.

Autumn is with the children in Alicent’s rooms. The castle is tense and as quiet as a crypt—Alicent weeps soundlessly, Larys paces the halls with Corlys and Tyland Lannister, everyone peeks out of windows constantly to see if bannermen of the victor have appeared on the horizon—but she keeps them distracted with stories and games. You cycle between Alicent’s bedchamber and Aegon’s. He is in and out of consciousness; sometimes you perch beside him on the bed, sometimes you lie curled up against him counting the beats of his heart, sometimes you help Autumn read to Jaehaera and Aegon the Younger. It is just after noon when the city bells begin to toll and screams rise from the streets outside the Red Keep. You and Autumn hurry to a window. In the distance, beyond the city gates, there is a swarming mass of infantry, cavalry, archers. Their banners, when you strain your eyes to decipher them, are not the brazen, vivid yellow of House Baratheon. They are night black and an icy, steely grey. They are the colors of House Stark.

“No,” Autumn says, denial in a protracted, helpless exhale. Alicent shrieks, frightening the children. You grab Autumn’s hand and lead her out into the hallway to warn the others if they don’t know already.

Lord Corlys Velaryon comes bounding up a staircase. “There are soldiers down in the secret passageways!” he booms. “Northmen! Armed! I’ve helped our guards bar the doors, but that won’t hold them back forever.”

Autumn looks to you. “Get the children ready to travel,” you tell her. “Find Larys and inform him.”

“Yes, my lady,” she says, and is gone. You sprint in the opposite direction towards Aegon’s bedchamber. You blow the door open like a strong wind, and Aegon startles awake. You rip through his dresser for things he will need: warm clothes, boots, his dagger, bottles of milk of the poppy.

“Get up, Aegon. We have to go. We’ll run, we’ll flee, there are Northmen in the tunnels but we’ll find another way out, we have to try, we have to, if they catch you they’ll—”

“Come sit with me,” he says from the bed, calmly, like you have all the time in the world. He is reaching out for you with one hand.

“What? No, we have to hurry—”

“Angel,” Aegon says. “I need you to come sit with me now.”

Why isn’t he afraid? Why isn’t he frantic? You cross the room with slow, numb footsteps. When you reach the bed, Aegon takes both of your hands in his own. And suddenly you know exactly what he is going to say. You remember what he told his brother in High Valyrian the last time Aemond left Dragonstone. Your voice is trembling and hoarse. Your throat burns like embers. “Aemond was supposed to be here to help us win. But he’s gone. Daeron, Criston, Helaena, Otto, Everett, Jaehaerys, Maelor, Autumn’s baby, so many people are gone.”

Aegon whispers, smiling softly as tears spill down his cheeks, one scarred and the other pure: “I’m not going to get better this time.”

“No,” you moan. “No, Aegon, no. You can’t say that, you can’t tell me that—”

“I’m not going to get better.” Now his palms cradle your face, forcing you to listen. “I’m not. And it’s okay. I’m not angry, I’m not scared. You’ve done everything you could and you’ve bought me more time and I’m so grateful. But I don’t want it to hurt anymore. I’ve been in pain for so long. I’ve been in pain my whole goddamn life.” He kisses you, like tasting something rare and fleeting. His thumbprint skates along the curve of your jaw, memorizing the angles of your bones, the rhythm of your pulse. “Please, Angel. I don’t want to try to run and die on the side of the road somewhere. I don’t want to die with Cregan Stark’s blade at my throat.”

You shake your head, unable to believe, unable to understand.

Aegon glances to the empty cup on his bedside table, to the large glass bottle of milk of the poppy. Then his eyes return to you. “You know how to do it.”

No. Never. But beneath those cold, dark, stormy waters: It would be painless. “I can’t,” you say, overwhelmed with horror.

“Listen, listen to me—”

“No—”

“Angel.”

“I can’t do that to you. Not to you. I can’t, I can’t.”

“When I’m gone, go to Cregan Stark,” Aegon says. “He is an honorable man, he will ensure your survival. He is the only person who can now. He wants to put his mark on the world. He wants to play Kingmaker. Let him. He can decree that my daughter will marry Rhaenyra’s son and ascend to the Iron Throne. He can end the war. Cregan will keep you safe. Tell him that I kidnapped you, that I forced myself on you. Tell him that I wanted an heir with Valyrian blood. Tell him that I was a drunk, a degenerate. Tell him whatever he wants to hear.”

“You would become a monster?”

“To protect you? I would become anything.”

He’s holding you, he’s pulling you into him until you can feel the fever bleeding from his flesh into yours, until you can number the knots of his spine and the ladder-rungs of his ribcage, counting them with your fingers through the sweat-drenched fabric of his cotton shirt. You draw back to look at him, to really look at him, sunken bloodshot eyes and rasping breaths, scar tissue of the body and the soul. You remember the day you met him, how he’d begged to die and been refused, how you brought him back. You postponed a debt, but you never paid it. It’s not possible to ever pay enough. You stack up gold coins in a vault until they touch the ceiling and still the Stranger comes knocking, jangling his purse sewn with scorched skin and chanting: more, more, more.

Aegon glances to the cup again. “How much?” he asks you, hushed like a prayer.

You don’t answer. Instead, you stand and go to the dresser. You open a small wooden door beneath the mirror. Your reflection is a woman you don’t know, someone who walks through fog and memory, someone made of ghosts. You take four clean cups from the cabinet and set them on Aegon’s bedside table. As he watches—eyes glassy with agony, lungs rattling—you fill them all with smooth, pearlescent, lethal liquid, as well as the empty cup that was already there. “Five,” you say, and it sounds nothing like you. “I think three at once would be enough. Five to make sure.”

He sobs with relief, and only now do you realize how badly he needed this. “Thank you. Oh gods, thank you.”

Your own words come back like an echo: I preserve life, I don’t take it. But that was a different lifetime, a different you. Aegon’s fingers are lacing through yours. He is drawing you back onto the bed, he is brushing your hair back from your face, he is kissing the path of tears down your cheeks so he doesn’t waste a drop of you. He’ll never get another taste, another chance; not in this life, not on this earth.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to the end with you,” he says. “I really tried.”

“I know, Aegon.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough.”

“You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known.”

He looks down at his left hand, then remembers where his ring has gone. He chuckles, darkly, bitterly, dismayed by all the failings he is built of. “I don’t even have anything to give you.” Then he remembers. “My dagger. Can you get my dagger?”

You are petrified. “Why?”

He grins, dull teeth beneath dazed eyes. “I’m not going to hack off a finger or my exemplary cock or something. I promise. Just get it.”

You fetch the dagger and bring it to the bed, and only then do you realize what he means for you to have. He points to it, then threads it through his pale, swollen fingers: his thin lock of hair that you’ve been weaving for him since the day you met. He wants you to take his braid.

“You’ll have to cut it yourself,” he says. “I don’t think I can.”

You hook the blade beneath the top of his braid, and with a few cautious slices of the dagger it is free. You tuck the braid into a pocket of your gown, thick black velvet to guard against the winter cold. Then you lay the dagger on the bedside table and pick up one of the cups filled to the brim with milk of the poppy. Your tears are scalding and torrential; it is almost impossible to see through them. You smooth back Aegon’s white-blond hair as you pour the blissful, deadly brew through his lips and down his throat, hating yourself, knowing it is the kindest thing you can do for him.

Suddenly, when the cup is half-drained, Aegon pushes it away. “You don’t have to be here. You don’t have to watch,” he says. “I can do the rest. Go, now. Right now. If the Boltons or some other house finds you before Cregan does, they might not recognize you. They might not care. You’re only safe with Cregan Stark. He has to find you first.” Aegon takes the cup with one shaking hand and presses a palm to your shoulder with the other. You haven’t moved. You can’t move. “Go. Leave me. Now. Please go. I love you, but you have to go now.”

“I can’t,” you choke out.

“You have to.”

“I’ve never wanted anyone but you.”

“Angel,” he says tenderly, smiling. “I’ll see you again. Just not too soon.”

“Okay,” you whisper, and you kiss him, traces of milk of the poppy on his lips that deaden the thunderstruck horror faintly, powerlessly, like small clouds drifting over the sun.

“If there’s anything interesting on the other side, I’ll find a way to let you know.”

The dreams, you think. “Okay,” you say again, barely audible.

“Now go. Right now. Go.”

You wipe tears from your face with your sleeve as you turn away from him. You can’t look back; if you do, you’ll never be able to walk out of this room. You take the dagger from the bedside table. Your bare feet pad across the cold floor. As you step through the doorway, on the periphery of your vision you can see Aegon swallowing down each cupful of poison as quickly as he can. It won’t take long to stop his heart. Minutes, perhaps. Seconds. You walk into the hallway. Autumn has just arrived with Jaehaera’s tiny hand clasped in her own. A few paces behind her, Alicent and Larys stand with Rhaenyra’s son. Two orphans without choices, two pawns in a much grander game.

Autumn is panicked. “Where should we go? What should we do?” Then she takes another look at your face. Her eyes go wide with terror. “What? What happened?”

“Follow me.” Your voice is low, flat, dark like deep water. Your eyes flick briefly to Lord Larys Strong. “Keep the boy here. He’s not safe with the smallfolk yet. But the Northmen won’t harm him.”

Larys knows. It’s over. He is devastated; and yet you think a part of him might be relieved as well. “Yes, Your Grace.”

“I’m not the queen anymore. I never really was.” You give him Aegon’s dagger. “I don’t think you’ll need this, Lord Larys, but now you have it in the event of any danger. Or in case I can’t convince Cregan Stark to spare you and you decide you’ve had enough of this world. You should get a say in how your life ends. You’ve earned it.”

Then you break away from them and glide through the Red Keep, Autumn and Jaehaera trotting swiftly behind you to keep up. You pass the rookery where Aemond wrote his letters. You sweep through the gardens where Helaena loved to collect her insects. You gaze down to the beach where Daeron landed on Tessarion under a dazzling sun before winter came like a plague to King’s Landing. From inside the castle, you can hear Alicent wailing as she discovers her last child’s lifeless body. What was all of this for? Why did this have to happen? Why didn’t anybody stop it?

Out on the streets of the city, the smallfolk have flocked with their makeshift weapons to defend their homes from the Northmen. But their eyes are darting everywhere and their faces are uncertain as they clutch their clubs made out of the legs of chairs and their rusty kitchen knives. They haven’t decided if it’s futile. They don’t want to be butchered for nothing.

“That’s Autumn!” they shout and sigh, especially the women. “The mother of the king’s bastard son, the one murdered by the half-year queen!” They reach out to skim their hands over Autumn’s gown, her long coppery hair, as if she is a saint or a spirit who can impart good luck upon them, who can change their fates. They fall to their knees to bow to Jaehaera, their king’s only living child, and she blinks at them with benign confusion.

But the smallfolk have a different reception for you. You hear their venomous chattering: “Is that the Celtigar woman?” “Her family put this city through hell.” “They served Rhaenyra.” “She’s a traitor, she’s a thief.” A few of them venture close enough to tug at your gown, to strike at you. A woman’s knuckles rap against your cheekbone, raising a bruise there like lavender in a dusk sky. You think dully: I wonder if they’ll gouge out my eyes with those knives like they did to Everett.

“Get back!” Autumn hisses, shoving the smallfolk away. And when she speaks, they listen. “She is going to the Wolf of Winterfell. She is my protector. She is your protector now too. She is the best chance you have left.” And the crowds open up and the three of you pass through King’s Landing unimpeded, though cloaked in thousands of fascinated gazes.

The King’s Gate has been abandoned; the guards must have feared the Boltons’ flaying knives or Lord Stark’s dark justice. Autumn instructs several hulking men of the smallfolk to open the gate if they wish to be spared from the wolf’s wrath. They are reluctant at first, but do as she asks. When the massive doors creak open, the people of the capital huddle behind the wall and peer out skittishly as you, Autumn, and Jaehaera advance to meet the Northmen, who are bloodied from battle and now within a hundred yards of the city. Above, the sky is thick and iron-grey and frigid. Snowflakes—the first of this winter to touch King’s Landing—begin to fall and land in your hair, and you are reminded of how embers rained from the smoldering pine trees at Rook’s Rest.

“Can you catch one on your tongue?” Autumn asks Jaehaera, and the little girl giggles as they both try.

The Warden of the North rides an immense, shaggy warhorse at the head of what remains of his army. He recognizes you immediately, dismounts, approaches with determined, unbreakable strides. Clement is close behind him.

“You’re alive!” your brother shouts joyously. “And apparently not pregnant with a Targaryen bastard! Praise the gods!”

Cregan Stark does not act as if he’s heard this. The Warden of the North is not as you remember him; he is larger, heavier and broader from the muscles won in battle, coarsened by weather and war. His hair is long and dark and pulled back from his face. He wears a sword at his belt that is taller than you are when it’s unsheathed. He is entombed in leather and furs. He does not hesitate before he lays his hands you. You are betrothed to him, you are his property, would a man ask before he grabs his horses or his dogs?

The Warden of the North does not seize your forearm roughly like Aemond once did. Instead, his massive palms and fingers clasp your face as he marvels at you. You can feel the stains of dirt and ashes he leaves there. You want to scream when he touches you, but you can’t. You want to burn with rage and heartache until you crumble like ruins. Your life is already over. Your life has just begun.

“You have suffered greatly,” Cregan Stark says, a marriage of shock and reverence.

“You have no idea.” Perpetual Resurrection, you think. It doesn’t mean you come back better. It just means you’re still here.

“You are safe now,” Cregan swears. “The Usurper will never harm you again.” And it ends the same way it began: with a man mistaking your allegiance and beckoning you into a destiny that he wholeheartedly believes is greater than any you could have envisioned for yourself.

“He’s dead.”

This stuns Cregan. “When? How?”

“Today. Of old wounds sustained in battle.”

He looks at Jaehaera, noticing her for the first time. “Is that his daughter?”

“Yes,” you say. “She must always be treated with kindness. She must be protected.”

“You have an affinity for her,” Cregan notes, intrigued.

You hear Aegon’s voice, so clearly it cuts like a blade: Tell him whatever he wants to hear. “We have been through great trials together. We survived the same monster.”

The Warden of the North nods. This is a story he craves to be told. “Very well. If it is your wish that she not be discreetly disposed of as a Silent Sister, I will betroth her to Rhaenyra’s surviving son. They will unite the noble houses of Westeros and end this war.”

“The worst of the Greens are dead already. Those who remain should be shown mercy. Alicent is old and ill and broken from loss. She poses no threat. She should be permitted to remain in the company of her granddaughter. Corlys was loyal to Rhaenyra until she falsely imprisoned him for treason, and he belongs on Driftmark with Rhaena. Larys Strong, Tyland Lannister, and Grand Maester Orwyle, if no pardon can be arranged for them, should go to the Wall instead of the scaffold. And Autumn, my companion there with Jaehaera…she was a true friend to me. I owe her my life several times over. She must be permitted to stay with Jaehaera and Aegon the Younger as a caretaker, and reside in comfort in the Red Keep for the remainder of her days.”

“Who do you think you are, sister?!” Clement exclaims. “You’re speaking to the Kingmaker, not some handmaiden! You do not command him!”

“I am not commanding,” you counter levelly. “I am pleading for mercy on behalf of imperfect souls who showed me kindness during my captivity. If granted, I will consider these my wedding gifts.”

“She is remarkable, is she not?” Cregan Stark says, grinning to Clement and several other men who have ventured closer. They wear the sigils of Northern houses: Bolton, Cerwyn, Manderly, Hornwood, Dustin. They chuckle in agreement, stroking their wild beards with huge filthy hands. “Dauntless but merciful. Clever but obedient.” And then the Warden of the North claims your lips with his, chaste but overpowering, the first of a thousand kisses you never desired, a thousand acts of affection for a woman who isn’t really you, feigned resignation and bitten-back rage, eternal war with the interminable knowledge that there is something more, more, more…you just aren’t permitted to have it. It was taken from you, it was ripped from your hands like stolen treasure.

All your life you will have to murmur in wounded agreement when people recount the terrible sins of the Usurper. All your life you will have to praise Cregan Stark for killing millions to rescue you. And the days will pass, weeks, months, years, summers and winters, the births of your children and their own marriages; and when Cregan’s boy Rickon, born of his first wife, produces only daughters, your son Brandon and his descendants will become the heirs to Winterfell. In the desolate North—so far from the ocean, so far from everything Aegon ever knew—your greatest solace will be letters from Autumn as she learns to read and write, books that your husband orders for you from the Citadel, setting bones and treating burns, a tiny lock of braided silver hair that you keep in a hidden drawer of your jewelry box, dreams that you never want to wake up from.

But one day, decades after you leave King’s Landing, you will receive a raven from Queen Jaehaera Targaryen, and she will ask you: You knew the Greens in your youth, Wardeness Stark. You knew Aemond, Daeron, Helaena, Alicent, Otto, Maelor, Aegon the Usurper. What can you tell me of them? What was my father like? Who was he really?

And you’ll pick up your quill and begin writing.

#aegon ii targaryen #aegon targaryen #aegon targaryen ii #aegon ii #aegon targaryen x reader #aegon x reader

[httpiastri]

drunk on you – cn21

when clement gets a little drunk on a night out, he feels a need to confess his feelings to his best friend’s little sister.

pairing: armstrong!reader x clement novalak

genre: fluff, mentions of suggestive but not much

warnings: alcohol mentions, nothing else

author's note: already missing my boys 💔 this is a lot of dialogue and not a lot else. hope u still like it though <3

f2/f3 masterlist

"little armstrong!"

you know the owner of the voice long before you see him. his voice always brought butterflies to your stomach. plus, no one else insisted on calling you that as often as he did.

you turn your head to look to your side, spotting clement standing right outside the door to the club. his hands are dug into his pockets as he watches you with an unreadable expression. "you truly are the most gorgeous thing in this entire city tonight. you know that, right?"

"i do know that. thank you."

"your dress is lovely, too." he takes a few steps closer to you. "though, it would look even better on the floor of my hotel room."

you roll your eyes, but you can't hold back the little grin growing on your lips. "that line is so overused, i can't believe you just said that."

"well, i might be just a little tipsy..."

"oh, really?" the irony is clear in your voice as you watch him stumble up to you, his lips showing off an intoxicated smile. "how much champagne have you had, hm?"

"just... a few glasses?" you can practically see the gears turning in his head as he thinks through his night, but he's far too drunk to remember. "enough to come out here and flirt with you, anyway."

"flirt with me, huh?" you chuckle and shove his shoulder. "and why would you do that?"

"because i'm head over heels for you, obviously."

you snort. "i'm definitely telling marcus about this. he's going to tease you for weeks."

your comment doesn't scare him – in fact, he looks even more amused than before. "tell your brother all you want. i love making him happy," he says, raising his eyebrows. "don't think you'll want to tell him about what we're gonna do back in my hotel room, though."

he takes one more step closer, and now he's practically towering over you. you lean back against the glass wall as if to create some distance, but it's helpless; he's just inches away, the heat practically radiating off his body. his warm breath on your face and his hand that lands on your hip leaves you completely flustered. "you're too drunk for this," you manage to get out, blinking up at him.

he shakes his head. "you're talking as if you don't want this."

"i don't."

"oh, please. you've wanted me since the first time you laid your eyes on me."

it's getting harder and harder to keep your cool, especially when his eyes are shamelessly checking you out, following every dip and curve of your body. you've never been this near him, at least not in a situation like this. have his eyes always been this beautiful? or is the alcohol in your body just making you see him in a new light?

he was right, of course; you had fallen for him quite soon after meeting him for the first time. how could you not when he was sweet, funny, and insanely handsome?

however, you couldn't just give in this easily. especially not when he wanted you just as much as you wanted him. "you have no idea what you're talking about."

he pauses for a moment. "so if i were to kiss you right now," his hand travels your thigh, his thumb absentmindedly drawing circles into your skin. "would you stop me?"

your eyes flutter closed at the sensation of his fingers along your skin. "i- i didn't say that."

"then what's stopping you from coming back to the hotel with me?"

you take a deep breath, wanting to keep your voice steady, but it's hard to focus when clement's hand keeps moving higher, eventually reaching the edge of your dress. "marcus would kill you if he saw me come out of your room."

"you can sneak back in the morning and pretend you’ve spent the whole night in your room, all innocent and sweet as you usually like to act."

when you pause again and open your eyes to look at him, he has leaned in closer. he takes notice of the way your breath hitches in your throat, the way your mouth hangs slightly open, the way your eyes are basically begging for him to close the distance between you. he cocks an eyebrow at you. "you really want this, don't you?"

"just shut up and kiss me."

clement is not one to disobey orders. his free hand grabs your jaw and you drape your arms around his shoulders as he presses his lips to yours. he tastes of the expensive champagne he's been drinking all night, and it's enough to pull you with him to an intoxicated state. drunk on champagne, drunk on each other.

when you stepped out for some fresh air just minutes before, you did not see this coming. never in a million years did you think you'd be making out with clement novalak, your brother's best friend, right outside a club – and yet, in the moment, it feels so right.

when he pulls back, he rests his forehead against yours as he speaks. "let me take you back to my room."

"do you remember how i said 'marcus would kill you'?"

"do you remember how you said 'shut up and kiss me'?" there's a massive grin on his lips and you gasp, pinching his shoulder. he leans back slightly, letting out a hearty laugh. "besides, you know your dad would love to have me as his step son. i practically am already."

"you make a good argument, novalak."

he tilts his head and his hand on your thigh makes itself known again by massaging your skin, slowly inching even further up. "so? what's it going to be?"

you pause for a moment, taking a deep breath before reaching down to grab his hand. you then practically pull him with you down the street, towards your hotel.

"i'm setting an alarm for six in the morning, and i am sneaking out before anyone finds out," you say – as if your brother and his entire friend group aren't standing inside the club with their mouths hanging wide, having watched you through the glass walls for the past couple of minutes.

#clement novalak #f1 #f2 #formula 1 #formula one #formula 2 #formula two #clement novalak fluff #clement novalak x reader #clement novalak x yn #clement novalak x y/n #clement novalak x you #clement novalak imagine #clement novalak fic #clement novalak fanfic #clement novalak suggestive #screaming meals #f1 x reader #f2 x reader #clement novalak drabble

[burningvelvet]

In a letter to W. S. Williams (14 August 1848), Charlotte Brontë compares Jane Eyre’s Rochester to the Byronic heroes of her sisters’ novels, Heathcliff from Emily’s Wuthering Heights and Huntingdon from Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall:

“You say Mr. Huntingdon reminds you of Mr. Rochester. Does he? Yet there is no likeness between the two; the foundation of each character is entirely different. Huntingdon is a specimen of the naturally selfish, sensual, superficial man, whose one merit of a joyous temperament only avails him while he is young and healthy, whose best days are his earliest, who never profits by experience, who is sure to grow worse the older he grows.

Mr. Rochester has a thoughtful nature and a very feeling heart; he is neither selfish nor self-indulgent; he is ill-educated, misguided; errs, when he does err, through rashness and inexperience: he lives for a time as too many other men live, but being radically better than most men, he does not like that degraded life, and is never happy in it. He is taught the severe lessons of experience and has sense to learn wisdom from them. Years improve him; the effervescence of youth foamed away, what is really good in him still remains. His nature is like wine of a good vintage, time cannot sour, but only mellows him. Such at least was the character I meant to portray.

Heathcliffe, again, of Wuthering Heights is quite another creation. He exemplifies the effects which a life of continued injustice and hard usage may produce on a naturally perverse, vindictive, and inexorable disposition. Carefully trained and kindly treated, the black gipsy-cub might possibly have been reared into a human being, but tyranny and ignorance made of him a mere demon. The worst of it is, some of his spirit seems breathed through the whole narrative in which he figures: it haunts every moor and glen, and beckons in every fir-tree of the Heights.”

Source: The Brontës Life and Letters (Clement King Shorter, 2013)

#defending her blorbo #charlotte brontë #the bronte sisters #anne brontë #emily brontë #wuthering heights #jane eyre #the tenant of wildfell hall #mr rochester #heathcliff #arthur huntingdon #letters #literature #english literature #character analysis #byronic hero

[ladystoneboobs]

possibly incomplete list of asoiaf characters described as having red or even "ginger" hair (or red-gold as opposed to red-brown or ghiscari red-black), never auburn:

mycah, the butcher's boy*

beric dondarrion (red-gold hair)*

lharys, member of the three stooges men-at-arms (wild rust-colored hair)**

unnamed and unfortunate mother of robert baratheon's doomed youngest child, barra (light red-haired mother of black-haired baby)*

tomard aka "fat tom", stark guardsman (with his ginger whiskers)*

horas "horror" redwyne (orange hair)*

hobber "slobber" redwyne (orange hair)*

unnamed red-haired whore leaning out a window the day of ned's execution (presumably not the same as above since she was joking about the king's death)*

melisandre of asshai (deep burnished copper. red and terrible and red.)*

a man called jaqen h'ghar (red on one side, white on the other)*

pug-nosed dancy from chataya's brothel (described as red-haired by tyrion in acok but honey-blonde in asos, so presumably hair dye must have been involved between those book mentions.)**

addam marbrand (hair the same copper color as his horse's mane)*

"ginger-headed" maester frenken*

unnamed beardless ginger youth among theon's crew at winterfell*

ygritte, a spearwife "kissed-by-fire" (bright red)*

arryk aka "left" or "right", lady olenna's red-mustached guardsman*

erryk aka "left" or "right", lady olenna's other, identical, red-mustached guardsman*

lord paxter redwyne (tufts of orange hair)**

anguy the archer of the bwb*

a red-bearded karstark rapist dead in a crow cage at stoney sept*

tansy, innkeeper of the peach in stoney sept*

meryn trant (rust-red hair)*

"red" ronnet connington

mero, "the titan's bastard", former commander of the second sons (bushy red-gold beard)

a red-headed soldier who came with stannis to the wall

shadrich "the mad mouse" (bristly orange hair)*

lord rykker's red-mustached maester

marwyn belmore, lysa's former guard captain (ginger-headed)*

lord benedar belmore with a beard that was "a ginger-grey horror"*

lord orton merryweather (reddish-orange hair)

"the red oarsman", one of euron greyoy's followers (fiery red hair)

unnamed red-haired sailor arriving at port in braavos*

lord clement piper

and his son lewys "little lew" piper, who served as squire to jaime lannister in the riverlands

unnamed red-haired youth who first escaped northward with varamyr from the battle at the wall

one of illyrio's washerwomen (dull red hair)**

jon connington (once red hair gone to grey, still red at the roots and eyebrows even when the rest was dyed blue. also had a bright red beard as a younger man.)**

rolly "duck" duckfield (a shock of orange hair)**

a young man among the wildling refugees at mole's town whose red hair reminded jon of ygritte*

the "sunset kingdoms" girl raped by tyrion in the brothel where he was captured by jorah**

hagen's daughter, only other woman among asha greyjoy's crew

roggon rustbeard, one of asha's men

mully of the nw (greasy orange hair)*

bloodbeard, commander of the company of the cat (fiery red whiskers)

"ginger" jack, a toungeless sellsword of the windblown sent to dany, face nearly covered by his bristly, orange beard

gerrick kingsblood*

and his son*

and gerrick's daughter #1*

and gerrick's daughter #2*

and gerrick's daughter #3*

ronald storm, son of ronnet connington

one of the 7 "choicest" enslaved girls from the yunkish ship who were sacrificed by victarion (red-gold hair)

an enslaved redhead boy in line for a well, asking tyrion about dany**

nail, apprentice to hammer, the armorer for the second sons**

maester tybald, redhaired maester from the dreadfort serving arnolf karstark

valena toland, heiress to ghost hill (bright red hair)

teora toland, valena's younger sister with the same hair

uther shett, knight arriving for sweetrobin's tourney (ginger-haired and whiskered)*

*characters whose hair is described in the povs of starks (or jon snow) who only use the terms auburn or red-brown for catelyn, robb, sansa etc. and do not compare said characters to said tully-haired relations

**characters whose hair is described by tyrion lannister, who spent significant time with sansa and exclusively referred to her hair as auburn (without anyone else telling him her hair color as catelyn told brienne)

the only asoiaf characters ever described as having auburn hair:

catelyn tully stark

robb stark (red-brown/auburn tully hair "so like" his mother's, with a beard redder than his hair)

sansa stark (auburn hair lighter than her mother's, most reddish glowing in candlelight)

brandon "bran" stark (hair not bright red enough for him to distinguish himself from young benjen at first glance in a weirwood flashback)

rickon stark

brynden "the blackfish" tully (once auburn hair gone to grey)

edmure tully (auburn hair with a fiery beard, likely brighter than his hair like robb's)

lysa tully arryn baelish

known tully descendants never described as having auburn hair

arya stark (darker brown stark-colored hair)

hoster tully (hair and beard gone from brown to brown streaked with grey to white as snow)

robert "sweetrobin" arryn (fine brown hair, thought by sansa to be his best feature)

fun fact: the only other character that i can find to ever even be descibed as having red-brown hair in the main series is rowan, one of the spearwives who accompanied mance on his mission to winterfell. (described by theon, who had psychological reasons not to think of any hair-resemblance to robb and co.)

tl;dr i suppose my point here is that auburn hair in the real world may be a term thrown around wildly as a fancier way of saying red hair, but grrm and his westerosi creations seem to keep to a much more specific (true) definition. not just specific, almost entirely unique to a certain family, a weird mutation passing down their line somewhat inexplicably, like the magic platinum hair of the targaryens. (ned stark's 4 tully-haired kids being sorta like alicent hightower's 4 targ-haired kids where nobody can really explain why it was so dominant.) except it's actually more unique to the tullys than either black hair to the baratheons or silver hair to the targaryens, with the velaryons also having valyrian hair as well as some people in the essosi free cities too. which i guess makes rowan the wildling the equalivent of an unknown dragonseed or a lysene woman who could pass as a targ, and regular brown-haired hoster and sweetrobin the equivalent of regular blonde-haired alysanne and alyssa targaryen. so the next time someone calls the tullys lame or whatever, just remember that in-universe they're actually more special than the dragonriders, at least hairwise.

#valyrianscrolls #asoiaf meta #house tully #catelyn stark #catelyn tully #edmure tully #lysa tully #brynden tully #hoster tully #robb stark #sansa stark #bran stark #arya stark #rickon stark #robert arryn #one fish two fish red fish blue fish #(c)lsb #happy tully tuesday! #ik this seems pedantic but as always i have multiple agendas here #which do not include hating on anyone's orange-haired fanart bc unlike some people i have some tumblr manners #and ik auburn hair is hard to define bc i cant explain it beyond my mom's natural hair color. thats how real world rare it is.

[whencyclopedia]

The Letters of Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles

Paul was a member of the Jewish Pharisees in the 1st century CE, who experienced a revelation of the resurrected Jesus Christ. In this vision, Jesus commissioned him to be the apostle (herald) to the Gentiles (non-Jews). After this experience, he traveled widely throughout the Roman Empire, spreading the "good news" that Jesus would soon return from heaven and usher in the kingdom of God on earth.

In the New Testament, we have 14 letters traditionally assigned to Paul, but the scholarly consensus now recognizes that of the 14, seven were written by Paul:

1 Thessalonians

Galatians

Philemon

Philippians

1 & 2 Corinthians

Romans

2 Thessalonians, Ephesians, and Colossians remain debatable among some scholars. The other major letters (1 &2 Timothy and Titus) were most likely written by disciples of Paul’s, using his name to carry authority. The letters that have survived range between 52 and 60 CE, and although we cannot pinpoint when Paul’s letters were collected, Clement, a bishop in Rome in the 90s CE, quoted from 1 Corinthians.

The Nature of the Letters

We understand these letters to be circumstantial. They were not written as systematic theology or as treatises on Christianity. The letters are responses to specific problems and circumstances as they arose in his communities. Paul spent time in cities establishing a group and then moved on. He received letters and sometimes reports with detailed questions or advice on how to settle conflicts. Unfortunately, when Paul’s letters were saved and circulated, the original letters from the communities were not preserved. The reconstruction of the original problems can only be determined by Paul’s responses.

Known as the most famous convert in history (from the Acts of the Apostles), Paul did not actually undergo conversion. Conversion assumes changing from one religious system to another, but at the time, there was no Christian system for him to convert to. Paul himself was ambiguous when it came to his self-identity:

To the Jews I became like a Jew... To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) ... To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) ... I have become all things to all people. (1 Corinthians 9:20-22)

In relation to what happened to Paul, it is better to follow what he says, in that he was 'called'. This is the tradition of the way in which the Prophets of Israel were called to their individual missions.

I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ. (Galatians 1:11-12).

Paul argued that this experience gave him as much authority as the original circle in Jerusalem (Peter, James, and John). Paul’s call to be the Apostle to the Gentiles was shocking because, as he freely admitted, he had previously "persecuted the church of God" (Galatians 1:13). He never really explained what he did, nor why he did it. It is in Paul’s letters that the name Jesus is combined with Christ, the Greek for the Hebrew messiah ("anointed one"). Understood as a title, "Jesus the Christ", it became common as a phrase that indicated his identity and function.

Continue reading...

#History #Bible #Christianity #PaultheApostle #WHE #[ #]

[mask131]

About Tanit

I recently posted about how people should be looking more into other gods outside of the Greco-Roman pantheons. If you follow me for quite some times, you will also have noted I posted a bunch of loose translation from the French Dictionary of literary myths (which is truly a great reference). Well, I wanted to share with you today a loose translation – well, more of an info-mining at this point – of an article about a goddess that people often ignore the existence of, despite being located right next to Ancient Greece and Rome, and being involved in the history of the Roman Empire. And this goddess is Tanit.

Written by Ildiko Lorinszky, the article is organized in two – at first it takes a look and analysis at the mythological Tanit, at who and what she likely was, how her cult was organized all that. The second part, since it is a Dictionary of LITERARY myths, takes a look at the most prominent and famous depiction of Tanit in French literature – that is to say Flaubert’s famous Salammbô. (If you recalled, a long time ago I posted about how a journalist theorized in an article how Flaubert’s Salammbô was basically an “epic fantasy” novel a la Moorcock or Tolkien long before “fantasy” was even a genre)

Part 1: Tanit in mythology and archeology

Tanit was the patron-goddess of the city of Carthage. Considered to be one of the avatars o the Phoenician goddess Astarte, Tanit’s title, as found on several Punic engravings, was “The Face of Baal” – a qualification very close to how Astarte was called in Sidon and Ugarit “The Name of Baal”. These titles seem to indicate that these two goddesses acted as mediators or intermediaries between humanity and Baal.

Tanit is as such associated with Baal, the vegetation god, but sometimes she is his wife, other times she is simply his paredra (companion/female counterpart). She seems to be the female power accompanying the personification of masculinity that is Baal, and as such their relationship can evoke the one between Isis and Osiris: the youthful sap of the lunar goddess regularly regenerates the power of the god. This “nursing” or “nourishing” function of Tanit seems to have been highlighted by the title she received during the Roman era: the Ops, or the Nutrix, the “Nurse of Saturn”. Goddess of the strengthened earth, Tanit is deeply tied to agrarian rituals: her hierogamy with Baal reproduces in heaven the birth of seeds on earth. Within the sanctuaries of Tanit, men and women devoted to the goddess practiced a sacred prostitution in order to favorize the fecundity of nature. The women tied to the temple were called “nubile girls”, while the men working there were called “dogs” to highlight how completely enslaved they were to the goddess. We know that the prostitutes of both sexes brought important incomes to the temple/

The etymology of Tanit (whose name can also be called Tannit or Tinnit) is obscure. The most probable hypothesis is that the Phoenico-Punic theonym “Tnt” is tied to the verb “tny”, which was used in the Bible to mean “lamenting”, “wailing”, “crying”. According to this interpretation, the “tannît” is originally a “crier”, a “wailer”, and the full name of Tanit means “She who cries before Baal”. As such, the Carthaginian goddess might come from a same tradition as the “Venus lugens”.

According to some mythographers, Tanit (or Astarte) was the supreme goddess of Carthage, and might have been identical to the figures of Dido and Elissa. As in, Dido was in truth the celestial goddess, considered as the founder of the city and its first queen. According to this hypothesis, the suicide of Dido on a pyre was a pure invention of Virgil, who took this motif from various celebrations hosted at Carthage. During these feasts-days, images and depictions of the goddess were burned The word Anna would simply mean “clement”, “mild”, “merciful” – the famous Anna, sister of Dido, is thought to have been another Punic goddess, whose cult was brought from Carthage to Rome, and who there was confused with the roman Anna Perenna, a goddess similar to Venus. Varro claimed that it was not Dido that burned on the pyre, but Anna, and according to this angle, Anna appears as a double of Dido – and like her, she would be another manifestation of the goddess Tanit. Anna’s very name reminds of the name “Nanaia”/”Aine”, which was a title given to Mylitta, yet another manifestation of Tanit.

The sign known as the “sign” or “symbol of Tanit” seems to be a simplified depiction of the goddess with her arms open: it is a triangle (reduced to a trapezoid as the top of the triangle is cut) with an horizontal line at its top, an a disc above the horizontal line. This symbol appears throughout the Punic world on monuments, steles, ceramics and clay figurines.

Part 2: The literary Tanit of Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert’s novel Salammbô is probably where the goddess reappears with the most splendor in literature. While her essence is shown being omnipresent throughout the Punic world, Tanit, as the soul of the city, truly dwells within the town’s sanctuary, which keeps her sacred cloak. The veil of the goddess, desired by many, stolen then regained throughout the plot, plays a key role within the structure of this very enigmatic text, which presents itself as a “veiled narrative”.

The town and its lands are filled with the soul of the “Carthaginian Venus”. The countryside, for example, is filled with an erotic subtext, sometimes seducing, sometimes frightening – reflecting the ambiguity of the goddess. The landscape is all curves, softness, roundness, evoking the shapes of a female body – and the architecture of both the city-buildings and countryside-buildings are described in carnal ways. Within Salammbô, Flaubert describes a world where the spirit and the flesh are intertwined – the female world of Carthage is oppressed by an aura mixing lust with mysticism; and through the erotic nature creeps both a frightening sacred and an attractive morbidity. For death and destruction is coming upon Carthage.

The contradictory nature of the goddess appears as early as the very first scene of the novel, when the gardens of Hamilcar are described. The novel opens on a life-filled landscape: the gardens of the palace are a true Land of Eden, with an abundant vegetation filled with fertility symbols. The plants that are listed are not mere exotic ornaments: they all bear symbolic and mythological connotations. The fig-tree, symbol of abundance and fecundity ; the sycamore, “living body of Hathor”, the tree of the Egyptian moon-goddess ; the grenade, symbol of fertility due to its multiple seeds ; the pine tree, linked to Attis the lover of Cybele ; the cypress, Artemis’ tree ; the lily, which whose perfume was said to be an aphrodisiac ; the vine-grapes and the rose… All those plants are linked to the moon, that the Carthaginian religion associated with Tanit. Most of these symbols, however, have a macabre touch reflecting the dark side of the goddess. The cypress, the “tree of life”, is also a funeral tree linked to the underworld ; the coral is said to be the same red as blood, and was supposedly born from the blood-drops of Medusa ; the lily symbolizes temptation and the unavoidable attraction of the world of the dead ; the fig-tree just like the grenade have a negative side tied to sterility… The flora of this passage, mixing benevolent and malevolent attributes, already depict a world of coexisting and yet opposed principles: fertility cannot exist without sterility, and death is always followed by a renewal. The garden’s description introduces in the text the very cycles of nature, while also bringing up the first signs of the ambivalence that dominates the story.

The same union of opposites is found within the mysterious persona of Tanit. The prayer of Salammbô (which was designed to evoke Lucius’ lamentations to Isis within Apuleius’ Metamorphosis) first describes a benevolent goddess of the moon, who fecundates the world : “How you turn, slowly, supported by the impalpable ether! It polishes itself around you, and it is the movement of your agitation that distributes the winds and the fecund dews. It is as you grow and decrease that the eyes of the cats and the spots of the panthers lengthen or shrink. The wives scream your name in the pains of labor! You inflate the sea-shells! You make the wines boil! […] And all seeds, o goddess, ferment within the dark depths of your humidity.” As a goddess presiding to the process of fermentation, Tanit is also tied to the principle of death – because it is her that makes corpses rot.

The Carthaginian Venus appears sometimes as an hermaphrodite divinity, but with a prevalence and dominance of her feminine aspect. Other times, she appears as just one of two distinct divinity, the female manifestation in couple with a male principle. Tanit synthetizes within her the main aspects of all the great moon-goddesses: Hathor, Ishtar, Isis, Astarte, Anaitis... All are supposed to have an omnipotence when it comes to the vegetal life. Mistress of the elements, Tanit can be linked to the Mother-Earth : for the character of Salammbô, the cloak of the goddess will appear as the veil of nature. The daughter of Hamilcar is linked in a quite mysterious way to Tanit – for she is both a frightened follower of the goddess, and the deity’s incarnation. Described as “pale” and “light” as the moon, she is said to be influenced by the celestial body: in the third chapter, it is explained that Salammbô weakened every time the moon waned, and that while she was languishing during the day, she strengthened herself by nightfall – with an additional mention that she almost died during an eclipse. Flaubert ties together his heroine’s traits with the very name “Salammbô”, which is a reminiscence of the funeral love of Astarte: “Astarte cries for Adonis, an immense grief weighs upon her. She searches. Salmmbô has a vague and mournful love”. According to Michelet’s explanations, “Salambo”, the “love name” of Astarte, is meant to evoke a “mad, dismal and furious flute, which was played during burials”.

As a character embodying Tanit, Salammbô is associated with the two animals that were sacred to the goddess: the holy fishes, and the python snake, also called “the house-spirit”. Upon the “day of the vengeance”, when Mâtho, the scape-goat, is charged with all the crimes of the mercenaries, she appears under the identity of Dercéto, the “fish-woman”. The very detailed costumes of Salammbô contain motifs borrowed to other goddesses that are avatars of Tanit. By using other goddesses, Flaubert widens the range of shapes the lunar goddess can appear with, while also bringing several mythical tales, whose scattered fragments infiltrate themselves within the novel. When she welcomes her father, Salammbô wears around her neck “two small quadrangular plates of gold depicting a woman between two lions ; and her costume reproduced fully the outfit of the goddess”. The goddess depicted here is Cybele, the passionate lover of Attis, the young Phrygian shepherd. This love story that ends in mutilations bears several analogies with the fatal love between Salammbô and the Lybian leader. And the motif of the mutilation is one of the key-images of the novel.

A fish-woman, like Dercéto, Salmmbô is also a dove-woman, reminding of Semiramis ; but more so, she is a snake-woman, linked mysteriously to the python. Before uniting herself with Mâtho (who is identified to Moloch), Salammbô unites herself with the snake that incarnates the lunar goddess in her hermaphroditic shape. It is the python that initiates Salammbô to the mysteries, revealing to Hamilcar’s daughter the unbreakable bond between eroticism and holiness. In the first drafts of the novel, Salammbô was a priestess of Tanit, but in the final story, Flaubert chose to have her father denying her access to the priesthood. So, she rather becomes a priestess under Mathô’s tent: using the zaïmph, she practices a sacred prostitution. The union of Hamilcar’s daughter and of the leader of the mercenaries reproduces the hierogamy of Tanit and Moloch.

Salammbô, confused with Tanit, is also victim of the jealous Rabbet. Obsessed with discovering the face of the goddess hidden under the veil, she joins the ranks of all those female characters who curiosity leads to the transgression of a divine rule (Eve, Pandora, Psyche, Semele). And, in a way, the story of Mathô and Salammbô reproduces this same story: the desire to see, the desire for knowledge, always leads to an ineluctable death.

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