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torukmaktoskxawng · 1 year

Text

'anla - part three

Series Masterlist

Summary: A race against time and the problem with having a large family.

Pairing: Ao'nung/Fem!Na'vi!Sully Reader

Warnings: Mature language, time skips, strict parents, blood/gore, HEAVY angst, death, canon typical violence, canon compliance, slow burn, etc.

Word Count: 5k+

Tag: #'anla ao'nung fic

Na'vi Words: tulkun - whale like animal, ilu - dolphin/plesiosaur like animal, ikran - Mountain Banshee, kuru - queue braid, tanhì - bioluminescent freckle, tsurak - skimwing, ionar - riding visor, tsaheylu - bond, matxe'lan - my heart

posted on ao3

Taglist (red indicates "could not tag"): @aonungmyaddiction @lv9su @aisselasstuff @yourusername1 @amortencjja @king-julian6201 @gg-trini @im-in-a-pansexual-panik @mikeyswifie

A/N: I'm only tagging those who specifically asked to be tagged as of rn. If you don't see your user in the taglist and you want to be added, please lemme know. Also, please reread part two before reading this. Thank you!

It was a dream turned into a nightmare. For a split second, Y/n wanted to drag Ao'nung by the hand and demand he takes her back to the Spirit Tree if it meant she could have one more minute of peace. The intrusive thought, however, immediately vanished when the Omatikaya girl finds herself gently holding a crying Tsireya while the entire village becomes an uproar of war cries all around them. Ronal is demanding justice for the murder of her Spirit Sister and calf, her eyes swimming with grief and anger as she mentioned the ones responsible for this crime.

The Sky People were here.

Y/n looks around, spotting her family among the crowd. In his hands, Neteyam held a long and red metal object, equipped with a sharp tip and light. Beside him, Jake is trying to calm the people, begging them to stop and think. Neytiri silently watches, a haunted look of recognition in her eyes as if she had seen all of this before. Kiri held onto her mother's shoulder as a comfort for both of them and Lo'ak, alone, stood small and quiet among the crowd while Tuk is nowhere to be found.

Her father continued to plead with the Metkayina people while Y/n drowned his voice out. She, too, had heard it all before and instead focused more on Tsireya, the reef girl shaking in fear, her innocence in question aside from what the villagers decided to do. Kiri had vanished from the crowd, likely off to find Tuk with danger so close to their new home, making a sickly feeling form in Y/n's stomach.

It only worsened when Jake took the red object, the tracker, from Neteyam's hands and held it out to the crowd, hushing them as he spoke, "You tell the tulkun that if they're hit with this, they're marked for death. And call for me, I'll silence it. Saving their lives, that's all that matters. Right? Saving your family."

Tonowari and Ronal exchange a silent conversation with their eyes alone, before turning to their people, "Tell the tulkun."

"Go. Go!"

The Metkayina scatter, and through the chaos, Tsireya turned to Y/n, eyes widening in a horrifying realization, "Lo'ak--"

"I know," determination fills Y/n's lungs as she grabbed Tsireya's arm and pulled her along, "Let's go."

The girls sprinted toward the docks, asking around for their friends as they went. Eventually, they spot two teenage boys. Not the ones Y/n was particularly looking for, but ones that Tsireya reached for in her panic, "Ao'nung, Rotxo, have you seen Lo'ak?"

"No." Rotxo paused, looking between the two girls, "What is going on?"

Y/n's walk begins to pick up, a scowl permanent on her face, "Take a guess."

She takes off down the walkways, heading toward the hut holding the ilu harnesses, not caring if the others followed her or not. Tsireya and Ao'nung take off after her with Rotxo in tow, all four of the teenagers making their way to the edge of the village. Y/n is the first one there and the first one to spot both of her brothers arguing until they spotted her.

"Lo'ak! 'Teyam!" She called out.

Lo'ak's head whipped around to spot her, Neteyam a little slower to react as Lo'ak begins to back away, pulling his arm out of his big brother's hold, "Get off me--"

Tsireya and the others catch up to Y/n and try to reach out, "Lo'ak!"

"Lo'ak!"

"Come back!"

He doesn't answer the reef girl or his brother and dives into the water below without another word, quickly disappearing into the deep with his ilu. Neteyam turned to the other teens, thumping Ao'nung's chest as he passed him, "Come on! He's going to Payakan!"

Neteyam claps his hands and makes various different calls to summon a ride of his own. The others call for nearby ilu, expertly diving into the water as they all follow suit, in sync and in formation like they have done in recent hunting parties. The ilu fly through the water, jumping out and back in through the waves, picking up speed and desperate to get to Lo'ak as he pushes through far ahead of them.

"Lo'ak! Come back!" Tsireya called up to him in between jumping up through the water before diving back down.

At one point, Kiri with Little Tuk had joined in the race as well, following after their friends and their siblings, confused by the urgency. Soon enough, the group was beyond the reef, close to Three Brothers Rocks when Lo'ak had eventually slowed his ilu, calling out for his Spirit Brother. Payakan had responded, though his calls were not one of joy or greeting. The poor tulkun sounded as though he was in pain. When Lo'ak asked what was wrong, the bull turned until the Na'vi boy noticed the bright red tracker piercing his flesh.

"Shit!" Lo'ak exclaimed while jumping onto Payakan's fin and then climbing onto his back, signing to his Spirit Brother to stay calm.

The rest of the group had caught up to Lo'ak and immediately clocked the situation, all eyes turning when they heard the sound of rotor blades. A demon ship was slowly coming out of hiding from behind the large rock cliffs peeking out of the sea, drifting over to the children and tulkun menacingly. Taking action, Neteyam and Y/n hop off their ilu and climb onto Payakan's back, lifting Tsireya and Ao'nung out of the water to help Lo'ak pull the tracker out of the injured tulkun. Everyone tried pushing and pulling the pinger out, together, with all their might as Lo'ak quickly called in their location to Jake. Neteyam eventually got an idea and used a rope to latch onto the saddle of his ilu, throwing the other end to Ao'nung after shouting his name so the reef boy could tie it to the embedded tracker.

Ao'nung successfully knots the rope around the red pinger, encouraging Neteyam to pull, "Go, go, go!"

"Pull! Now!" Neteyam demands as he orders his ilu to swim, the strain of the rope tightening as the ilu struggles with all its might, flapping its fins in the water.

"Everybody! Together!"

"Pull!"

Rotxo and Lo'ak pull at the very end of the tracker, while Ao'nung tries pulling at the rope now attached to it. Tsireya tries pushing it out with her foot while Y/n takes both hands and grips tightly onto the base of the needle that stuck out of Payakan's flesh, pulling that with all her might.

"Pull! Harder!"

"Pull!"

Y/n was the first to feel the tracker loosen and eventually, the pinger releases its grip on Payakan and the force of the rope threw all the teenagers into the water, each of them shouting in surprise as they splash into the sea.

"It's out! Kiri! It's out!"

"Go. Tuk, go!"

"Go! Everybody!"

"Go on, get out of here!"

They don't take time to revel in their small victory. Panicked on borrowed time, the kids immediately swim to their mounts and round each other up. Lo'ak instructs Payakan to dive and get as far away as possible while the others were screaming to one another to hurry up, the demon ship nearly upon them.

Chaos erupted after that. The children were forced to split up after Neteyam took the tracker to draw the Sky People away from the others. Depth charges were tossed into the water, exploding on impact and confusing the children, rattling their teeth and ringing their ears. Neteyam had a couple of close calls but was at least able to stay attached to his ilu as he ditched the tracker, letting it sink to the bottom of the reef. By the time he had lost the Sky People, he looked around and realized that he had been completely separated from his siblings.

Meanwhile, the other Sully children and the Metkayina trio were hiding underwater with their ilu among a forest of gigantic seaweed as they were being pursued by the Sky People's crab suits and submersibles. Weaving through the kelp and trying to keep a safe distance, the children urge their mounts to swim away, the sweet creatures clicking to one another in distress.

At one point, Y/n loses sight of half of the group as she maneuvers her way through a thicket of seaweed while being pursued by a crab suit, long claws stretching out to try and grab her. She dodges and weaves expertly, her thighs clenching tightly around the saddle of her ilu with the muscle memory of an ikran rider. Her stomach clenches once and Y/n noted that she would need air soon after hiding down here and holding her breath for so long. She needed to lose the demon crab, the others were no longer her priority until she can shake her pursuer. Out of the corner of her eye, Y/n caught sight of another demon crab searching through the seaweed, unbeknownst to her presence. Thinking fast, she sharply turns her ilu and frantically swims over, the crab that had been chasing her still right on her tail. With speed and the element of surprise, Y/n ambushed the unsuspecting crab suit and swiftly swims over it, causing both crabs to crash into one another in pursuit of her. Y/n beams smugly while looking over her shoulder, happily watching the way the machines struggled and quickly forget about her before slowing her swim, looking around in search of the others.

She catches sight of Kiri and turns toward the direction she spotted her sister, ordering her ilu to leave after disconnecting her queue braid. Y/n followed Kiri after she noticed Rotxo and Ao'nung with her. The three others caught sight of Y/n and even look relieved, waving her over and signing for her to follow them for air. Ao'nung takes the lead, swimming ahead, without an ilu, as he finds an underwater pod, swimming up into the center of the blooming flower for a pocket of air. Rotxo has the Omatikaya girls swim ahead of him, letting them swim up after Ao'nung, who grabs Kiri's arm first to bring her up for air, then Y/n. All four teens gather snugly together in that small pocket of air, taking their breaths while Kiri looked around frantically.

"Where is Tuk? Did you see her?"

Y/n's eyes widen, "You mean she's not with you?"

"She had fallen off, but I don't think the Sky People noticed. They were too busy with us."

"I think we lost them," Ao'nung stated.

"What do we do?" Rotxo asked.

Kiri's pupils shrunk and grew rapidly through her panic, "We can't stay here. We gotta find the others. Any of you see Lo'ak and Tsireya?"

"No. It all happened so fast--"

"We find Tuk first," Y/n exclaims, ears pinned back and staring them all down with authority, "She's all alone, then we find the others."

"What about Mom and Dad?" Kiri questioned her older sister.

"Lo'ak called it in. They're on their way, likely with an army. 'Teyam drove the demon ship away, leaving us with whatever is left of their subs," her face suddenly splits with a twinkling, uplifting grin, "I already damaged two. You guys need to catch up."

Kiri rolled her eyes but let out a huff of air resembling a short bout of laughter, her adrenaline appreciating the small bit of humor Y/n tried to break through the tension. Looking around at the other three, Y/n raised her eyebrows, "We ready?"

Ao'nung nodded then turned to his friend, "Rotxo, you go first. I'll stay in the back, in case we need to grab them and swim out of there fast."

Kiri and Y/n exchange a look but say nothing, both internally shocked that Ao'nung didn't take the time to make a 'bad divers' comment while Rotxo just nods, "Right."

He takes a long, practiced breath and sinks back down into the water. Y/n expands her stomach as she takes a deep breath and holds it, following Rotxo as her arms and legs push and pull her through the water. Kiri is not far behind and Ao'nung follows suit, the teenagers carefully looking around, cautious for signs of danger. Rotxo led them all back the way they came in search of Tuk, but the longer they swam, the more things looked unfamiliar. He had turned to swim backward while signing to the others following closely behind him, 'We should have seen her by now.'

Y/n briefly grabs Kiri's shoulder before signing, 'No Sky People either. Maybe we should--'

Throat grunts echo behind her, Y/n's ears perking up at the sound as she spins around. Ao'nung was frantically clicking to grab their attention, pushing Kiri forward as he quickly motions, 'Demon!'

A small submersible appears from behind the large seaweed, bright searchlights blinding the Na'vi children as it spots them. Ao'nung continues to shove the girls forward until they pick up enough energy to swim away, trying to lose the sub around a large coral reef at the edge of the kelp forest. They swim close to the wall of the reef, all the while the sub maintained speed. In her determination to get away, Y/n lost sight of Kiri for a moment only to realize too late that her adopted sister had hung back. Y/n mewls deep in her throat as a way of screaming a warning, stopping and trying to turn around to go back for Kiri, but Ao'nung was suddenly there and he was using his powerful legs and tail to push Y/n in the opposite direction. Y/n tries to struggle but remembered to slow her heartbeat when she realized her thrashing was draining her of oxygen. Looking around for Kiri, all three turned back and notice the girl had attached her kuru braid to a nearby daisy anemone, watching the large plant-like sea creature move and grow out its long tentacle entrapments at her command.

The submersible arrives and is unaware of the trap until Kiri uses both of her arms' movements to mimic a push as if she was forcing someone off of her. The command is clear as the anemone reaches out, grabbing hold of the sub and completely encasing it with its tentacles. Kiri then uses one arm to mimic smashing something to the side of her, then the anemone pulls the sub in, smashing it against the side of the reef, squeezing the sub until the glass shatters and collapses within itself. When the sky demons within the sub try escaping out the hatch, Kiri makes a motion mimicking the way she would squeeze fruit for a fun and juicy treat as a child, only she made this motion with a menacing glare. The tentacles completely surround the Sky People, swallowing them whole and squeezing them to death. Kiri lowers her arms, satisfied even as her tanhì flickers up and down her entire body.

Ao'nung and Rotxo look at each other, amazed, confused, and a little freaked out. Y/n was used to her sister's... strange abilities and instead tried focusing on holding her breath. She had been underwater for far too long. Ao'nung and Rotxo were just fine and Kiri was strangely accustomed to holding her breath just as long as a Metkayina could, even without training, leaving Y/n to be the only one who was starting to struggle. Her lungs and stomach clenched and constrict, begging for air. Y/n's hands rise to her mouth and nose, forcing them to stay closed as she tries not to panic and keep her heart steady. Black spots started to dot her vision when she looked up to the surface, catching the sun rays peeking through the water.

Y/n grunts deep in her throat to get the others' attention. Kiri and the boys all turn and she frantically signed, 'Need to breathe.'

Kiri swims forward, gesturing with her hands, 'We can't wait for it to be safe. Need to go up.'

Ao'nung and Rotxo move then, taking Kiri's orders when she told them to bring Y/n up to the surface, 'I'll be right behind you.'

Ao'nung took one of Y/n's arms and Rotxo took the other. Together they use their speed to swim the forest girl up to the surface. The moment she felt air on her face, Y/n gasped for breath, sputtering and coughing with whatever water she had accidentally inhaled. Rotxo had let go of Y/n's arm and Kiri emerged, taking deep, more steady breaths. If she had taken the time to notice through her panicked breathing, Y/n would have noted the firm hold Ao'nung still had on her other arm.

The teens form a circle as they breathe but are not spared a moment of peace. The silence should have been a warning before an ikran, armed in Sky People gear and sporting a Recom for its rider, swooped down out of nowhere, wrapping its talons around Kiri's arms and plucking her out of the water like she weighed nothing.

Kiri screamed, kicking the air as she struggled, "LET ME GO! NO! SISTER, HELP!"

"KIRI!" Y/n screams, staring up and watching in horror as the ikran takes her sister away. Once she realized the banshee was taking Kiri to the demon ship, Y/n immediately began to swim. Her limbs, however, protested. Her arms were heavy and her lungs spasmed, everything begging her to rest even through her determination to go after her sister.

"No!" Ao'nung grips Y/n's elbow a little tighter. She spun back to hiss at him, but noticed the way his entire hand was able to wrap around her whole arm and found it pointless as he continued, "You'll be faster on your ikran. Let's go home and bring back reinforcements."

"No, no, no, I can't. I have to find Tuk!" Y/n exclaims, now allowing her panic to sink in at the idea of all of her siblings separated from one another, "I have to get Kiri back and find Tuk! I have to find Lo'ak and Neteyam--"

"Y/n." She paused at the sound of her name, turning back to the reef boy holding her. Ao'nung makes sure she's looking him in the eyes as he nods encouragingly, "They'll be fine. Look."

He turns his head and Y/n follows his gaze, her yellow eyes widening by what she saw. Fire, for one, lining along the ocean's surface, and a battlefield between the Na'vi and the Sky People. Boats and gunfire ring out against tsurak and Metkayina spears. It was an all-out war, and Y/n couldn't find herself looking away from it.

Ao'nung does, however. Moving his hand up from her elbow to grab her shoulder instead, pulling her gaze back to him, "Our fathers are driving them back. We can use this to buy time to get whoever is left at the village. Come on, Forest Girl. You need your ikran."

He knew -and she did, too- that Y/n stood a better fighting chance in her element, upon her own mount and using her own weapons. Even so, her stomach drops, dread filling her heart at the idea of her brothers and sisters among all that death and destruction. She wasn't sure if she had the willpower to run back now, and somehow, she managed to say it with her eyes alone without ever speaking a word.

And somehow, Ao'nung heard her. She watches his eyes as he reads something written on her face before a decision was made. Ao'nung expression of reassurance melts into something determined, nodding sternly at her as he calls and clicks with his tongue, summoning an ilu.

Rotxo does the same, confused and unsure what decision had been made, and two ilu emerge from the depths. Without a word, the boys climb onto the backs and Ao'nung drags an exhausted Y/n to sit behind him, making sure her hands were secure around his waist before internally ordering the ilu to dive. Y/n hangs on for dear life, taking another deep breath as they submerge underwater. She pressed her whole front against Ao'nung, afraid that she wouldn't have the strength to hold on otherwise, and the warmth radiating along his back was the smallest bit of reassurance she didn't realize she needed.

The swim back to Awa'atlu was longer than she remembered. Eventually, she had to pat Ao'nung's stomach to let him know she needed air. They resurface just outside the large atoll seawall. Without even looking for the village beyond the wall, Y/n remembered to breathe and her first exhale was a shout. She mimicked a bird call, shouting at the top of her lungs as she, Ao'nung, and Rotxo swim through the tunnels of the weaving atoll. Y/n kept yipping and calling out until finally she received an answer. A screech rings out and slowly a large form flies over the treetops behind the Metkayina village, flying over open water and toward the teenagers.

Hope floods Y/n's chest at the sight of her loyal friend flying toward her. She smiles briefly, sitting up straighter in the ilu saddle as she squeezes Ao'nung's shoulder, "Don't wait up for me, Seaweed Brain."

Ao'nung smirked at her from over his shoulder, "Honestly, Forest Girl? That's all you have to say? Why not 'Thank you, Ao'nung' or 'Be safe, Ao'nung'?"

"Who's Ao'nung?" She grinned back as the shadow of her ikran looms overhead, "I only see you."

Both of them had frozen at her words, eyes widening at one another, the only sound between them being the squeaking ilu, clapping its fins in response to whatever emotions were going through the bond between the creature and Ao'nung. Thankfully, Y/n didn't have to backtrack or rephrase her words as her ikran decided to drop in at the perfect time. Talons out as she dove forward, the ikran screeches again, breaking the awkward air around the teens. The spell breaks and Y/n looks up, holding her hand out just in time as she grabs hold of her banshee's open talon. The ikran bats her wings as hard as she could, banking up high in the air and completely pulling Y/n out of the water. Ao'nung and Rotxo watch the display in amazement, necks craning up with eyes wide and jaws dropped. Y/n pulls herself up and climbs onto the back of her mount, finding her ionar in its respectful saddle pouch and slipping them over her eyes before completing the tsaheylu.

"Good timing, Evi," Y/n whispered to her ikran, patting the mighty beast's neck, "Thank you."

~~~~~~~~~

The sky was dark as eclipse rolls around, the fires from prior explosives the only thing lighting up the war zone. It was like a waking nightmare for Jake Sully, watching a small group of teenagers come rolling onto the shore of the rock face he had landed on. Quickly, he noticed something was wrong, running over as Lo'ak waved him down.

"Dad! Dad, help! It's Neteyam!"

Tsireya briefly closes her eyes as a harsh wave smacks her in the face, ears drooping when listening to the sounds of Neteyam's coughs. He was weak, short of breath even through her lessons on how he could take large gulps of air for deep diving. It scared her, "Hurry!"

Lo'ak peers back at his brother before sinking into the water, dismounting his ilu and handing his brother to Tsireya, "Here, take him!"

"Oh, no," Jake gasped as he took in the horrific sight of the half-drowned kids trying to pull his wounded firstborn to shore, blood pouring from his chest like the water he was floating in.

Lo'ak keeps repeating the same words through his fear, "It's Neteyam! He's hurt!"

Spider, the only human among them, reaches out for Toruk Makto's arm as he grasps Neteyam's body, "Jake, come on! Come on!"

"Hurry, please!" Lo'ak begs.

Jake finally snaps out of his daze and grabs Spider's arm, trying to help drag all the connected teenagers to shore, "Pull!"

"Bro, watch his head, watch his head!" Lo'ak instructs Spider, panic set in as he watches Neteyam's eyes begin to roll back, the older boy still coughing and otherwise unaware of his surroundings.

"Pull! Come on!" Jake grunts, finally managing to get all the kids out of the water. He grabs Neteyam's torso, lifting him in the air while Lo'ak and Spider have his sides and Tsireya has his legs. Jake has them bring Neteyam to more solid ground before lowering him, "Just watch his head. Okay--"

Neteyam shallowly breathes, unable to suck in more air as Lo'ak grasps one of his hands, squeezing hard in comfort, "It's okay, bro. We got you."

Jake pushes Neteyam onto his side, immediately clocking the exit wound bleeding profusely with the help of Spider's flashlight, "Oh, no," looking around, frantic, he instead grabs Lo'ak's hands and presses it harshly against Neteyam's bleeding chest, "Put pressure-- put pressure on it!"

Neteyam stifles a grunt at the pressure against his chest, trying to get a word out, "Dad, I--"

"It's okay, I'm here!"

Neytiri lands her ikran when she spotted a few members of her family, barely pulling her braid from her mount before running over to the scene, muttering in fear and denial, "No, no, no, no, no!"

"It's okay. It's okay, son, I gotcha." Jake comforted.

Lo'ak tries the same, "It's okay..."

"Dad, where's Y/n?" Neteyam's eyes wildly looked around, unfocused and frightened.

"I don't-- I-- I don't--"

"Where's Y/n?"

"We'll find her, son, we'll find her--"

"--Is she alright?"

It was like his son couldn't hear him, the shock setting Neteyam into panic mode as Jake tries to firmly reassure him, "Neteyam--"

"Is she alright?"

"She's gonna be fine, boy. She'll be here soon."

"More... Tell her-- tell her-- 'find more.'"

"Alright, alright, I will."

Neteyam briefly looked relieved before tears started to brim in his eyes. Just this once, he allows himself to be a little boy again, tearful and sad, "I want to go home..." he grunts out before gasping rapidly, the words exhausting him.

Jake's voice quivers, holding his son's shoulder, "I know. I know. It's okay, we're goin' home. We're goin' home."

He softens his voice, pushing the desperation away to try and calm his son, as if he was still an infant he was soothing to sleep, "We're going home. It's okay, it's okay."

"Dad, I..."

~~~~~~~~~

The battle was already starting to disperse when Y/n finally arrived, flying in on her ikran. She had spotted a few stranded Sky People and made quick work of them before they got any ideas, taking her bow and arrows from their places attached to Evi's saddle. Like her mother, Y/n didn't miss and continued onward without ever even watching the bodies drop.

It was almost too quiet for her liking, with only the beat of an ikran's wings to keep her company. Searching around and wishing she had a throat mic to contact her family for their location, Y/n's heart sank when she couldn't find the demon ship, wondering if it had left or if something worse had happened to it. Did it sink? If it sank, then they won. But where was Kiri if she was meant to be on that ship? Where are Tuk and Y/n's brothers? Where are her parents?

Her questions are answered when a geyser sprays out of the water, rocketing almost high enough to hit Y/n. Evi squawks as she evades the water spray and Y/n looks down, spotting Payakan below, unharmed. Flying like a vulture in circles so she can get a better look at the tulkun, Y/n's eyes squint as she catches sight of a small ring of blue bodies, drifting over the top of Payakan's only pectoral fin. Gasping in shock, Y/n orders her ikran to dive, pulling her smaller body closer to Evi's as they fall. Once close enough to the water, Y/n suddenly asks Evi to pull up, and as the ikran lifts its wings to catch the air and slow her descent, Y/n holds her breath and breaks her bond with her banshee, diving into the water. She immediately swims back up to the surface and paddles over to the tulkun, where she had seen the group of blue bodies.

"MOM! DAD!"

Jake's ears perk up as he pulls away from the family embrace, and hurriedly looks around until he spots a familiar figure in the water. He wheezes in pain because of his injuries, but he lifts his arm and frantically waves, "Y/n!"

Neytiri follows her mate's gaze and nearly sobs in relief, crying and smiling all at once, "Y/n, matxe'lan! Matxe'lan!"

Lo'ak, Kiri, and Tuk also chime in, relieved and excited to see their big sister, alive and well, "Y/n!"

"Y/N!"

"Sister!"

Y/n is crying and shaking in relief as she finally reaches her family, both her mother and father pulling her up onto Payakan's fin when she couldn't find the strength to do it herself. The parents nestled their oldest daughter between them, each embracing her one at a time and surrounding her in their hugs, Neytiri even going as far as to kiss all over Y/n's face.

Jake is almost beside himself, hushed exhales escaping him as he settles his cheek over the top of Y/n's head and closes his eyes in relief, "You're okay. You're okay, sweetheart."

For a moment, she revels in the peace and her parents' embrace before looking around, inspecting each of her siblings' faces before she took a head count in her mind. She pulls away to look at her mother's face, "Where-- Where's Neteyam?"

Immediately, Neytiri's face falls, and unshed tears quickly form in her aging eyes. Her hand reaches up to cup Y/n's face while looking each of her daughters in the eyes, "Y/n... my girls... something happened."

~~~~~~~~~

Payakan brings all of them to the flat rock faces sticking out of the ocean, forming small islands of their own in the middle of the empty war zone. The Sully family slowly and painfully drag themselves to shore and Lo'ak thanks Payakan before the tulkun leaves. Y/n catches her breath and looks around, finding Tonowari and Ronal, standing off to the side, holding Ao'nung and a sobbing Tsireya in their arms. Lo'ak calls out the reef girl's name and Tsireya starts a new round of crying as she broke away from her parents to embrace him. Ao'nung briefly looks up when the Sullys arrived and locked eyes with Y/n, and to her sinking horror, he looked at her with pity and sorrow.

She soon found out why when the sound of Tuk's crying rang in her ears. Y/n spun around, ready to defend her baby sister, until she realized that there was no danger. Tuk was crying over a body, holding its arm to her little chest and hand to her face, sobbing. Neytiri blocked Y/n's view as she knelt on the other side of the body, picking it up and holding the head close to her chest. Y/n looks around and catches Jake's eyes as he looked at her expectedly, waiting for her reaction with broken eyes and tear tracks running down his aging face.

Y/n begins to catch on to what was happening, but the words that fled her mouth were ones of denial, "No... no no nononono."

She stomps over to her family, kneeling down around the legs of the body as she frantically looks around, "What's wrong with Neteyam? Mama, don't just stand there! What's wrong with him?! Someone help him! Help him!"

"Maite..."

"Don't!" She pushes Neytiri away and hovers over the body, kneeling down to it opposite Tuk. She finally allows herself to stare at her twin brother's face, and she's haunted by those unblinking eyes, unfocused and staring off at a place they couldn't see anymore. Panicked, Y/n roughly grabs Neteyam's jaw and tries tilting his head around to make him look at her, "'Teyam. 'Teyam? Wake up. You're okay, you're okay, you're okay..."

She is met with silence, and that almost rings louder in her ears than the sound of a roaring waterfall. His eyes still don't blink and his mouth never moves. Y/n, from that day forward, wished she had never looked down, because all the blood was permanently sewn into her memory and purged her nightmares.

One look at the gunshot puncturing her twin brother's chest, Y/n became a madwoman, roughly grabbing onto Neteyam's shoulders, "TSMUKAN! ZA'U NE'ÌM TSONTA, RUTXE! RUTXE!"

The noise that escapes her lungs is unlike any sound ever heard on Pandora. It pierces the air, shattered and broken like glass to the point where it had to hurt her throat. Tuk was completely terrified, scared to see her oldest sister lose her cool and continue crowing and sobbing like a feral, wounded creature. It was heartwrenching to listen to, and even worse to watch.

Y/n rocked herself back and forth as she sobbed uncontrollably, trying to find the smallest bit of comfort as she held her other half in her arms. Neytiri tried to be her comfort, even through her own shattered cries. Neytiri knelt on the other side of Neteyam's body, holding his shoulder in one hand and Y/n's in the other. The twins, neither living nor dead, noticed or even acknowledged their mother's touch.

"NETEYAM!"

Y/n's last words to Neteyam are roughly translated to: "BROTHER! COME BACK TO ME, PLEASE! PLEASE!"

A/N: So... uh... did I not mention that I write heavy angst? I think I should've put that in my resume. I have several blogs for several fandoms, and if you asked my followers anywhere else, they'll tell you I write angst on purpose. I write angst to make them suffer. Their tears keep me young forever.

Although I can't say this was written without any of my own tears being shed. That would be a lie. I swear I was bawling my eyes while watching the death scene happen (for the dozenth time, I'll be honest) and writing it out. No movie has ever pulled tears from me after I've already watched it several times, which is why I admire Zoe's acting for shattering my heart every time Neytiri screams and cries over her dead child.

But, look at that! Y/n's ikran has a name! It's Evi, derived from the Na'vi word 'evi, which is an affectionate word for 'kid'. That's something light-hearted and cute, right??? Right??? Ha ha, please don't kill me.

Anyway, I promise that this is only the beginning of the series and I hope the rest of it helps you heal from this loss like I know Y/n will likely learn to heal in time 😇 I honestly believe this will help me recover from Neteyam by writing about my characters' own healing journeys.

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satoru-is-the-way · 1 year

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SPOILERS FOR AVATAR 2!!

Avatar! Rick Quaritch x Na'vi Reader

"Given Enough "

Series Master list

Tag list: @anyzandy @kneelingforvillains @dioriez @mylovelyreblogs @dinobae-replyacc @the-wanderer-2022 @zootsutra @voodoogoul

Let me know if you want to be on the tag list.

Chapter 1 - The Invader

Colonel Rick Quaritch shamefully tucked his tail and flew off. His mission to kill Jake Sully failed drastically. Now it's just him flying out into the wilderness of Pandora. His body is weak and needs to rest. Rick landed on a nearby plot of floating land,' Ayram alusìng' as Na'vi called them. However, this was not the Hallelujah Mountains. Quaritch had no clue where exactly he was. He grunts, removing his Queue from the Ikran. He slides off the mountain banshee’s back boots landing on the ground beneath him. The Colonel glanced around for any natives lurking in the trees or behind the bushes around him. The cost seemed clear enough to let his guard down. Little did he know a female Na'vi had been monitoring him long before he entered her tribe's domain.

(Y/n) (L/n), the clan leader's firstborn. Her people were known as the Kamimaljuyú. The air tribe. They lived in the Ayram alsuìng and built their home there. Humans learned very little about their kind. Due to the terrain, it served as a natural shield against the sky people. Their technology did not last beyond a few miles before rendering them completely useless. The Kamimaljuyú made minimal contact with Sky people and preferred to keep it as such.

(E/c) orbs gradually examined the Avatar before her. She caught subtle differences between her people and the lab-grown organism. Their Avatar features included: eyebrows, a pronounced nose, a stout physique, one extra finger, and a toe. Their entire race intrigued (Y/n). How did it make sense to leave their dying world only to bring their problems here? Humans would not change their way of life. Not even to save their race. They rather force their ways on others while avoiding the real problem. She could not allow him to stay here much longer. (Y/n) feared Quaritch might bring others. The Kamimaljuyú knew about the sky people’s return but had no involvement in such a meaningless slaughter. They were after the mighty Jake Sully, not her people.

Her chest rose and fell, soaking in the air around her. With a graceful hand, she retrieved an arrow from her quiver. (Y/n) placed the string between the nock before pulling back. Her accuracy could rival any hunter in their village because she never missed. Everything around her accounted for; the distance, position, and wind speed. She let go firing her poisoned lace weapon. Suddenly a gust of wind hit the trajectory changed. Her eyes widen as the arrow lands right at the Colonel’s boots. She then felt a strong presence, Eywa. Maybe the path for this Avatar is not death. The great mother is never wrong.

Quaritch leaped up glancing in the direction the arrow came from. “Come on out. I might go easy on you.” He growled despite not being in the physical condition to fight. (Y/n) rolled her eyes before slowly emerging from the nearby bush. Her arrow is out as a precaution.

“You look ready to collapse at any moment now, demon.” Her ears go back hissing as a warning. “I take it you couldn't handle the Na'vi as you thought? You may have an Avatar body but your skills and technology are no match for our spirit."

Quaritch looked over the native female. He could not deny she was beautiful. The Colonel normally had no attraction to women of their race but. Her eyes, face, lips, and hair all came together perfectly. "You-you." He stutters before collapsing. The last thing he saw is (Y/n) rushing over to his body before everything went black.

---

Quaritch had no idea how long he was out. He woke up surrounded by thousands of Navi. He hissed looking frantically for a way you. However, he is bound and helpless. What choice did he have? Why did she not kill him? What did they want? He instantly could tell the leaders apart from the other Navi. ‘Oh, shit’ He thought realizing the pretty native woman is not just anyone. It was their daughter. How lucky could he get? It brought flashbacks of Jake Sully meeting Neytiri. Perhaps he could use this to his advantage. If Jake became one of them perhaps he could? Seduce the princess into falling in love. Oldest trick in the book. A mission he would be willing to extend if that meant killing the whole Sully family while Jake watched.

“Why have you come back to Pandora after Toruk Makto sent you flying back?”

“We come back in peace. Not all of us agree with what happened to the people all those years ago. Earth wants to make admins.” He looked down with sorrow as the lies spilled off his tongue. “I had gotten caught in a nasty fight with the water tribe. I tried to explain but they did not want to listen.” Quaritch looked up directly into (Y/n)’s eyes.

“How can I trust the sky people? The last time ended in bloodshed for both sides.”

“I will do anything.”

“Father…” He glanced at his daughter. Originally Cualli held great anger when (Y/n) returned from her hunt with this demon tied to her Ikran. That anger changed as (Y/n) told him Eywa gave her a sign not to kill the Avatar. “Yuum, leti' impidió ti' le flecha perforara u puksi'ik'al. In wojel ba'ax Eywa Ma'atech u equivoca.Yaan jump'éel plan ti'. In wojel jach jaaj.” (Father, she stopped the arrow from piercing his heart. I know Eywa is never wrong. She has a plan for him. I know it to be true). Quaritch listens closely not understanding this language. He knew about the Kamimaljuyú. They were one of the largest tribes on Pandora and preferred to stay isolated from the other Navi. It was mentioned in books their numbers are greater than the stars in the sky.

The people chatted amongst themselves. They had a right to be scared for the sky people. Other clans had not been so lucky with the alien invaders. Eywa had blessed them all this time. Now his daughter has brought the invader right into their home. His wife, Inez, placed a hand on the wounded Avatar's chest closing her eyes. The Navi went silent waiting for her judgment. “We have avoided war for over 30 years. We kept the sky people at a distance. Eywa has blessed us with protection. Now the great mother has given my daughter a sign. This Avatar has great spirits around him. Evil and good alike battling over his heart. Eywa now brings him here for reasons we do not know. In time she will guide us to find his path, his destiny.” Her voice traveled loud and certain of her communication with Eywa. (Y/n) sighed in relief he would not be harmed as of now. Cualli stepped up raising his staff. The crowd bowed down waiting for his final verdict. With a gesture (Y/n) walked to her father kneeling down.

“My daughter has been spoken to by Eywa. Told to spare his life for now. As we wait for his purpose my daughter will take on the responsibility of tending to his invader. He could be a threat or an ally. We have yet to learn his heart. Eywa sets everyone on two paths. It is his choice of which path to take. Rise, my daughter.” He spoke. (Y/n) rose to her feet ears back. She is left in charge of this man? “You are going to show him our ways. Teach him right and wrong. Then I will pass judgment on him. If he passes the test he will be welcomed as one of us. If not you will kill him yourself. Do you both accept?”

Quaritch held back his smirk,” I accept.”

(Y/n) sighed deeply,”Je'el in wóotik” (I accept.)

“Then go your time starts now,” Cualli announced

“ Ma' in falles waal.” (Do not fail me, daughter.) Inez whispered already knowing this will not work and (Y/n) will once more disgrace their family. (Y/n) nods looking at Quaritch.

“Follow me.” She instructed as the villagers went back to their daily tasks. She huffed once arriving at the edge of their first village. “You will have to wear our clothes, eat our food, and learn our language.” (Y/n) growled.

“I am not going to run around in one of those thongs or whatever you call them” He adds. Without warning (Y/n) pulls her knife out cutting his shirt. “You will change for this role. You will have to make accommodations or else my father will kill you.” She looked over him. “No boots, no guns, no shirt, but your pants can be cut short enough to still allow for mobility. We are air people there is still forest on our land. So we know how to climb the trees, and swing on the vines, and you will also need to learn our language.”

Quaritch sighed taking his cut shirt off. He kicked his muddy boots off and growled cutting his pants mid-thigh length. He did not like this one bit. “Is that better for you Princess?”

“Don’t call me that!” She hissed tail slapping him. “You are going to fail…Eywa sees something in you and I do not know why. It’s getting late supper will be soon then I will show you where you will rest.”

“With you, I hope.” He smirks moving closer to (Y/n). She growled and turned away with a sway in her walk. The Colonel knew this is going to be fun.

Chapter 2

#Spotify #avatar x reader #na'vi avatar #avatarmovie #avatar way of water #avatar #avatar x you #Avatar x navi #colonel quaritch x reader #colonel quaritch #Rick quaritch #jake sully #sully family

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lumentears · 2 years

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Garreg Mach students ranked by how popular their tumblr blog would be, from least to most

Popularity is measured not only by follower count, but also their general notoriaty in the tumblr dot hell ecosystem.

Ashen wolves sadly excluded because this list is long enough and I wish to see the sun again sometime today.

24. Leonie

I say this with a mind free of judgement and a heart full of love, but Leonie is a Facebook user. She doesn't really get tumblr, since for her social media is mainly to keep up with her people back in Sauin village, and you can not tell me that a community of mainly hunters uses anything other than Facebook to show off their latest game.

Most popular post: Her introduction post. Liked by Byleth and Byleth only.

23. Dimitri

He uses his tumblr as a personal vent blog whenever he is having a Mental Health Moment™ and deletes everything he posted the day later. He sits on an ask box full of concerned anons he can't bring himself to either acknowledge or delete.

Most popular post: His posts get liked in the """"traumacore"""" space but since he immediately deletes them it's hard to gaige exact metrics.

22. Hubert

You fool! He has 70 alternative accounts! And he uses all of them to send anon hate to his enemies and publish callout posts on those who seek to oppose Lady Edelgard.

Most popular post: "Lord Varley is a terrible person that deserves to be deplatformed and beheaded and here's why"

21. Ashe

His tumblr is for things he personally enjoys, he doesn't really post much original content. He reblogs from Bernadetta and Ferdinand and every single credible gofundme he can get his fingers on.

Most popular post: That time Felix baited him into a lengthy argument over the ethics of shoplifting.

20. Raphael

Reblogs warriormale like it's his god damn job. Occaisonally posts workout videos too, but for some reason Ignatz is REALLY bad at getting the camera to focus whenever Raphael is on screen.

Most popular post: Raphael was very enthusiastic about warriormale's drop that towel!!! post, much to the amusement of many immature people online.

19. Petra

Petra has a travel blog, mostly to document her experiences in Fódlan and get her into the habit of writing in her second language. It's mostly for her own sake, so she isn't fussed about getting followers.

Most popular post: A video titled "Me and my best girl friend at the beach". Every single one of the notes are a variation of "girl is that Dorothea Arnault 👀👀👀". She never confirms or denies this and her next update is about her catching the cold for the fifth time this year.

18. Linhardt

No queue, no tags, no system, Linhardt posts whatever holds his interest. An absolute nightmare for the novice to follow, but students with a little bit of patience can unearth many a pirated textbook.

Most popular post: A masterlist of crestology textbooks. Reblog to save a student's life!

17. Ingrid

Mostly vaguely feminist theory and book recs. Sometimes extremely personal ventposting. People who know her irl pretend not to know it is her as to not make her uncomfortable.

Most popular post: That one time she got kungpowpenised on one of her more...problematiqué opinion pieces.

16. Lysithea

Okay folks hear me out - she totally has a super secret fandom blog. She pretends that it is for the sole purpose of pointing and laughing at fandom drama as she herself is above that fandom-brained nonsense, but Goddess have mercy on your sinful soul if you provoke her into sharing her hot takes.

Most popular post: A 14k word essay on disability in the warrior cats book series.

15. Annette

Annette also has a fandom blog, but shame? Not on her good christian site. She takes great pains to keep her blog a space of positivity and unabashed joy in being cringe. In all honesty, it feels a bit like falling through a time portal into pre-dashcon tumblr, and I say this with equal parts nostalgia and condemnation.

Most popular post: In this universe, she is the person that birthed the "my homophobic dad became an ally by watching Sherlock" fake tumblr story. It was a bit of wish fulfillment when she was younger, and it haunts her to this day.

14. Ferdinand

Writes mediocre poetry and reblogs scenery panoramas and history posts. Regularly has to fight accusations of being a tradcath blogger, and he fights them to the death.

Most popular post: A picture of him on horseback went semi-viral once, akin to the ridicoulusly handsome marathon runner.

13. Lorenz

Writes mediocre poetry and reblogs scenery panoramas and history posts. Is actually a tradcath. Alas, people live for the drama and Lorenz gives them no shortage of it.

Most popular post: That time Lorenz went defcon as he was accused of sneaking into women's dms to ask for feet pics. He vehemently, desperately denied being into feet.

12. Felix

Felix has been banned from every other platform but tumblr, and he uses it for PVP only. He's become infamous sitewite for always starting shit and getting into arguments, almost in the same vein as human pet guy, just a bit less horribly morally bankrupt.

Most popular post: A legendary colour-of-the-sky length feud with Sylvain that ends in Felix posting a screed that has become the next "what the fuck did you just fucking say about me" copypasta.

11. Marianne

Has one of these "is the animal media cute" blogs. She tries to stay nonjudgemental and positive, but something in these blogs just seems to make people go sicko mode - she has to block at least a dozen people every single day. Secret star of the blog is Dorte the horse.

Most popular post: A video of her singing happy birthday to Dorte. It wold probably have gone unnoticed if Hilda hadn't reblogged it to her ravenous audience who can't get enough of pretty girls.

10. Dedue

Is most active on youtube, but he still has a woodworking, cooking and gardening blog that attracts the most wholesome audience of old people. You know, the „great work, Dedue, it’s nice to see the younger generation still picking up these kinds of hobbies“ kind.

Most popular post: I feel like he’d dabble in the kind of „cooking hack debunking“ videos Ann Reardon does in our universe, because he respects the craft and doesn’t want young people getting hurt trying dangerous viral hacks.

9: Ignatz

If you’ve ever been on the internet at all, you’ve probably seen one of his artworks. Sadly, those artworks are probably reposts of reposts of reposts, and Ignatz is still struggling to make comissions – he is still to shy to just become a furry artist but give it a few months and he might not have a choice anymore.

Most popular post: A post begging tumblr users to reblog his art.

8. Dorothea Arnault

She absolutely could be in the top 3 of this list if she wanted to. She just ABSOLUTELY doesn't want to. She's incognito on this blog and, once you've dug your way through reblogged gofundme's of folks in need, you'd find that her content is mainly her singing in places you wouldn't expect great audio in - stairwells and basements, mostly. Sometimes, people will ask her "has anyone ever told you you sound like Dorothea Arnault?" and she'll answer "I don't know who that is, sounds like a bitch though".

Most popular post: Her blog really took off during the sea shanty stage of quarantine - in fact, her sapphic shanties might have kickstarted the era.

7. Sylvain

Hornyposts all day every day and still finds a way to get all up in everyone's business. Was determined to outlast the titty ban and by now, the algorithm as pretty much thrown up its hands and given up on him. Totally the kind of guy who reblogs nsfw pics or videos from other blogs with unwarranted commentary.

Most popular post: His legendary tiff with Felix, in which he pulled off smooth shark levels of playing dumb to piss off his opponent. The resulting mythic copypasta is now his bio.

6. Mercedes

Mercedes posts daily on her affirmations and positivity blog. Reminders to relax x muscle, unclench y joint, and afford yourself the same grace you afford others. She also gives advice to troubled anons, and it's not neccessarily good advice but it's nice to see someone sincerely cares. People somewhat parasocially call her the "tumblr mom".

Most popular post: Her coming out post where she announced she is bisexual.

5. Caspar

Okay this might be a hot take but i feel like Caspar is a tiktoker – detractors call him a thirst trap but honestly he doesn’t show off his abs to make money off of horny viewers, he shows them off cause he's proud and wants everyone to know about them. He reblogs all his stuff to tumblr because he knows Linhardt is most active (most being a relative term) there and Linhardt liking his new post is a highlight of his day.

Most popular post: He’s gone viral a few times with a genre of tiktoks tumblr would describe as this is what boys will be boys should mean. In this universe, he ist he originator oft he vine of a guy pushing his friend, who’s fallen asleep on an air matress, out into a lake.

4. Bernadetta

Has a gajillion sideblogs she can’t bring herself to part with – she lives in constant fear someone will discover her abandoned onceler sideblog. Her most popular blog is for writing reader insert fanfiction. Whenever her blog gains enough followers to make her feel nervous about posting, she drops off the face of the earth for a few months until her follower count has shrunken to a managable size.

Most popular post: shamefully, an 18+ onceler rp from the olden days.

3. Edelgard

Your one-stop shop for protest tactics, world news, guilt-trippy posts about today's calamity and what you can and MUST do about it, and organisation to donate time and money to.

Most popular post: So she let her guard down once, ONCE, and reblog a slew of topless buff woman gifs to main on accident, and tumblr still clowns on her for it.

2. Hilda

She may be an insta gal, but she took to tumblr like a duck to water. Yes, tumblr as a whole hates the idea of being sold things, but sometmies they are willing to make an exception if the girl selling things is a delightfully lazy and aggravatingly cute #girlboss.

Most popular post: Technically, it's a selfie with her tiddies almost out. What draws people to the post is Marianne in the background, clearly hypnotised, pouring a herself a nice cup of tea...into her lap.

1.Claude

You think he's a tumblr funnyman? Wrong. He's ALL the tumblr funnymen. He is gaud, he is pukicho, he is all the other's who's names I can't be arsed to look up. It began as him sockpuppeting on another account to set up a punchline to a shitpost, it snowballed from there and now he is roleplaying several different tumblr blogs with an incredible amount of dedication. Right now he is planning for two of his personas to stream a game simultaneously.

Most popular post: If you ask him, his most popular post has not been made yet, but it sits in his draft, just waiting for the day they pull the plug on tumblr, so he can end the charade and dramatically unmask himself at the last possible moment.

Bonus: Byleth

Reblogs every single post her students make. Regardless of theme. Regardless of content. Always reacting with a couple of emojis. Nobody is sure whether her blog is a bot or a real person, and scrolling through it the closest one could come to browsing r/all on tumblr.

She is, of course, not a bot, this is just the way she makes her unconditional support of her students known. Even if that means reblogging hardcore porn, an essay on the canonical treatment of Brightheart in The Prophecies Begin, more hardcore porn and a deeply personal account of trauma within seconds of each other.

#fire emblem #fire emblem 3 houses #listen if i was mean to your fave on here there is a good chance i actually love them #i am just shitposting #black eagles #blue lions #golden deer #fuck im not tagging every student in this if this is a 2 note post then so be it #fe3h

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basedkikuenjoyer · 1 month

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Oh darn, I forgot my queue ran dry. But it's a nice, rainy day off and an old story has been on my mind. Let's call it Thursday Afternoon Toriyamaposting this time. I like Dragon Ball. Especially colloquially to mean I like the part where Goku's a weird kid from the mountains. The Z arcs have some fun parts but it's just such a roadmap for what I don't like in anime in others but I loved early Dragonball. It has a magic that made it so popular, really hitting at that common trend of popular manga featuring a clash between old and new. The Red Ribbon Army saga is where that fully feels like it comes o fruition which is why I love it so much.

It all starts with Muscle Tower, which like a certain first act I'm extraordinarily fond of works as an overture. This little moment has always been a favorite though. Girl save Goku, tells him of troubles, he sprints off to smash them, a young Eiichiro Oda is taking notes. But here Goku stops and figures out what snow is for the first time. The theme won't fully mature until the great side story of going to the city to find Bulma but it's here. Up until now Dragonball's world was hard to get a good grasp on. The Red Ribbon Army was a great vehicle to solidify that through. What technology they had, their operations beyond the magic balls that could make Red taller. Talking about inspiration, I wonder how much Toriyama took from Cyborg 009 here. That one wasn't afraid to rip from ongoing Cold War headlines, but the RRA clearly draws from the Axis Powers. Which by that point felt quaint and campy. Seriously, even the relatively clean landmark Japanese manga of the 80s has the hero dunking on foppish Germans and Japanese caricatures. Speaking of.

Then you have this weird usage of a past series. Arale and Penguin Village just end up being a theater of combat because fuck you that's awesome. Goku should have brought Arale to Namek. Look how fearsome she is. But honestly, also cool how the Red Ribbon Army keeps coming back. My favorite part of Z is when we're dealing with rogue androids of their making. Because you have 8 in this early part of the original arc it ends up being one of the most brilliant connections in the whole series. Saw they had come up again in Super, probably need to check that out.

#dragon ball #dragonball #akira toriyama #red ribbon army #thursday afternoon toriyamaposting

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sixbucks · 1 year

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OK. That was close.

The storm sirens were going off. And going off. And going off. Fucking annoying. I was looking for my Breakfast at Tiffany’s ear plugs and scrolling weather. (Just because you’re an old bitch doesn’t mean you can’t have awesome stuff.)

I posted to Facebook, “Tornadoes are f*cking stressful” and clicked over to tumblr. My husband was standing in the front yard (because he is a genius). He said, “I see debris!”

Me says: What?

“Stuff is flying over us.”

Me thinks but does not say: If things are truly flying overhead why are you still in the yard?

I saved that last Tumblr post just as the tornado was passing over.

So if you saw a picture of a wrecked Kroger in Little Rock, that’s my Kroger. I was there earlier today. All those photos of the blown apart stuff… all around me.

- [ ] Breckinridge Village

- [ ] Colony West

- [ ] I-30/430 exchange

- [ ] Baptist Hospital,

- [ ] Old Forge

- [ ] Rodney Parham Road

- [ ] Reservoir Road

- [ ] Cantrell Road

If the Weatherman mentioned it then it’s within walking distance.

But.

We are unharmed aside from losing our Xfinity connection, thus my ability to post an update. (I’m writing this in note.) We didn’t even lose power. However 75,000 in Arkansas are without power,

61,000 in Pulaski County alone.

That’s the thing with tornadoes. They will fuck one street up completely and leave the next one untouched.

What did we do while we were waiting for the alarms to die?

When you live in Arkansas long enough you have plenty of tornado war-stories to share. It’s like a severe weather version of bullshit, where you say a lot of “Oh, yeah? Well one time…”

- [ ] The Grocery Store freezer

- [ ] The old lady in the trailer

- [ ] That night a tornado ripped the porch off our trailer

- [ ] The one that wrecked downtown

- [ ] That one that went down John Barrow

The list goes on.

Anyway, I’ll post this when I am again socially networked.

XOXOX

LOL!

And my queue just kept posting even though I was off the grid!

#tornado #tornadoes #Little Rock #Arkansas #safe!

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miloscat · 2 years

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[Review] The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age (GCN)

I’ve been sent back, until my task is done.

So I took some time off from my quest to play Lord of the Rings games. Quite some time, in fact. But no matter. Previously, I’d wrapped up the movie-based tie-ins and was ready to start on sidestories. So, after EA Redwood Shores (later known as Visceral Games) finished the Return of the King game, they started on a game ostensibly called LotR Trilogy, teased at the end of the former. I don’t know if this is what they were planning it to be all along, but the name at least changed.

I’ve heard people call this a Final Fantasy X clone. I can't really speak to that, but it’s certainly a turn-based RPG with one of those initiative queue systems. Progression is streamlined: some areas have branching paths but many are straight corridors, the skill trees are simple, there’s no shops and no currency. The traversable zones seem like little more than set dressing until the next drawn-out battle. These are mostly prescribed (most areas have no random encounters) and give predetermined loot. You’ll be spending a lot of time in the menu between battles fiddling with stat numbers and equipping the new drops (they’re cosmetically reflected on the characters which is nice).

If it sounds a bit railroaded, well it is. Or you could view it as one of those miniature trains in a model village, a pleasant ride to see some sights. I do recommend turning on Easy mode in the options, as it will reduce the amount of time you’ll spend watching those belaboured battle animations. (Note that I tried to play this on my Xbox but the disc was too damaged and failed after my first session, so I continued using Dolphin; the blessed speed-up feature saved me figuratively millions of years.)

There is some freedom with your character builds and your choice of party. I chose three of the six available (Idrial, Morwen, and Berethor) and used them as much as I could, and got by just fine. There’s a mechanic where you gain skill points in one of your two ability fields for each time you use an action of that type in battle. This incentivises using your skills—and they are useful—to learn more of them. I literally never used the ordinary attack! The game throws restoratives at you and you’ll frequently level up for full heals too, plus the save points replenish you. OK, so I was on Easy but the way I see it the harder difficulties were just wasting my time, and there was some challenge later on anyway.

Anyway, as an RPG it’s fine, but how is its use of the licence? Well, it feels quite fanfictiony, for better or worse. The story plays it safe by following a B-team Fellowship, closely shadowing the actual Fellowship and cleaning up after them, and almost all the six party member are expies of other characters, at least on the surface. Berethor is a Boromir type, although you find out later that he was secretly brainwashed by Saruman... and also Sauron I think? He’s a paladin type with excellent party-wide buffs. Idrial is just Arwen in the Fords of Bruinen scene, has sword but mainly healing and magic. Elegost is Strider-like, a Dunedain ranged attacker and debuffer. Hadhod is a Gimli-esque dwarf, a tank with some defensive and fire spells. Later you find Eaoden aka Éomer-lite, a Rohirrim knight with some technical buff skills, and Morwen. She’s a bit similar to Éowyn but the most original, a woman of Rohan with a tragic past and a need for vengeance who fights with double axes and thievery skills.

There’s some developments with these folks, aided by cutscenes with new narration by Sir Ian over movie footage, lending some authority while bridging the narrative to the films’ events... and the events and backstories of the game and its characters. You see, it’s told in a disjointed way, and supposed twists are just tossed off, so it ends up feeling a bit half-arsed. There’s even an unnecessary forced love triangle. It doesn’t help that several of the actors seem to be Americans faking British accents, and the voiceover recording in general could have used a pronunciation coach, but this has frequently been a problem in the movie games with their proper nouns.

It is fun getting something of an original story in this world, but it sticks very closely to the movie events for most of the time, unlike the later and more ambitious War in the North. The new characters are fun but heavily retreading known archetypes. You do get a ridiculous climax by fighting the Eye of Sauron at the summit of Barad-dûr: this is the fun kind of nonsense the game could have leaned into more, and even it seems thrown in at the last minute with no lead-in at all. There’s apparently a co-op mode but it is separated from the main game in some way, and the touted “Evil Mode” where you play as the baddies is a minor side-event that’s just a series of battles. Basically I just wish this game had gone harder and more out-there, but it’s a fun fluffy bit of fanservice all the same.

#The Lord of the Rings #visceral games #the lord of the rings the third age #review #gcn

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samueldays · 2 years

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Thea: The Awakening guide to the Piece of Cake achievement and AAR, part 2/2 (turns 100-197)

(Continued from part 1.)

Disaster strikes while my away team is far from the village. A 3-skull pack of undead giant spiders attacks the home team, leaving everyone in the village badly injured after I lose the fight. And this happens in the 99-100 interturn, so I can't savescum to avoid it. What do?

Load up everyone with food and wood, run to the herbalist to buy instant healing! Here I was saved by having enough food types to get 6 movement. (It's 5 tiles, but one of them is difficult terrain.)

Then I beat the spiders in the rematch now that they're wounded and fewer in number. Thank you, devs, for tracking internal state of wandering encounter groups, rather than resetting them for each fight.

Away team does some sidequests and easier random encounters, sharing some food with dwarfs who give me a little mithril in exchange, more gathering, and rescuing a child from slavers. Sadly, I don't have enough force to destroy the slavers outright yet.

A random gatherer is attracted to the village by my buildings, deciding that joining us would be better than wandering the postapocalyptic wilderness with nothing but Dad's old sword. Welcome aboard, Pakoslava, here's your gathering basket and silk tunic, you'll be fishing from the safety of the village harbor for the foreseeable future.

Now we're up to 15 people in total, and the group limit of 16 who can act in an encounter is almost relevant, if I bring the explorers home. But we're going to keep growing!

A group of human refugees passes by the village, their home taken by an Orcish clan. In stock games, I might have expected a "drive out the orcs and retake our home" quest from them. In Thea, it's instead "we stayed in one place too long and attracted trouble, really" as talking to them reveals they're migratory.

But they tell me that I'm welcome to go beat up the orcs anyway, and loot the lumber and prepared stone from the stockpiles and quarry they left behind. I attempt to use Social Combat to convince them to stay and join my village instead. Most of them say no, they're going off to see the land of their forefathers in their south, but one desperate mother asks me to raise her twin children whom she fears she can't care for on the road. I happily accept.

There's a dialogue option in this event for "no, I meant I wanted healthy working adults to join" which is just so mean, I've never been able to bring myself to check what it does. (I can't even savescum it, since this is a random interturn event and saves only happen on the player's action phase.) With cabbage patches, slave rescues, and these, we're now up to 7 kids in the village. Kids, funnily, are represented as an inventory item with zero weight. They're all identical and they stack.

Blessed Paths +1 comes online turn 111, giving me another advancement point in the process. Village gathering radius now includes 2 wood sources (due to realistic economy, each has a limited production rate, rather than being able to produce as much as you can get villagers to gather), 2 seaweed, mushroom, granite, fish, spidersilk. Now I could sit everyone in the village and craft-research my way to an economic victory of rebuilding civilization, but that wouldn't be very interesting. So instead I adjust the home gathering a bit, queue up some cooking, and the away team does another resource dropoff. At this point I've pretty much explored the map due to its small size, and done most of the quests I can, so their focus shifts to monster hunting and gathering.

When I was new to the game, I used to fall into a trap of having the party wander around grabbing whatever struck my fancy, and spending more turns walking than gathering, wasting a lot of time. Even if you reserve the last move point for camping, you aren't guaranteed to be in range of a useful resource. Now I've learned to be fine with letting the away team sit gathering for 5+ turns in one spot. Current focus: Coal, which I'll need a lot of for crafting reagents.

While all these major events happen, I make sure to do incremental upgrades of gear in the background. My early Cane+Spidersilk baskets were worth +3 gathering. I've picked up a couple of random drops of scaled leather, and Cane+Scaled baskets are worth +4 gathering.

Right now the only gear I can produce is gathering tools, craft tools, light armor, and clothes (AKA really light armor), but I have an advancement point, so... let's get Jewellery (Rings). First ring to craft: Amber + Amber, another +2 gathering, two of them. I don't have a source of gatherable amber, that might be my next priority, but I have a few pieces of random resource drops and a few more from deconstructing weapon drops. Then a couple of other miscellaneous jewelry pieces from random resource drops to boost various stats like this one:

That's +4 special trait applying in Sneak, Hunt, Intellect and Hex challenges.

I decide to get a 3rd Crafter now that my resource income has been growing: more people, better gathering gear, levelups of gathering skill, Blessed Paths giving access to more village resources. As a rule of thumb, you never want crafters sitting idle. Too few crafters means a resource backlog you can use later, too many crafters will have nothing to do. Even when they're not producing actually important gear, they should be grinding experience for advancement points, or cooking food, or creating more baskets than you need so that you can roll for Good Quality baskets that have +1 gathering and reduced weight.

Nothing major happens for a while. I visit the orc site the refugees told me about, and try diplomacy at the Orc Matriarch. She gives her side of the story as "goblins were here first, those humans came and beat up them ten years ago, now the goblins joined us for reconquest of rightful home". After some more diplomacy, I convince her to regret the bloodshed and trade peacefully with my people. Lack of full 'trade' mechanics means I get a one-time pile of random resources including Ancientwood. Nice.

A kid grows up to become a gatherer. I get an advancement point and consider unlocking Amber, but check the map to see where it is first. Bother, it's on the other side of a large fjord, 20 tiles from the village. Oh well, off goes the away team. Double bother, the game's first 4-skull wandering monster pack has shown up.

New plan: Advancement point into unlocking Swords instead, start making Granite Swords for everyone since that's a decent tier resource (it's fantasy granite) available in my village gathering radius. Flee the adventuring party back home, we're not ready to fight this yet with a split party. 17 people at home will be much better off. The mithril from the dwarfs earlier is turned into one really good sword. Other scraps are also thrown into the forge, like enchanted bone + gold to make Kostey's Stabber, a sword that boosts magic, given to one of the sages.

The bats don't attack the village, so I feel besieged. Really glad I got Blessed Paths up fast enough to use it now. A kid grows up and becomes a Medic, which is nice, greatly reduces death chance if badly wounded after a fight. Here, take this bloodstone +2 medicking I just crafted, here's your basket, get to gathering. Another advancement point rolls in from the crafting, and while I could put it into unlocking Amber, I should wait until my team can actually get over there.

The other things I want to get right now are Blessed Paths +2 (needs advanced resources), unlocking the Gold (fantasy gold, good crafting ingredient) near the village, Bows, Shields and Spears crafting tech. So I sit in the village under siege, gathering and crafting for a while, as the bat horde wanders off into the fog of war. Random event raiders hit my village, and I fend them off for a Tactics skill boost. They drop loot, and I dismantle some of it for more Amber. Unlocking the resource in advancement points unlocks the ability to gather it from the ground; I can freely use any I have on hand. It's annoying micromanagement, but at high levels, it's worth checking the ingredients of dropped loot to see if you want to recover some of it by dismantling. Or, just dismantle everything anyway and make your own.

By turn 150, the bats are nowhere to be seen, everyone is better equipped, and my research is progressing well, so I unlock Bows and start making those. Another kid grows up to be a Warrior, bringing me to 19 adults, and once I have several bows made (cane+spidersilk creates very light bows), I send out a 10-person expedition to go get amber and kill bats. Advancement arrives on schedule from making more bows at home, expedition beats up a baba yaga, gets a curse, rescues a kid.

This is where Realistic Economy bites. I could be collecting amber at double speed. I'm limited to getting one batch (6 units) per turn. An Amber Charm (+2 Gather, +1 Craft) takes 8 units to make. Each dedicated gatherer and crafter should have two of them, and I could use even more to fill in whatever slots don't have something else. Figure 25 charms at least, 200 amber... I could sit here for 20 turns. I probably won't, but seriously consider that the "Expedition" can sit in place and pretend it's a village for a long time.

A child falls ill in the village. One bizarre folk ritual later, it becomes a Child Wraith, mechanically a tank character who can't use weapons but deals large amount of Poison + Drain damage, and has no mundane skills. (Really, did you expect a wraith to help catch fish?) The village also randomly attracts a wandering Hunter human character, and now I'm up to 20 human adults + the wraith, 4 children. A Rat Witch visits the village, and I dispel her swarm.

I settle for a haul of 124 amber, which is more than I have coal for, so crafting can start while I go get coal. On the way back from the ambermine, I attempt the next step of the Cosmic Tree Quest, which is the dragon guarding shards - you can fight, sneak past, or try to convince him that his oath doesn't apply any more. Social Combat scales with your people, I have a large party, I talk the dragon into leaving and he's so thankful for being freed from this boring place that he hands out Magic buffs, a mithril axe, and some diamond. Orcs come by afterwards, asking me to please lock up the Cosmic Seed instead of restoring the tree because blah blah elves.

"The whole land is shaken with tremors." event plays for the first time on Turn 181, inflicting 3 wounds on everyone in the village. This is the first sign of the Giants returning. I need to hurry, Giants are super deadly.

My exploring party hits up the Divine Quest too, meeting Perun's avatar. This is a quest step that can be done with diplomacy or fight - different patron gods favor different approaches, and will bless or insult you correspondingly. Perun prefers a fight, and will heal all your party of their wounds if you win the challenge against his avatar, so this one you can afford to be headstrong about. Then he charges the party to go destroy the Thundercatcher that's been sapping his power.

Since I did the avatar encounter the favored way, it's made easier. Instead of a 5-skull challenge to grab the thundercatcher rod without dying of electrocution, I can fight the rubbery beast (a bies) as a 3-skull challenge, and use its hide as an insulator. This is easy by comparison, I break the rod, release the thunder, and - Victory! Also an orcish devotee of Perun joins the party.

That completes the Divine Quest on Turn 185. Now for the rest of the Cosmic Tree quest.

Expedition heads to village, drops off resources, picks up cooked food, also picks up enough people to fill traveling group to 16 with warriors and child wraith. The dropped-off resources are enough to build a Blessed Paths +2, but that's unlikely to matter now. I'm off to smash Zmey. Only 7 people are left in the village, I hope no giants wander in and kill them while I'm gone. (Kidding. Encounter fights can't kill people - you get 1 turn's grace to rush for the herbalist and heal them. Death only occurs if you leave people at low or negative HP across turns.)

Elf Alysir makes the compass to lead me to the stump of the Cosmic Tree, I get blessings, I go to check where Zmey is, and I laugh at the fact that the final quest point spawns 2 tiles from the village:

This conveniently means I can load up literally everyone to do the encounter with Zmey and go home again, instead of using just the away team, which is kind of an anticlimax. But I'll take it. Didn't even bother with a save. Game won on turn 197.

The Zmey encounter at the end of the Cosmic Tree quest reminds me of Planescape:Torment a bit. Firstly because you can talk Zmey down, instead of having to fight it. (Although the talking is implemented as Social Combat with a Speech skill, which isn't quite the same.)

Secondly because the genre and tropes of Thea strongly signpost "This game is about restoring the Cosmic Tree" with the way destroying it created the postapocalyptic setting of destruction in the first place, and all the search for its last seed. But if you take the time to explore and talk to people, rather than being generic murderhobo protagonist, you learn about two other options you can do with the Cosmic Seed at the end.

There's the human scholars who had a plan for controlled demolition the Tree to banish magic and bring about an age of reason, enlightenment, and electricity, while the magic beings fade away. This is reflected in an option to burn the last Cosmic Seed. And there's the orcs who would rather you locked away the seed to leave a twilight age of just enough magic to sustain elves and orcs, but with the orcs getting a chance to shine - they'd lose to elves in the default outcome and lose to humans in the age of reason.

The final choice:

Well, final for the main game. There's postgame opportunities to visit whichever one of Elf Foresttown, Human University or Orc Bartertown matches your ending choice, and there's extra content from the Return of Giants DLC that was only a foreshadowing earthquake here. And there's 103 more turns to click through for the other achievement, but that's a gimme at this point with a fortified populous village.

In closing, I want to note how much leeway there still is on this. I did not unlock Mithril, Diamond, Dragonbone, Dragonleather, nor Nimblewood. I did not unlock 2H Swords, Crossbows, Heavy Armor, nor Artifacts. I feel that I won mostly by paying attention to the economic engine underlying Thea: gather -> craft -> advancement. Secondarily, there was knowing which fights to pick, L5 Perun's large bonuses, rerolling for a good start, percentage chances to attract population that added up over 100+ turns, and a little savescumming -- but surprisingly little, really. I didn't need it against the dragon, avatar, or zmey, and couldn't use it against the undead spider disaster.

Thea: The Awakening is available on Steam and GOG. Recommended.

(Back to part 1.)

#all #vidya #thea the awakening #longpost

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dalamanhirecarsa · 1 month

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dyadhogs · 2 months

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☼ cont >> @teenagedkraken

oh boy...

seeing the other there, with that look on their face, amy just knew she had overstepped. she didn't think the house had been occupied given how quiet it was, and she was more embarrassed than anything. and the other had asked a fair question, one she could only chuckle sheepishly at.

"um...you wouldn't believe me even if i told you?" that was what she was going with.

#off saving the village [queue]#teenagedkraken

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pluton514 · 6 months

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Chapter 10: A mother’s love

Hermes is wearing a golden and white plated torso with red feathered outline and white plated armored shorts with gold stripes embedded on the edges. He wore a golden helmet in the shape of a griffin. He's also relatively short, he has light skin,Hazel colored eyes, and a burn mark that reaches from his thigh to his calf. Mother grunts in pain due to the injury on her left shoulder and was bleeding heavily. She says, "Hermes where'd you take us?" Hermes replies, "We're in the outskirts of the village. He won't find us here unless we make a sound that's loud enough for him to hear." She replies, "Well, that's good to know. What about the others?" Hermes looks down and stays quiet. He clenches both of his fists, and in a soft and sad tone he says, "They didn't make it...They were collateral damage from the lightning bolts. Those things wiped out everything and everyone in an instant.I was barely able to escape it. After I did, that's when I heard you taunting Zeus. Your voice literally echoed throughout the entire village. I knew it was my queue to go and save you. Well, the three of you."

The Priest chuckles, and in a sarcastic tone says, " Ah yes, let me go ahead and commit taboo to anger the strongest God to ever exist. Surely that would end well." Mother lets go of my hand and proceeds to bitch smack the priest. She says, "Listen here you old fucking buffoon. It's do or die now, so if you're gonna start complaining then by all means go surrender yourself to the one you worship. Trust me, you'd be making it a lot easier for us." The Priest stays quiet and starts to clench his left fist. They look at each other for a few seconds. There's clearly some tension between those two. Honestly, I can kinda see why ,since he worships the god that she's trying to take down.

The Priest says, "Fuck you, you filthy woman. You tricked me into teaching you the history, and now I too must pay for your actions...no, they also had to pay the consequences of your actions...the innocent men, women, and children...You killed them all, not him. I warned you, didn't I? That there would be punishment? Yet, you still went in without thinking for a second as to what could happen. What if he got your son? You ever thought of that?" My Mother took a step back and replied, "No, that's where your wrong. If anything, I thought of every single possibility as to what the punishment could be, but this was one that I didn't see coming. Demons from the underworld were somehow released, and he's using them as an excuse to slaughter us. He doesn't care who's collateral damage, and he won't stop hunting us down until he knows that we're completely gone." Lightning starts to strike continuously in the middle of the village. We hear a loud roar come from Zeus. Hermes walks up to my mother and says, "He's gonna destroy all of the forest and mountains to find us. We have to get going before it's too late." Mother nods her head, and walks up to me. She picks me up and says, "How the hell are we supposed to get out of here without being noticed?" Hermes points at the top of the shortest mountain which was on the other side of the village and says, "That's our only shot. We have to move quickly and quietly to reach it." Mother replies, "Well, you are the fastest god so I don't see how that's a problem." Hermes takes off his helmet and reveals his sepia colored hair. He says, "If Zeus throws a lightning bolt then it'll be over for us, and the only reason I was able to save you all three of you was because I had already started running before he even grabbed the third bolt. I'm just barely faster than his lightning anyways. If I start running then he'll notice my golden trail. Another reason why he didn't notice me when I saved all of you was because my trail was covered by the flames and the fact he was already putting his attention on his aim. He knows it's me tho. I'm the only one who can escape his attacks"

Mother's jaw drops and starts to tease Hermes. She says, "Damn for the fastest god you're pretty fucking slow. How can you not outrun lightning? Haven't you been training at all?" Hermes gets embarrassed and throws his helmet into the dark. He sarcastically says, "At least I can outrun an old lady with a stick." Mother gets flustered, and replies, "Hey! That was just one time, and I was injured by the way!" She sticks out the

middle finger, and Hermes laughs, but quickly shuts his mouth. The Priest taps them both on the shoulder and says, "I just want to say that I hate you both, and I hope that after we get out of this you treat me to some good ass food." Mother chuckles and nods in agreement. She says, "There's the optimism! Alright lets get going."

We start heading into the vast darkness that engulfs the entire forest. The only source of light we have is the fire in the distance from the village itself, but that light can only reach so far so we're literally going in blind. We can hear different kinds of noises from insects and animals like crickets or hissing from snakes. The sound of wind blowing into the trees as Zeus' screams of frustration create winds that can even lift trees from its sheer force and velocity. Luckily for us, we're on a side of the forest where the winds are fast, but not strong enough to lift us. It seems that Zeus is just hoping for the best, but since he doesn't know where we are then he's just complainin like an ignorant child. The Priest trembles in fear, and in a scared, low, and trembling tone he says, "I don't want to die...I can't die here..." Mother and Hermes don't reply. They keep on moving as if there isn't an angry god going on a tantrum.

Zeus' starts to grab lightning bolts and throws them onto the already burned down village. He yells, "WHERE ARE YOU?!?! HERMES!!!! I KNOW YOU'RE OUT THERE!!! HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN SINCE YOU'VE LEFT YOUR HOME?!?! I LOST COUNT!! A DISOBEDIENT CHILD LIKE YOU DESERVES TO BE PUNISHED!!! YOU KNOW, YOUR UNCLE HADES WOULD BE VERY DISAPPOINTED IN YOU!!!" Thunder roars and echoes throughout the skies. Hermes clenches his and softly says, "He doesn't know what he's talking about. My uncle was a great god, and he will pay for what he did." Mother rushes to Hermes, but before she could get to him we start to fall, but before we hit the ground Hermes had already caught both of us and says, "Oh shit, Serenity you're bleeding a lot. You imbecile! What did you do?!" Mother replies, "Long story short, I fought a demon and almost got my ass handed to me. It seems that the extreme blood loss is getting to me." Hermes puts me down right next him and says, "If that's the case then we have to make it there quick."

Hermes picks up mother, and gives her a piggy back ride. Hermes asks, "Hey Pluto, you think you can walk the rest of the way?" I reply, "Yes sir! You can count on me!" I give him and thumbs up. He smiles and reaches his hand out to me. He says, "Here, you can hold on to it if you want." I hold his hand and we continue to make our way. Mother groans very quietly, and softly says, "Thank you Hermes..." Hermes smirks and replies, "My pleasure, but save your breath, ok?" Mother nods, and closes her eyes.

We walk for what seemed to be a few hours, and Zeus has been quiet for some time. The winds have completely stopped, the insects have stopped making noises, and the snakes have stopped hissing. Hermes whispers, "Halt." We all stop moving, and The Priest starts to tremble in fear. My butt clenches, and I hold in my tears. I can't make any noise or we're all dead. The Priest whispers, "Why hasn't he done anything for the last few hours?" Hermes doesn't reply, but shushes him instead.

Hermes slowly moves forward and says, "We're not alone." We put our backs against each other to see if anything comes popping out of the dark. After a few seconds of silence we hear leaves crumble. As if something was moving, but very slowly. Low growling was heard a few feet in front of me, and it got closer with every second that passed. Hermes looks into its direction, and prepared for combat. He lowered his knees as if getting ready to sprint, and held my mother even tighter on his back. He whispered, "Both of you, get behind me right now." We very slowly and carefully move behind Hermes. The Priest quietly asked, "What could it even be?" The growling grew closer, and the leaves crumbled even louder.

Eventually revealing a silhouette of a bald creature with two long arms. It crawled closer with its two long black nails, and then it stopped. We were staring at each other for what felt like years, but it was only my fear that made me think that. The creature put both of its nails in front of its entire body, and lunged itself to me, but then Hermes kicked it down in the blink of an eye. It was gonna let out a loud shriek, but before it could Hermes kicked it on its jaw horizontally. He kicked it so fast that its head started spinning which led to its vocal chords ripping apart. It couldn't make a sound. He then pierced its chest which killed it in an instant. Hermes says, "I thought Zeus killed them all, but it looks like some were smart enough to escape into the forest." The Priest replied, "Some of the demons survived...?" Hermes nods and says, "We have to be extra careful from now on. Luckily, this one was missing half of its body so it only had one heart."

Mother groans in pain, and quietly asks, "What happened...?" Hermes looks at her, and gasps. He quietly exclaims, "Serenity...your skin...its pale!! Holy shit! At this rate you're gonna die from blood loss!!" Mother chuckles, and slaps the back of his head. She says, "You fool...you really think that this...this is enough to kill me...? I ain't dying...til I know my son survives past tonight.." Hermes grits his teeth and says, "Let's hurry it up then." We continue to move forward into the woods. The Priest says, "Hey, wanna hear a funny joke?" Hermes replies, "Sure, we could use one right now." The Priest smirks and asks, " What do unicorns eat?" Hermes confused replies, "Uhh I don't know. What is it?" The Priest chuckles and says, "Greek yogurt."

Hermes stayed quiet and Mother groaned in pain again. She slowly lifted her head and softly says, "Dude...that was fucking terrible." Hermes chuckled and replies, "Well, at least he tried. Honestly I'd rather feel awkward than feel hopeless." The Priest shrugs it off and says, "Well, I can agree with that." We head forward, and the short mountain is actually visible now. Hermes says, "We're almost there. Just a little bit more and this'll all be over." The sounds of thunder start to appear out of nowhere. Little droplets of rain start to fall, and then we heard Zeus yawn. Hermes' eyes widen and he starts to shake. His face grew pale, he starts to sweat, and his breathing got even faster. He says, "I can't believe it...I thought we were safe..." The Priest replies, "What? What's going on?" Hermes stops moving, and slowly looks back at the priest. He says, "The reason why Zeus hasn't said anything, or why the winds stopped...was because he's been sleeping this entire time."

Mother replies, "It's fine, he hasn't...noticed us...ugh...yet." Hermes nods and says, "You're right. Come on, let's keep on going. We're almost there." We continue walking towards the mountain, but then that's when we heard Zeus roar louder than before. His shout which was filled with rage and hatred made the winds blow stronger than before, and rain poured harder than ever. He yelled, "I HAVE AWOKEN FROM MY POWER NAP!!! YET, I CAN STILL FEEL YOUR PRESENCE!!! SERENITY!!! IT WAS YOU WASN'T IT?!?! YOU PUT ME TO SLEEP!!!! YOU CALMED ME DOWN TO THE POINT OF SLUMBER!!! HOW DARE YOU?!?!?!" Lightning slammed into the tress behind us causing a wild fire to start. It spread quickly throughout the forest eventually getting to us. Hermes quietly exclaims, "We have to hurry now!! Before the fire catches us!!" We start to sprint towards the mountain hoping we can outrun the flames that were chasing us.

I start to fall behind since my small feet can't catch up to them. I exclaim, "Wa-" before I could finish my sentence Hermes quickly picks me up and holds me with one arm. He catches up to the the priest and runs beside him. He asks, "Hey man, you ever loved someone before?" The Priest replies, "That's a bit of a random question." Hermes smirks and says, "Just trying to make conversation while we try to escape death." The priest chuckles and replies, "Yes, I did once love a woman by the name of Seraphine. She was gorgeous, and was the nicest lady you could ever meet. She was a brunette, with yellow eyes, dark skin, she was pretty tall, and always wore a red gown. Don't ask me why because even I didn't know. We got married with four kids. Three girls and one boy. We lived the happiest eight years of our lives until my wife got very sick. She had leprosy which gave her blisters all around her body. We tried everything we could do to save her, but nothing worked. Eventually, she passed on without even getting to see her kids turn ten years old. After my wife's death, I had built the palace of blessings. She loved talking about the gods, and so I made that place as a memorial for her, but it eventually became a safe haven for the people of the village. Something about it gave it this feeling that your sins were being lifted and it made you feel free. A few years after I built the palace, all three of my little girls became ill and died on the same day. While my son mysteriously disappeared."

The priest shed a tear, but it got immediately evaporated from the heat that surrounded us. Hermes pats him on the shoulder and says, "I'm sure they'll be proud of the fact that you've been living your life, and haven't given up at all, but before I continue what's your name?" The priest replied, "My name is Zephyr." Hermes nods and says, "Zephyr...that's an interesting name. Not many have it. Your parents are very smart for giving you such a unique name." Zephyr laughs and says, "Thank you, I am honored to be complimented by a god." Thunder roared louder and lightning struck the ground again creating an even bigger fire. Mother groans and says, "Look...we're at the bottom of the mountain..." Hermes smiles and says, "Yeah..we're here!"

The priest jumps in joy with sweat dripping down from his entire body. I mean, even I'm sweating from the intense heat. Zephyr says, "Come on let's hu-" his sentence gets interrupted by multiple loud shrieks coming from within the fire. Hermes looks back and says, "What the hell?" Zephyr looks into the direction of the shrieks and says, "There's no way..." multiple demons crash through the flames revealing themselves to us. Mother looks at them, and says "one...two...four...ten...there's too many to count. We're completely outnumbered." The demons rush to us without hesitation. I can see their saliva dripping from their mouths. Their nails piercing through the ground with each step. Mother says, "Hermes, put me down." Hermes hesitates as he thinks that's a horrible idea especially with her current condition. Zephyr says, "Is this it? Is this how I go out?" Hermes lets out a sigh and puts both mother and I down.

The demons quickly surround us in the shape of a circle, and roar at us. The fire get nearer with each passing second. We all put our backs against each other, and mother says, "Hermes..make a path...leading straight to the mountain..." Hermes replies, "Yes ma'am." Hermes gets in a running stance, and takes off plowing through multiple demons. Ten demons lunge at mother, but before they could reach her she creates a shockwave from her words. She chants, "Your screams and anger shall be silenced by the shallow tranquility that lies deep within your souls." The shockwave passes through the ten demons which led them stop their attack and calm down. She took this opportunity to take off each of their hearts with her working arm, and kill them off.

Zephyr asks, "How the hell am I supposed to do anything? I don't have any weapons nor powers. I'm useless in this battle." The flames grew bigger as the battle wages onward. I'm scared and my small hands and feet can't do anything, but stand still waiting for all of this to be over. The sight of my mother fighting these monsters head on even when she's been heavily injured astounded me. I felt somewhat safe knowing that she's here to protect me. Rain pours even harder and we hear Zeus yell again in frustration. He shouts, "WHERE ARE YOU?!?! WHERE DID YOU ALL GO GOD DAMNIT!!!!" He throws another bolt into the other side of the forest creating another wild fire. Hermes plows through more demons to make sure they don't attack me or Zephyr, but he didn't notice the demon that was lurking on the outskirts of the fires. That things snuck by both my mother and Hermes eventually reaching both Zephyr and I. The demon sprints in front of me and roars into my face. I start to cry out for help, but then Zephyr shuts my mouth with his hand.

He says, "I'm done watching anyone else die tonight. I can't bare to see another child fall to the hands of these fiends anymore." The demon swings its nail to try and cut Zephyr, but he narrowly escaped it by moving backwards. He grunts in pain because it managed to graze his entire chest. He puts me down and says, "run to your mother while you still can." I do as he says and sprint towards my mother who is fighting as I move towards her. I run without looking back until I hear a shriek of pain come out from Zephyr. The demon pierced through his chest and bit his neck. It ripped it off and began to eat him. Hermes stops running and looks at Zephyr's lifeless body was being devoured by the demon without any remorse. He hold his mouth and a tears falls from his face. In the blink of an eye he killed the demon and ripped its head off.

The flames spread even closer and reached my mother. Demons kept appearing, and she kept killing them. Hermes ran to help her, but we were running out of time due to the fire. My mother says, "There's too many of them. They just keep coming, but how? I thought Zeus killed all of them?" Hermes replied, "It's the punishment. It won't be undone until the one who committed the taboo has atoned for their sin." My mother stayed quiet and kept killing the demons with Hermes. Ripping each heart out without hesitation. Hermes stops sprinting and puts his back against hers. He says, "Let me guess, you want me to buy you time?" She replies, "If you can, I would be grateful" Hermes replies, "Go to him." She stops fighting and starts running towards me.

Hermes gets rid of all the demons that try to get in her way until she eventually reaches me. She crouches down and puts her hand on my face. She sheds a tear and says, "My son, oh my perfect child." She weeps as she says these words, but she tries her absolute hardest to smile. She says, "You are the best things that has ever happened to me, ok? Don't ever doubt that not even for a second." I reply, "Mommy? Is everything gonna be ok? Why does this sound like a goodbye?" My mother's tears fall faster and she starts to bite her lip. She says, "No son, this isn't goodbye. You'll see me again someday. After you've lived your life, after you've made family, friends, and memories. You will see me again on the other side, ok?" I start to cry and reply, "Mommy I don't want you to go!" She passes her fingers through my hair and puts her forehead on mine. She asks, "Can you promise me something?" I reply, "Yes mommy anything!" She smiles and replies, "Promise me that you'll be strong. That you will live your life to the absolute fullest, and that no matter how hard it gets you remember these words. Even if I'm destined to suffer then I will face it head on, and defy the destiny that has been given to me for I will keep getting up no matter how many times I fall. Promise me you'll remember that." I nod my head, and boogers start to come out of my nose. She wipes them off with her dress and kisses my forehead. She slowly lets go of my face , and runs towards the demons. She says, "Hermes! Grab Pluto and go now!" Hermes replies, "What?! Are you crazy?! You'll die!!" Mother laughs and says, "This is this literally the only way!!"

Hermes clenches his fist and sprints to me immediately grabbing me. Mother shouts, "HEY YOU FOUL DEMONS!!! I'M HERE!!!" They all look at her and lunge at her. Her right shouldee gets pierced, her left leg gets sliced off, and her right hand gets bitten. I yell, "MOMMY NOOO!!!!!" Hermes yells, "SERENITY!!!" My mother shouts, "HERMES WHATEVER YOU DO!! DON'T LOOK BACK AFTER THIS AND RUN!!!" She takes a deep breath as the demons slowly eat her, and lets out a scream that echoes throughout the entire forest. Zeus replies, "I SEE!!! SO THAT'S WHERE YOU WERE HIDING!!!" He hysterically laughs as he lifts his hand up in the air, and brings it back down to reveal a giant pillar of lightning forming in the clouds. Big enough to destroy everything around us. Hermes immediately starts running, but everything turns into slow motion for me.

I can see my mother smiling as she sees us run away, and she has blood pouring out of her eyes and mouth. The pillar of lightning immediately hits the ground, but Hermes is so fast that even though we're in it. We can't even feel the burns. However, I can see my mother die in the distance. Her flesh melts into her bones, and the demons all start to immediately perish alongside with her. I can hear the agony in my voice as I call out for my mother, but its no use. She's already gone, and we're now too far away. Hermes wept as he ran, and murmured the words, "He'll pay." Multiple times, and got faster as he continued running. Eventually, we couldn't even see the mountains anymore. He had ran into a completely different area, and kept running. After that, my whole world started to collapse into darkness. Hermes disappeared into thin air, and my eyes closed.

Morpheus appears before me from within the darkness, and wipes a tear coming out of my eye with his thumb. He says, "I'm sorry, but this one appeared to be the one you needed to see." I stayed quiet for a few seconds, and then asked, "So why is Zeus targeting me...?" Morpheus softly replies, "I can't tell you that either. You have to find that out on your own too." I clench my fist and yell, "WHAT WAS THE POINT OF SHOWING ME THAT THEN?!?! WHY DID MY MOTHER GET KILLED BY ZEUS?!?! WHY?!?! WHY?!?! WHY?!?!?! WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THIS INFORMATION?!?! WHERE DO I GO?!?!" I kneel down, and softly say, "Where do I go..." Morpheus replied, "That I can answer. You must go to the Valley of death. There, you will meet someone who may have the answers you're looking for." I reply, "Are you sure?" Morpheus replies, "Yes, that should be it." I stand up and clench my fists. Morpheus says, "Oh, and when you find out what it is you're looking for. What is it you're going to do next?" I look at him and reply, "I'm going to kill Zeus."

#original writing #original character #wattpad #writing #greek gods #action adventure

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nonnui · 8 months

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Stop the Darkness

I didn't use to understand idle games. It's the name - they're games where you don't do stuff, where "waiting" is a key mechanic. What's the point? But I get it now. They aren't games.

Idle games are wind-up toys.

Stop the Darkness is a pixelly civ-builder sort of game with, to a first approximation, one mechanic: click tiles to upgrade them. Once you wind them up they get you resources with which you can perform further upgrades. There is a lot of waiting, but unlike other idle games I've tasted, there's also an element of time pressure: in a slow square-spiral around the edge of the map there encroaches a Darkness. Tiles swallowed thereby accomplish nothing for you. If the whole map is dark, you lose. You can't just walk away from this game for half an hour. It's a wind-up toy being chased by a very slow, very ominous RC car and you have to keep reaching in to wind it up a bit more.

Quality of Life: Decent. Could use an undo button, and a way to queue developments to trigger as soon as you have the resources, and a way to preview the path of the spiral to save the effort of figuring out which middle squares will be safe longest. But the click and upgrade system is as simple as you could wish and the secret other things that aren't that are also pretty easy to interact with. Regenerating the map to desired specs in order to try different challenges or strategies is a friendly feature. 4/5.

Throughline: Idle games are usually very bad at this. Stop the Darkness is not sophisticated, but it is not bad. There is this threatened area, and the civilization you represent/control are trying to industrialize fast enough to beat it back while it chews resources away from you at every moment. You can make progress, you can succeed. Grading on a curve for the genre, 5/5.

Pacing: Most idle games are clicker games, where you can get 1 of the most basic resource by literally clicking on something, and 10 by clicking ten times, and so on and so forth. Not so here. The beginning of the game is slow, and even toggling the speed from x1 to x3 doesn't make it not-slow. Later portions of the game can be either stressfully crunched, or just long waits to see if the numbers will go up faster than the darkness will encroach, with no more moves possible or advisable to make. The midgame is all right simply by being in the middle of these extremes. 2/5.

Aesthetics: It's pixelly, and not high-res about it either, but it has a pleasant enough palette and whatnot. Within its constraints I don't mind looking at it at all. They're just pretty strict constraints 3/5.

Charm: I enjoy contemplating the valiant efforts of my pixel nation as they build cities and study magic and try to juggle investing in their villages and learning science against spending down what they have on shorter-term solutions. I have beaten the game several times now, yet still don't have a very good reliability rate at it, which is a feature I often value in a game. Magic is mostly derived from mushrooms, which I think is kind of funny. But I think once the shine wears off I will pretty much never think about this again. 2/5.

Nonnui: While - after a one-time exploratory upgrade of every tile on the map to maximum to see what they'd all turn into at the highest levels - I don't tend to keep playing after I Stop the Darkness and instead declare victory and close it once I win, it's a good half-attention game for when I'm watching TV or playing card games. A transcendent experience it is not, but it's fine. 4/5.

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crackedmarrow · 9 months

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Back in to the void again the light grew smaller and cut off completely. Remembering in that moment I was now on the outside of that realm that I once lived my frequency started to get a little shaky. The waves that I have become began to shut down.my concentration on the light was lost. I was no longer concentrated. I began to realize that maybe just maybe meeting Kush Jha was a mistake. It was all a a mistake but that regret grew in to an absolute resentment.

I loathed Kush. I loathed him because how could he leave me there to die on the hay. If you loved me you would of never left me. You would of made sure I was safe and protected before you let me die. Before you allowed me to be sent back to this ward. I was stuck on the fact that I regretted all of this and started contemplating if the feelings that I deemed as love were real. I started to feel as if it was all part of a far more songster plan to send me to this prison. I didn’t leave to accept this feeling. Peaceful yet not in the flesh I once knew. Just a frequency. I do not know if my soul and my frequency are one in the same but I know when I see my life flash before my eyes and how I tried to quickly grasp on to the moments that I saw to go back to have never came back to the village with a group of deceptive manipulative barbaric people. I knew right then I had to learn to accept that I may be stuck in this void the darkness I’ve never seen nor heard of for a while. It was like the gods the heavens the world was waiting to make a decision on whether I go to heaven or hell. I was never told nirvana had a waiting room.

I never knew of a queue. This was against all that was taught this me. This was something I never even imagined. I was probably in this state as a curse for not fully believing all that I’ve learned. I’m stuck here as a frequency as punishment for me not complexly agreeing to everything that was told to me. I was questioning my rebellious free thinking mind. The kind I no longer physically had but I felt. I thought about the fact that when I was killed my father was amongst the traitors who took away my flesh. I thought about how I always loved him no matter what he did to me hoe I forgave him for his cowardness to never go against the grain and hoe he always thought to appease and put people first before the ones he’s loved just to survive in his flesh. I thought about how he never even thought twice maybe with his strength his power his words the natural charm that he passed down to me that he could of made a change. I know that if I was in my physical body I would of cried with the way I felt but for some reason it was like the wave that I became went lower and lower. The waves were more rapid but they were lower. My mother came to thought. I loved my mother although she didn’t have much of a voice because she feared my father and feared his leaving she feared that upsetting or going against my father at times he seemed to be prideful would harm her. I also loathed that about my mother. There were times where she would straighten my father out but the one time that it really mattered she didn’t. She didn’t come for me. She had to know about my father and his plot to get rid of me. She didn’t even warn me her child the one who loved her more. I just kept replaying scenes of my mother over and over again questioning if she knew or not trying to figure out if I had missed her warnings all along. Her prayers didn’t save me did she even pray for me like she said. As the moments went by… my waves started to die down. I was still. I just let scenes play. Moments of me in the village playing with the other children at childhood or my first teacher for the school was Mrs. Kapoor. She was a slim fair lady with green eyes with a bindi in the middle of her forehead. Long dark flower locs. Everyone admired her. She was one of the most beautiful women in the village. She was from another village far away. She made a life for her self and became a teacher. She taught us all types of lessons we would see her at the river from time to time. She had a good reputation throughout the village. Her lips the same colors as the water lilies that floated upon the banks of the water of the river. She was beautiful her make up was ahead of it’s time. The minerals of her flesh with a light sandy color blush. Oh her eyes oh her eyes. Her sari was green and yellow she always wore the most beautiful gems and smelled of mint and other spices. After our lesson she would feed us all the foods she ate at her own home. A beautiful home. Trees covered it the long dusty path until you got there. She had servants but they were always eager for arrival she also had her husbands family living with her and she was everything a man could hope for I looked up to her in a way. I wanted to be loved by the village as she had. I just was young and not a woman of a very powerful man yet. My family did have wealth my father ran a merchant shop in our village and other villages. We had multiple shops in the villages bazaars. We usually had fair English man dock in near by villages and come to ours to trade with us. It was beautiful. My mother was strong woman who kept my father level headers beautiful yet still submissive to his ego. She was also darker complected. She had her big red bindi in her forehead as red wax cover finger tips. Henna on her hands and feet. Tribal markings of our village and long light brown hair. Thick eyebrows. Her lips full but not as full as mine. She had the look of a deity yet you could see her ageing and her grays growing here and there that she would dye in henna every week.

She was beautiful. Her and Mrs. Kapoor. The difference between Mrs. Kapoor husband and my father was her husband was far more far and equal. Tranquilly might I say than my father. He would let his wife speak and there was and sign of his ego trying to take the suns beam off of his wife. My father a man who lived to fit the image of what his father once did and his grandfather… he would find himself and lose himself every once in a while. I knew that my fathers rage would be the destruction of all things he loved. I felt in time we would get tired of accepting his charades and tell him that he is a man like all men and that he should accept that. He was no better than the next and the image he tried to portray would make us love him any less as if he was to act like who he truly was. I don’t think he would of ever got to see it for himself. My frequency started to lift and rise in the void that I was in. A black background which wouldn’t have been noticeable to me. I felt like I was left in a left over drop of pigment that feel to the ground unnoticed. The beam of light return and I was about to see myself back in the forrest with Kush Jha.

Kush pulled out a knife and started cutting through the forest. We were making our own path at that time. He said where ever it leads he was sure it would lead to the river bank he was certain of it. I like to think now that the river bank was the destination and the journey we took was the experience. We were dodging all of the obstacles cutting the trees and branch’s hearing the small animals that hide between them scurrying on the forest floors. Our feet and bodies cooled by the shade of the trees blocking out the suns beams occasionally peaking through the canopies that cover the heavens.

Ouch-

“Sonali! What’s wrong?”

“Nothing Kush it’s a small cut let’s keep going” Sonali explained

“ when we reach our destination I’ll clean it for you” Kush said

“Kush it’s fine it’s only a little cut I think I can manage”

We kept walking through

Kush turner around to me abruptly

“Sonali, you know the other day when we were talking about who I liked and I said ka-”

“Kush, I wanted to tell you that I was with Kagal today at the river banks and we both bathed in the water we rubs lilies on ourselves and I ask her who did she like she never told me but I think it’s a good chance it’s you.” “She’s a very beautiful kind hearted girl and also my friend and I can see why you would like someone like her.” Sonali said

“I also think that you two would be the perfect pair so understanding and fair. I would want to see you both happy one day” “ I initially went there to clean my sari and to wet my hair to cool off from the sun.” Sonali explained further

“Sonali do you really mean that by me being happy one day you want to see my truly happy” Kush said excitedly

“Ofcourse my Kush who wouldn’t want to see the most perfect being a direct defendant of the gods happy and in love bringing happiness to the rest of the village.” Sonali said

Kush turner back around and continued chopping the trees of the forest.

We could hear the bugs and I watched closely for any animals that might harm us. I was his eyes from behind i was to watch over his and my back. I felt it to be natural with him wanting to protect him and telling of any small animals I saw or possibly heard. We reached an area where it was not our normal spot but a water fall. He picked me up and yelled

“Sonali we found our place this is our place and we will have many other places like it.”

The water fall was on the side of a mountain or what to look like could of been a mountain.

We looked at each other and laughed. He set me down on the damp earth and went back towards the forest and grabbed a big leaf he started to rip it in to long vertical string like shapes and he grabbed something from inside of his clothing and sat it down on the ground beside him.

He turned towards the water cupping it and poured the water on to my cut. The cut was on my leg. I don’t know how it happened but it happened he told me I had to be careful and that he was happy that he was able to take care of my wound. He called it a battle scar for choosing the path unknown. I felt that he was wise beyond his years for the way he talked to me. That he didn’t attend our lectures to just look at Kajal and to talk to his friends. He was there actually listening and putting things together just as he was putting together a wrap for my leg. He used the oil he removed on his pocket which left my leg tingling. He grabbed the ribbon like leaf pieces and roped them around my and tied knots at the end slightly not to tight but just enough to fit. It stayed.

He told me that I may have to rewrap it if I chose to get in the water which was fine.

All I thought about in those moments were about the feelings I felt the night before and the nights prior.

I thought about having Kush Jha.

Kush Jha and Sonali the best friends the lovers and the rivals.

Kush Jha was everything I dreamt of unlike my father who had few god traits Kush was perfect well as almost perfect the fact that he like Kajal. I thought again and said to myself that’s who he wants that’s who he got the gems for that’s what he wants and I wouldn’t change him but I would only wish that he saw that he has me someone who loves him someone who will love him better than his own family and who would serve him if I had to just to be with him forever. Kajal was good but I felt I could be better I felt we actually knew each other but who knows when we aren’t together who he could be with. Kush and I were talking when he asked me.

“ So you and Kagal were in the water rubbing flowers on your skin?”

“No Kush I was rubbing lilies on my skin by myself silly”

“Sonali, why do you always call me by my name?”

“Because Kush that’s your name”

He hit his head with the edge of his hand where his wrist meets his hand

“ I know that but it’s what ever one calls me and you aren’t everyone”

I blushed “ oh Kush I am someone I hope

“So I’ll call you Durga or Shaktas or even Sonny because you have the skin that was kissed by the sun”

I blush and I moved my hand around the damp earth gripping it. The mud and the wax covering my finger tips clashed to cover my actual fingers.

I suddenly shouted “ and you are the great Shiva or Rudra because you have the mightiest of strength. You are the hunt and the prey for me”

I get up and walk towards the edge of the water

Kush gets up and walks behind me

“Show me Sonny how you and Kagal got in the water and bathed yourselves.”

He went through his clothes again and pulled out mint leaves and two flowers. Two lotuses

“One for you and one for me” Kush says

We stand and I looked at him and said

“ isn’t it improper to get fully in the nude when one is not your husband”

“Sonny I never took you for one to follow rules … but I to will get in the nude with you as well.” “ I want to feel as you did when you and Kajal were together… remember this is our spot this is our place to be truly us no rules no morals just us.”

“ we are in the heavens right now. We are gods we do as gods do… whatever we want”

I started to take off my sari hesitantly

And Kush took all his clothing off and made sure to check for the gems he brought earlier.

He stood there nude and I did everything in my power to not look at him but I couldn’t help but do so.

He said “ if I had to make a charm or a necklaces with these gems and gems that’s I’ve bought before for Kagal what metal do you think she would like gold, silver?”

Silver I shouted while still taking off my sari

I felt his eyes the eyes of the Gharial piercing my skin his eyes danced while I slipped out of the sari.

He did it shamelessly

“ Oh Sonny… do you think my body looks better than Kagal?”

“ Kagal, you know I said we are gods a god can’t be cowards they must stand tall and feel the part.”

He picks up my sari and he places it on top of his clothing and he grabbed my hand and we walked together in the water. Our bodies submerged as mine and Kagal did earlier that day and I began to swam toward the waterfall. He went away from the water fall

The sounds of the waters clashing sounded so soothing so calm yet rapid. I felt like the water was me I felt like I was the water. I closed my eyes and went under water swimming toward the direction of where I thought Kush to be. I came up to catch a breath. I did not see Kush I turned around so did not see Kush. I started to panic but I kept calm. I started to think about my first thoughts of him. A people pleaser probably a person with cruel intent all types of nasty things. I started to feel sad and upset I see started to question myself because why would I even do something like this

I started to feel something grip on to me and I slowly rose higher than the water.

Kush catching his breath and the water ran across his lips

“ I got you Sonny… I found you in the water and I got you”

I instantly regretted all the emotions I felt prior to because he was not what I first thought he was what I realized and what I felt after getting to know him and what gave me another name and who cared about my opinion he was the person I questioned myself to be in love with who I felt protective over and who protected and cared for me as I would care for him. He was the one I felt so strongly about being my best friend my love.

Kush carefully lowered me in to the water both him and I sinking our bodies back in to the waters. So that it touched the top of our shoulders.

“Sonny show me how you and Kagal rubbed the lilies on to your skin”

I took the little that was floating nearest to me and rubbed it in to my skin while making direct eye contact with kush closing my eyes occasionally to show him my enjoyment of it

He then grabbed a lily and rubbed it in to his skin not as harsh as I thought he would. He did not close his eyes but lower them in this mesmerizing way and I look only at his eyes for a while until I looked at his lips

I told him oh Kajal also came close to me and did this to me

I swam closer to Kush and I grabbed his wrist pushing them under the water and stared in to his eyes and blew on his lips just as she did mine getting closer and closer. Our breathes in sync and he inched till our lips met we both did not move meme stood still. Then together we locked lips fully. I felt how he didn’t want to pull away and I to did not want to pull away. We are god remember we do as gods do we started to turn our heads and kiss as we felt what was the right way to kiss. He slowly brushed his tongue against my tongue and it danced in my mouth going from cheek tongue then cheek again. We turned as we saw the wheels of the carts in our village. My arms raised and grabbed on to his neck and I began to wrap my legs around him. He grabbed me by my bum and we floated and floated around and went closer to the water fall. The water rushed over us but we didn’t pull away. No amount of water could of killed me. No amount of air could of saved me I refused to pull away but I thought what if he’s doing this because he’s afraid to pull away what if he dies.

I stopped immediately and I looked at him and said

“Kush.. Kajal and I didn’t do that part. Nor did she make me want to do that to her”

Kush smiled

“if Kajal did that to you I would understand you have a beauty unlike any other Sonny. My Sonny”

I stared at him in his eyes and a tear rolled down my face.

“ I can’t do this when I know you love Kajal. I am not Kagal she’s yours slush you like her you told me. You are making her a gift you bought gems for her I don’t want to cause any confusion”

Kush sighed “ Kajal is beautiful but she’s not Sonny. Let alone I do not even like Kajal the way you think Sonny . Kajal is my cousin.”

I stopped and I looked at him and he was laughing at me

“She’s my cousin by marriage and I barley know anything about her I think she’s beautiful. I was just stating a fact when you asked me who I liked I said Kajal because I knew you two were friends.” “ I was trying to make conversation I didn’t think you would take me seriously. Or that you had already known we were cousin I mean she does go to lectures with us and I know her that way… I thought I thought you knew what I meant.”

I started to swim away and stood up outside the water

“Well I didn’t” now thinking to myself all of the crazy things I said and how I looked like an idiot. I was wishing to stay in the water in that moment forever but I had to say something I had ti pull away only because I thought he could not love me or want me the way he wanted Kajal who was his cousin not even a girl he liked so much hurt his cousin.

“Kush-“

“That’s not my name Sonny we are gods what is your nickname for me?” He said

I said “Rudra but now I want to say Kama”

Kama! Oh Kama it is

The name fit so perfectly for Kush Kama

Pyaar Pyaar Pyaar

My whole heart I thought it was true the feelings I had for him were love but I was out of the water and not in the waters with him.

Still nude and not feeling as shy as I did before. I was up against him before marriage if the village people knew they would of killed me. I would have been seen as the village consort.

Kush started making his way towards me emerging out of the water. His whole body wet he shook his hair out and smiled.

“ did you enjoy being a goddess Sonny”

I said yes

Forgetting about time and how long we may have been out there I didn’t want to leave him we look up at the top of the water fall and he said

“ we shall go along side to see what lies on the other side of the water fall or we can go today”

I was eager to go now but I knew it would have to wait I felt that it would be better to wait. One of our recent lessons was the lesson of patience and enjoying everything for what it is thinking about the now and not rushing the process. I did not want to be a minute without Kush especially after we played gods and found this spot. I wanted to stay here forever making our own life’s. He handed me my sari and even offered to help me put it on I let him wrap the fabrics around my skin. He took his time and he placed his hands on my beast and on my waist got down on his knees facing me to make sure it looked good.

He then put back on his clothes and felt for the gems he purchased earlier. He also grabbed this pretty stone one the edge then another and handed me one.

“This is for you Sonny… so you’ll never forget the day you truly got to be yourself a goddess”

I took it and tucked the stone in my sari and we checked ti make sure we didn’t leave anything and walked back towards the path we created.

The way back I did what I did before we came and I touched him a bit more. Realizing once we get back to the village I would have to be the person I was before we went to ours little kingdom. Our safe space or at least one of them. I told him about the animals I heard made jokes here and there but didn’t dare speak of the passionate waterfall kiss for the gods or of the gods. I withheld the urge to even speak on it hoping that he would but he didn’t. He said tomorrow we would go on the other side and find another spot that we would make our other safe space. He said we have one in the dark and in the light. By this time it’s seemed as if the day was nearly over the sun setting and getting closer to normal life. Everyday life no kisses of gods from us because we were not married.

We reached almost the end of the trail and lush turned to me and told me that he needed to go back to village to pick up something’s before he returned home I wanted to offer to go with him but I knew I wouldn’t be able to hide the fact that he was mine and only mine. Not to them of course but to me. He was the one I wanted the one I loved the most and my heart couldn’t take it being dampened down because of some villagers and their beliefs. I did not share the belief they did only a few things but not really. I was a martyr. I was creating everything I wanted for myself I used the gods as things to describe my beliefs but nothing more than that just a visual but not the attributes.

I told Kush I mean Kama goodbye

I had to remember he was Kama for me now.

I walked to my home I was greeted by my mother and she spoke of the mud on my sari not a lot but some she said I would need to change for supper immediately I let her know if my bath and hoe the mud was just from the river bed and how I didn’t even realize it wasn’t fully wet just in certain places. I went to my room and I changed but I sat on my bed and thought about Kush and my kiss. How one day it would not be just in that place but where ever I pleased. How I would be his wife and love him for all that he is good wise and handsome and we would be the happiest discovering new places. Cooking together. Learning together traveling together.

My heard my mother call for me to come down for dinner and that I will be pouring tonight’s tea. I was elated.

I ran down in to the dining area and sat on the floor around the floor table made of clay. Decorated with foreign items from the English men. My mother spoke of how one of the English men asked about her and I.

He asked if I was married and if he could see me one of these days. I didn’t care to even entertain the thought of someone else possibly loving me better than Kush could.

I laughed and my mother told me he’s coming tonight and that’s why I would pour the tea. She also said that if I had came home earlier I would of helped cooked the meal. I didn’t care to hear that I was worried about “Tomorrow”

And how I would be my Kama’s little Sonny or Durga just in a different part of nirvana.

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xtruss · 1 year

Text

The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II! It Seemed That Everyone in The World Was Here.

— By Mollie Panter-Downes | June 5, 1953 | Letter From LondonJune 13, 1953 Issue | May 5, 2023

Photograph by Bela Zola/Getty Images

June 4

This Coronation, the older generation of the young Queen’s subjects say contentedly, was the last they ever expect to see. It was probably the most superb and certainly the most moving one that anybody now living has seen. To lots of English, going over every minute of the big day in endless discussions, it seems to have been a vast prize package that made up for the long years of drabness. Its complicated rituals and pageantry contained elements of the ancient magic of the Old Testament, of Hans Christian Andersen, and of “The Golden Bough;” a bit of “Plain Tales from the Hills;” and various antique traditions treated with brilliant modern showmanship, and it turned out wonderful. Everything turned out wonderful but the weather, and even that, Londoners loyally declare between their sneezes, could not spoil it.

On Sunday, the nation asked God to save the Queen in services held in big cathedrals, in the dank Norman chill of little country churches, and on village greens under the undenominational sky. Having made their peace with Heaven, citizens spent Monday stocking up on the big day’s bodily needs. There were long queues at all the bakers’ shops for bread (which ran out, making it almost seem that housewives had panicky ideas of preparing for a prolonged siege), and other queues for sweets to assuage the pangs of thirst, for bottles to do the same thing more festively, and for plastic raincoats to pop prudently into the basket, along with the thermos flasks and the sunglasses. Right up to the last minute, there was a great bustle of workmen hammering and heaving decorations into place along the route. Householders clambered precariously out on their window sills with their mouths full of tacks and their hands full of red-white-and-blue streamers, and a stroll around the sights was enlivened by the risk of a shower of potted hydrangeas, crashing from the hands of florists’ men feverishly fixing shop and hotel fronts with banks of fresh flowers.

Suddenly, after all the doubts and rumors about how many visitors were going to turn up for the Coronation, it seemed that everyone in the world was here. Bus conductors, benignly eying cargoes of passengers who sounded like a Berlitz school with the roof off, bawled “Picc-dilly Cir-cus” to longhaired Dyaks in lounge suits, lovely Indian ladies in dragonfly-colored saris, and unidentified Asian exotics in striped robes and intricately tied headdresses. All day, taxis with their tops down cruised along the processional route (though cruised is maybe hardly the word for the slow crawl through the wedged traffic) with people perched all over them waving Coronation balloons, sucking pop bottles, and gaping up at the banners. By midday, the curbs along the Mall, Hyde Park, Trafalgar Square, and other key spots for viewing the next day’s show were crowded with people setting up housekeeping in the gutter among their bundles and their bits of shabby bedding as handily as though they were back in the old blitz days of sleeping in the tubes. (“Run along to the lady two places down, Mavis, and ask her if she can oblige with a tin opener.”) They had brought their food, their radios, their cards for patience, their old people, who were swaddled in rugs and leaned against lampposts as though they had grown there, and their infants, who placidly chewed on Coronation ribbons pinned to stout maternal bosoms and stared with interest up at the sky, which unkindly darkened and hurled chilly rain on them. The route instantly sprouted acres of sodden mushroom shapes, as people squatted under small tents of blankets or rubber groundsheets. As a demonstration of damp mass devotion, the huddled Coronation-eve multitudes would have mightily astonished the English of other days, who sometimes lampooned their monarchs and sometimes died for them but would never have thought of risking pneumonia for them. It was sad that the Queen did not get the traditional royal weather, which (as one of the “Golden Bough” touches) is supposed to react to the presence of the royal person with beaming skies.

Coronation Day dawned cold and dry, continued cold and wet, and appeared to be about to usher in a new ice age as well as a new Elizabethan Age. It was the meanest June day that anyone can remember. In its glum early light, alarm clocks started to buzz all over London like a swarm of irritable hornets, and the first groups began to traipse through the streets toward the bus and tube stations, where they bought the morning papers and read the great news about the Everest climbers. The police had artfully encouraged citizens to leave their cars at home by ruling off a large Coronation area in which motoring was forbidden, and by issuing passes for various official parking lots that were so far away most people gave up and took to the bus or their own feet. Scotland Yard was also, it developed, extremely canny with its constant propaganda to the effect that if holders of tickets for the official stands did not get along to their places bright and early, they might find it impossible to struggle through the crowds later. This worked fine for everyone but the obedient members of the public, who were in their seats, virtuously munching their breakfast hard-boiled eggs, by six or seven o’clock, as requested, and viewed with no pleasure at all the ease with which less docile late-comers strolled into their seats, cool as cucumbers and pink with delightful sleep, two, three, and even four hours later.

As early as five-thirty, there was a great to-ing and fro-ing outside the Abbey of ushers, officials of one kind and another, and early arrivals in curious, resplendent garments. Loudspeakers were everywhere, and the B.B.C. filled in the moments when there was nothing to look at by relaying jolly dance music and warnings to householders, passed on from the R.S.P.C.A., not to forget to feed their pets in the excitement of the day and to be sure to see that no feathered friends had nested in Coronation bonfire piles to be set alight that evening. At the Abbey and all around Parliament Square were stands resembling the high, scalloped galleries of a medieval tilting yard, painted clear blue and yellow, and decorated with shields and little pennants flying aloft. These stands were full of visitors from the Commonwealth nations, which had sent by air magnificent floral decorations for them. The Canadian and Ceylon sections were banked with masses of strange flame-yellow and parakeet-green blossoms, and from one corner jutted a fabulous floral umbrella (mournfully appropriate to the day) composed of massed lotus buds and orchids, which had been flown in as a present to the Queen from India. In the icy morning air, these lovely things looked as nipped as some of the fine dark faces in the Ceylon stand.

The ladies hurrying into the Abbey also looked fairly unhappy in their regulation gowns of pale brocade; short, stiff matching veils flowing from the backs of their heads; and only brief fur wraps covering their bare arms and bosoms. The warmest-looking, most envied guest was a stout African chief who arrived in a cozy mantle that seemed to be made of colored blankets. The males certainly outshone the females in their splendor, with a perfectly stunning sartorial diversity of scarlet tunics; gold-laced velvet coats; stovepipe trousers showing off thin, horsy legs; Highland kilts showing off brawny ones; blue cloaks blazing with decorations; spurs; swords; and fancy-dress hats, trimmed with bottle-brush plumes or swan feathers, that they nursed tenderly in the crooks of their arms, as though carrying valuable roosters.

The peers and peeresses were pure Tenniel, needing only flamingos and croquet hoops to complete the absurd and gorgeous picture. One peer drove himself and his lady to the Abbey in a small gray car, which appeared to be occupied by two splendid, bulging polar bears. Only the Earl of Shrewsbury and the Marquess of Bath availed themselves of the old privilege of the nobility—rarely exercised now that the stables of the great country houses are either closed or used as tearooms for visiting tourists—of showing up in style in their family equipages. The Bath coach was pale canary, with buttercup-yellow liveries for the powdered footmen and coachmen, and the Shrewsbury turnout was blue and pale yellow. (The Earl’s footmen, clinging gamely to the back of the jouncing thing, were his butler and his brother-in-law, going along for the ride.) The hours of waiting for the Queen’s arrival at eleven o’clock were nicely diverted, too, by the spectacle of the various small processions that, by miraculous stage management, passed under Big Ben right at their scheduled moments. At eight-forty-five, the Lord Mayor’s gold-and-scarlet coach, which was built in 1735 and looks a mite uncomfortable in 1953, rumbled across the square amid its marching guard of Cromwellian pikemen. At nine-thirty, the Speaker rode across from the House of Commons in his painted coach, a square, rickety vehicle looking like a tea caddy on wheels, which shook abominably on its antique springs and was guarded, according to tradition, by a lone trooper of the Life Guards, jogging in the rear. The person who, apart from the Queen, really stole the show, though, was the enormously tall, powerfully built, and engaging Queen Salote of Tonga, the tiny British protectorate that at the outbreak of the Second World War stoutly cabled the allegiance to the Crown of its thirty-four thousand souls before anyone else had got around to reaching for a pencil. Queen Salote won the spectators’ hearts by riding in an open carriage through one of the day’s cold downpours, and beaming and waving as though she loved every soaking moment of it. (The three other carriageloads of sultans and sultanas in her procession stopped and cautiously had their tops closed to protect their dazzling jewels and cloth-of-gold garments.) Sir Winston Churchill, beaming like a moon from out of the midnight blue of his Garter finery, also got a big, affectionate hand when he arrived in the carriage procession of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers. Each Prime Minister had his own mounted escort—Pakistan lancers in gauzy black-and-silver turbans for Mr. Mohammed Ali, scarlet-uniformed Royal Canadian Mounties for Mr. St. Laurent, slender, elegant Singhalese in white tunics with white pennants fluttering from their lances for Mr. Dudley Senanayake, of Ceylon, and so on. Mr. Nehru was wildly cheered. Dr. Malan was politely cheered by some. The Queen’s approach was signalled by the squealing rapture, high above the great clamor of bells, of the thousands of school children watching her go by along the Thames Embankment. She looked happy and unexpectedly bridal—the white dress, the bouquet of white flowers, and the handsome husband (who was cheered all for himself, and warmly, when he appeared with her later in the day on the Buckingham Palace balcony).

Together with the rest of the world, the crowds outside the Abbey heard the immense ceremony begin with the Recognition—the tremendous, thrilling fanfares from the trumpets and the ringing, shouted injunctions, four times called to the four corners of the ancient walls, which indeed had ears, to God to save Queen Elizabeth. Everyone then settled down to listen, which in the wet and drafty stands presented some slight problems. Was it all right, for instance, and not an awful bit of lése-majesté, to gulp a surreptitious cup of coffee while the Queen’s hands were being touched with the golden spurs of chivalry and she was receiving from the Archbishop the “kingly sword” with which to protect the right and punish the wrong? But at last it was over. The Queen had been crowned with the huge, hideous, sacred St. Edward’s Crown (and there was an astonishing emotional silence in the packed streets when this moment came). The trumpets shrilled again and the Tower guns roared, to the alarm of the neighborhood pigeons, and hundreds of Her Majesty’s subjects uncoiled themselves thankfully out of approaching rigor mortis and struggled along for a nip of something strong and reviving at the bar beneath the Abbey stand.

The return parade began in pouring, relentless rain, which turned khaki uniforms to greenish black as they clung to the soldiers’ backs, took the crispness out of the marvellous Pakistan turbans, and so bedewed the Foot Guards’ bearskins that they looked as gray as the grizzled mops of the elderly Fiji chieftains. The stout white-stockinged calves of the footmen on the royal carriages were pale-strawberry pink with the dye from their crimson velvet pantaloons. But the rain could not dampen the mad excitement of the crowds camping out on the sidewalks and watching the old glamorous, Kiplingesque trimmings of Empire swing by—the dark faces and the white, the smart scarlet tarbooshes of the Africans, the turned-up Australian hats, the wild-looking men from Papua and Samoa, the small, neat Gurkhas, and the Pakistan pipers hung round with leopard skins. The British regiments were also quite a sight in their various bottle-green or scarlet frogged tunics, their plaids, their colored pants and their fur caps, and with their standards decorated, by tradition, with bouquets of fresh white roses or laurel wreaths or sprigs of bay. The most comical sights in the parade were the mounted Navy and Air Force officers, who joggled along unhappily on their restive horses, which they patted beseechingly from time to time. It was the first really remarkable show of men marching wonderfully in all their wonderful-looking prewar finery that London had seen since the war. It culminated in the expected but somehow extraordinary spectacle of the gleaming, barbaric coach, slowly rolling along like a ponderous golden juggernaut, with (as it appeared to some sympathetic onlookers) its dedicated sacrifice inside—a young woman looking pale, grave, and extremely small under a crown which, as a painful reminder that uneasy lies the head that wears one, blazed with more than three thousand weighty, luminous stones, including the great, rough ruby that Henry V wore in his helmet circlet at Agincourt.

The end of the day was celebrated with floodlighting, fireworks on the river, champagne flowing expensively at gala dinners in all the big restaurants, beer and community singing flowing in the pubs, and people flowing down the Mall and Constitution Hill to floodlit Buckingham Palace, before which they squeezed together and swayed and shouted for the Queen. An innovation that brought the age of the palais de danse right up to the Palace gates was loud, raucous dance music, broadcast with an intensity that must have shattered the nice quiet evening the maternal section of the crowd was audibly hoping the Queen was having with the “Jook” after their tiring day. There was not much dancing. Here and there, a couple jived under the trees to something called a Coronation samba, and a ragged conga line determinedly shuffled along the Mall, under the arches and the suspended golden crowns that, when floodlit, are certainly the most beautiful sight to be seen in London. The crowd was good-tempered and orderly, wildly cheering the Queen when she appeared on the balcony, and then grabbing the children and starting to trudge home to bed.

The bitterly cold evening and the showers probably kept thousands of people off the streets. St. James’s Street, where the clubs were hung with brilliant heraldic trappings, behind which their members were, no doubt, toasting Her Majesty in their cellars’ remaining vintage port, was soon as silent as on a wet Sunday afternoon, and in Berkeley Square, pretty as a Watteau féte champétre with its rain-soaked rose garlands looped among the trees, the canned nightingale, installed for the season, gurgled to only a few peacefully strolling lovers. Groups of white-coated workmen began to appear and started pulling down the wooden traffic gates. The great day for Elizabeth and for England was over—or maybe, as people seem emotionally to believe, it had just begun. ♦

— Published in the print edition of the June 13, 1953, issue, with the headline “Letter From London.”

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