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mythicamagic · 3 years

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“Call it a truce”

(For the prompt if you’d like)

They'd crossed paths eight times now inside the godforsaken maze. Naraku had placed them under some sort of spell- Kagome wasn’t totally sure if her friends were also somewhere inside. It had all happened way too quickly. One second she’d been fighting alongside her comrades- the next, waking up inside a bizarre hellscape.

Sadly the only person she’d seen thus far was Sesshoumaru of all demons. When they’d first bumped into each other- blue and gold had narrowed- both quickly turning in the opposite directions.

Gradually, however, time wore on. A continuous mist obscured every corner of the black maze, its towering walls strangled by twisting, thorny vines. Red skies hung overhead, a barrier likely preventing Sesshoumaru from flying upwards, otherwise he would've escaped by now.

Kagome had just one arrow and one weathered bow. No food, and no water. Just the clothes on her back and strung out nerves, wits starting to fray at the edges. Her footsteps sounded too loud in the empty space. The mist kept rolling, making her paranoid- imagining salivating demons and evil spirits haunting her steps.

Am I going to die in here?

Gritting blunt teeth, Kagome let out a frustrated noise- wrapping her hands around the nearest thorny vines and letting reiki burst free from her fingertips. Maybe she could just blast her way through the wall. Pink light glowed like a signal flare, shimmering and giving her a brief taste of renewed hope.

“It will not work.”

She frowned, registering Sesshoumaru’s acerbic tone. Just as he’d said, when her holy light died, the thorns remained.

Kagome glanced over her shoulder, finding him closer than expected. She shifted warily to maintain some distance. They’d refrained from talking so far during their encounters in the maze. This was unexpected. And worrying. If Sesshoumaru was out of options, things were dire.

“Flying is a no go, I’m guessing?"

He stiffly nodded in response, head tilting back to gaze hatefully at the high walls. Kagome shivered, wrapping both arms around herself. “Damn it. I have no idea what to do. I can sense Naraku’s youki but it's everywhere so there's no chance of pinpointing him. It’s soaked into the air like gasoline."

"I am also unable to locate the wretch."

Kagome blinked, glad he was reciprocating conversation.

"We're locked in a spell or under a curse, I’ve got no doubt about that. I just don’t know if these are our real bodies or not…”

Were they trapped somewhere mentally? Caged like birds?

Sesshoumaru levelled a look down to her hands, gesturing with a claw. “The cuts do not hurt?”

Kagome blinked, flexing her fingers. She hadn’t even realised they’d been pricked by the thorns. “N-no.”

“Then it appears he has either somehow trapped us within a space that has absorbed our conscious minds or put us in an area that dulls the senses. Perhaps a keeper box of some kind," Sesshoumaru said easily, as though he did this all the time.

Kagome’s heart pumped at a dizzying speed. Keeper box. She'd been in one of those before. The face of sage Tokajin came to mind. “Crap,” she whispered.

"Unpleasant memories, miko?" a lofty, entertained tone brushed her hearing.

Kagome sneered half-heartedly, "it's nothing."

Sesshoumaru's eyes glowed, smiling. As if he could see right through her. "Hn."

“We gotta get out of here," she said dismissively. "Since this is Naraku we’re dealing with- I doubt just finding the centre of this maze will let us get outta here and break the curse, and knowing him there’s no exit.”

“Hn, and yet I can think of nothing else after trying everything."

Kagome gave him a sweeping glance over, swallowing. She hadn’t seen him since he’d nearly killed Kohaku- still thankful he’d released the mind controlled boy.

They were still technically enemies despite a shared goal of killing Naraku.

Steeling herself, Kagome took a breath. She then boldly stuck a hand out towards him. “Let’s work together. We haven’t got much choice. Call it a truce.”

Silence.

Kagome chanced a look at his face.

Sesshoumaru merely stared at the offered hand unblinkingly. Kagome giggled weakly. “A-ah, you shake it. It’s an ‘across the seas’ type of gesture to show we’re sealing a deal.”

Interest livened his animalistic gaze. He briefly seemed considering, perhaps wondering about her origins. Long fingers unfurled from his palm, clasping her hand strongly. The shock of skin to skin contact and sharp claws nearly jerked Kagome enough to rip her hand free. She forced herself to stay still, feeling a surge of something shoot down to her toes.

He was warmer than expected. It surprised her that callouses roughened his palm, likely from years of swordplay. She'd always figured he was too inhumanly perfect to have such a thing. Sesshoumaru blinked slowly, remaining locked in a stare. For a moment, Kagome dumbly admired his pretty white lashes.

She caught herself staring and briskly shook his hand, prying her fingers free before gesturing to several pathways, cheeks red. “S-so which way?”

Mokomoko’s soft fur caressed the bare flesh of her lower thigh in passing as Sesshoumaru stepped towards one. “I have yet to take this path. Stay close, troublesome miko," he threw over one shoulder. "I will not slow down for you.”

“Please don’t. You walk slow enough as it is,” Kagome griped, following.

---

Demons began littering the narrow, claustrophobic spaces within the maze. Kagome had to duck and weave around Sesshoumaru as he killed them with acid or fierce swipes of his claws. It forced them to get up close and personal, occasionally plastering miko and Daiyoukai together.

His scent wafted into her unwilling nose more than once- masculine and sharp, reminding her of thunderstorms. Since she couldn’t use her reiki with much finesse yet and the close quarters put her archery skills at a disadvantage, Kagome tried her best to be helpful.

“Behind you!” she’d yell, ducking under his arm before grasping his sleeve. “On your right!”

Sesshoumaru dispatched enemies without argument or complaint, calmly moving on once they lay dead.

As time dragged on, Kagome’s legs began to ache from the endless walking. Her stomach grumbled near constantly. Her limbs and body were becoming weak.

She didn’t breathe a word about it- though noticed Sesshoumaru’s lingering attention. Turning a corner, she stumbled, an arm catching her around the waist, steadying.

Kagome’s belly fluttered, and she quickly straightened. “Thanks.”

“Hn.”

They book occasional breaks, but respite was near impossible with the continued droves of enemies. After what she could only guess to be at least 17 hours- though it felt like days, they finally arrived at the centre of the maze. Exhausted, Kagome kept a hand buried within mokomoko to keep her upright, leaning against the stability he offered. They’d shed a lot of restraint about touch around hour 9 of their journey.

As first suspected however, there was nothing in the middle of the maze. Just a plain space with a single fountain. They hadn’t come across a single exit either.

Kagome’s knees quivered a little, “d-do you have a plan B?” she rasped, throat dry. What she wouldn’t give for some water.

Sesshoumaru stared grimly ahead, slowly lowering his calm attention to her. If she could hazard a guess, he was likely thinking he could survive. He’d weather the storm of hunger and dehydration much longer than she.

“I suspect the reason Naraku lingers is because he predicted I would kill you,” his velvety voice was completely at odds with his words.

Kagome stiffened, leaning slightly away from the warmth of luxurious furs. “...That would make sense,” the admission slipped out, “he’s a sadistic prick. He’s probably watching us right now, getting his kicks from seeing us struggle.”

Sesshoumaru turned to her, lifting a clawed hand. The sharp points gleamed. They could tear through her supple flesh and bones with ease. Kagome had witnessed it enough times to know.

Rendered completely exhausted though, she had little room left for fear. She stared at him blandly, falling quiet.

He arched a brow, resting those deadly claws against her flushed skin, gradually unfurling to hold her neck. “You will not resist?”

“I’ve never taken you to be the kinda guy who would take the easy way out,” Kagome muttered, raising her chin. “Am I wrong?”

Was it her imagination or did his pupils dilate a touch?

She shivered, feeling the pads of his fingers drag against the nape of her delicate neck, thumb resting at her throat.

“No,” he rumbled softly, gripping tighter and drawing her in closer. “But since we have an audience, miko,” his voice lowered, “let us give him a show.”

Blue eyes widened- seconds before lips crashed to hers. Kagome gasped- and a sinuous tongue took advantage, shoving inside to plunder her mouth. Sensation slammed into her gut. Suddenly she was immediately aware of everything. The warmth of his palm, the dry rub of his callouses along her neck. The goosebumps rising on her flesh. How his tongue skilfully played, twined and slid against her own- and she found herself responding.

His lips were hot and quick across her own, firm and yielding and then parting to meet her tongue with his anew. Kagome’s breath shuddered. Her entire body thrummed. She found herself touching the fine, soft locks of silver hair behind his ear, strands running through her fingers like water. Their mouths broke apart, and Kagome could only give a breathy gasp as he sucked along the bent arch of her throat.

“Behind me, to the left,” he whispered, kissing her flesh bruisingly hard.

“I know,” she panted.

It happened quickly. They moved in sync- Kagome reaching for her bow and nocking her single arrow while Sesshoumaru turned, angling her to fire at the faint ripple in the sky they’d both sensed the second they’d kissed.

While the blazing firework of pure holy energy streaked into the air, the Daiyoukai followed its progress, flying with Kagome in tow. She held on around his shoulders, praying with all her might it would break through.

Her arrow pierced the demonic barrier- shattering the weak spot immediately. Sesshoumaru broke through, leaving the world of red skies and unsolvable mazes behind.

---

Kagome sucked in a gasping, strangled breath, shooting upright.

“Kagome! She’s awake, guys!”

Putting a hand to her head, she looked to her side- only to be greeted with the sight of Sesshoumaru sitting up from the ground, both of them having been sprawled out. Around them, battle raged. Inuyasha was fighting diligently, swiping madly at continuous rounds of regenerating tentacles.

Miroku and Sango seemed to be on guard duty, having been defending their unconscious bodies. Shippo immediately buried his face in Kagome’s arm, holding onto her. “You’ve been asleep for a good hour after you were both hit by that attack! Naraku kept trying to kill you! Ah- I’m so glad you’re safe!”

Kagome comforted him with a few gentle pats upon his head, murmuring softly. The shifting of weight caught her attention, and she watched as Sesshoumaru stood. He sneered softly to himself, “I do not know why you saw fit to protect this one, but I did not need your aid, humans.”

“I told ya!” Inuyasha shouted from somewhere in the distance.

“We couldn’t let you be absorbed by Naraku or he’d be even more formidable,” Sango griped.

“What my friends mean to say is- you’re welcome, Lord Sesshoumaru,” Miroku amiably smoothed over the situation.

Sesshoumaru grunted, securing his swords in place. Then, slowly, his eyes lowered.

Kagome exhaled a shuddering breath. Her heart slammed against her ribcage, cheeks burning with all the voracity of a fever, chest light and heavy all at once. Sesshoumaru’s gaze fell to the subtle parting of her mouth, before looking her in the eye for just one more lingering moment. He then moved out from behind the protection Sango and Miroku offered, racing headfirst into battle.

He just did it to break the spell, that’s all.

He’d kissed her to help flush out a weak spot from their enemy, which had opened from Naraku's shock- having lost brief control of the spell. Thinking about it as anything more than that would be foolish.

Shaking herself, Kagome followed suit. She grabbed her bow and nocked an arrow, pushing down all confused thoughts and sensations that Sesshoumaru’s wicked mouth had elicited- entering the fray alongside her friends.

#sesskag #sesshoumaru x kagome #sesskag fanfiction #sesshoumaru #kagome higurashi

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captainillogical · 4 years

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Distant Lands Ch.2

Stranded on a planet with toxic conditions and nothing but the clothes on your back, your only means of survival lies within the gem that got you here in the first place.

Spinel/Reader

collab with my lovely wife @firstofficertightpants

You wake up with a jolt, gasping for air.

Sitting up, you internally wince. Everything fucking hurts, and your body feels like you got tossed under a 16-wheeler. It’s pretty dark around you, but you can tell that you’re alone.

Once you feel like you can breathe normally again, you begin to look at your surroundings. The air is kind of humid, and smells.. weird. You were.. somewhere. It was hard to tell with how little light there was. Could it be night time already? Were you really knocked out for a whole day? The walls around you are crumbling and falling apart but it doesn’t look like anything from Earth, and you could almost make out some sort of drawings on them. They’re too worn out for you to make anything out of it, though.

You can see lush green plants growing from the cracks in the walls, and they seem strange to you. You’re no expert on plant life, but you haven’t seen plants that look like this ever in your life. Thick, ropey vines were streaming down the surface of the walls, and large bulbous, orange flower-like plants were blooming on them. They looked.. fleshy.

You stand up from your place on the ground, legs wobbly from their lack of use, and realize that half the reason why you feel so weird is that the gravity is heavier? You feel sluggish. You’re definitely not on Earth. Fuck. This is just.. great.

You take one step and groan out loud. Your leg muscles are so sore, and this is taking an immense amount of effort to not go back to curl up in a corner and pretend everything is fine. You start to feel your way around the room, hands trailing against the wall. Slowly making your way northbound, hands running over several vines and one of the flowers hiss - you quickly step away from it. Okay. The fucking flower hissed at you, no big deal.

You keep walking in the direction you were going before, and eventually find an opening in the wall with some moonlight pouring in like a spotlight. You have to bend down to get out, nearly stumbling over the scattered, worn bricks on the ground. Once you steady yourself, you look up to see that yes, it was night time you guess? You don’t see any stars, and the atmosphere is murky with a thick fog. The sky is dark and tinted a soft bright green - unlike anything you’ve ever seen, and a bright, orange moon. Actually.. three moons, what the hell?

Turning your head in both directions, you look around you for any immediate signs of danger. The trees around you are thick like a jungle, and you don’t see an immediate pathway to how exactly you got here.

Swiping your forehead, you wince and remember your flesh wound from earlier. It feels dry, so that’s good, but it also seems to be smeared down your face like someone tried wiping it off. You don’t know how you feel about this, so you try not to think about it.

You eventually spot a crude footpath that looks pretty old and overgrown, like it hasn’t been used in a century you think. You walk slowly along it, body sore and not used to the gravity change - and peer around you at the plantlife. Many of the trees here are tall and droopy, long leaves coming from high arches above. They’re similar to palm trees but also very much not. So many large tree-like bushes that are in various shades of greens and oranges, leaves and color formation very alien to you. It’s all very strange. You don’t seem to see any kind of organic lifeforms around either, except for some type of gnats and other small bugs.

You keep walking along the path you found, and you spot a couple of freshly torn tree branches, so you forge ahead.

Your mind is swimming with thoughts as you slowly regain most of what happened today. A gem you’ve never seen before tried to kill Steven, knocked you out and took you with her to a different planet, as.. what. A bargaining chip? She didn’t outright kill you, which she could’ve done very easily, but didn’t for some reason. You’re positive you came here via warp pad, but you cannot leave alone, as you are human, and humans can’t use the warp pad without at least a gem beside them.

Steven must be so very worried about you, and you hate to make him worry. You hate to make any of them worry. They’ve done so much for you, despite.. certain things. You shake your head to clear your thoughts. Best not to dwell on past mistakes, especially when you’ve got much more prominent things to worry about. Like finding a way off this fucking weird planet.

The path ahead of you turns slightly, and you start to see the beginning of an opening to a clearing. A spark of hope bubbles inside your chest as you pick up the pace. You nearly trip out into the clearing - catching yourself on a nearby tree, and you marvel at the view around you for a second.

There’s a good sized clearing here before a massive line of trees hit the outer edge - it’s probably the size of two football fields you think. The expanse of the horizon is enormous, all three moons in clear view, and you think you see a few scattered stars here and there through the thick atmosphere. There’s a couple large hills in the distance and some large towering rock formations as well from what you can see, and it would take at least a day or two to physically walk over there if you wanted to - but you’d rather eat your own foot than stay here any longer than you have to, curiosity aside. Off to the left of the jungle there seems to be miles upon miles of rocky terrain, huge chasms running through the sides of the crust. You can’t really make out anything around it from here, though.

Your eyes eventually spot the warp pad in the middle of the clearing, and you make a beeline for it. Your heart rate picks up pace too, and you cannot quell the hopeful feelings inside you.

It.. it looks intact. You let out a long, weary breath that you didn’t realize you were holding in, and walk around the warp pad to inspect it.

There isn’t any damage, and it looks usable. This was definitely the one that you came through when you were brought here. You’re unsure if there are any others on this planet, or if this is the only one. Speaking of.. all of this. This was a gem planet, clearly. You have no idea what it was used for, from what you can tell. Actually, from what you can tell, this planet seems pretty intact? Compared to some of the other planets you’ve seen while you’ve adventured with the crystal gems. Why was it abandoned? Aside from you wanting to go home, this place doesn’t seem so bad.

You are so completely lost in thought that you don’t hear someone approaching you from behind.

“Well, what do we have here?” A familiar voice speaks up from a few feet behind you, and you freeze in your tracks.

You feel the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and your turn to look at her, eyes wide.

“Didja think your little friends were gonna come save ya?” She says with a devilish grin, and takes a threatening step towards you. You take a step back. Your mouth doesn’t work for a few seconds as you regard her appearance, now that she’s not trying to actively chop you to pieces.

Her heart-shaped gem is upside down, and on her chest. Her pink hair is in pigtails, and she’s got streaks down her face, and her attire is strange. You have no idea who she’s supposed to be, and honestly you don’t give a shit. You don’t care about anyone that would dare lay a hand on Steven.

“They still could,” You reply, and try to keep your voice even. “They wouldn’t just abandon me.”

“Aww, that’s cute of you to think.” Her grin gets a little wider. “I hate to say it toots, but they ain’t gonna find us out here.” She takes another step closer to you.

“They’ll find a way,” You back up the same distance, and your heel hits the edge of the warp pad. “They always do, somehow.”

She considers you for a moment, and lets out a low chuckle that sets off your fight or flight. Your feet feel rooted to the ground.

“I seriously doubt that.” She says with a grin, and you watch in dawning horror as she expands her fist, slamming it down on the warp pad behind you with a loud crash. Some pieces of debris hits you, and you stumble, crashing to the ground.

The only half-baked plan you had of escaping just flew out the window. You struggle to get back on your feet, and you hold yourself back from screaming endlessly into the night.

“Why the FUCK would you do that!?” You yell at her, forgoing any rational thought that you had. “That was the EASIEST way for me to get home and you just ruined any chance I had!” She lets out another chuckle before responding.

“Oh, you thought you had a chance. That’s adorable.” She continues to take another step towards you, insistently getting closer. “Ya’ see.. I brought you here with the intention of not letting you go.”

“That makes no fucking sense, you came to kill Steven, like every single other gem.” You reply, unable to move anywhere without tripping on the pieces of the broken warp pad. She’s only a couple feet in front of you.

“I did. Changed my mind, though.”

“Wh..” Too many thoughts are racing through your head. “What do you mean, changed your mind!? Why ME!? I’m not even a gem! You could’ve just killed me and made this easy!!!”

“Now, why would I want to kill my best friend?” She chuckles, darkly. “I just got her.”

“B-best friend.” You reiterate, mind reeling at this. “Excuse me? You are NOT my best friend. You’re far from it.”

Her eyes snap to yours, and you’re immediately filled with unease. She moves closer to you, and gets right up in your space, merely a few inches from you.

You want to bolt.

“Ya wanna repeat that.” She replies calmly and regards your face, blinking once.

“You’re not my best friend, and I don’t even know you!”

Her hand snaps to your face, and she’s gripping your jaw roughly. You can feel her thumb pressing into your cheek, and she forces you to look at her. She grins wide enough that you can see many of her teeth, and it doesn’t reach her eyes at all.

“Sweetcheeks, we can get to know each other. We have.. time.” She ends the last word slowly, and every fiber of your being is telling you to get very, very far away from her. You grip her arm with your hands to try and pull away and she pulls you flush against her, still holding your jaw painfully. She wraps her arm around you to keep you in place.

“Now, just why would you want to leave dear ‘ol Spinel? After everything I’ve done to make sure we’d have a grand time together?” The moonlight above making her eyes look brighter, her irises boring into yours. You can’t look away.

“S-Spinel?” You push on her arm, trying to get some distance between the two of you, but she holds tight. She looks absolutely delighted and practically purrs as you say her name, and you are one hundred percent uncomfortable now. You make another attempt to pull away, but the gem has an iron grip on you.

“Say it again.” She demands, holding you in place. “Say my name.”

You feel like no matter what you do, you’re probably fucked regardless.

“Uh.. Spinel?” You nearly squeak as she presses you uncomfortably tight against her. Her gem pushing against you actually hurts.

“It's.. so nice to hear my name again.” The pink gem smirks, her face so close you can feel the words coming out of her mouth.

You make a silent agreement with yourself to get the fuck out of here as soon as possible, or at least die trying. And as if this moment couldn't get any more uncomfortable, your stomach decides to growl loudly enough for the gem to notice.

Spinel drops her hand from your face and disentangles herself from you, looking at you in mild confusion.

You suddenly notice just how hungry you are as your stomach growls again, and it feels like it’s eating itself. You avoid making eye contact with the strange gem in front of you as you attempt to walk around her, done with this place, done with this gem, and done with everything. You’ll unpack all of your emotional shit later, if you ever get time to yourself.

A hand shoots out and grabs onto your arm, stopping you in your tracks.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Spinel spits out at you with a glare.

“I gotta eat.” You answer curtly, pushing her hand off your arm. Why the fuck is this bitch so touchy?

“Not alone, you aren't.” Her fist finds its way to your arm again, and this time her grip is much tighter than before.

You sigh loudly, extremely annoyed at this point. Not only were you stranded on an alien planet, but you were stranded with this crazy ass gem who couldn't decide if she wanted to kill you or be your best friend. You want to scream.

“Okay, fine. But I need to find something NOW.” You turn from her and walk off, and she follows closely behind you, much to your irritation.

You look briefly around the clearing for anything that looks even remotely edible, and you find nothing. It’s dark out, but there’s enough moonlight to see that there’s really nothing but the now-destroyed warp pad here. Heading back from where you came is probably your best option, considering this area has only one pathway in and out.

On your way back you actually spot a couple bushes in the thick of the trees a few feet out that seem to be bearing some kind of berry. You think you'll take your chances, and meander your way through enough vines to nearly strangle yourself. Spinel is still holding your wrist, and she follows you closely. You wish you could ditch her somehow, because you're worried she'll murder you in your sleep. You think maybe later you can try to find an opportunity to escape her somehow.

The berries on this bush are.. weird. They're a mix of blues and oranges which is kinda wild, but you're so hungry you don't even care. You pick a couple off the bush, and hold them up to your face to sniff them.

"What are those?" The gem next to you asks.

"No idea. Don't care at this point though." You reply, and shovel a couple into your mouth.

They burst in between your teeth, and they taste.. not great, you can't lie. But you're hungry, and they seem alright, so you scarf down enough to placate your stomach. You grab another handful to bring with you to the ruins you woke up in, aka your makeshift shelter. Spinel is watching you with curiosity, and almost looks like she wants to try the berries herself.

You move around her carefully - you don’t want to agitate her again, and you don’t want to give her any indication that you were fine with her as well. Nearly tripping over the heavy foliage, you walk back to the narrow pathway so you can attempt to rest for the night. It’s getting colder, and you only wore long sleeves and jeans today. You quietly curse yourself for not wearing a sweater today like you were going to originally.

“What was that?” The gem asks from behind you.

“Nothing.” You reply. Of course she heard you.

“Are you keeping secrets from me?” She stops, and grips your arm tightly. You turn around to face her.

“No, first of a-” You feel something coming up and slam your hand over your mouth. You hurl against the tree next to you. Christ, it tastes worse coming back up. You empty the contents of your stomach on the ground, gripping the tree for support.

You feel a hand on the back of your neck, gently grabbing your hair away from your face. You feel fucking awful, but you have enough in you to be pissed that she thinks she can touch you like this. After a few more dry heaves, you feel like it’s stopped enough. Leaning against the tree to steady your breathing, you finally find enough strength to push her hand away from you, and you walk off angrily to the ruins. She’s holding your arm again - of fucking course.

You don’t know if you have any strength in you to continue to find any sort of food source tonight. It might be best for you to rest for a couple hours, and get up when it’s lighter out. The temperature is also rapidly declining, and you worry if you can’t find some source of warmth, you’ll freeze to death before you can even get out of this place.

It only takes you a couple minutes to get back to where you were before you ventured out. You’re miserable, pissy, cold, and you feel like absolute shit. And it doesn’t help that the single being to get you into this entire mess is standing next to you like you should be grateful to her for this. It’s fucking insane.

You head back inside the hole you came out of earlier, but not before grabbing a couple large leaves off the weird palm trees to make yourself a makeshift cot. Maybe you can salvage some kind of warmth for yourself..

“Whatcha doin?” Spinel has the gall to ask beside you. You stare at her.

“I’m going to sleep.” You reply, moodily.

“Why?”

“Because humans need rest to recuperate.” You aggravatedly sigh, and lay a large leaf down in the corner, away from the vines with the hissing flowers. You sit down on it, and Spinel moves to join you.

“Okay uh, can you.. Not. You can sleep over there.” You say, and point to the opposite side of the wall.

“Why would I do that if you’re right here?” She squints at you.

“Personal space?” You glare at her, and shiver from the cold creeping up on you.

“And that is?” She scoffs at you. “Who cares. And besides, you look cold.”

"Yeah, I'm good. I'll be fine right here by myself." You pull up your other two leaves over you to protect yourself. Like somehow she can't just rip these apart and strangle you to death if she wanted. She stares at you for a moment, and then sits down right next to you. Her leg is pressing against yours.

"I'm not going anywhere. I don't want you running away on me." She states, determinedly.

Oh, great. You don't even get to have the private emotional breakdown like you wanted.

Today sucks.

"Whatever. Don't touch me." You huff, and roll over to your side. It's cold, now. Decently cold, actually. It was humid when you woke up some time ago, but in the last half an hour or so it got significantly chilly. You seriously hate this planet. Your abdomen is sore from the violent vomiting before, and your whole body just aches in general. You still feel the pain on the side of your face from your flesh wound from earlier. You haven't felt this shitty in a long time.

You're lost in thought when you feel Spinel slowly wrap an arm around your stomach, and leans against your back. You freeze instantly.

"What did I just say?" You hear yourself say out loud.

"Nothing I have to listen to." She says from behind you, and tightens her arm around your middle.

Well, there goes your other half-baked plan of possibly sneaking away from her.

You sigh in aggravation, and reside yourself to trying to sleep. It's proving to be difficult though, because your mind won't stop swimming with thoughts and unease about the gem against you. You don't know anything about her aside from her name, and that she took you to be her best friend, whatever the fuck that actually means. You still have no idea why she came to kill Steven earlier, or how she knew of him in the first place, considering you've known him half his life and you've never seen her before. Or even mentioned. But somehow, she knows him.

You feel some warmth coming from her, and try not to lean into it. You hate her. Your life was going great before all of this. You miss your bed, you miss your sweater, you miss the food you bought earlier and left on the counter.

You miss your home. You miss the gems.

You miss Steven.

Sighing again out loud, you pull your leaves closer to you. You'll deal with other things in the morning if you don't die in your sleep. Your eyes droop heavily, weariness from the day catching up to you. Sleep comes to you eventually.

#spinel x reader #spinel #su #spinel self insert #Steven Universe #fic #distant lands #vomit warning #my fic

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real-jaune-isms · 4 years

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RWBY Volume 7 Chapter 10 Rundown

Another great and satisfying episode, yet it leaves us with a better cliffhanger than even the one going into this last winter hiatus. I have to commend them for that, even if I hate how badly I couldn’t wait for the next episode. But while so many of the scenes were really good, it almost feels too good to be true. The heat going off and Watts being as in control as he was could be the worst things get this volume, but I can’t help but anticipate the moment it goes from bad to worse. Spoilers for next week, that moment is coming soon.

Fortunately for my recurring annoyance at their bad habit of doing this, the episode does not start in the aftermath of this Grimm attack like they had for the one following Penny being framed and the riots after Jacques laid everybody off. Instead we open to Mantle still in turmoil and distress. Grimm are running and flying everywhere, Atlesian soldiers are killing a few but still taking casualties, and people are running for their lives in mass, one group barely avoiding getting trampled by a stampede of Mega Goliaths, or Megoliaths for short. We briefly see the Happy Huntresses doing a good job of defending civilians before a Sabyr runs by them. Another Sabyr tries to attack a Faunus mother and son before getting literally cat-called by Nora who jumps from the top of a building to bash it to dust. Marrow and Weiss are with her, and get back to work as they see another wave of the vicious cats running in. Speaking of cats, Blake is being chased by a Megoliath and 3 Ursai, and only dodges the smaller beasts by using Dust based clones to take them down or put them in the path of getting trampled by the larger pachyderm. The Megoliath can’t handle corners as well as she can and crashes into the front of a building in trying to keep following her. The beast is closing in, but she dodges to the right and it instead runs right into a rooted Elm who stops it dead in its tracks and even lifts it into the air by its tusks. Yang rushes in and plants her sticky bombs on the thing’s belly before Elm throws it a few dozen feet into the air where Yang blows it up. The three are winded but still urge civilians to get to the nearest shelter, knowing full well that even if those shelters are going to fill up fast there’s not much safe alternative right now. Qrow and Clover are taking Teryx out from the rooftops before getting unheard new orders and leaping away. Back to the first group of heroes, Weiss shows off a little and impales a Sabyr that had leaped over Marrow’s head on her Knight’s sword. She then looks at him from behind the blade and laughs that he had gotten scared by that and is holding his tail for safety. Ruby had done the same peeking around the edge of something to laugh 4 episodes ago. Guess some of her partner’s habits are rubbing off on the Ice Queen~ The civilians they’re protecting are backed against the border wall as alarm lights are still turning on all around them, making for a very panic inducing environment. They beg Nora to let them be taken to Atlas where it’s safe, saying they won’t survive here and decrying Ironwood for not doing anything to help. Nora tries to quell the outrage, promising they will be taken to safety, just give the huntsmen and huntresses a little more time.

But they soon get something better than “a little more time”, screens all over Mantle lighting up with a broadcast from Robyn Hill and General Ironwood who are hand in hand to prove there will be no lies. Such a useful Semblance Robyn has~ Ironwood is telling everyone about Salem right here and now, though he leaves out the part about her being Ozpin’s immortal evil ex and just says she’s the ancient and malicious force behind the attacks on Beacon and Haven. We see shots of our other heroes killing Grimm in Mantle, like Ruby with Harriet, and Ren and Jaune with Vine, as they realize Ironwood is coming clean. Even the villains are shown hearing what he has to say, Cinder and Neo watching the broadcast on the latter’s Scroll while Watts and Tyrian hide out in an alleyway. Speaking of those two bad boys, Ironwood publicly outs them as being responsible for all the recent hardship and freezing in Mantle and says that the panic and distrust they’ve sewn is exactly what Salem wants. It’s a pretty rousing speech, especially when he says that the people have what it takes to overcome this threat if they all work together. A pack of Sabyrs had been charging up the street to attack the people Ren and Jaune were protecting, but Vine uses his aura arms to spread them apart and press them against the buildings on either side so there is a clear path down the middle. As the General starts to inspire people, Jaune uses all his training and experience... from preschool crosswalk duty. It does help here though, since everyone gets into a single file line and keeps track of one another through a hand on the shoulder so they all stay close together while Jaune boosts Ren’s Semblance to mask the entire group from the Grimm pack they’re walking right through the middle of. He even has a few of the preschool kids there to “show’em how it’s done~”. The whole thing has a bit of a biblical Exodus vibe if I may be honest, and it’s kinda satisfying to see Jaune has skills and strengths no one saw coming from taking the work others thought was beneath them. Ironwood also admits why he wasn’t doing much to help Mantle, that being that he was focused on the Amity Tower that he says is now complete and ready to launch. The renovation of the Amity Coliseum is not news to Watts, but he didn’t know it was to become a communications tower and he pulls up the schematics in disbelief that James was working on such a big project without him noticing. Ironwood declares that he is taking all security ships away from Amity, and sending a dozen more down with them, to evacuate everyone in Mantle up to the safety of Atlas. Robyn publicly endorses and fully supports the plan and says now is the time to come together for peace, and the once terrified crowds cheer.

Someone who is NOT cheering is Tyrian, who punches a wall hard enough to leave cracks out of anger and frustration. All their work causing death and chaos, and the people are more united than ever. Peace like that is sickening to him. But Watts quells his rage for the moment, he’s still got a scheme in mind. He just needs Tyrian to cause a bit more trouble and keep the public’s eye on Mantle while he pays a visit to Ironwood’s pet project. Tyrian raises the valid point that this is already about as chaotic as you can get, but Watts plays to his ego and says if anyone can accomplish the task it’s a master like him. Robyn’s still on screen saying that the people still in shelters should stay put and transports will come to them, and that she will personally be coming to help in Sector 17. And that’s enough to inspire the psychopathic scorpion’s next move.

Meanwhile, we go back to Atlas where the cycloptic pyromaniac... I mean Cinder, is pissed that Watts and Tyrian have already started a grand plan before she arrived and she had no idea. Last she had heard Salem would be targeting Vacuo and she would have Atlas all to her secret self in the meantime. But she realizes that since she was left for dead at Haven Salem has changed the plan. She’s been out of the loop, but she’s not out of the game. Since everyone is focused on the trouble Watts started down in Mantle, no one will be paying attention if she makes her move in Atlas. Neo lets her disguise powers do the talking for her by turning into a perfect doppelganger of Ruby. She wants to go after Ruby now and get her revenge, but Cinder insists that they will be following HER plan dammit. First the Maiden powers (so she can become stronger and hopefully be able to kill Ruby at last), then they can indulge in cathartic revenge. So Neo will go after Oscar to get the lamp, since they want to take that from the heroes too, and Cinder will take advantage of Ironwood’s paranoia to expose Fria’s hiding spot. As we see next episode, she actually has a really good subtle plan for that. What is less subtle is the foreshadowing of how Neo will achieve her part of the plan: she’ll pose as one of the heroes she saw at the dinner party and thus can turn into to get close to Oscar and catch him by surprise, most likely that’s going to be Ruby.

Back down in Mantle, dozens of ships indeed start arriving and landing to evacuate the civilians to safety. We hear a sonic boom and see a streak of green dash across the sky. Another three Megoliaths charge at the ship Blake and Yang are helping herd people onto, but Elm reveals that her hammer is also a rocket launcher and uses it to blow the Grimm away. She even roots her feet down to brace herself against the recoil. Then she gives the cheering people an okay sign and a smile, it’s all in a day’s work! They hear a sonic boom too and the green streak soars by them too. Ruby and Harriet are looking for the closest landing zone to bring their group of civilians to, but instead find a bigger and meaner Megoliath than the last few. Maybe they were actually just Goliaths and this one is a real Megoliath... Regardless, it’s blocking the way to the LZ and charging at them. Luckily, the green streak soars in and is revealed to be Penny!! She shots a beam in front of the Grimm to disorient and stop it before landing with her friends. Harriet and Penny rush in to try and take the monster down, while Ruby tries to focus and tap into her Silver Eyes. Unlike last Volume, she can’t keep her focus for very long and abandons that strategy in favor of flying up to a rooftop to shoot the Grimm. It does next to nothing, as does Penny stabbing all her swords into the elephant’s exposed skull. Instead it pulls the poor android in close by the wires her swords are still attached to and sends her flying a few blocks away. Ruby dashes over to check on her, but she’s fine. She just cheerfully says ouch and comments on how dangerous the mammoth’s tusks are. This gives Ruby a great idea and we get one of those confidently nodding in agreement without even having to ask what the plan is moments from Penny... before she asks Ruby to tell her what it is. Harriet is still zooming around and weaving between the Grimm’s legs, trying whatever she can to stop or even slow the beast, to only detrimental results. Her Aura breaks, but Penny blasts the Megoliath’s head before it can trample the speedster and gets it to turn down a different street toward her. It does so, and she fires a Kamehameha at it. No, really. She moves her hands to one side and behind her to charge it, then keeps them cupped together to fire the blast in front of her! Admittedly the energy is coming from her swords spinning in a circle in front of her, as she has done since her first fight in Volume 1, but the hand movement was different here and more in line with Dragon Ball’s most iconic technique. Still, she one ups the reference by diverting 3 swords further down and to her left to fire a smaller beam at one of the Grimm’s tusks. The single point on tusk starts to heat up, while the larger beam seems to be mostly for slowing the Grimm. At Ruby’s signal, Penny stops the attack altogether and the speedster zooms right up to the Megoliath’s face to cut off the tusk at the point weakened by the heat of Penny’s beam. Clever strategy, weakening the density at that point to make it vulnerable. What comes next makes the plan epic though, as Penny grabs the severed tusk and impales it into the ground with the tip facing up while Ruby trips the mammoth’s back leg and it falls onto its own sharp body part. Much like the Omnidroid from the Incredibles, the only thing strong enough to kill it is itself. With the dangerous beast defeated, the people cheer and Penny’s reputation is restored as the Protector of Mantle. They can safely evacuate their group, and they hear similar good news from Nora and Yang’s squads. Hooray!

As Penny gives Robyn this good news over the comms, we cut to the hometown hero herself as she tells Joanna to bring the people they’re with to safety while she “checks for stragglers” and runs down an alley. Tyrian arrives to ambush her and bemoan how he hates all the hope and happiness she brings as he dodges her crossbow bolts and even catches one between his fingers before bending it with his thumb. But as he charges at her, a fishing hook almost snags him and he realizes he is the one being ambushed. Qrow and Clover are here to back Robyn up and she purposefully revealed her location to, no fishing pun intended, lure the killer in. She wants first crack at the bastard who killed her followers, but Clover wants to settle his grudge first. Unfortunately, neither can compare to the chip on Qrow’s shoulder after this punk poisoned him in Volume 4 so he’s earned the first shot. Tyrian does not like this new development one bit, and it’s possible he might just be outmatched... but we have to wait until next episode to see how that goes.

For the final storyline of the night, Doctor Watts is flying up to Amity to give the new communications tower a check up of sorts. With carpetbag in hand he makes his way to the center of the arena and surveys the renovations. They are... rather lackluster, and that’s the point. Ironwood lied about the tower being finished so he could bait Watts into coming to try and sabotage it, and the doors lock so the evil genius can’t escape. You might be wondering how the General could have lied when he was on video with a human lie detector, but they were sneaky and used a close up of just his face when he said the tower was completed so neither Watts or the audience saw that it was a lie!! Ironwood leaps down from the commentator’s booth to face Watts in the arena, and Watts uses his hacking rings to activate the biome system so their duel can be a bit more interesting~ A couple geyser and volcano biomes, and four gravity platform sections. The gravity biomes were apparently the only type CRWBY didn’t get to show off during the Vytal Tournament, so they made them the focal point of this fight. Ironwood has the good sense to try and shoot Watts while he’s bent over to touch the ground and activate the biomes, but the scientist is nothing if not ingenious and has a hexagonal shield of hard light Dust to project out of his right glove that stops the bullet. While Ironwood is checking what biomes are coming up, Watts runs off the edge and leaps onto one of the rising platforms in a gravity section. When all the mechanical changing is said and done, Watts has the high ground and both men draw their weapons. Ironwood of course has his two thick hand guns, while Watts is revealed to carry a flintlock pistol with gold vine designs up the double barrels and about... 18 or 20 chambers for bullets. That is way too much gun for one gun. From what small glimpse we get of the bullets, they seem to be hard light dust based, so who knows how much of an oomph they will pack? As he starts spinning the chambers, Watts admittedly indulges in cliche to say he won’t be going down without a fight. And that’s where the episode ends, a great cliffhanger leaving us in enthusiastic high spirits. I loved this episode a lot, and lots of other fans seem to have too.

Shame I have existential dread from the next one...

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starlling-writes · 5 years

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Bewitching Monsters: Hamadryad (Vérus) Part 3

Series Rating: 18+ Chapter Contains: swearing, slight non-con kissing* (immediately called out) *If you’d like to skip this chapter, click here for the next part, which will have a short synopsis of this chapter Pairing: f/m BeMo Masterlist ☆ Writing Masterlist

**Alt Pronouns are used in this chapter. Please refer to the following guide.

Every time I stepped into the archives, my heart danced. So much knowledge and insight and history. Wrenching myself out of these walls was always a chore; I could spend months in here, undisturbed, without noticing.

“Ah, Witch. Back again,” intoned Lybras, the head archivist. Ve was a dragon, who took a partial humanoid form while in vis archive—easier to move around with a smaller body. Though vis horns still proved cumbersome in certain areas. Vis scales were a brilliant turquoise, dabbled with navy and oceanic stripes, that stood out from the leather and paper books even in dimmest of candlelight. “What are we hunting today?”

“Garrán i bhfolach. Or as close to it as I can get.”

Ve stopped mid motion and dragged vis stony gaze to me. “That is no simple spell.”

“I have no simple client.”

Ve harrumphed and organized vis work before standing and jerking a claw for me to follow. Deeper and deeper into the sea we waltzed. How such a large being in a secondary form moved so adeptly amazed me. I stumbled on a few stairs, misjudged a corner and banged my shoulder, and almost ran into another guest. It felt like five minutes before we finally stopped in the most solitary nook possible in the archive.

Towering at the end of a narrow hallway was a grand, iron door with runic reliefs. It was spelled to repel magics. No wonder it was so far set from everything else.

“It has been some time since I could certainly say that spell resided here, but it would be in there.” Lybras gave me a sidelong stare. “Are you certain about this?”

Less so than I was when I first came in here. Why was it such a restricted spell? I already figured it was a complicated spell but I didn’t guess this. I was beginning to see why ichor was a reasonable payment. “Yeah,” I halfheartedly smiled. “Let’s do this.”

“One hour.” Ve opened a small cabinet mounted on the wall and retrieved the rope and harness it held. It was secured to the wall at one end, and was long enough to reach anywhere in the vault beyond. Since the room drained magic, it was a failsafe to prevent death. Being closer to the mundane human race, I could survive longer in there. Still, it was not going to be pleasant.

And so began my hunt.

Nails hammered into my skull as my guts were pulled out through my throat. That’s what it felt like anyway. I was conscious of the pain wracking my body long before I regained any motor functions. Once I plied my eyes open, the world slowly pieced together. It was a fight to keep my eyes open for more than a second, but gradually I managed.

I was home. I didn’t recall how I got here. I was at the archive, searching for the hamadryad’s spell. My mind was too hazy to search for deeper answers.

“Mistress! You’re awake.” Caera’s energy flooded my body, making me shiver. She backed off but kept near. “A mielikki brought you home. And… you have a guest.” The sharpness of her final words made me concerned. Who was here, and why was Caera bothered by them?

“Who?” I managed to croak out. Damn talking hurt. I made a gesture and mouthed water. I felt her leave but before she came back—

“May I come up?” came the voice of the hamadryad. Ah. Now I empathized with Caera’s bitterness. It was his fault I was in this state. Partially anyways.

“Fine,” I rasped. He came up and perched on the foot of my bed just as Caera was returning with a glass of water. I struggled sitting up. He helped me. We locked eyes and it made me uncomfortable the amount of concern his face held. I mouthed thanks to him, then eagerly took the glass hovering beside me and greedily drank it all down.

A beat passed, neither of us having any words to say. Actually I had plenty of words I wanted to throw at him, but I worried I’d be unable to rein my emotions and further hurt my throat by yelling.

“I can help,” he quietly offered. “With your pain and magic depletion, I mean. Though I’m not sure you’d be happy with it right now.”

My brow furrowed. I assumed he meant giving me some ichor, but I couldn’t piece together why I might be against it. He already revealed that there were different types of ichor; did he mean I wouldn’t like the kind he’d give me? Or was it the method of giving it to me? Perhaps both. With my luck, likely both. Despite my reservations, I nodded. I felt like hell.

He moved closer and I tensed as he drew into kissing distance. He hesitated. Did he sense my feelings, or was he nervous as well? I nodded again; at this point, kissing him wasn’t a big deal. A simple price for what he offered.

“Part your lips.”

Once I did, his tongue—it felt more like a tentacle, or vine I guess with him—slipped into my mouth. I almost choked on the sudden syrup now filling my mouth. It quickly became too much. I swallowed awkwardly, not enjoying the coating it left in my throat. For a second my breathing strained as if the air was slowed by the syrup. Then I couldn’t breathe at all as his tongue slithered down my esophagus.

I pushed away from him to no avail; he grabbed me before I could get off the bed. I hit him and tried pushing him more but his restrictive grip prevented me from getting the power needed to fight him off. He didn’t budge or remove his tongue. Panic was setting in. What kind of healing method required suffocating the patient? Damn hamadryad. This is what happens when you blindly trust a fae this old.

Just as my lungs were starting to burn and ache from lack of air, a wave of cool, electric magic deluged me. And then I could breathe. I greedily inhaled as I cut a glare at the fae. After a minute of recuperating, I begrudgingly noted that I was indeed feeling perfectly fine, magic and all.

“Next time,” I groused, “give a girl some fucking warning and don’t suddenly suffocate her.”

“You agreed before asking the details of my method.”

“That’s not the point!” I knew he was right, but that didn’t mean he was in the right. “Just because fae-logic dictates you don’t have to explain yourself freely doesn’t mean you can’t show some common courtesy. Especially when dealing with a non-fae.”

He stood up and glowered down at me. His eyes were molten with ire but I didn’t shirk away. “I can kill you right now.”

“But you won’t,” I called his bluff—why was that always the go-to threat for old fae? He didn’t answer, didn’t move; acted like I was the one bluffing. But he undeniably needed me alive. “I found the spell, by the way.”

That got a reaction from him. The flinch was subtle, only noticeable if you were watching for it. His shoulders were no longer pushed back in threat; his eyes were now cold and stormy. It was hard to read much else with his bark-like skin and centuries honed poker face. But I knew he realized his position now. “And you’ll cast it as soon as you can?”

“No. I’m not casting it at all.”

— — —

A/N: Also "mielikki" are magical bears; they're the most common paramedics/healers/doctors in this world. They're named after a Finnish goddess.

BeMo Masterlist ☆ Writing Masterlist

Story: Previous — Next

Character Arc: Part 1 Part 2 [Here] Part 4 Part 5

#monster love #exophilia #writeblr #fae x human #fae #dryad x human #tree fae #Bewitching Monsters #hamadryad

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scifrey · 5 years

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Chapter Two

Ah, hello. Was your lunch as disappointing as mine? I don’t know why I expected different - I’m not so much of a hedonist that food has rated high on the list of things that I require in quality, but I had hoped that because I had a guest someone would have made more of an effort. Ah well.

It is prison after all, Rachel, isn’t it? We are meant to suffer.

Oh, no, I don’t mean to imply that I am starved or served anything that will make me ill. Goodness no. Prisoner rights have evolved significantly since the first time I was incarcerated. Hmm? Oh, I’ll get to that. Patience.

How else do I suffer? Well, the worst part about being a mad genius, as you can guess, is the boredom. Solitary Confinement is a special kind of hell. Not because it is dark, or just the right side of too cold to bring activists and indignant lawyers done on the penury system, or because I am alone. I was quite happy to hear that they were going to be leaving me all alone. It felt like a breath of spring air, a small soft finally. It was lovely to be completely alone for the first time in ages. I don’t hate people, you must understand. But I have had quite my fill, I think. After all the… well, after that.

No, solitary confinement is hell because the only thing I have to do in here is count.

I am assuming that I will be in solitary for many, many years. Potentially as little as twenty-five, a life sentence, which is the standard sentence for the sort of criminal I am. But I was sentenced to one sentence for each life lost in the, ah… ahem. Apologies. I don’t… shall we call it a ‘tragedy’? As the papers elected to do? One thousand seven hundred and fifteen lives - forty-two thousand, eight hundred and seventy-five years in jail, if I serve the all of my first degree murder sentences consecutively. At thirty one million, five hundred and thirty-six thousand seconds per year, Rachel. Can you even imagine how many seconds that is?

And shall I count them all? I just might.

Will I live that long?

Ah. Likely not. Even I have not fully worked out how this little mistake works. Oh yes, it was a mistake. Haste and desperation do not mix well with laboratory protocols, and I was indeed in desperate haste when it happened.

Yes, I promise I will tell you that as well. Patience, please. All in good time.

Forty-two thousand years is a long time to be alone. Well of course I don’t actually believe that they will hold me that long. Two, perhaps three sentences in, I will be declared rehabilitated and released. A hundred years, that’s what I assume. If the prison system still operates the same way in 2132. That is a long time to be alone, and after the events of the last six decades, I welcome it.

But it is also a long time to become bored.

Sometimes I wonder if it isn’t a shame that I cannot be given the death penalty. It’s not humane but it would put an end to things. Sometimes I wonder how I would react if they tried. Sometimes I wonder how they will react if they try and fail. I still am not certain if such a thing would kill me - it is possible that my death may only come with the complete destruction of my every cell. Burning alive, perhaps…

Forgive my gallows humor. I am old and have had more time than most to come to terms with my mortality. Or lack thereof. I don’t long for death, but I sometimes wonder if it would be easier.

To avoid both thoughts of that nature and my boredom, I count. Seconds. Minutes. Hours. Sometimes, when they are available, I count tiles and window panes, buttons on a coat, teeth on a comb, leaves on a tree, ants on tarmac, grey hairs on the head of the man in front of me on the bus.

But mostly I count seconds.

Hmm? Ah, well… good question. I suppose that it… well, it is because of the watch.

Grandpapa's silver fob watch. I recall it with a preciseness that sets it aside from all of my other admittedly numerous memories. I see it quite clearly in my mind. It glows, almost, with the nostalgia of youth.

Ah, but I’m getting poetic. You see, I forget nothing. I catalogue everything. That is what I Do. It is a small power, an obscure power, it doesn’t stack well against those found in the generations that came after me, but it is the most important, the most useful, and likely the most affecting thing to Do that has ever been recorded in one of Us.

But I was speaking of the watch.

Grandpapa worked on many watches over the years, other people’s watches, in that little street-front shop in that neighbourhood bordering the Player Estates, but I never saw him do anything but check the time on his beautiful art nouveau watch.

It never seemed to wind down. It was never scratched. Perhaps he tended to it dutifully outside of my sight, away from his place of commerce.

It was silver, the watch, with a chain like gossamer. There was a single polished gem where the chain met the loop, a dark garnet. The cover came open like butterfly wings, hinged on the opposite outer rims, and perforated in the same stained-glass way. The design was organic, something swirling and like the curling coil of a climbing vine. The numerals were roman, and the hands were shaped like stamens. They moved slowly, without the quick sharp tick to mark the time, so smoothly that one had to blink to be certain the second hand was moving at all. And the face was ever so faintly blue, like it had been made from a shaved-down sapphire.

A fairy watch.

Or at least, it seems like it must have been. If magic ever existed, if the Fae were real and not just my own primitive ancestors with the genetic abnormality occurring hundreds of generations separated providing both them and me the ability to Do, then I would not doubt for a moment that they had given Lachlan Munson the fantastical watch.

I don’t know what began my fascination with it. Perhaps my Grandpapa had dangled it over my face while I lay in my crib - but memories that old are lost in a mist for me even despite what I am. They are as shrouded behind the gauze of time as they are for most everyone else. I hypothesize it is because a child’s brain is not fully developed immediately upon birth and my genetic gift had not finished blossoming yet. Perhaps he dangled it over me. Perhaps I had been crying, and he sought to distract me by pulling me onto his knee to distract me. Perhaps he was showing me the watch because I was meant to inherit it, and he was trying to forge a connection through his son to his grandchild. Perhaps it had slipped out of his hand as he checked the time. Perhaps I had found it on his washstand.

This is one of the rare times when I can honestly say that I don't know when I first saw it. Only that it was as tied inexorably to my memory of my Grandpapa as the scent of his aftershave and the calluses on the tips of his fingers.

I also don’t know what happened to the fob watch - I never inherited it. By the time I might have been responsible enough to be given the watch, it was gone. And so was I.

Ah, but I was talking about counting.

I am seven at the time. It was the youngest a child was required to go to school, and though at the time we it was only compulsory to attend for four months of the year, I was as elated to attend as my parents were to find better distractions for my precocious mind and we had agreed that I would attend for the full term.

Being the son of a Playter, even a little known one, had its advantages. The school I attended was populated mostly with young boys and youths of a similar background to my own - upper middle class with merchant parents, all white, and mostly Presbyterian.

Shall I set the scene for you? It’s 1923, and Toronto is small and though dusty and muddy, neat. Few buildings that line the wide roads rise above three or four stories, and wires string along above the sidewalks in multi-tiered groupings. There are elegant office towers downtown, stone and small windows, elaborate cornice pieces and lintel carvings. Outside of those few blocks come the merchant buildings, Georgian red and yellow brick, housing departments stores and greengrocers and family run butchers and barbershops. Then next the row houses and cramped single family homes, dotted here and there with large houses with servants and gardens and low walls around their perimeters - high enough to make it obvious that the rabble is unwelcome, but low enough that the common gawkers can admire the fine lace of the curtains, the well-tended rose bushes, the gleaming windows.

Everyone wore hats outside, and on the roads the last of the horse-drawn vehicles are giving way to Tin Lizzies and early spoke-wheeled Fords, clunky bicycles, and blunt-nosed streetcars. Hair was pomaded, women wore dresses and low heels, men were clean shaven to thumb their noses at their father’s beards. Children played in the streets, or the public parks, and businesses were closed on Sundays so everyone could go to church.

All the photos of the time are sepia and silver, but I assure you there was vibrant colour all around - women’s evening dresses and bright red lips, the lush green of grass and trees, the blue of the lake, the riotous hues of the hundreds of billboards on any surface flat enough to paint or paste one onto it. It is a time of manners, and night-time parties filled with wild music and cocktails for the young, and what crime there was, it wasn’t happening in my neighborhood.

On the first day, the day I began to count, I was sitting on the bottom stair in my short pants and my high socks at the back of Grandpapa’s workshop, waiting for my mother to to come down from the apartment and her toilette. I have just come home from school, and she is preparing to go out with father - this was September of 1923, and the Great Depression was receding. Grandpapa’s business had survived, and father - one-handed as he was - had begun to carve a name for himself on the halls of local council chambers. If there was one thing my father was good at, it was talking. Mama had refused to go begging to her wealthier relatives for support, and had spent those lean years voraciously learning and employing every economizing ‘life hack’ that she could glean, taking in borders who could no longer afford rent on their own apartments, giving up stockings and pomade and cigarettes, and breaking into the trust they had begun for my education. I did not begrudge her that, and in the end I never ended up requiring extra funds for schooling anyway. It was a good thing Mama already owned the building in full before the stock markets crashed or we likely would have lost it.

The back stairs of the building were cramped, and a bit dusty. Like most structures on the Danforth, it was tall - three stories including the ground floor shop and a storage cellar - and skinny, with just enough space between the thick brick firewalls blocking our home from the building over for a table and chairs, or a double bed, while leaving room to walk without barking one’s shins on the furniture. There was a small cellar too, not deep, used for storing Grandpapa’s supplies and our root vegetables and pickles.

The back stairs always carried the dueling scents of Grandpapa’s workshop - mechanical oil and metal - with the upstairs smells of Mama’s perfumes and cooking, Papa’s cigarettes, furniture polish and whatever wilting flowers I could scavenge from the nearby parks to present, filthy and grinning, to my mother. Exactly four steps up, before the bend that took the stairs across the back wall, the scents mixed with perfect evenness, and that’s where I was seated.

The pin curls take extra time, and mother likes to have them just right before they go out dancing. There was a free community

As I wait, blood blossoms against the white wool on my leg, and I hope Mama will not notice. I worry less about her anger at me being untidy, and more that I know it will take an awful lot of scrubbing to get out.

Despite my vow never to lie as an adult, I was not a very honest child. At that moment, I am making up a story that will be less horrifically embarrassing than admitting that one of the older boys, Roger Phillips, had beaten me up because I had objected to certain term he had called me. This version of the story involves aliens and rocket packs. I am also not a very good liar.

The real story is this: Roger Phillips came from the sort of family that used more than three forks at dinner, and had told me, in no uncertain terms, that my father was a useless cripple and that my mother danced to nigger music. That means, he went on, that she was going to turn into nigger, and that made me the son of a nigger. I would be a nigger, too. I didn't want to be a nigger, because the young black men and women I had seen in Toronto were mostly servants. I didn't want to be a servant; I wanted to be a boy. And sometimes the black people weren't treated very well. I wanted to be treated well, so I told Roger Phillips that I was not a nigger, and would never be a nigger and liking Jazz would not turn my mother into a nigger. Secretly, I hoped I was right.

Of course, Roger Phillips was a lying little bastard. But I was seven. And Roger Phillips had said it with such conviction that I had believed him.

I had then surprised myself - and Roger Phillips - by swinging a fist at him.

I had never punched anyone before in my life, but my father had taken me to boxing matches. As I had, even then, perfect recall, I had adjusted my stance and my swing to match that of the great sweating men I saw in my memory, and lashed out.

Now, I must pause here to reinforce that perfect recall is not the same as muscle memory. I had no actual training as a boxer, no practice in making a fist, no experience in any sort of martial art. That I scored a hit at all was due to the aforementioned element of surprise.

The hit resulted in Roger Phillips getting broken nose. It also resulted in me getting pushed into an alley by his mates, and down into a pile of scrap wood and metal. The cut on my leg happened almost at once, and forestalled what I was sure would have been a vigorous beating because I had screamed so loud, and one of the boys got sick at the sight of blood. My leg and Roger Phillips' face were enough for him and he had vomited into the trash beside me. That had embarrassed the other boys enough that the whole posse had fled and I had been left to hobble my way home, alone and filthy.

I had pulled up my sock to hide the blood, but I had not known at the time that blood stains and spreads, that it seeps through wool just as easily as it seeps out of a cut. I snuck around to the back entrance to the workshop and dashed by Grandpapa to the water closet on the second floor to wash the dirt off my face and hands. Mother couldn't abide smudgy kisses, especially after she had put on her face.

As I wait on the step, as I did every night, I pull my homework out of the leather satchel that serves as my school bag and begin my arithmetic problems. Grandpapa only lets me sit up and play chess with him if my homework was finished, and Grandpapa's chess lessons are significantly more interesting than my homework.

I remember that Father came downstairs first, dapper as always and smiling around a slim cigarette that balances just so right in the centre of his bottom lip. It was a trick I often attempted to mimic with the sticks of lollipops and could never quite manage.

He kisses the top of my head, as always, and says, in this thick brogue: "Righto, sport? And how was school today?"

"Boring," I reply, as always. "Father, can't you make the teacher give me harder problems?"

Father ruffles my hair. "Now, what's the point in that, my lad? Then you'd have to advance past the other kids, and being the little fish in a big pond is not all it's cracked up to be. Much better to be a big fish in a small pond, boyo."

"I'm a small fish no matter what pond I'm in," I protest, but father has stopped listening. He is smoothing out his mustache in the tarnished mirror by the back door, and throwing his cuffs to ensure they sit right against his suit sleeve. His other sleeve is tucked up to his elbow, pinned discreetly so the bulk of rolled fabric doesn’t bring extra attention to his missing hand. He is dapper, and handsome in his one remaining good suit, carefully preserved and quietly patched these past four years.

He is not negligent of me or my concern. He is simply madly in love with my mother and is always just a little unsure how he landed such an amazing woman. So he tries very hard to be worthy of taking her arm. Sometimes he gets distracted. But he means well.

Meant well. He is sixty years dead, and committed to the present as I am, I sometimes forget.

But back in that memory, the soft click of heels against the hardwood stair make both my head, and my father's swivel on our necks.

"Woooeee," father says softly. "Now lookit that. Ain't that just a dame who's the bees knees?" The slang sits like rocks in my father’s mouth, awkward and roughened by his accent. He tried so very hard to be relevant to the folks he wanted to please - mother’s family, the people of the neighbourhood, the men of the political endeavors that he sought to

"Scamp," Mama teases from the top of the stairs. Even now I can envision her deliberate decent, black-lacquered nails skimming the banister, dark lips curved in a flirtatious smile as her kohl lined eyes flicked at my father, then indulgent as she turned them to me. "Oh, dear, and scamp," she admonishes, gaze narrowing on my wool socks, somehow managing to see them from her place above me on the stairs. I am convinced that this is something that all mothers can Do, whether they are one of Us or not. "Oliver?"

It is a question only in that her voice inflects upward. In every other way it is a demand for answers couched in disappointment.

"There was a spaceman. He said he was from Venus and the backwash from his jet pack made me fall into a—"

"Oliver," she interrupts, and her darkly painted mouth is a fearsome thing to behold as it curves down. As much as I was a dishonest child and a poor liar, I was also an unbelievable mama's boy. All of my clever tales of rocket ships and aliens crumble on my tongue.

"Phillip Rogers called you a nigger because you like jazz," I say softly. "So I hit him. Then they pushed me down."

"Oliver!" mother says.

"Hit him?" father shouts at the same time.

"Like this," I say, and show him the right hook. Father grabs my wrist mid-air and inspects my knuckles. They are scraped. I hadn't noticed.

"Oliver, my lad, this is unacceptable," father tuts. Grandpapa keeps a bottle of cheap Scotch in one of his work table drawers, and our commotion has summoned him with bottle and clean handkerchief. He dabs his pocket handkerchief into the liquor and applies it to my hand. The sting is fair punishment. "Men don't hit other men," he rumbles at me.

"But men defend their dames, you said so," I protest. "Besides, Papa shot people in the war."

Papa kneels in front of me. He puts his hands around my shoulders. "That was something different, Oliver. Fighting should be avoided. Don't be a dummy. And besides, your gorgeous mother is my dame to defend, not yours."

"I wish you gentlemen would stop calling me a dame," mother protests half-heartedly. She’s made her way around me and has joined father, crouched down by the bottom stair - not kneeling, she wouldn’t want to get a pull in her stockings - and peeling down my wool sock, revealing the cut there to her disapproving eyes. I gasp at the unexpected pain of the fresh air slapping against the cut, and grab at her shoulders. Normally she would admonish me for wrinkling her dress, but now she just leans in and kisses my neck.

Father cranes his head and pecks a kiss to her raised arm, right on the elbow. "Oh? And what should I call you instead? What do the young swathes say today? The cat's pajamas?" He kisses her shoulder. "My ducky?" Her neck. "My doll?" Her chin. "My tom-ah-tah?" The tip of her nose.

Mother slaps his shoulder playfully. "As long as it's not late to dinner." She winks broadly at me and I laugh obediently. The joke hasn't been funny since I was three, but it makes her laugh in return, and I dearly like her laughter.

"Off to your grandpapa with you," Papa says, pointing to where his own father has retreated to stand by the wall beside the water closet. "He’ll have a look at your leg. Do you need a stitch?"

"Don't think so," I mutter. Grandpapa is going to put iodine on it and it's going to sting and I don't want to go.

"I don't think so," mother corrects. "Full sentences, Oliver."

"Yes, mother. I don't think so."

"That's my boy." She ruffles my hair. "What a hero you are, defending your mama like that. Thank you."

"You're welcome, mama," I say.

"But no more hitting," father adds.

I squint at him for that. "But what if they really deserve it?"

"No."

"Can I hit a mobster?"

"No."

"What if they're robbing a bank?"

Father shifts his cigarette in an exasperated grin. "Fine, okay. You can hit mobsters if you catch them robbing banks."

"Okay," I agree. I hold out my hand so we can shake on it, and father, all playful solemnity, grasps it. We shake. "It's a deal."

"It's a deal," he says. "Now, do as your mother says. Water closet. Grandpapa and you can have dinner after - I’ve laid out your plates and there’s cabbage rolls in the oven."

"I don't like cabbage," I complain.

"But I do," mother says and kisses the exact middle of my forehead. "Off you go Oliver."

She stands and I do as I'm told. Grandpapa lays a warm hand on my shoulder, comforting, supportive. Mother stands and pats her hair, then smooths out the wrinkles my little fingers had wound into the shoulders of her dress.

She pecks father on the cheek, then rubs away the lipstick with her thumb.

"Should I teach him how to throw a proper punch?" father asks her as he opens the back door for her. They’re so wound up in one another I think they’ve even forgotten that I can still hear them as they step into the back alley, making their way down that toward the cross street that will allow them to access the Danforth and stroll at their leisure to the community hall and the dance.

"Absolutely not," mother says, as she lingers by the door, throwing a look over her shoulder at me. "Not until he's ten, at least."

"Boys will be boys. He's going to scrap whether we condone it or not, Flo. I'd rather he knew how to end the fight with one good right hook."

Mama sighs. "We'll talk about it in the morning. How's that?"

"Sure, whatever you say, darling."

"Butt me, my dear," Mama says, and Papa obligingly pulls his cigarette case from his jacket pocket with his one hand and flips it open. Once she’s plucked one out of the case, he pockets it and comes back up with his zippo, which he flicks open. Mama reaches up to touch the tip of the cigarette to the flame. I memorize that, too, the easy charm of it, the economy of movement. The fact that he obviously practiced to be able to do the whole routine smoothly with one hand.

And then, in a swirl of smoke, they are out the door and down the walk.

“Come, sit,” Grandpapa husked at me, and I toed off my shoes and yanked off my socks and sat on the closed lid of the toilet.

The iodine stung as much as I expected and I winced and almost succeeded in holding still. Grandpapa has hold of my ankle to keep me steady and my hands are fisted in his shirtsleeves and he is gazing intently at the cut with his loupe.

“Not too bad, lad,” he murmurs over the cut, cleaning away blood and dirt. “But I’ll be needin’ my tweezers for these splinters, I’m thinkin’.”

“Oh, no,” I blurt, trying to jerk away and Grandpapa lets me go.

“Here now,” he says, comforting and gruff, standing. “I’ll be right back. Sit still.”

“Yes sir,” I reply glumly, and he is back right away with said tweezers and an oil lamp besides. He puts the lamp down on the floor by my leg and begins the grisly business.

Despite the pain, after a while the boredom comes.

If you ever write this confession down, make sure you transcribe that with a capital letter - The Boredom.

I didn’t know how to explain it then, save that it was a kind of deep, brown mood that yanked me into spirals of dissociation and empty staring as my brain went dark and dumb, or a spinning mind and limbs that would not rest, my mind flashing and popping without tempo like a string of cheap fireworks. It was encompassing and happened whenever there was nothing particular to occupy my mind. If I already knew what the teacher was explaining, or if I had completed a book and had nothing further to read, if the games of the other children were not engaging in their complexity, if the conversation of the adults around me was repetitive or outside of my understanding simply by dint of not being privilege to specific facts or information. I required stimulation at all times, and at this point was too young to know how to seek out that stimulation myself - I had no library card of my own, no laboratory, no adult who yet understood how deeply, frustratingly unoccupied I often was.

I start to fidget. Mama hates it when I fidget. That's what she calls it when I start counting the ceiling tiles, head right back on my neck and lips working silently over each number, counting the small wrinkles in my skin, or the number of small round scabs. This time I was starting at Grandpapa’s head, fingers tapping on my thigh to keep account, trying not to jerk out of Grandpapa’s hands as he worked and jiggling the other leg to expend the energy the the pain sent zinging up my spine.

"What are you doing, Olly, my boy?" Grandpapa asks.

"Counting," I answer, because the one person I never lie to is Grandpapa.

"Counting what?"

"How many black hairs you have," I say. "I was going to count the silver ones, but there are too many. They are too close together and I can't see them all individually. But the black ones stand out."

Grandpapa runs a wrinkly hand over his pomaded hair and chuckles. "I see. And when you're done counting those?"

"Maybe I'll count the ceiling pattern again, though that never changes."

Grandpapa's dark eyes narrow. "Do you count a lot, Olly?"

"Yes, sir."

"What sorts of things do you count?"

"Blades of grass, clouds, the checks on the back of Edith Parker's dress,” I admit slowly. No one’s ever asked me before. “She sits in front of me in class, even though my last name comes before hers in the alphabet. She was too short to sit behind me."

Grandpapa leans back and studies me. "Why do you count, Olly?"

"Because sometimes I have nothing else to do, sir."

"So talking with your Grandpapa isn't stimulating enough, eh?"

I feel my cheeks going red. I am embarrassed. "That's not what I mean," I protest. "I mean, I can listen, and I can answer, and I can count all at the same time. I am really good at school, so, when a test is over, or something like that, and I'm waiting for the other kids to finish, and they're slow, I count. In my head."

"Seems like sometimes you fight, too.”

“Only today,” I promise. “Never again.”

“Don’t make promises you don’t you’ll be able to keep,” Grandpapa says, and sets aside his tools. I’ve been so engrossed in counting that I hadn’t noticed that he had finished, wrapping my leg snug with some of the hospital gauze that Mama, ever the nurse even now, insists on keeping in the medicine kit.

“But I won’t--”

“You won’t intend to,” Grandpapa says, washing his hands. Not knowing what else to do, I say on the toilet. “But sometimes a fight comes to you, without you meaning to. Let’s go up to the kitchen, there’s more space there.”

Grandpapa takes the time to throw the bolt on both of the downstairs doors and turn his shop sign over to ‘closed’. And then, standing beside the kitchen table, Grandpapa shows me how to curl my fingers into the kind of fist I can use to strike a person without breaking my own fingers.

When I’ve punched his palm to his satisfaction, we dish out our cabbage rolls and part way through dinner I resume counting his black hairs.

"Alright then." Grandpapa digs his watch out of his pocket and flips it open. The glass face is polished and shiny. "Come sit on my knee, Olly," he says, and I do, eager to scramble into his lap and cuddle against his heartbeat. "Can you read this?"

"It just says I, two Is, three Is, I and V—"

He chuckles, cutting me off. "Those are roman numerals. It says, one, two, three, four... Do you see the pattern?"

"Oh! V is five? Is X ten?"

"Yes. My, you are a clever boy."

"Why doesn't your watch have numbers? I thought watches told you the time, but it doesn't have the time, it has all the times."

"Olly, my boy, let me show you how to read the time. This is the hour hand. This is the minute hand. And this is the second hand. Do you see it moving fast? Tick, tick, tick. Like you, the second hand likes to count. One, two, three, four..."

"What is it counting?"

"Seconds. The precious, wonderful, important seconds that make up the moments of our lives, ticking by."

"That's something worth counting," I venture softly.

"And how," Grandpapa whispers back.

"When does the second hand stop counting?"

"Never, Olly my boy. Never."

#manuscript #manuscript snippet #The Maddening Science #J.M. Frey #1920s #Toronto

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pengiesama · 6 years

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Dies Caniculares (Fic, Mikleo/Sorey, Fantasy/God AU) (Prologue)

Title: Dies Caniculares (Prologue) Series: Tales of Zestiria Pairing: Mikleo/Sorey

Summary: Mikleo dreams of travelling the world, having exciting adventures like his uncle. Unfortunately, he lives a pretty boring life in the tiny mountain village of Camlann. If he's not working at his family's temple, he's having to deal with his mother's constant attempts to match-make him to every eligible girl in town.

He also happens to be best friends with a god. That god happens to be a dog, who happens to be able to turn into a frustratingly handsome young man. Complications, as they do, inevitably crop up.

(CONTENT WARNING: shapeshifting, eventual mpreg.)

Link: AO3

This is a collaboration between me and @sensenaoya! I'm honored to be allowed to write for their wonderful AU, and even more honored to have their lovely art illustrating it!

Please heed all content warnings!

Check out my commission info here.

Read on Tumblr!

Mikleo and his uncle stumbled through the trees and underbrush. The rain was coming down in sheets; they could barely see more than an arm’s length in front of them, and the mud beneath their feet seemed determined to suck their hiking boots right off of them. The village of Camlann was in a mountainous region, which made rainstorms like these all the more dangerous – if they didn’t find proper shelter soon, they would be one mudslide away from becoming part of the mountain permanently.

Mikleo stumbled, reached for a tree branch to steady himself, and very nearly wiped out when that same tree branch snapped under his grip. His uncle’s arm was there to steady him, tight and secure around his midsection.

“Keep going!” he heard his uncle’s voice shout over the roar of the storm around them. “The ruins are up ahead!”

Mikleo tried to calm his racing heart. His Uncle Michael was a seasoned adventurer. His Uncle Michael would get them both home safe.

The Mabinogio Ruins were an ancient, sprawling temple that sat just outside Camlann – Mikleo and Michael had set off hiking from the village that morning with the intention of camping at the temple for the evening, and examining the state of its frescos and stonework. They would take note of what needed to be tended to, manage said tending with the tools in their packs, and then head back to the village the next day. It was something they did every time Michael found himself wandering back to town in the midst of his travels, and was an activity Mikleo cherished.

When they left the village, there was no sign of a storm – it was sun and clear skies for miles. This torrential downpour came from nowhere, and caught them completely off-guard. Too far already from Camlann to try heading back, they would simply have to push toward the Mabinogio Ruins with all they had, then find a room that was in good enough shape to wait things out.

Finally, they caught sight of the ancient steps that led up to the temple entrance. Rainwater rushed down the steps like a tumbling waterfall – they would be quickly washed away if they tried to climb. And so, they continued to trudge through the underbrush, step by stumbling, soaking, mud-sucking step, until they reached the entrance. They collapsed to the (marginally) dry stone floor once inside, and paused a moment to catch their breath; watching the downpour outside in wonder. It was such a massive, raging storm – how did they not manage to see it coming on the horizon before they set out?

“…we’ll need to build a fire,” Michael finally said. “Go try and find some dry kindling. Don’t wander too far.”

Mikleo nodded absently. “Yeah...yeah.”

Mikleo knew these ruins like the back of his hand. Although he didn’t often get the chance to come out in person – being nine years old with an worrisome and overprotective mother limited one’s options when striking out on a journey to an ancient, decaying temple in the mountains – he poured over maps and books on the temple regularly, and found himself wandering its halls and rooms in his dreams. It held a special place in his heart as a place of adventure, a place that symbolized his dreams to get out of his tiny village and explore the world – just like Uncle Michael.

That being said, being able to navigate the ruins blindfolded didn’t necessarily give Mikleo a leg up on finding kindling that wasn’t soaked through. Even in areas of the ruins that had intact walls and ceilings, protected from the rainstorm, the humidity was chokingly thick. Mikleo bet that if he were to reach out and take a handful of air, he could wring it out like his clothing.

Mikleo wandered into one of the temple’s inner rooms; a large, spacious chamber with a towering statue of an ancient god at its head. He knew this temple well, he knew all of its rooms, all of its statues and carvings, all of the spots where the floors were weak and shouldn’t be stepped on. So, the new addition to this room stood out: a wild dog, curled at the base of the statue, and staring straight at Mikleo.

Mikleo was paralyzed in place, a scream for his uncle caught in his throat. He was terrified of dogs, and had been for all his life. But this was so much worse. He could at least expect a tame dog, a pet dog, to have some sort of training – something that would hold them back from snarling and barking and tearing him to pieces. A wild dog was a different story. Mikleo wondered if he was fast enough to get away and back to his uncle, before the dog could catch up to him. He wondered if playing dead would work.

The moment stretched on, and finally, the dog averted its gaze. It lowered its muzzle to rest on its front paws, sighing heavily. It didn’t seem interested in making a meal of Mikleo – it didn’t even really seem interested in moving from its spot. Mikleo allowed himself to relax, a bit, and take stock of the situation. The dog was quite unlike any sort of creature he’d seen before. Instead of a wiry coat of fur, it seemed to have…feathers, feathers that were as bright and glimmering as gold. The dog was soaked through with rainwater, and as he looked closer, it was clearly shivering. Perhaps even injured. Perhaps it had retreated here, to this abandoned place, to succumb to its wounds and die a lonely death.

Every survival instinct he possessed screamed at him to run back to the temple entrance and fling himself down those waterfall temple steps to escape the beast’s jaws. But Mikleo ached with sympathy for the poor, lonely creature, and his soft heart overrode his common sense.

“Hey. Did you come in here because of the storm, too?”

The dog’s ears perked up at the sound of Mikleo’s voice, and its tail thumped against the stone floor once, twice. Mikleo swallowed down his fear and crept a bit closer.

“You…are you hurt? Are you going to bite me if I come in here?”

The dog tilted its head, one ear flopping to the other side with the motion, and thumped its tail once. Its pink tongue poked out of its muzzle just enough to be visible. Mikleo sighed.

“You don’t understand me. Just…don’t bark at me, okay?”

The dog thumped its tail again, as if in agreement, and curled a bit closer on itself before continuing to shiver. Mikleo didn’t really know what to look for in a wounded animal, much less how to help one…Mikleo suddenly felt the weight of the soaking wet coat on his shoulders, and slowly slid it off. He got as close to the dog as he dared, and gently threw the coat near it. The coat landed on the stone floor right next to the dog with a muffled, soaked flop.

“Here.”

The dog blinked, and looked from the coat to Mikleo, as if in disbelief. Mikleo rubbed at his upper arms, feeling a little embarrassed somehow.

“I’m sorry it’s wet, but…well. You obviously know what the weather’s like. It should still warm you up.”

Now that he was closer, he could see the dog’s eyes more clearly – green, green as a forest after a rainstorm, green as emeralds. They were beautiful, just like that glimmering golden coat of feathers. Mikleo felt a strange sense of intelligence behind them.

The dog whined, and nosed the coat back in Mikleo’s direction, even as it still shivered in every limb.

“It’s fine, my uncle is building a fire, and I have more coats at home…please, you can have it. I hope it makes you feel better.”

Even though he was afraid of dogs, if he could bring comfort to a hurt and cold animal in what could be its final hours on earth, Mikleo would do it without question.

A shiver of his own tore through Mikleo, and he was reminded of the reason why he came down here. He looked around the room, trying to spot something dry enough to feed the fire. The dog, now curled around his coat, watched him curiously as he wandered around the room. Mikleo felt compelled to make conversation – it seemed rude otherwise. He explained to the dog how they’d found themselves here, explained they were from the village of Camlann. Talked about his home at the village temple, talked about his family, who were traditionally the caretakers of said temple…

“…and my mother will probably never let me leave the village gates again, if she found out about all this,” Mikleo added, ruefully.

The dog gave a sympathetic whine. Its ears were perked, and its tail hadn’t stopped wagging since Mikleo had given it his coat. It was an excellent listener – Mikleo felt like it understood him, somehow, and that it wasn’t judging him.

“…you’re sitting under the statue of Zenrus, one of the heavenly lords of lightning,” Mikleo continued to explain. The dog’s ears perked further at the sound of that god’s name, and its tail wagged harder. “This temple used to be one of his centers of worship, centuries ago. But he disappeared one day, and Maotelus took over watching the area…Maotelus is the god enshrined in our temple in Camlann. No one really knows where Zenrus went, but my uncle says that even gods deserve their peaceful retirement years.”

Mikleo had found some dry vines behind a crumbling pillar, and he gathered them in his arms as he continued to talk aloud.

“We still take care of this temple, though – you can’t just leave something with this much significance to just rot away in the forest, even if most people have forgotten about it. Well, more specifically, my uncle and I take care of it, whenever he’s in the village. He travels so much, and only comes back once or twice a year…someday, I’ll set out with him to see the world. I know I will.”

The dog was gazing at him with something that almost resembled affection. Mikleo waddled closer, his arms full of vines and twigs. He looked over the dog, and felt himself relax a little bit. The dog had stopped shivering, and was stretched out more comfortably – Mikleo could now see that the dog didn’t have any visible wounds or broken limbs, and its bright, alert expression further assured Mikleo that it wasn’t on death’s door as he originally assumed. It was still soaked though – not that Mikleo really had a leg to stand on there, either. Mikleo thought they looked like quite a pair: a soaked feathered dog, and a soaked boy whose shoes were surely filled with more mud than he could comfortably imagine.

“Mikleo! Are you alright down there?”

Mikleo jumped at the sound of his uncle’s voice, and turned to give his farewell to the dog (and his coat).

“I have to go back – my uncle is probably worried. Stay inside until the rain stops, okay?”

The dog whined a little, but seemed to acknowledge the advice. It set his head down on its paws, and watched Mikleo leave; its tail not stopping once.

Mikleo headed back to the entrance with the kindling, and gave it to Michael for the sputtering fire. Michael looked him over with a confused expression.

“What happened to your coat?” Michael asked.

“Um,” Mikleo replied.

Michael dropped the subject, but made sure to add:

“Your mother’s going to kill me, you know.”

The storm outside seemed to be calming down, and by the time they were done drying off in front of the fire and doing some basic temple maintenance – pulling out weeds from cracks in the stone, moving artifacts from rooms that had started to crumble – it had broken entirely. Michael poked his head out, squinted at the sky, and sighed.

“I think it’s passed…we should probably head back before your mother sets out to track us down.”

Mikleo was already piling dirt on the fire to put it out, but looked over at Michael, concerned.

“What about taking care of the temple?”

“Today is no day for heavy maintenance,” Michael explained. “I’ll come back tomorrow when it’s dry to patch up the ceilings and reinforce the walls.”

Mikleo perked up. “Tomorrow? We can come back tomor--”

“I will come back tomorrow,” Michael clarified. “Sorry. You know I’d take you again if I could.”

Mikleo sulked. He knew his mother hated that her brother travelled so much – straying so far from home, for so long, with so little contact. She seemed to despair at how much Mikleo admired him for his wanderlust, and it was a small miracle that she allowed these hikes whenever Michael found himself back in town. She was sure to be in full fussing mode when they returned to town after this storm, and surely wouldn’t allow Mikleo out of her sight for a month or more. And there was still the matter of explaining the coat, on top of all that.

“Come on, pack up and let’s get going.”

Mikleo paused, and glanced down the darkened halls of the temple.

“…can you let me check on something first?” he asked.

Michael allowed it, and Mikleo set off into the halls. He found his way back to the inner chamber from before, and peeked in.

The dog was asleep – breathing steadily, and still curled around his coat. Its leg twitched in its sleep.

Mikleo smiled, and quietly made his way back to his uncle.

The next few days proceeded as normal. Mikleo’s mother, Muse, scolded them both, fretted over Mikleo, scolded them both over Mikleo’s lost coat and muddy shoes. Michael left as expected after a day or so, itching to start a new adventure; leaving Muse to fret further over his safety, and leaving Mikleo bereft once more – alone with his collection of books at the temple, only able to dream about the world outside the village. And so would the days go, forever, unchanging.

…or so Mikleo thought. Because the morning after his uncle left, the dog from the temple showed up in front of his house.

It was definitely the same dog – that coat of golden feathers and those green eyes were unmistakable. Moreover, it still had Mikleo’s coat; carefully carried in its jaws, as if it was being conscientious enough to not tear it. It seemed to be patiently waiting for something…or someone. Mikleo watched the dog from his bedroom window. Who could it be waiting for, other than him?

Mikleo steeled his courage, and walked out to meet the creature waiting at the temple gates.

The dog brightened up as he approached – its tail wagged in full force, and that golden coat seemed to almost glow. Its coat was even more beautiful now that it was dry, and Mikleo could see the shimmer in it, and the fluffy, silver-white down around its neck and ears. It was truly captivating to look at, and Mikleo was able to push down the fear still in his heart at the sight of it.

“…you found me?” Mikleo asked quietly. “I guess you might’ve followed the scent on that coat.”

The dog seemed to remember that it was carrying the coat at Mikleo’s comment, and dropped it to the ground, nosing it towards Mikleo. Mikleo stared, trying to make sense of all this. After a moment, the dog backed up, giving Mikleo his space, seemingly mindful of his lingering fears.

Mikleo picked up the coat – it was covered in feathers and leaves, and smelled like wet dog, but there were no tears or rips anywhere. It was clear that it had been well taken care of.

“…thank you,” Mikleo quietly said.

The dog’s tongue lolled out of its mouth, and its tail thumped once before it rose to its feet.

“Wait,” Mikleo said. “Don’t go. You must be hungry, or thirsty…”

At those words, the dog couldn’t help the needy look that crossed its face – nor the little bit of drool around its mouth. Mikleo smiled despite himself, and asked the dog to wait for him while he went inside.

While Mikleo’s mother did not share his fear of dogs, she was always concerned for his safety – after listening to Mikleo’s plea to feed and water their visitor, after listening to his rambling tale about finding the dog at the temple, and seeing Mikleo’s coat returned in one (albeit filthy) piece, Muse went out with supplies with a thoughtful look on her face. Mikleo watched from the window as she tended to the dog – even managing to pet the creature; the dog leaning into her palm with a blissful look on its face. Mikleo felt a strange little twinge of jealousy.

When Muse came back inside, she gathered some old blankets, and made to return to the front gate.

“Mom?” Mikleo questioned. He couldn’t help the curiosity, or the hope. “Are we letting it stay?”

“Whether this creature is a herald of the ancient Lord Zenrus, or simply a wandering stray, night is coming, and we must offer our hospitality,” Muse explained.

And so they did, as the dog continued to remain around the temple for the next few days. Mikleo watched from the window every time his mother went out to offer food and water to their could-be-divine guest, and felt his courage and his longing grow – until finally, one day, he managed to voice what he wanted to do.

“Can I…take out the food today?”

Muse rose an eyebrow at him – she was well aware of his fear of dogs, so it was quite a thing to hear. But seeing the determination in Mikleo’s eyes, she relented, and soon, Mikleo was carefully approaching the beast waiting at the gates with their offering. The beast saw him, and gave an excited little whine; its tail going at full-speed.

“…here,” Mikleo said, finally, setting the food and water down. The dog managed to wait until Mikleo had stepped back before digging in to the meat. “You know, my mother thinks you’re a herald of Lord Zenrus. I don’t think a heavenly herald would drool so much when they eat.”

The dog looked up at him, and blinked. “Herald? Oh, no. I’m no herald. Zenrus is my grandfather, though, so I guess it’s not too far off…”

Mikleo thought he deserved a great deal of credit for not screaming at the sound of the dog’s voice. At the sound of the dog speaking. Perhaps a lifetime of serving in the village temple had prepared him for this moment, though Mikleo still couldn’t control the truly baffled expression on his face. The dog seemed to realize what had just happened – that its cover as a completely ordinary hyper-intelligent golden feathered dog was blown. It lowered its ears, abashed, and licked its chops to clean up its drool before it spoke again.

“I—I’m sorry, but I didn’t want to speak until we were alone,” it said. Or rather, he said. The voice coming from the dog was unmistakably that of a young man. “My name is Sorey, I’m a travelling thunder god. I…I just had to thank you for the other day in Gramps’ old temple. For your coat, and the company.”

“…you’re welcome,” Mikleo said, unable to manage anything else. Except: “I’m Mikleo.”

And such was the beginning of their strange friendship. Mikleo took up the responsibility of bringing offerings to their could-be-and-actually-definitely-is-divine guest, and he and Sorey began to speak more and more. Sorey was so well-travelled – even moreso than Mikleo’s uncle – and was eager to talk with Mikleo about the places he’d seen, over the many years he’d lived. (Though he still seemed to be considered quite young, by godly standards.) Mikleo began to look forward to their chats every morning and night more than anything – it was a lonely life in the village, with so few other children his age, and even fewer with his interest in history and travel. And it seemed that Sorey knew some of that loneliness, at least a little bit.

“…I wish you could stay,” Mikleo said quietly one night, after a few weeks of their acquaintance. “It’s so lonely here. And boring. You can travel anywhere you want, and I’m stuck here, just…”

Sorey lifted his head from Mikleo’s lap, and shifted to his feet. “…close your eyes, okay?”

Mikleo frowned. “…you’re not going to try and lick my face again, are you?”

“Hey! You had food on your face that day and I was just – listen, just close your eyes. I promise it’s nothing weird.”

Mikleo shook his head and did as he was asked. There was a whisper of wind, and the scent of a distant rainstorm – and then, a hand, a human hand, holding his own. Mikleo’s eyes flew open, and he stared at the handsome young man kneeling in front of him. Mikleo felt his cheeks burn. His long blond hair was tied into a high and messy ponytail, and it cascaded down his back; feathered earrings peeked out of the fall of it. His white and gold clothes were finely-made, and were as elegant as anything Mikleo had seen in the temple’s holy etchings. Those same sparkling green eyes that he remembered searched his own, and then, the smile that crossed the young man’s face was unmistakable – Mikleo could almost see that phantom tongue lolling out the side of his mouth.

“If you need me to stay, Mikleo, I’ll stay. I’ve got nowhere to be, and…” Sorey trailed off, then scratched at his ear, a little embarrassed. His feather earrings jingled with the motion. “I mean, as long as your mom doesn’t mind me hanging around. I feel kinda bad for imposing so long…”

Sorey was lonely, too, just like him. They were alike in so many ways.

Mikleo pled his case to his mother the next day – not including certain details (like “the dog can talk” or “the dog is a god” or “the dog is a man and I can’t get his smile out of my head”), but begging her to let the dog stay permanently. Muse’s superstitious nature – or perhaps her spiritual intuition, in this case – and the dog’s friendly charm won out in the end, and she agreed to the arrangement.

Sorey and Mikleo were two peas in a pod, to be certain, and became fast, inseparable friends. Sorey was the north star in Mikleo’s life – unchanging, always there, a rock to lean on even as Mikleo grew and his life got more…complicated. The years seemed to fly by, and soon, Mikleo found himself twenty-four years old and gazing at Sorey’s face as he napped next to him. He didn’t look a day older than he did that day at the temple – Mikleo had gone from looking the part of little brother, to looking the part of the older brother. (Though he’d always had the maturity of the older brother. Maturity was not something that came easily to Sorey.) Soon, no doubt, he’d start looking like Sorey’s father. The thought didn’t bother Mikleo much – it came with the implication of many more long years with Sorey, which was all he wanted.

…Maybe not all he wanted, Mikleo amended, rolling onto his back. They were relaxing in their secret place in the forest; a waterfall clearing, with a clear pond and soft grass, and plenty of tree cover to keep the sun out of their eyes. It was a wonderful spot to hide from his duties at the temple, and his…other duties. He still dreamed of travel, of seeing the world. And he dreamed of getting a break from his mother’s constant matchmaking, which this secret place helped with.

Sorey whined softly in his sleep, and scooted closer to Mikleo, his messy hair tickling Mikleo’s jaw. Mikleo smiled and stroked his head. He had appointments this afternoon, temple duties to tend to. But he could spare some more time for Sorey to get his rest.

He let his eyes drift closed, and dozed to the sounds of the forest around him.

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#mikleo/sorey #miksor #mikusore #mikusure #sorey/mikleo #soymilk #soremiku #suremiku #tales of zestiria #i guess this is my personal tales of zestiria tag now #a tenderly crafted fanfiction #commissions #writing commissions

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neurotic-nimrod · 5 years

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Trinity Of Trinities (Israeli Wine, Part 1)

For a year and a half now, I’ve struggled.

It’s been that long since I had my feet on the ground among the vines in Israeli wine country, and until now I’d yet to write a word about the experience, apart from a few social media updates and the odd mini-review.

The mistake I’d made over that period of waiting? Thinking that there would be an appropriate time during which the political maelstrom that is Middle East politics would present a low-key time for me to simply be able to focus on the region’s wines themselves, without the specter of centuries upon centuries of conflict rearing its ghostly head obtrusively behind. And it’s just difficult to do that when you have visited vines that grow among former Lebanese army bunkers, or are surrounded by land mine warning signs, or that have turned up with the occasional IED among them. In that context, waiting for a quieter period of Israel in the national news before focusing on something as simple as vino doesn’t seem like a bad idea.

Buuuuuut… Fat chance. I may never see that time. And so I suppose this is the start of me trying to do a (very) small part of in taking matters into my own hands with giving Israel a bit of media focus that isn’t packed to the gills with cringe-worthy tales of damage to pride, property, and lives. Well, perhaps the writing will be cringe-worthy, but hopefully that’s the extent of it.

The author, adding a prayer to the Wall of Jerusalem (& still waiting for it to be answered)

Fortunately, Israel’s winemaking history surpases its history of conflict, both in terms of longevity and in interest. There is evidence of winmaking and (particularly along the Mediterranean coast) wine export dating back at least five thousand years. About seven hundred years of Muslim Ottoman influence slowed things down, buy by the 1880s a wave of Zionist immigrants, focused on farming, renewed and rejuvenated the region’s wine industry. Investment from the Rothschilds in France helped to modernize the industry here, and another wave, starting in about 2008, focused the fine wine scene mostly on Mediterranean grape varieties, and saw the development of more modernized marketing approaches.

And despite all of that, as Recanati winemaker Gil Shatsberg told me, “Israeli wine is not really defined yet…”

Israel has few formally defined AOC-style wine areas, few real AOC-styled rulesets and dictates for wine-growing and wine-making. After fifty centuries, there is no winemaking school, so stylistically Israeli fine wine “is like a fusion from all over the world,” according to Shatsberg (himself a UC Davis grad), with many in the industry studying abroad and bringing stylistic preferences and techniques back with them. This has, it seems to me, created a situation with unique potential in the wine world, provided that the rest of the world, and Israel itself, can get past the politics to allow it to properly bloom…

Racanati’s Gil Shatsberg

2016 Recanati Winery Marawi (Upper Galilee, $35)

In an industrial park that seems straight out of the 1980s sits Recanati winery, established as a thoroughly modern Kosher outfit in 2000 and that now exports to the USA and Rance, among other countries. At Recanati, Shatsberg deals with the larger issues facing Israeli wine-growing; namely, water access (a “sensitive issue” with strict enforcement, and grape ripeness. “It’s very easy to go over-ripe here,” warned Shatsberg; “a matter of three or four days at harvest can be crucial.” With all of the focus on modernization at Recanati, it’s interesting that perhaps their most interesting wines focus on nearly lost, indigenous, ancient grape varieties that survived the Ottoman times by being used for table grape consumption. Marawi is one such project, a grape found growing wild, and then (with funding from a Palestinian grower) was analyzed in Milan and found to have a unique DNA profile. This version is lean, clean, and very mineral, with hints of citrus and white flowers. It’s rounded out texturally by lees contact, toastiness, and a heaping of saline notes. A better option with Mediterranean seafood would be difficult to procure.

2015 Recanati Winery Special Reserve White (Galilee, $45)

A Roussanne/Marsanne blend, this is Recanati’s premium white, and it’s true to its Rhone roots: oily, floral, tropical, rich, well-integrated, peachy, and damned sexy. The finish is toasty, long on the stone fruitiness, consistent, and just right on point. Having all of that minerality is a nice bonus. There’s a lot of wow factor here.

2015 Recanati Winery Lebanon Vineyard Special Reserve (Galilee, $65)

This Cabernet, according to Shatsberg, required something unique even among the often unique requirements of fine wine growers: the intervention of the UN. Harvest is done at night, opposite the Lebanese mountains (which provide a cooling influence). The Israeli army patrols during harvest as well. Maybe some of that tension makes a spiritual appearance in the wine itself, which has both grit and great freshness, along with smoke, herbal spcies, minerals, and gorgeously ripe cassiss fruit.

Vered Ben Sa’adon of Tura Winery

2017 Tura Estate Winery ‘Mountain Vista’ Gewürztraminer (Shomron, $27)

“Every day is a miracle,” intoned Vered Ben Sa’adon when I visited the boutique winery founded in the 1990s by her and husband (and also winemaker) Erez in Shomron, an area known for producing wine for Jerusalem about two thousand years ago. Ancient fortification ruins have been found in the region, probably placed there to guard farming. Despite the auspicious history, the Ben Sa’adon couple have had to overcome the kind of challenges that make boring days probably seem much like small miracles.

Originally from Holland, Erez’s grandmother survived the Holocaust; she views wine as “the best Jewish answer that we could give” to overcoming turmoil. “I’m a religious woman from this are, it was not easy,” explained Vered when I visited as part of a media tour. “Everyone wanted to ignore me. But we have fifty medals from the world, and they can’t ignore us anymore.” Adding to the challenges of religion and sexism is the fact that Tura is kosher (with their labels sporting both Gregorian and Jewish calendar vintage years, so that some of the wines are from 3760, for example), but in a small space that also has to accommodate non-kosher visitors. Their solution: a sort of loophole in the “two seals” rule; with a double-lock over their barrels, making them likely the only kosher winery where someone like me can actually touch some of the equipment.

And then, there are the terrorist bombs. Three of them, which according to Vered exploded in their vineyards in Mt. Gerizim about fifteen years after planting (near a formerly Sumerian area acquired after the Six Days War). Makes things like the occasional vineyard black widow or rattlesnake seem kind of tame, doesn’t it?

So maybe the miracle is that they can make any wine at all, let alone excellent wines. Their Gewürztraminer is chock full of lychee, ripe stone fruits, florals, and sports a rich palate of tropical fruits, astringency, plantains, and excellent balance between its sweet and dry sides, all elegantly belying the struggle of its production.

2015 Tura Estate Winery ‘Mountain Heights’ Cabernet Sauvignon (Shomron, $42)

Seeing nearly two years in French oak, and hailing from twenty year old vines, this is an elegant Cabernet that mind remind some of the better incarnations from Chile. Dried and green herbs, ripe dark plums, wood spice, a toasty finish, and full of power. It’s young now, and grippy, but still accessible and finely crafted.

2014 Tura Estate Winery ‘Mountain Heights’ Merlot (Shomron, $44)

Almost two years of mostly new French oak give this plenty of sweet wood spice, but there’s no subduing those black plums and black olives. Everything is silky here, but with a nice hit of acid to give it some backbone, and hints of wet stone to give the nose some complexity. So… a wine that is hard to resist.

Zeev Dunia of Seahorse

2017 Sea Horse Winery ‘James’ Chenin Blanc (Israel, $NA)

Zeev Dunia is diminutive only in stature; otherwise, he’s like a towering force of nature. A former filmmaker, since 2000 Dunia oversees winemaking at Seahorse, producing about 25,000 bottles per year from eight acres of organic, low-yielding, high-density-planted vines. Much of his end product is French-inspired, and named after artists or other figures Dunia admires. In the case of his Chenin (a variety in which, Dunia claims, he was involved in getting produced in Israel in the first place), it’s Ronnie James, former head winemaker of Tzora Winery and one of his mentors. I tasted it from barrel sample, and it was peachy, broad, pure, long, textural, and lovely.

2015 Sea Horse Winery ‘Pure Ku’ Counoise (Israel, $NA)

“Israel is an impossible country from all sorts of possible views,” Dunia told me; one of which happens to be acquiring grape plantings, due to the country’s agricultural restrictions. In 2010, importation from certain vine nurseries was permitted, and Dunia “saw on the list Cinsault and Counoise, and it was like a kid in Toys R Us fpr the first time!” This is 100% Counoise, spicy, meaty, mineral, salty, juicy, savory, and pure. Favoring zest and spice rather than complexity, but that won’t stop you from falling for its tangy loveliness.

2013 Sea Horse Winery ‘Romain’ Red (Israel, $NA)

A GSM blend at heart, augmented with Dunia’s toy-store-shopping-spree Cinsault and Counoise. Chewy, dark, leathery, and very, very spicy on the nose, there’s more meaty richness on the expressive palate. Hints of stone and flowers come later. Uniquely characterful, much like its winemaker.

Cheers!

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Copyright © 2016. Originally at Trinity Of Trinities (Israeli Wine, Part 1) from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers! Source: http://www.1winedude.com/trinity-of-trinities-israeli-wine-part-1/

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newssplashy · 6 years

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Opinion: An ancient land, newly optimistic

The downtown has an energy that is a long way from the sleepy Soviet city I first visited in the 1980s.

Each time I’ve come to Yerevan in the past decade, the city has surprised me with its evolving elegance and cultural richness.

The downtown has an energy that is a long way from the sleepy Soviet city I first visited in the 1980s. Walking the shady avenues off Republic Square on a recent visit, I found the city has become a hip place, with wine bars, microbreweries, cafes, art galleries, boutiques selling crafts and carpets, and an ever-new array of restaurants, as well as upscale hotels and clothing stores.

The new mood is defined by the millennial generation’s role in the velvet revolution of this past spring. After weeks of peaceful protests, the civil society has pushed from power an old regime that much of the nation viewed as dysfunctional and corrupt, representing a continuation of old Soviet mentalities. When Nikol Pashinyan, a prominent journalist, activist and former parliamentarian became prime minister May 8, a sense of a new era enveloped the country.

In June, I sat in a vine-trellised courtyard restaurant and art gallery on Abovian Street with Armen Ohanyan, a young fiction writer, and Arevik Ashakharoyan, a literary agent. I was hearing Armenia’s new voices of optimism. “Soviet minds are a thing of the past,” Ohanyan said.

“The new generation, born after the fall of the Soviet Union, is playing a big role in the new democracy,” Ashakharoyan said. “We are tech-savvy and have no ties to the corrupt Soviet past.”

Ohanyan added: “We feel a new future. The reign of oligarchs is over.”

Having written about Armenia for decades, their words resonated. I am a poet and nonfiction writer of Armenian ancestry and have been to Armenia five times in the past decade. My trips are often connected to my work — a translation of one of my books, a lecture tour, a symposium.

I started the day grazing on a classic Armenian breakfast spread at the Armenia Marriott Hotel Yerevan, an elegant hotel on Republic Square with fine local cuisine: bastermas (spicy, cured beef); paper-thin or thicker warm lavash; local cheeses; jams with strawberries or apricots or walnuts; thick yogurt; cherries, apricots, blackberries and melons from local orchards; fruit nectars and orange, red and brown rolls of thick grape molasses stuffed with walnuts (sujuk); and black tea from a samovar. The presentation was beautiful, and the Caucasian sun poured through the windows.

Like its cuisine, the country has a long, rich history. Armenia, which became an independent republic in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union, is a small, landlocked nation in the southwest Caucasus, at the crossroads of Europe and Asia. The country today is what remains of a once-ancient empire that stretched from the Mediterranean to the Caspian Sea in the first century B.C., before it was conquered by the Romans. It was the first nation to make Christianity its state religion, in 301.

Conquered by Byzantines, Persians, Mongols and Seljuks, then colonized by the Ottoman Turks in the 16th century, Armenians were subject to large-scale massacres in the 19th century, during the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, and were the victims of what genocide scholars regard as one of the first genocides of the modern era, by the Ottoman Turkish government in 1915. (Turkey denies that the killings were genocide.)

Armenia became a Soviet Republic in 1920, endured Stalin’s purges and repression, a massive earthquake in 1988 and a war with neighboring Azerbaijan in the 1990s that has flared up again in recent years over the province of Nagorno-Karabakh. By all rational odds, Armenia should not be on the map today.

Having survived such a harsh history, Armenia has emerged as a democracy that cherishes the many layers of its past. Today, the capital, Yerevan — which dates to the seventh century B.C. and was founded on the walls of the Urartian city of Erebuni — is a blend of ancient culture, artisan tradition, modern architecture and high-tech, postmodern style, exemplified by the new condominiums and high-end shops on the pedestrian Northern Boulevard.

On Sept. 29-30, Yerevan will celebrate its 2,800th anniversary, making it one of the oldest cities in the world. In the ruins of the ancient fortress on Erebuni Fortress Hill, fragments of murals with images of sacred animals evoke the late Bronze Age. The Erebuni museum has a fine collection of artifacts, including a huge wine storage container that documents Armenia’s winemaking tradition from the Bronze Age.

Those amphoras prompted me to visit the Ararat Brandy Factory, an imperial monument to the Armenian passion for the grape, set on a perch overlooking Victory Bridge, which spans the Hrazdan River. I love walking the beautifully lit cavernous halls filled with Caucasian oak barrels. Ararat Brandy has been a major export for more than a century, and its velvety depths were made legendary by Winston Churchill, who drank it daily for decades. I left with a glow of delight after the brandy tasting that concludes the tour.

Yerevan is a city where many avenues are named after Armenia’s great figures: the early 20th-century poet Yeghishe Charents, the fifth-century historian Movses Koranatsi, the 19th-century novelist Katchadour Abovian, the composer Komitas (1869-1935), to name a few. It’s a city of great museums, including the Matenadaran, which has a rich collection of medieval illuminated manuscripts and books in Armenian, the National Gallery and the History Museum of Armenia.

I always head first for the intimate museums dedicated to major figures. The Saryan museum, for example, has two floors of works by the avant-garde landscape and modernist painter Martiros Saryan (1880-1972). In a stately stone house, the Sergei Parajanov Museum is a celebration of the great 20th-century filmmaker and visual artist’s work: mixed media collages, paintings, conceptual installations and miniature drawings on matchbooks and bottle caps from the time he was imprisoned by the Soviet authorities for “decadent” art and homosexuality.

I always get a good workout climbing the 572 steps of the Cafesjian Center for the Arts (also known as Cascade). It’s a dramatic complex rising up from the tree-shaded, cafe-abundant Tumayan Street in five monumental limestone tiers of fountains, topiary gardens and sculptures. If you tire of the climb, you can slip inside and take the escalator, and soak up one of the most important collections of modern glass in the world, as well as paintings, drawings and sculpture.

No one should come to Yerevan without visiting the extraordinary Armenian Genocide Museum and Memorial, also known as the Tsitsernakaberd (meaning swallow’s fortress) Memorial Complex. It is situated on a hill that overlooks the city and Mount Ararat, Armenia’s national symbol, just across the border in Turkey.

Built of sleek gray basalt, its elegant new wing was designed by the museum’s director, Hayk Demoyan, and his wife, designer Lucine Matevosian. The wide circular exhibit halls wind from a top floor down to a second floor. Photos, maps and documentary footage on various screens accompany text that explores the history of the horrific events that took the lives of more than 1 million Armenians in 1915. From the museum visitors walk the stone walkway to the memorial — towering twin obelisks (a symbol of eternity) and 12 20-foot high stone pillars — to lean over a large circular area where an eternal flame burns and sacred music plays.

Back in Yerevan for the evening, I dined with friends and found the cuisine more inventive than ever. Restaurants blend the traditions of the Armenian Caucasus with the Middle East as refugees from Syria and Iraq make their impact. At Sherep, one of the hottest new places, with a chic open kitchen and late-night jazz, I had mountain sorrel soup; tender stuffed grape leaves; eggplant sautéed in olive oil and rolled up with minced walnuts, dill, garlic and yogurt; and succulent lamb chops. At Vostan, in an old Russian-period stone building on Abovian Street, I feasted on pink, succulent, wood-grilled Lake Sevan trout.

My travels frequently take me beyond Yerevan. Wherever you go in Armenia, you are journeying through an open-air museum where churches and monasteries, even a Hellenic temple, are built into the cliffs or perched at the edges of canyons or green gorges, with searing vistas framed by the ever-blue sky. Thousand-year-old lacelike carved stone crosses (khatchgars) emerge from fields of roadside poppies.

Because Armenia is defined by mountains, canyons, gorges, forests, rushing streams and rivers, lakes, grassy highlands and dales, it has become a prime destination for hikers. The new Transcaucasian Trail runs from Georgia through Armenia into Azerbaijan, and offers extraordinary trails from the Dilijan National Park in the northern mountains to the caves of Goris in the south. Many trails intersect with ancient monasteries and churches.

For a small country Armenia has an amazing diversity of flora and fauna; about 240 bird species breed in Armenia and nearly 400 move through the country, making Armenia a birder’s paradise.

On a sunny morning, I headed east from Yerevan in a minivan with my superb guide, Katar Taslakyan, and a driver, Raphael Hovakimyan, whose musical selections — jazz and R&B — filled the van. About 40 minutes later, we stopped at Charents Arch, an impressive monument to Armenia’s great modern poet Yeghishe Charents (1897-1937). From there, we got a stunning view of the glistening, grassy highlands and snow-capped Mount Ararat.

In another 15 minutes, we were at Garni, a beautifully proportioned Greco-Roman temple believed to have been built by King Tiridates I to the sun god Mihr. The vistas from Garni, which is perched at the lip of a gorge, are spectacular.

We drove on until the conical dome of Geghardavank (the Monastery of the Spear) emerges from behind a stone wall. A UNESCO World Heritage site (like many monasteries in Armenia), the medieval church was built partly out of the side of a mountain. Monks’ caves adorned with stone crosses and arches dot the cliff face. I walked into a chapel and stared at the animal carvings on the wall as light fell through the round opening in the dome, a feature in Armenian medieval churches that creates a mysterious dark light and a heightened sense of the cosmic. A stream from the mountain runs through a wall, and pilgrims and tourists pass their hands through it.

At Geghard, as with most Armenian medieval churches, you enter a distinctive organic architecture, in which building and carvings flow with the contours of nature. Unlike the Gothic cathedrals of Europe, these churches are smaller in scale and designed as intimate spaces. Here, you feel the stones are speaking to you, the light grazes you.

The next day, we drove south from Yerevan into the fertile Ararat Valley. In June, the apricot orchards are popping with Armenia’s bright yellow national fruit and the vineyards are green. On this clear morning, Mount Ararat rose from a bank of clouds and the hot sun was mitigated by cool breezes.

Farther south, in Vayots Dzor province, our van climbed the road to Noravank, a complex that includes two medieval churches, one of which was designed by the architect and artist Momik. Again, I’m blown away as monks’ caves appear in jagged red cliffs that remind me of Arizona, and the milky tan limestone of the Myrig Adzvadzeen church glistens in the sunlight against a brilliant blue sky and rising mountains. The chapel at Noravank is luminous with light pouring through the windows. Gazing out those windows to green hillsides, red cliffs, blue sky, I felt the shimmer of the sublime.

Four miles from Noravank, I went from spiritual to chthonic, as I walked up the steps of a craggy cliff to the Areni cave where, in 2007, the earliest known clay amphoras (karases) — some 6,100 years old — were discovered. Armenia is considered the birthplace of winemaking. Archaeologists are still working there, and the Copper Age karases are well displayed in the cave where they were once used.

Winemaking runs deep in the Armenian vein, and the famous Areni grape with its thick skin is the source of some of the best new wines anywhere. Throughout my visit, I had various full-bodied reds that were smooth and dry, with complex flavors enhanced by Caucasian oak barrels, reminding me of some fine pinot noirs of Oregon and certain red Burgundies. Among the better-known labels are Areni, Kadar, Kara, Trinity and Zorah.

After a night on the Goris River at Mirhav, a beautifully appointed inn with antique Armenian artifacts and rugs, we drove to 11,000 feet through a fantasia of chirping nightingales, swooping eagles and clouds lifting off the green valley to the world’s longest nonstop, reversible tramway to reach Tatev, a ninth-century monastery. As a Baroque concerto spilled through the tramway’s speakers, our glass car floated above villages and ancient churches, by cliffs and grassy mountains and past gliding hawks toward the monastery, with its two conical domed churches perched at the cliff’s edge.

Heading north past potato fields and farmlands, meadows of poppies and royal blue delphiniums, we drove up the western shore of Lake Sevan, one of the largest high-altitude lakes in Eurasia. Its turquoise water is a resort for bathers and fishermen, and an important source for fishing, irrigation and hydroelectric power. At a lakeside restaurant called Dzovadzots, I had a perfect whitefish soup.

A half-hour north, the ninth-century Sevanavank monastery, with its two small beautiful, earth-colored churches on a peninsula, is worth the climb up the steps from the shore below.

Just north of Lake Sevan, we crossed into the alpine mountain region of Tavush where streams and hiking trails wind through the lush forests of Dilijan National Park. The stunning monastery of Haghartsin is nestled on a forested mountain.

The spa town of Dilijan, situated in the park, is an atmospheric place out of a Chekhov story. Its chalet-style buildings with gable-tiled roofs, open-air theater and mountain views made it a popular vacation spot for wealthy Russians in the 19th century; today it is a retreat for artists. One of the creative entrepreneur and philanthropist James Tufenkian’s four unique hotels is housed in a complex of restored 19th-century houses.

From there, we drove to Avan Zoraget, another Tufenkian hotel, beneath the mountains on the Debed River. Sleek, imaginative and appointed with Tufenkian carpets, its rooms have lovely views. The restaurant overlooking the river offers a sumptuous repertoire: sautéed local greens and onions with yogurt; smoky eggplant dip blended with tahini; spelt with wild mushrooms; a tongue-melting sou boreg (thin flat noodles layered with Armenian cheeses), chicken cooked with dried plum and pomegranate sauce; and superb dry white wine.

Back in Yerevan the next evening, I walked through an arch onto an old cobblestone street off bustling Amirian Street and found Anteb, a Syrian-Armenian restaurant, where we had spicy, crepe-thin lahmajuns (Armenian pizza); a piquant muhamara (walnut, pomegranate molasses and red pepper dip) that you scoop up with hot, puffy lavash; and kuftas, crisp shells of cracked wheat bursting with lamb and herbs. The next night my friend Ashot took me to Babylon, an Arabic-Iraqi restaurant where our feast included crispy boregs (phyllo dough wrapped around cheese), meatless stuffed grape leaves and the most tender lamb kebabs I’ve had outside my mother’s kitchen.

I never leave Yerevan without meandering through the Vernissage, the open-air market in a park along Aram and Buzant streets where there are stalls and stalls of ceramics, folk and contemporary art, rugs, textiles, jewelry and more. I bought two small antique Caucasian kilims before I wandered back to Republic Square, where I end most evenings.

At night the square, with its monumental rosy tufa stone buildings, is lit up; the fountains spew through colored lights, music plays, people dance. It’s a nightly ritual in Yerevan in the warm-weather months — a down-home celebration to end a day, and a resilient response to the harsh history of this new nation that has emerged from an ancient civilization.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

source http://www.newssplashy.com/2018/08/opinion-ancient-land-newly-optimistic_22.html

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trivialsplash · 6 years

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Angel Virus: The Biology of Ecstasy

For the SLY project. In honour of all bodies. All knowledges. Between trauma and ecstasy countering the narrative of feminized pathologies.

Fine tendons, mobile ribbons. Their body, invisible body - her body (of all textures, sizes, all shapes and functions and genitals or totally agender, asexual, alien). Always multiple, permeating mycelial structures, filling airy inter-molecular spaces in a rockbed with aliveness, weight, air, water, matter. Life and decay. Filling the solidity of meaning from within, creating gaps, creating spaces, imbued, fertile, secret spaces. Biohacking. Wires, electic signals.

‘‘ There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of bird’s feet is unknown. ‘‘ (V.Woolf)

Lightening. Nitrogen-fixing rhizo-mycelial strings. Laces of a dress, swaying, spiraling, rocking motions. My legs, had I had any, would have been tied into a poem. My body walks dematerialized, it is walked from the outside, I overlook the process. When I visit briefly I experience a thick First Night, an ancient darkness. Death and rebirth of consciousness. A blackout. Helix. Consciousness. 40-80% is estimated as having had arrived from an ancient invasion of abiotic viral structures. Primordial oceans. Bacterial heat. Our brains have been hacked. Even before our birth. How much of our epigenetic structure is coming from non-human sources? What is the thing that separates us, that deemed us human, so upright, with a centralized nervous system? Two rainbow snakes fucking inside of my body, undulating, I feel naussea. ‘If no human is good enough for you, you’d have to fuck God/dess.’ sarcastic voice puts me in a place. I laugh from my guts. This is how it probably feels like - being fucked by the universe. Vine. Hedera helix. Infinite lovership. Jolly, nauseating, cosmic, hard, cynical, character-building humour. The panromantic gene. Pansexual panpsychism. Non-bodily. Then suddenly deeply somatic. The Arc Gene. The other within. I hear animal sounds that are beyond audible, even in the city. ''I know things older than Freud, older than gender. (...)I interpret this as 'the one who is at one with the beasts'.'' (G.Anzaldúa)

It is a full moon, I am walking through the park of the Train Station, my sinuses are being filled with strong lunar glow, an end of winter air curls into my cranial cavities, then suddenly I no longer have a skull. A frisky crowd of rats opens up in a full moon in front of my each step. Rodents’ rendezvous interrupted by my presence, diverging choreographies with me as a nucleus, a negative space. Paws tapping into the still frosty earth, provoking a subtle rustling of the dry grass. I am following her. She is full and raising in a slit between two solid blocks of houses. A crowd of rough sleepers cheered up from the period of warmer nights look at me, look at her. We smile. Sometimes toothlessly. We pray the same prayer. They look at my glass bottle hoping for booze. I pour a puddle of clear water on the pavement staring into the moon. Cervix bleeding. Cervix ovulating. Full moon nearly falling out of my cunt with the weight of dewey humidity, the full moon filling my mouth.

‘‘Both the performer of the epic scenes and their audiences are felt to be ‘beside’, ‘outside’ (exó) themselves and possessed by god (en-theos, whence enthousiasmo),(...)The pleasurably ‘mind-bending’ (psuchagogía) of allowing god to enter ‘inside’ oneself (enthousiasmos, i.e. being en-theos) (...)and thus moving ‘ouitside’ (exó) one’s normal consciousness...‘‘ (M.Griffith)

The divine is a virus. The notion of devotional, a notion of another within us, the guardian angel, the arc gene angel virus, the external consciousness, the one within and without, non-dualistic. Our RNA hacked, self which is both internalized and othered. Self-transcended. Crystalic divergent metalic sounding structures, consciousness’ cosmetics. On a deeply biological level we are numerous. We ride or we are ridden. Without mutual exclussivity. The notion of devotion is build within us as a survival reflex. If you do not honour others within you you will be devoured, overpowered.

The occult knowledge of spatial matrices. Plateaus. Climaxes and little deaths. Trauma. Non-human intimacies. Challenging toxicities. Hormonal fluctuations. Critical theory applied as a practice of magick. Only poetic overlapping inter-dicoursive meanings can really be uttered as magickal formulae, shape-shifting, space-bending, echoing, echolocating. Echo-locating. I write so the nervous system does not burn itself, so the knowledge does not consume me. A fire sword appearing in the Garden of Eden. Neural synapses like wide open psychic channels. Chemical receptors running tears down my face without a grimace, comely unlike me, estranged, intimate, exotic. Tears like a condensation on a galactic rock. Luke warm gushing waters despite this body sometimes being so metalic dry. Crone-like, ancient, inhuman, amorphic. Electric. Hypervigilant awake multi-presences. La Virgen. Both eclectic and Saturnian. I sing in the main church ship. Spaceship. The echo sings me back, massages my fine skin membranes. Magicians’ box, endless numerous bottoms. Endless negative spaces with positive presences. The sound waves build something I can trust, I can move on. I sing love songs in the vernacular. My secular tongue knows the best how to lick my human wounds. I spit my own blood below the dress. There are vegetal motifs in dark rich pigments and gold on the walls. This church was built in a place of a pagan worship. The rocks towering above the river click their teeth in a dusk, but they hold. I know the thickness of the air as I breathe, the density of materials as the walls sing it back at my emptied body. There is no separation between music and dance or matter and the spirit.

‘’Squirt, shoot, bite, write, cum, scratch, dance, kill... do anything, but do it with ME!’’ there were words at some beginnings and those words were hasty spells. Tempestuous postcards in my mailbox. Copious saliva in my mouth. A diamond projectile.

Blue fire. Hanging upside down, my hard mocking laugh disturbs. Escaping body, watching it from the outside, laughing. Hanging upside down. Gestating past life images. Pendulum, an oracle. Hanging in timelesness, spatial vacuum. I enter a room full of old karmic bonds, broken oaths, people are on heat, trying to fuck them out, fuck themselves out of their current shape, of their conditioning, to alchemize these bonds, broken oaths, some have forgotten. I sit quietly by a fire. Someone asks: ‘‘Are you okay?’’, obliges me to try to explain what I know, what I sense. No body knows anything. No single body knows everything. She claimed she’d teach me. She’s nervous now. Noone is safe, there is no safe role here. I run out just as the thunder gloriously roams above the storming sea in the dark night. I am the thunder. My back convulsing, my limbs wide open on the wet green grass. Angry orgasms. Autonomous. Thundering. The semen of yours held in my body, the semen I never wanted inside of me, turns into tiny stars in the Milky Way. My own generosity. Overflow. Throat opens. The energy cannot be held. The consciousness being birthed into the cosmic darkness, inter-planetary interplay, inter-stelar galactic spaces, my body opens all its holes and convulsions birth me into states of in-betweenness. Years of being not a ‘part of’. Being in between. Stranding. I psychically communicate with my lost twin. Big raindrops falling on my body that walks along the coast on an autopilot, while simultaneously jumping layers and fluently moving across ancestral planes. I am learning how to walk myself back. Coming, screaming, speaking primeaval tongues, then sitting silently, home-coming. Soul retrievals. I never begged to be spiritual. I bet the part of brain that deals with trauma also triggers responses in the worshipful cells. You literally go beyond yourself to survive in this human body, to survive this human body. Again. And again. Laughter.

#ecstatic #body #toxicity #psychicintimacies #multilayered #criticaltheory #poetry #witchcraft #psychic #trauma #numinous #reclaimingsex #healer

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justforustravel-blog · 7 years

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THE CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION KAYSERI - #Bazaar, #ClockTower, #ErciyesMountain, #GrandBazaar, #HunatHatunMosque, #Istanbul, #Kayseri, #KayseriCastle, #Mountain, #Turkey, #VezirHan, #WinterTourism

New Post has been published on http://justforustravel.com/2017/10/15/the-cradle-of-civilization-kayseri/

THE CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION KAYSERI

The name was mentioned frequently with people who are inclined to trade and Commerce, and bacon eminent legendary cities, Kayseri is a modern city that has all the features need to be found. Established on a flat area, wide roads, a place where you can find everything you’re looking for a tidy and clean downtown. Kayseri Anadolu selcuklu and Ottoman you will see wandering in the works.

Republic Square in Kayseri, is the heart is wrong to say, ” I’m told. In the middle next to the statue of Atatürk and the clock tower, Kayseri fortress, and bowing to visitors from the Grand Bazaar is almost. Again, Republic Square’in the underground shopping mall, Mosque and hunat hatun Mosque and burung we’ni you can visit. The people of Kayseri are usually very sympathetic and they speak in their own accents. Here “how are you,” instead, it is between them “noruyo” say … so unique and beautiful accents they have. Kayseri is known with a penchant for football’Kayseri kadir has Stadium in the region with the modern structure looks good.

Friendly people, good food, and historical monuments of Kayseri, shall we travel together?

Kayseri Castle

today, still durability to protect the castle and its splendid glory, fully of the city square. As consists of two parts, the bushings and external walls of the castle, which covers a very wide area. Kayseri Castle’s B.C. are known to have been built between the years 238-244. The castle, the Byzantines, the Seljuks and the Ottomans made the repairs used. Rather than large portions of the inner walls the outer walls to have survived intact. Restorations have been done in many parts of the castle. When you get here do not turn to a closer examination of this magnificent structure.

Clock Tower

the period of Sultan 2. Sultan abdülhamid II gave the order to be done on the clock tower in all major cities of. The building that began construction in 1906, the town has added a unique beauty. Kayseri which is a combination of modern buildings with historic buildings, spectacular cities in this aspect.

Bazaar

during the Ottoman period, the bazaar, the biggest Bazaar after the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul is known as. Throughout history fires have occurred in the structure of the market that is exposed to distortions. In the years 1987-1991 and has been completely renovated and opened to the public. Within the market, hold of the jeweler’besides, spice, shoemaker local dress shops, you can find everything you are looking for. Grand Bazaar is very colorful and lively with the structure as well as historic ones also fall in love with yourself. Just outside the bazaar, a local sausage, bacon and meat products it is possible to come across a shop that sells.

Vezir Han

This two-storey, the vezir han, in Caesarea of unique handmade carpets and rugs are sold in a place where it is being used as. Wazir Khan 3. It was built in 1724 by damat Ibrahim Pasha, Grand vizier Ahmet during the period. The only jeweler in the mall when it was first formed, certain shops and fabric stores such as abaci allowed to be, but this application has been removed in 1731.

hunat hatun Mosque

which is one of the most magnificent and beautiful monuments of Kayseri hunat hatun Mosque, the wife of alaattin keykubat in 1237 in the name of hunat hatun was built. The smooth walls of the mosque, which was built of cut stone rectangular shape in plan. Fine architecture and decorations with interesting visitors from all parts of the crown door of the mosque.

Chip

Talas, Kayseri I won’t be mistaken if I said the balcony. Ali mountain located in the heart of sawdust, is an ideal place to air for a bird’s eye view of the city. It is located about 6 km from Kayseri center. Many Armenian and Greek historic house in the city.

don’t forget to drop by when you get the shavings from Ataturk’s Mansion. Ataturk in 1934 when he came to Kayseri is stuck in this mansion. Very calm and nature, a place with sawdust. You can listen to your head and get some fresh air when you get here.

mount erciyes, Turkey in the top 5. Mountain and constantly emphasized in terms of promotion by the local people of Kayseri. Winter tourism and skiing, when he said to this that comes to mind I can say that this is one of the most important ski centers. Erciyes winter and summer no matter the season you want you can go in. Of course, every season has its own beauty. You can enjoy the beauty of the snow and you can ski out in the winter. Watching the snow from the window while sitting by the fireplace in your hotel it’s a different feeling. Erciyes mountain’s beautiful hotels in the area and is located close to the cable car. Overwhelmed by the heat of summer you can cool off by coming here. You can have a taste of that ice flows from the mountain bread and sausage you can eat. The air will almost make you younger.

item links

located in Kayseri melikgazi gesi County Ties, it’s hard to sing about 150-year-old a place with mansions is worth seeing. People here are very hospitable and they are inviting visitors to their homes. In the area there was known by all of us everywhere in time and that bond has been the subject of folk songs. But now you can’t see much more bonding.

element will attract your attention when you get to dovecotes. Pigeon manure for vines, because it is very efficient, to meet the needs of the bonds established by the local people in particular places, you can see dovecotes.

What Defeated?

the bacon and the home of Kayseri ravioli. When you get here first, you can eat ravioli. It doesn’t look like you eat here the other ravioli ravioli, Dumplings dumplings and soup here and a whole lot of love like very little is being done. The best ravioli in Kayseri Spoon’or elmacioglu you can eat.

here again, which is unique to elmacioglun ply, bacon, cold cuts, Bacon, on paper, you can have a taste of succulent leaf roll and RAID. In appearance it looks like lahmacun lubrication, and it is served cut in the shape of a triangle, although I can say that has a taste very different from lahmacun lubrication.

before I forget this place is a notorious venue with Alexander. When you get here, Alexander’s don’t leave without a taste, I’d say. Kayseri Develi also civikli’s one of eat flavours. Kayseri Develi civikli a multi-venue present. Sheep’s by taking the limit of the rib and the waist Double thin sliced meats with a knife rested for 2 days. Ingredients blended with chopped tomato and pepper, Develi civikli’s prepared for. Develi pide with the image of civikli reminiscent of the name a little more runny, but so delicious. Here you should definitely taste among the food that civikli Develi.

note that the famous Kaiser of Bologna. Vakumlatara bacon and sausage when you get here you can take your home and your loved ones.

How do I get to?

as you can go by road to Kayseri, you can choose the airline. If you spend a lot of time on the roads, my advice to you will be air travel. When you get on the plane and also if you wish rent a car from the airport you can easily visit the town of Kayseri.

kayseri, historical sites and beautiful dishes is waiting for you!

#Bazaar #Clock Tower #Erciyes mountain #Grand Bazaar #hunat hatun Mosque #Istanbul #Kayseri #Kayseri Castle #Mountain #Turkey #Vezir Han #winter tourism

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newssplashy · 6 years

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The downtown has an energy that is a long way from the sleepy Soviet city I first visited in the 1980s.

Each time I’ve come to Yerevan in the past decade, the city has surprised me with its evolving elegance and cultural richness.

“The new generation, born after the fall of the Soviet Union, is playing a big role in the new democracy,” Ashakharoyan said. “We are tech-savvy and have no ties to the corrupt Soviet past.”

Ohanyan added: “We feel a new future. The reign of oligarchs is over.”

For a small country Armenia has an amazing diversity of flora and fauna; about 240 bird species breed in Armenia and nearly 400 move through the country, making Armenia a birder’s paradise.

A half-hour north, the ninth-century Sevanavank monastery, with its two small beautiful, earth-colored churches on a peninsula, is worth the climb up the steps from the shore below.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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newssplashy · 6 years

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Opinion: An ancient land, newly optimistic

The downtown has an energy that is a long way from the sleepy Soviet city I first visited in the 1980s.

Each time I’ve come to Yerevan in the past decade, the city has surprised me with its evolving elegance and cultural richness.

“The new generation, born after the fall of the Soviet Union, is playing a big role in the new democracy,” Ashakharoyan said. “We are tech-savvy and have no ties to the corrupt Soviet past.”

Ohanyan added: “We feel a new future. The reign of oligarchs is over.”

For a small country Armenia has an amazing diversity of flora and fauna; about 240 bird species breed in Armenia and nearly 400 move through the country, making Armenia a birder’s paradise.

A half-hour north, the ninth-century Sevanavank monastery, with its two small beautiful, earth-colored churches on a peninsula, is worth the climb up the steps from the shore below.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

source http://www.newssplashy.com/2018/08/opinion-ancient-land-newly-optimistic.html

#News

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