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uncloseted · 4 years

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what are your thoughts on the black lives matter movement and recent events in Minneapolis?

Black lives matter. Period. Black lives are irreplaceable. I am fully in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. I’m furious and appalled and disgusted by police brutality, and I’m a white person. I can’t even imagine how furious and appalled and disgusted the Black community must be right now. I don’t think it’s my place to insert myself into this conversation as a white person, but I also recognize that you all come here to hear my opinions on things, so I’m going to try and be brief, but I also want to make sure I say everything that needs to be brought up.

The US justice system is racist from top to bottom, from the people who are hired to be police officers to the way they’re trained to the way Black people are arrested, tried, and imprisoned, to what happens to imprisoned people once they’re released. Our police system was formed from discriminatory practices designed to uphold racist and prejudiced ideas, and it continues to do that to this day.

Armed white protestors in Michigan assembled outside of the statehouse just a few weeks ago to demand that governments relax stay at home orders. They screamed in the faces of police officers with no reaction from authorities. They were treated humanely; no arrests were made. George Floyd was unarmed. He was killed for allegedly trying to pass off a fake $20 bill. Not even for passing off a fake $20 bill- for being suspected of using a counterfeit bill. He was deemed threatening solely because of the way he looked. He begged for his life and his pleas fell on deaf ears. He was unarmed. He was not yelling in an officer’s face. And yet our president tweeted that the Michigan protestors are “very good people…see them, talk to them, make a deal,” while the protestors demanding the end of police brutality are, “thugs” and “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

I know a lot of people object to the property damage the riots have caused and are asking why Black Lives Matter couldn’t have taken a more peaceful approach. But they did. They peacefully protested and circulated information and called their representatives and demanded that disgraced cops are fired from their jobs and took knees during football games. They were ridiculed for it. Their protests did not create the widespread change that is needed. So more people were killed at the hands of the police officers who were supposed to protect them.

Martin Luther King Jr said that “a riot is the language of the unheard”. Before we lament the property damage to the likes of Autozone and Dollar Tree, let’s take a second to consider the incredible frustration and anger that would lead someone to do that. Let’s consider how long these voices have gone unheard, how long their community has suffered. The window of a Dollar Tree, a burned Autozone, those things are replaceable. George Floyd’s life is not. Eric Garner’s life is not. Ahmud Arbery, Beronna Taylor, Treyvon Martin, those lives are not replaceable. By making this a conversation about property damage, we are admitting that we care more about capitalism than we do about human lives. That’s disgusting. The damage to those businesses is so, so small compared to the damage the Black community has faced at the hands of the police officers that are supposed to protect them and a justice system that monetarily profits from their imprisonment.

Protestors have alleged that the cops initiated the violence. They have said that the protests were peaceful until the cops showed up in riot gear and started using water cannons, tear gas, and rubber bullets. Dispatch has reportedly refused to provide medical attention to the protestors or allow ambulances to reach the protestors. The police are allegedly using non-lethal weapons in a lethal way, such as shooting rubber bullets at people’s heads. There have been reports that undercover police are pretending to be violent protestors, and that the white man who damaged the AutoZone that started the violence was an undercover cop pretending to be a protestor. Other protestors tried to stop him, but were afraid for their safety because he had a hammer. (Edit to add: the cop in the video has been identified as Jacob Pedersen of the St. Paul Police Department. You can report him by emailing the St. Paul Police Department - [email protected]). The police have allegedly jammed cell phone towers and cut live streams to prevent people from seeing what’s going on. Reporters who are at the scene of the protests are being arrested without just cause.

The police are supposed to protect us, not to scare us. They should be on the side of peace and justice and humanity. They should not be the enemy, and yet, they constantly act as the enemy. They should be educated in de-escalating situations instead of making those situations worse. They shouldn’t be militarized the way that they are to begin with.

We cannot keep letting this happen, and by staying silent on this issue, we are. Anti-apartheid and human rights activist Desmond Tutu said, “if you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel said, “we must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” Martin Luther King Jr said “the hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict…[an individual] who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it”. We cannot be neutral. We must use our privilege and positions of power to fight for those whose voices are drowned out. We must fight to make sure they’re heard and respected and taken seriously.

Here is what you can do to help the situation:

Check the official page for #BlackLivesMatter for information on how to be a good ally and donate to your local Black Lives Matter chapter:

https://blacklivesmatter.com/

Follow and listen to Black Lives Matter founders Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi.

Contact Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey here to demand justice. You can also call his office at 612-673-2100. Call DA Mike Freeman (612-348-5550) and tell him to arrest and charge the involved officers for the Murder of George Floyd. Derek Chauvin has already been arrested, but Thomas Lane, Tou Thao and J Alexander Kueng are still free.

SIGN THESE PETITIONS:

https://www.change.org/p/mayor-jacob-frey-justice-for-george-floyd

https://www.change.org/p/change-org-the-minneapolis-police-officers-to-be-charged-for-murder-after-killing-innocent-black-man

https://www.change.org/p/department-of-justice-mandatory-life-sentence-for-police-brutality

https://www.change.org/p/mayor-jacob-frey-justice-for-george-floyd-2

https://sign.moveon.org/petitions/justiceforfloyd-demand-the-police-officers-who-killed-george-floyd-are-fired

https://go.theactionpac.com/sign/justice-for-george-floyd?akid=s126290..-x2Vhw

https://go.theactionpac.com/sign/stand-with-breonna?akid=s170063..jxQ_ei

DONATE TO GEORGE FLOYD’S FAMILY:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/georgefloyd

FOR THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE INTERNATIONALLY:

If you cannot sign without American postal codes, here are a few you can use:

90015 - Los Angeles, California 10001 - New York City, New York 75001 - Dallas, Texas

TEXT “FLOYD” TO 55156!

TEXT “JUSTICE” TO 668366!

DONATE TO THESE CAUSES:

Donate to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, who are reducing the burden of bail for protestors who have been arrested.

https://minnesotafreedomfund.org/

Donate to Reclaim the Block, a grassroots organization based in Minneapolis.

https://secure.everyaction.com/zae4prEeKESHBy0MKXTIcQ2

Donate to Black Visions Collective, who focuses on transformative justice in the state of Minnesota.

https://secure.everyaction.com/4omQDAR0oUiUagTu0EG-Ig2

Donate to North Star Health Collective, a group of street medics, who are using the funds for gear and medical supplies.

https://www.northstarhealthcollective.org/donate

Find our your local police department’s hiring practices and ensure that disgraced cops cannot be rehired. Does your police department conduct background checks? What are the union’s rules with respect to fired officers? Can the department be forced to rehire? Are police personnel records available? Reach out to your city council and your state legislator and demand that they change these policies. Support efforts to change these policies. The cop who murdered George Floyd had more than ten complaints filed against him and had been involved in three other civilians shootings. We cannot keep letting these people be rehired.

#Anonymous #effys-closet #effys closet

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jackjots · 3 years

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#10 Siblings

Wayward Guide for the Untrained Eye 30 Day Prompt

(This takes place around Episode 6 )

Day #10 @30daysofwayward

(I do not own any other characters or place names outside of Shelby St. Ranger, this is just for fun)

“You oughta ask GPS.” Desmond threw his towel over his shoulder.

“What?” I asked, wrapping my hand around the cold beer.

“Garmin Patrick Saget, GPS, he’s usually over with Wallis Gale. Surely you’ve seen them?”

“Are they the two that sit over that way, with the hats?” I gestured. He nodded. “That’s not the way I usually go, but I have seen them sitting there an awful lot. GPS, and he knows where things are?”

“Yes.”

“Great. Technology these days.” Desmond frowned and I shrugged away the joke. I wondered if he understood the very pun he had told himself. I didn’t feel like explaining it to him.

“Why do you want to go see Aubrey anyway?”

I contemplated the harm in letting Desmond in on what I was searching for. In the pause that he saw me take a long sip of beer, I rolled around in my mind his likelihood of being a werewolf. Even if he was, I just couldn’t picture him being a bad person. So I swallowed the beer, and risked it. “I heard he knows about werewolves.”

“Ah.” He shook his head. “I don’t know about that.”

“No? His father then”

“His great-grandfather.” He corrected me. “We all know about that and the stories he used to tell.”

“Right. But naturally his family listened to those stories?”

“Maybe. Still, don’t you think that’s taking this whole werewolf thing a little far?”

“You don’t believe it.”

He looked at me. “You do?”

I scratched my head. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. It’s like there’s two sides at war inside of me, the logical and the imagination. I know what I’ve seen, and I know what I’ve heard about. I could be mistaken, and they could be mistaken. But there’s too much empty space there for maybes. But even if they do exist, I am not convinced they’re guilty of murder.”

“No?”

“No. Just because someone is holding a gun, doesn’t mean they’ve fired it. I don’t think judging a group of individuals before you even know for sure they exist, nevermind what their intentions are, is fair at all. People are scared of what they don’t understand. So of course there’s panic. I am more worried about the damage the panic will cause than the threat of the werewolves.”

“Well said. You’re a writer, right?”

“Correct.”

“You’re used to making stuff up and having things go your way.”

I frowned. “I guess.”

“Just be careful. This is real life. You might be walking into something you don’t understand, however pure your intentions might be.”

I tilted my head. “Do you know something about this Desmond?”

He shook his head. “I know people. And you’re right, when they panic, they get down right mean. And these people, they don’t know you. You might as well be a stranger.”

I flinched. “I’m not very good at socializing.”

“You’re new here. It wouldn’t matter if you were the life of the party, it wouldn't matter if you were the mayor’s best friend. They don’t know you.”

“They don’t know each other either.” “Pardon?”

“If they aren’t turning on each other already, they will soon. The idea of a werewolf is a person who turns into a wolf, unless - which is very likely - the movies are wrong and they just stay wolves all the time which...which opens a whole other possibility. But if they are people during the day, presumably, they’re people who have lived here for years.”

“How do you figure they’re not new people.” “Like me?”

“The siblings, Artemis and Paul. The podcasters.” He threw it out there with a small nod to what had once been a humorous moment between us, but it was like hearing an echo a week after speaking into a cave and didn’t hit me the same way.

“They aren’t the killers. They could be the werewolves. But from what I’ve pieced together, they couldn’t be the killers. Probably. And because of the lore that I’ve seen hints of, werewolves in Connor Creek is not a foreign concept. It’s far more likely that we’re dealing with locals.”

“You’ve got quite the brain.”

“Do I? I feel like I’m chasing my own tail sometimes. I just want to make sure no one innocent gets hurt.” I paused. “Noone else innocent, that is.” I grimaced.

“You’re taking on a lot that isn’t yours.” He observed.

I drank another deep sip. This whole ordeal was making me drink a lot more. “All I’m doing is observing.” I said finally. “That’s all it is. Just writing down what I see and what I hear. If it helps, it helps. If it just fades away into the background and I go back to my book and just write about vikings beating each other up.”

“That’s what you write about?”

“Yes. I’ve always liked humans in extreme situations. In high school I wrote horror stories about spiders coming out of ear canals and other fun things like that. I try not to give so many nightmares now.”

He nodded. “Will you publish whatever it is you write here?”

“Publish it?” The thought hadn’t really occurred to me. “Desmond, if I write any of this down, it’s just to make sure the truth is found. I’m not trying to get a story out of this.”

“Try or not, you’re recording it.”

“I’ll burn it.” I promised. “Once everything is all over, it’s gone. I just need to keep track of everything.”

“If you could prove werewolves existed, you’d just get rid of any evidence of that?”

“Of course.” I shook my head. “If they’re hurting people, that’s a whole other situation. But again, I don’t think they are. All I want is the town to go back to the quiet place it was before. This isn’t good for my book writing, honestly.” Desmond cleaned a glass and just the hint of a smile hit his face.

I found GPS and Wallis eager to give me directions. “Aubrey? Sure!” Wallis’ chipper attitude propelled him toward GPS who whispered in his ear. “That way!” He said, describing Aubrey’s residence to me in detail so I’d know what to find. I thanked them both and GPS smiled at me from under his hat that took up most of his face. Although they’d been overly eager, I liked them better than other outgoing people I’d met recently. I didn’t feel as trespassed in my introversion, so to speak.

Trespassing on other people’s introversion seemed to be my accidental next choice, though, as was obvious when I knocked on Aubrey’s door.

“Who is it?” He called through the door.

“Aubrey Dockweiler?” I asked.

“Who wants to know?” He voice had a hint of shrillness like I hadn’t been the first person knocking on his door.

Just the sound of it made me start with an apology. “I’m sorry, my name is Shelby. I’m fairly new to town.” “Yes, yes, I remember you. What do you want?”

“I just had some questions-

“No. There’s been enough for today.” I was not good at this. “Of course you have. I’m sorry. I hope you have a nice evening Aubrey.” I turned to leave when the door opened behind me and I turned.

“Werewolves aren’t real. That’s all you need to know.” Just a whisper after he said: “But I wish they were.”

#30daysofwayward #tin can bros #shelby st ranger #werewolves #fanfiction #fic #desmond

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anomalousresources · 4 years

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Wooden Overcoats for the head canon thing

Rudyard Funn: aroace, but has probably never heard the words “aromantic” or “asexual” in his life, so he’s frankly a little suspicious that the concepts of romantic and sexual attraction are just part of an elaborate long con everybody’s pulling on him—at least until Georgie gets fed up with that attitude and chucks an informative brochure at his head, likely acquired from the LGBTQ+ Center on the second floor of Chapman’s.

Antigone Funn: bisexual, but when she first figures it out she probably feels a little hesitant using the term since she hasn’t been in many (or...any, really) relationships before—until Georgie sits her down and is like, “Hey that’s rubbish, if you’re bi then you’re bi. It doesn’t matter who you have or haven’t snogged. Here’s a scarf my nan knit for you in the right colors. Happy pride.”

Eric Chapman: bisexual and on the aromantic spectrum. He came out as bi a long time ago...but it took him a lot longer to realize that he was arospec. Once again, Georgie was to thank for that. (Yes, there’s a pattern here. Georgie is great at helping people with LGBTQ+ identity things.) She pointed out that he treats relationships like games with rules that he can learn to win if he plays them right, that he’s never been keen on the romance part of romance, and that he proposed to her despite barely knowing her because he’d sat down and just made the decision that he was in love with her, which is apparently not quite how that’s supposed to work. After that conversation, things are a lot less fraught between the two of them—although Georgie still gets a kick out of sabotaging his every move with the Funns. (But that’s how friendship works sometimes, right?) Eric also leads weekly meetings at the Chapman’s LGBTQ+ Center, which eventually have to be split into multiple smaller group meetings because almost everyone on Piffling Vale starts showing up.

Georgie Crusoe: bisexual, nonbinary, and on the aromantic spectrum. She’s not particularly bothered about where on that spectrum; she normally just uses the term aro, or describes herself as queer and leaves it at that. Men are alright, women and nonbinary people are very alright, but she’ll take helicopters over romance any day. While she typically uses she/her or they/them pronouns, she’ll answer to any. Georgie is everybody’s go-to person for when they’re questioning identity matters. She’s got her own desk in the Center.

Madeleine: Madeleine is a private sort of lady, so let it suffice to say that she doesn’t feel gender is relevant when she’s looking for a partner, or a fling. (Good taste in literature, on the other hand, is critical.)

Rev. Nigel Wavering: pansexual and questioning his gender identity. He’s not quite sure what label fits best, if any, but genderfluid seems the closest so far. (It doesn’t seem right to stick with just one gender, after all, simply because someone told him it was the right one.) He winds up getting very enthusiastic about queer theory and takes a couple of online classes. For the duration of the courses, his sermons wind up incorporating a lot of the lecture material. Desmond is very supportive, of course.

Mayor Desmond Desmond: gay and grey-asexual. Eric mentions one day that towns often hold pride parades, and Desmond gets very excited at the prospect of organizing one. His husband and Georgie help, and it’s a smashing success. After the parade, the rainbow flag that he put up outside the village hall never seems to come back down.

Jennifer Delacroix: trans lesbian. She hosts a weekly LGBTQ+ radio hour on Piffling FM, and Georgie usually winds up guest starring after they start seeing each other. (Yes, Georgie’s nonbinary. Yes, Jennifer likes nonbinary people as well as women. Yes, she’s still a lesbian.) On that note, Jennifer’s always respectful of Georgie’s romance-related boundaries as an arospec person—Georgie makes sure to respect Jennifer’s as well, of course—and they go on at least one date in Chapman’s helicopter (their previous date was stealing that helicopter).

Thanks, anon! (Send me a podcast I listen to and I’ll give you some of my LGBTQ+ headcanons for it.)

#wooden overcoats #lgbtq+ tag #this is the non-audio log of...#asks

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professor-of-predators · 4 years

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Mistletoe, accidental after many purposeful tries

Christmas Party!

Another year, another party she wasn’t sure she was able to enjoy. Georgie had told her about the villiage party, but it was Jane who had convinced the Funns and their assistant to go along. At least this year the participants were friendly with her. Not to mention entertaining! She’d been whisked around by nearly ever tipsy villiager in the place, and enjoyed most of them thoroughly, though Sid Marlowe nearly crushed her toes. She and Antigone had a lovely dinner conversation about taxidermy, and Georgie had shown her how to do a body roll.

Rudyard arrived a little late, but no one but Jane seemed to notice. In fact, it seemed most people’s attention was on the ‘newcomers’ to the island. Rather than being able to welcome her friend, Jane spent the majority of her time bouncing between residents of Piffling Vale. It wasn’t all bad though; she watched as villiager after villiager tried to capture the effervecent Mr. Chapman under the sprig of mistletoe in the doorway. Lady Templar’s successful smooch was particularly disturbing. The food was excellent, and excellently prepared, and though a few residents couldn’t have them Jane’s own contributions to the table were well regarded. Rudyard nearly got a whole dance in with her too, between the other residents cutting in. The mayor and the reverend also snagged kisses, both from Chapman and each other. Jane didn’t escape anyone’s notice either. Jennifer Deleacroix nearly knocked her into the doorjamb while they were getting more nibbles, and kissed her with a festive and platonic glee. Mayor Desmond nearly required a kiss, cornering her in a long conversation about her work and leading her through the doorway. She narrowly avoided running into Chapman there as well. At least, not until the end of the party.

Most of Piffling had gone home to thier beds by the time Jane and Rudyard actually got to talking. They spent so long talking they were almost forced to help clean up the dregs of the party. It was almost nice; quiet and cozy as the snow started to fall outside. Rudyard was very good at prioritizing clean-up, and Jane was happy to stay late to wash dishes, as long as he could dry. She almost forgot the mistletoe existed entirely, until they were taking the last of the trash out.

“Oh!” Jane exclaimed, looking up at the little decoration. “I forgot that one.” She smirked up at Rudyard, then looked back at the sprig. “Lucky us.”

He froze for a moment, seemingly lost in the many thoughts that were swirling through his mind, his arm halfway to the sprig. Jane waved him downward gently --he was too tall to simply kiss-- until he was close enough that she could settle a hand on his shoulder and drag him in for a proper kiss. One that left them both breathless, a bit giddy, and ready for another.

#inthegroundontime #V: It's Normal Because You Live Here #Maximum Efficiency: Rudyard Funn #OTP: I'm Monitoring His Progress

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filmstruck · 6 years

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Hitchcock Was Right: SABOTAGE (’36) by Greg Ferrara

The subject of terrorism, so prevalent today, was rarely discussed back in the 19th century outside of anarchist circles and newspaper reports on the Haymarket bombing in Chicago in 1886. Joseph Conrad’s novel, The Secret Agent, published in 1907, is even set in 1886, clearly evoking the Haymarket affair in its story of terrorism and subterfuge. But he was also evoking a bit of London’s own recent history. In 1894, a French anarchist named Martial Bourdin accidently blew himself up instead of his target, The Greenwich Observatory which, it just so happens, is the major target in the novel. And that swings us around to the movie version, released in 1936 as SABOTAGE. Taking place in 1936, this Alfred Hitchcock film targets something completely different but with similar results to the novel. The major difference being that this time, in the movie, the results were wildly unpopular with the viewing audience.

The movie version and the novel version are similar in theme but different in the details and understandably so. Different mediums, different times, different audiences. But the basics are the same. There is a man, Mr. Verloc (Oskar Homolka), who is a shop owner (novel)/cinema owner (movie) by day and terrorist by night. His accent places him as Eastern European and communism is mentioned quite a bit, at least in the novel. His wife, Mrs. Verloc (Sylvia Sidney), is completely unaware of her husband’s nightly activities and political bent. Her younger brother, Stevie (Desmond Tester), is learning disabled and she takes care of him. What the terrorists plan to do is clearer in the novel (they fight for the proletariat and want to undermine England’s parliamentary system) than in the movie but it doesn’t matter so much in the movie which focuses more on Mrs. Verloc and Stevie, and their relationship with Ted, an undercover detective (John Loder), who’s trying to put the finger on Mr. Verloc.

At the beginning of the film, Mr. Verloc successfully sabotages the electrical system in London and the lights go out. The problem is that no one much cares. Everyone has a good time wandering around in the dark so, clearly, this wasn’t New York in the 1970s. When Mr. Verloc meets with his benefactor at the aquarium, he is instructed to be a little more forceful next time. To wit, blow up something. Preferably, Piccadilly Circus during the Lord Mayor’s parade. That’s when the novel and movie both kill a main character but in dramatically different ways.

In both the novel and the movie, Mr. Verloc employs Stevie to carry the bomb. Stevie, of course, doesn’t know this in either medium, but in the novel, he trips up and falls in a field on his way to the observatory and the bomb goes off, just like it did with Mr. Bourdin in real life. In the movie, however, things play out a little differently. Hitchcock shows Stevie wandering around London with the bomb in the guise of a package. It plays off the very same element of suspense Hitchcock himself always used as an example: blow up something unexpectedly and there’s no suspense. Let the audience know there is a bomb and the suspense becomes overwhelming as we wonder if our hero will notice in time. Suffice it to say, our hero does not. Stevie, aboard a packed bus no less, is blown to smithereens. And with a visual countdown to accompany it. We literally see a clock tick away to the exact moment the bomb is to go off and then, as expected, it goes off.

Audiences were not amused.

Nor should they have been and Hitchcock received a lot of flak for this but he really shouldn’t have. In fact, he copped to it in an interview years later with François Truffaut where he said that he made a mistake having Stevie blown up with everyone else on the bus. I’m here to tell the ghost of Alfred Hitchcock he was not wrong and shouldn’t have caved so easily. He made exactly the right decision and SABOTAGE, as a result, becomes one of the cinema’s first works to truly show and painfully illustrate the collateral and emotional damage of terrorism. Terrorism may have its incompetent buffoons like Bourdin but it also has far too many competent evil-doers who make life miserable for innocent people the world over. SABOTAGE looked at terror square in the eyes and didn’t blink.

At a time when terrorism was a rarely discussed subject, SABOTAGE took an older tale of anarchists in the 19th century and transformed it into one of the most impressive and powerful statements on evil in the 20th century. I understand the pressure that Hitchcock succumbed to when he took it all back and said he shouldn’t have killed Stevie on the bus. But he was right to have the bomb blow up like it did. Otherwise, SABOTAGE would have been just another thriller with a throwaway villain and a low stakes plot. As it is, it is a formidable film on the horrors of terrorism and the pain it unleashes upon the world.

#Alfred Hitchcock #Sabotage #Criterion Channel #FilmStruck #Sylvia Sidney #StreamLine Blog #Greg Ferrara

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khrow-shinku · 3 years

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The Great War S12.5

D&D 5e Campaign

The Great War

Aravari’s Mysteries

Ara begins looking through the records. She finds out that her mother’s family was one of the founding families of the town along with a map of the town before it was destroyed. Ara keeps digging through the records and finds out her mothers birth year and her grandparents' names. Suddenly things didn’t add up. According to this her mother was born 85 years before Ara was born, almost 86. She had always told Ara that she was much much younger. She keeps digging a bit further and finds out her mother was actually married twice before being married to her father. “Why would my mother never tell me about any of this… she always talked as if dad was her first love, the first person she married. WTF is going on?” Ara thought to herself.

Ara kept reading and found her mother’s first husband was a human named Desmond Miles who was captain of the guard and a local who was born 20 years before he married Bekari. She also found his death certificate which says he died 5 years after they got married, cause of death was mysterious circumstances. “That’s strange.” Ara mumbled. Ara dug deeper into this first marriage. She found an arrest certificate dated 30 days after his death, her mother was arrested, accused of his murder however she was released 30 days later. “Oh no, mom you didn’t…. There’s no way you could have…. “ Ara mumbled as she began to fear the worst. Ara then found another arrest certificate attached to her mother’s release paper. Za’an Miles who was sergeant of the guard at the time of mothers arrest and was Desmond’s sister was arrested for the murder for her brother. There was also an amendment to the death certificate saying that Desmond was poisoned with iocane. There was also a written confession from Za’an that simply stated, “I Za’an Miles killed my brother Desmond Miles.” There was no listing of motivation or how in the confession. This was odd and too strange. Ara, knowing what her bloodline could do, went searching to see if there was some contact between Za’an and Bekari. Ara began to say “No, no, nooo, mother you didn’t… please, you surely wouldn’t charm his own sister into falsely confessing just to free yourself.” as she read where just 3 days before the confession Za’an had visited Bekari in prison.

Bekari paid off all debts of every member of the Miles family 15 days after she was released. “Hmm perhaps mother didn’t charm, but made a deal.. Still just no mother no....” Ara thought reading this. Za’an was beheaded in prison only 3 days after she was arrested in prison by prisoner 37, the real name was smudged and not legible. Ara did some more digging and found that her mother was a sergeant of the guard and vouched for Za’an to join the guard just 5 years before she married Desmond. Ara began to question if her mother was really deep down evil as she began to wonder if the entire thing was a long con or something and all of it premeditated. Not satisfied believing this about her mother she kept digging for answers. Ara found that prisoner 37 was her uncle, her mother’s brother… he was also arrested by Desmond, who was captain of the guard when he arrested him just 5 years before mother had sponsored Za’an to join the guard. Uncle was arrested for ripping off the head of a shop's merchant with his teeth. The merchant’s last name was Miles. “Oh god no no no no no. Mom… why. You did set up this long con all because…” Ara mumbled as tears streamed down her face. Ara steeled her nerves and resolve, then dried her tears. “No, there were still too many holes in this story. Maybe her mom wasn’t the one responsible” she thought.

Still not satisfied, she went even deeper into the files. Turns out her uncle died just 4 days after killing Za’an, poisoned by iocane. “Wait, what? Whoa whoa whoa. This has really confusing things.” Ara thought. So she checked to see who had visited her uncle leading up to his death. He had only 1 visitor, it was on the day he died. The name was smudged but she could tell that the first name started with an S and the last name started with a B. Upon further digging of info on Bekari she found out that Bekari’s father, Ara’s grandfather, was an alchemist named Shalashaska Birion. Ara gasped, “S B.” It was her grandfather who had killed her mother’s first husband, and her uncle, and likely convinced Za’an to confess. She knew too well the lengths a father would go to for his daughter. If he did not see Desmond as good enough, he likely killed him, then when they accused his daughter he had to kill one after the other to cover his tracks. It all suddenly fit into place in Ara’s mind, however one thing still bugged her, where did her mother get all of that money from to pay off the Miles family debts? She did a bit more digging and found out a contract between Bekari and another person for the sale of her grandfather’s alchemy shop. Grandfather had contested the sale of his shop even though the money was already paid. Seems the shop was in debt for 10,000 plat. Mother used the money from the sale of the shop to pay off the debts of the Miles family, likely because she knew about what grandfather had done and felt guilty for his actions. She also found a death certificate for grandfather, apparently his debt collectors caught him because he had been found neck broken twisted around 180 degrees and shoved up his own ass and his body shoved on a pike.

Ara was now curious though as she had yet to find any evidence on when Desmond entered the guard or of him or his sister living in the town before mother entered their lives. She did some more digging and found that Za’an couldn’t have children so she had adopted a child and he was who got the financial benefit from Bekari. However there was no proof of Za’an and Desmond’s parents ever living in the town or any proof of any one from the Miles family living in that town before Desmond and Za’an. And no evidence of him actually being in the guard other than on that arrest paper. Then Ara stumbled upon another death certificate for both Za’an and Desmond. This one says that Desmond died before arresting uncle and Za’an died before joining the guard. Ara came to the conclusion that they had their identities stolen. “Perhaps the real reason grandfather had done what he did was to protect mother from the impostors. Maybe he knew they weren’t who they claimed to be and just wanted to protect her.” Ara thought for a moment. Ara decided to go with that as she didn’t like the idea of her grandfather being a cold murderer, even if she never met him.

Ara leaned back satisfied finally with that chain of research and decided to look into husband number 2 when suddenly a locked book fell from a top shelf and smacked her in the head. Ara looks and sees where it fell from and for some reason this book looks to be in pristine shape, not an ounce of dust on it even though the shelf it fell from was covered in layers of thick dust. Ara quickly solves the sliding picture puzzle lock with ease on her first try. As it pops open Ara sees her family tree. It even includes her name written in her mother’s hand writing. Ara gasps and thinks out loud, “Is mom still alive?” At that moment a being steps out from the shadows, and says “No, she isn’t.” Ara screams “Who the fuck are you?” visibly startled as she thought she was alone this whole time. In an ominous voice the being says, "I am no one and I am someone but for your purposes you can call me X" and with this the being’s eyes glowed red as the rest of it seemed to almost be made up of shadows. Ara then wondered, OK so she isn’t alive but she has obviously been here some time since I was born in order to have written my name here. X as though reading her thoughts responds, “Yes, very recently even. I’m sorry I’m not speaking directly to you, but someone through you.” Ara shrugs off the ramblings of this bizarre creature. She feels no malice or ill intent so she keeps searching for answers. And looks to see if there is any indication of her having a brother on her family tree and sees that there is no indication of it, just some erased lines from other branches of the family where mistakes had been made.

X begins to laugh at Ara’s sad attempts to make sense of everything, so to assist her X begins throwing papers at her from all over the building for her to read. At first Ara wasn’t sure where the papers were coming from but she noticed X’s fingers moving ever so slightly which gave away who was doing it. Ara quickly began reading page after page as they flew in front of her. Bekari’s 2nd husband was the mayor of the town and died of natural causes after being married for 23 years to her. As Ara reads this only one thought enters her mind, “If mom had all these years of marriage and a full life here where she seemed happy enough for the most part, why call this place a cult and run away from it? Why hide this all from her? Sure it wasn’t all peachy but why lie about it to both her and her dad?” It is at this time X drops a stack of 17 pages in front of Ara. Ara begins to read this new stack as it describes an incident where several females of the town created a lynch mob that marched on the mayor's house the day after he died. They bared the doors from the outside and set fire to the house, all the servants died in that fire, yet for some reason Bekari did not. After she didn’t die they accused her of being a witch. They tied her to a pike in the middle of town and piled wood around the pike and proceeded to burn her, but could never figure out why the flames would never touch her. Because they couldn’t kill her with fire they ran her out of town. As Ara reads this X begins to take on a more physical form and gets closer to Ara. Ara continues to read, after Bekari was run out of town the women showed their true selves, they were demons. Ara begins to read the last page which is a recounting from the only survivor, a child, about how the entire village was destroyed by those demons years ago, long before Ara was born.

As Ara finishes reading the last page, the building starts turning to ash except the papers and the table which are glowing. Once the final page is read X’s eyes stop glowing and a female form appears out of the shadowy mist. Ara then turns to look at the woman as the papers and table turn to ash and the book with her family tree and the lock fall to the ground still intact. The female figure reaches down, grabs the book and the lock, locks the book back up, then hands it to Ara saying "keep this". As Ara grabs the book, she can’t shake this feeling in her gut so she reaches for the hood covering the woman’s face and moves it back gently, brushing the woman's face as she does. X speaks up, “All you had to do was ask and I would have removed the hood. I swear in all my years working for your family I’ve never had to go through so much trouble.” Ara responds, “Sorry, I had to know who you were. To be honest for a moment I thought maybe you were my mother’s spirit here to guide me.” X replies,”Sorry dear she really is gone. However I am indeed here to guide you, as I have assisted every member of your bloodline. You wouldn’t know me though, you met me only once, that was the day you were born.” Ara responds back, “It’s OK. I just felt like for a moment ...she was here with me. I still get the feeling that I’ve known you for years. So you said you’ve worked for my family for years, tell me, do I have a brother?” X answers very formally, “Yes and no. You had a twin brother who died at birth, but you lived. It was my job to show you what happened and to help your mother to birth her children and once I failed to give one of them a proper burial.” Ara takes a deep breath “OK, well obviously he is alive again somehow, as I have heard I have a brother who is currently plotting to destroy the world. How is this a thing if he is dead? Please fill in the gap for me of how my family got to this point. What don’t I know?” Again very formally X responds, “Yes M’lady that is the part that I am afraid scares me and the reason why I was in the state I was in when I found you. You see, the Dracolich revived your brother, and… your mother. I was able to kill your mother which is what she had asked me to do if such a thing ever befell her. Your brother however, was raised by the Dracolich and sees him as a parental figure. He is also quite powerful and deeply brainwashed. If this is all that you need I’ll go back to protecting you from the shadow.” Ara grabs her hand and puts a finger on her lips. “Nonsense. If it is true you are bound to me then no more hiding. Talk to me, stay with me. Be a proper servant to me. I have many more things to ask. Besides beauty such as yours has no business being hidden. “ X nods, “As you wish M’lady.” Ara then says, “OK first what is your name. This whole X business is getting old.” X responds, “Right, let me properly introduce myself. My name is Thefa, I am an Ifrit created by Slaanesh with the task of guarding, guiding, and forever watching your bloodline, the 1st bloodline. As long as a member of your bloodline is alive so shall I too live.”

“Whoa, whoa, hold up, OK Thefa what is all this 1st bloodline stuff and a creature of Slaanesh? Mother always told me that he was like some evil deity that created demons. However given the giant lie about this town just to keep me from finding it… I imagine that isn’t exactly the truth so please teach me about my full past, and why exactly you have to protect my bloodline.” It was at this time Thefa suggested they start heading back to where her friends would no doubt be waiting for her and informed Ara that she had been inside that hall of records for 2 and a half months. In order to keep that room together so that Ara could learn the truth she had to create a space outside of the normal realm to keep the building together. As they walked together to the nearest town they continued to talk. Thefa informed Ara that Slaanesh wasn’t good nor evil, he just gave power to people, what the people did with it was up to them. Some did good, some did bad. Slaanesh is a god of pleasure, lust and excess. A god of all the decadent things in life. Once he was born his very first creation was a line of succubus who were given a country to rule over. This country has been ruled by her bloodline for thousands of years. Ara’s mother, Bekari was supposed to be the next in line to rule the country, however she refused and handed the country over to her 2 viziers so that all decisions made for the country had to be agreed on by both in order to be enforced. Well the first thing they did was agree to divide the country and both control their half. She also explained that Ara was now the last living member of that original bloodline and the one true heir to that country should she decide to go and reunite it and take over. She also explains that her countries were not a part of the alliance that had held the summit meeting because until recently they were actually underground and not surface countries, but due to changes happening the country had risen to the surface. That was about all she knew concerning the country as she hadn’t been back since her mother gave up her rights to it. Ara and Thefa continued to get acquainted over the next 2 and a half months traveling back to the town where Ara had left the party. During that time Ara had seen Thefa’s true Ifrit form in battle. While some would regard it as beastly and ugly, Ara saw it as a beautiful bright flame and was in awe of how majestic Thefa looked as she easily disposed of 49 bandits in a single swipe of her flaming claws. Ara continued to tease Thefa that she was so beautiful that she wanted to someday have her as more than just a servant. Thefa every time responded, "That to be with her was to kill oneself." Ara always just vowed to become stronger so that someday she could handle her flames and repay her for the service she has given her family and especially to her.

Once they got back to the town where the summit was, Ara met with her long lost party member Baruch, where he had informed her that everyone had been in a coma for 5 months. There they took turns watching over their party members. Ara in her boredom and curiosity got Thefa’s help in measuring everyone. She now knows every woman’s bust, waist and hip measurement and the length and girth of every males Johnson. The mammoth’s was a challenge as it took both of them and Ara’s tail to hold it up to get a good measurement.

#d&d #d&d5e #homebrew #campaign #the great war #session 12.5

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prowlingthunder · 7 years

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WIP Meme

So I was tagged by @badwolfgirl01 who clearly doesn’t believe me when I say I have all the projects to do. How do you put nonsense under a cut?

Fandom: Assassin’s Creed Title: Deus ex machina, chapter 3 Notes: The partially-finished Chpt3 has been in my WIP for... a long time. I’ve been squinting at it for a while. Poke it once in a while. Read previous two chapters on Ao3

Eventually he got a few fake IDs that said he was a bit older than he was, which was okay because he looked it, and he started tending bar. The owner had been surprised when Desmond mixed up a drink from barely-there memories, mentioning that it had been many years since the man who'd known how to make a Bloody Templar had retired from the scene. Been kidnapped, you see, and then when he came back he'd done a bit of work and then finally gave his resignation.

He asked Aita. Aita told him, “That was you, before. But I couldn't fit into your life. I tried.”

Fandom: Harry Potter, Saint Seiya Title: A Mother’s Love, chapter 6 Notes: Crossover. Not enough to share here. It’s been stalled for years, since waaay back in my FF.net days. I don’t like to let things die, but it’s hard juggling RL and everything else. There’s been some interest shown in this recently and I’ve also found my old notes, so we’ll see where this goes.

Fandom: Harry Potter, Ronin Warriors Title: Harry Potter and the Light of the Moon, chapter 4 Notes: Crossover. Not enough of the chapter to share. See above reasons for hiatus. Unlike AML, there’s been less interest in this, but I actually like the plot for this a trifle better than AML and my notes are a bit better for this one too. I’ve been poking at it trying to resurrect it from the dead.

Fandom: Mass Effect, Gundam Wing Title: Minor Troubles Notes: Crossover, 2/6 posted on Ao3. The other chapters are slow-going but in existence, though they’re all arguing for Chapter 3 and I’m not yet comfortable sharing the hot mess with ya’ll.

Fandom: YuYu Hakusho, Ronin Warriors Title: Roses in Stained Glass Notes: Crossover, Chapter 2 in progress, Chapter 1 on Ao3. I have to do some more research and designing of the grounds, various people on the area, hammer the plot out a bit more. So far the only thing to share is a teaset, which isn’t enough to spoil you guys with.

Fandom: Outlaw Star, Gundam Wing Title: The Ripple Effect: Desert Rose Notes: Crossover, Part 1 on Ao3. I wont call it a chapter because the next part isn’t a direct continuation of what we’ve got, there doesn’t seem to be a directly-after section for the current posted in my brain. Go figure.

Fandom: Fallout 4 Title: The Devil’s Luck, Chapter 3 Notes: Chapters 1&2 on Ao3. Chapter subject to rewrite, because current writing doesn’t feel quite right.

The inside of the Memory Den was lipstick-red, the color women used to press to letters before they sent them to their sweethearts in the war. It was a shade of red that made his heart ache, just a little. His Nora had started wearing it after they had come home from Alaska, partly to draw attention away from her cheeks, partly to fit in better with the housewives who had surrounded them in Sanctuary Hills. A rather failed attempt to make nice with civilians.

Silas tried to ignore the way McCready watched him. There were a lot of questions in that blue gaze that he wasn't prepared to explain, though he thought he knew what all the questions would be if the younger soldier spoke them out loud.

The memory den? Are you sure? You know what they do in there, right?

He was sure. He had to know for sure if it worked like the rumors said it did. He had to know.

Fandom: Fallout 4 Title: Hell Hath No Fury, Chapter 17 Notes: 1-16 on Ao3. 17 is partially written but not enough to be posted, even with HHNF standards.

Fandom: Fallout 4, Fallout 3 Title: Big Town Blues Notes: Oneshot. Doesn’t yet cover enough of what I want it to cover to be considered even half-complete. Still working! RJ takes Duncan to safety, outside the Commonwealth. The only place that’s safe? Big Town.

“Awe-J and his son--”

“Duncan.”

“Awe-J and Duncan awe hungwy.”

Duncan waved a little over Mac’s shoulder. Tewwy blanched and dropped the nose of his shotgun at once, as if just noticing the child for the first time. “You’ve a child?”

“Startled the fuck out of me too,” MacCready tried, smiling as disarming as he could manage. “Didn’t know I’d made a baby until my wife gave birth to him.”

Tewwy sucked a breath, setting his shotgun down on the table while he moved to pull a pot off the fire. “Billy, you should let mayor know as soon as possible. Don’t worry. I’ll make sure your friend and his son get breakfast.”

“Save some fow me!” Biwwy cried gleefully, nearly dancing on his way back out the door. Tewwy shot a hand motion at his retreating back that Mac didn’t know.

“Ignore him. He’s always hyperactive before breakfast. Have a sit, let the little one down?” The offer sounded pretty genuine.

MacCready moved to a crouch and started unstrapping Duncan’s harness from his back. The little boy let out a whoop of delight; partly for being let loose, partly for the truly divine scent coming from Tewwy’s pan. He had to snatch him by the harness before he went and got under Tewwy’s feet. “Ma,” Duncan whined plaintively.

“It’s not ready yet.”

“He sounds hungry,” Tewwy commented. Mac winced.

“We ran out of rations yesterday.” That hurt to admit. Especially to a stranger. But MacCready wasn’t above wheedling and emotional manipulation to get food in Duncan’s belly.

“Oh my.”

Fandom: Fallout 4, Fallout 3 Working Title: Radstorm Notes: Oneshot. I don’t like the way it reads, but I haven’t quite managed a rewrite that I like yet. It’s not... floaty enough? McCready gets radsickness.

It hurt. Everything hurt. His stomach roiled, guts twisting into knots, and rolled, vomiting over the edge of the cot. He could feel his clothing cling to him, wet and sticky like the blanket, but even that had chased through his bones to leave him weak. He flopped back on his back, hip aching, and tried to find air that wasn't going to melt his lungs.

People talked, background noise of the clinic, and he listened to them and couldn't make out the words, but the sounds helped. Something cool pressed against his flesh, against his head and against his chest. Lucy tugged at his shirt. He blinked up at her, dizzy; reached to find her fingers. She brushed his hand away.

Lu-- 'm hot.

Lucy paused for several heartbeats-- too fast, much too fast, he was too hot and he had to cool down. He heard her fiddling with something. The coolness on his head was ice against a fire. He could feel it drip into his hair. "You have a fever. Don't worry. We'll fix it."

Missed you. She looked like she had when he last saw her, all kitted up to go help mungos who didn't deserve it, stained white cloth at her throat to hide an old scar. She didn't respond to him, cut his shirt down the sleeves and pulled it out from beneath him. He realized, distantly, that he wasn't wearing his scarf. She must have taken it already.

Hot, he whined, and Lu ignored him in an effort to keep working.

Fandom: Fallout 4 Title: Line-dried Laundry Notes: Oneshot, Lupercalia fic. Incomplete, needs some touch-ups. No porn, promise. Nora and her brother back during soldier-days.

"Do you know why we're here?"

Nora did, and told him as much. The rest of the men were eyeing each other in confusion.

Major Rye dipped his hand to her, offering the table.

"You're evaluating us, and our brothers, sir. You're feeding your sister a heat suppressant to ensure her heat holds off while you judge the roster as worthy or unworthy."

Hawken furrowed his brow. Opened his mouth to say something, and decided to keep his fool mouth shut.

Major Rye had a pretty face; strong features, brown eyes, tanned skin. The crinkle around his eyes was a smile. "Very good. Officer Nedved and his brother are our escorts. The four of us will be spending the next two days with your squad to ease the transition. If all goes well, we'll retire to a breed room."

Nora didn't know if it was BreedCom policy to take a whole team off duty or not. She doubted it. Especially since they were front-liners, were Army not Recon Marines, they were a pack within a pack but it wasn't so tight that they couldn't handle without a member or two...

There was something else Major Rye and Officer Nedved were here for, and it wasn't just to rope them into a heat-shack.

Fandom: Fallout 4 Working Title: N/A Notes: Demon-summoning AU, the next in Every Word a Promise - Sil at a Summoning.

[Is this one yours?] Puck asks, words a whisper of wind through his hair. It's like a caress. A part of Silas resents him for being here; a part of him is exulted. Puck is a spirit of deceptive magic, a woodland sprite for twisting, winding paths that get lost in the woods, shaded corners and cool spots where the snake will strike if someone steps. But he is trustworthy, if the words are asked correctly. He never makes a bargain he will not keep. He never offers his strength if he will not be entertained-- and the dead bring no entertainment, for Puck.

Puck is all smiles and honeyed words, a willow swaying in the wind, or the aspen, quaking, but strong enough not to come undone.

Silas can't say anything to him without seeming crazy, so he nods; this one mine.

The thing about forest-spirits, they're all trees standing alone. The woods only truly exist when they come together.

Fandom: Fallout 4 Working Title: All The Things I Didn’t Say Notes: Oneshot? Y7 fic, because Sevan needs love too. This is my... second or third rewrite of this, and I’m not sure I like it yet. Y7 contends with his human counterpart.

The few people he'd run into the Commonwealth hadn't batted an eyelash at the thought that he wasn't the true Silas King. They had greeted him as if he had been. They didn't know.

Silas King knew. He knew what he was and what he wasn't, and Y7 might have gotten the drop on him if he had been more careful, perhaps, or if Silas hadn't seemed to have been expecting him, or.. maybe a thousand other things. Maybe if the rouge coursers hadn't been in town. Maybe if he hadn't followed him down into the Vault.

Maybe.

He hadn't been prepared to have to outwit an unaware subject. He hadn't been prepared to have to handle Silas King in a verbal chess-match, when he had been trained to deal with him physically. Father had some sort of upset against him, which Y7 was not privy to, was not prepared to ask, and did not care to know. It wasn't his business who Father did and did not have issues with.

My son sent you, didn't he?

Fandom: Fallout 4 Working Title: N/A Notes: The one death fic for Sil I haven’t bothered to finish yet and may have to re-poke...

Last night's dinner wants to revisit him. Silas swallows it back down fiercely, ribs screaming in pain. Plants both palms on the ground beneath him and shoves, pushing himself up, gets a knee under himself. Fire sears across his chest. Bones grind, broken. The pain threatens to swallow him.

I can't die like this. Not like this. The enemy is still alive; he wont let himself die until he's dealt with them, wont lay down like a dog and let them have their play. He wont, he wont, he wont. Damned raiders.

Calculatedly, not the best plan he'd ever had. But he couldn't just let them take his men. The Minutemen trusted him, they were his subordinates, his command. Maybe them being his soldiers didn't mean the same thing, here in the future, but it meant plenty to Silas. He refused to die before he got them the keys, got them their weapons--

Fandom: Fallout: New Vegas Working Title: [Inside Pandora’s Box] Notes: Oneshot, Lupercalia fic, wolf’s perspective of waking up at Doc Mitchell‘s.

"Easy there, girl. You and your lady are safe now."

There is still pain. Pain in her chest, and Hope remembers a bullet taking her there when she'd lunged at cigarettes. She still wears the muzzle they put on her, but she cannot blame the old man for trying. Even the shamans will tie off a wolf's jaws when they or their sibling are injured. A wolf cannot help to bite, in hopes of warding away more pain.

Her sister's mind is a quiet blanket of nothing in her mind. That worry holds more pain than Hope can ever feel in her own body. She reaches out, careful, prodding at the pack-sense, but the man is not of the People, he is a stranger utterly, and Hope cannot speak to him, cannot ask him, does my sister yet live?

He'd said you and your lady. Hope does not often have much of her namesake, but she hopes.

Fandom: Fallout: New Vegas Working Title: N/A Notes: Pandora walks the Divide and bristles a lot. Will continue it as I replay more of New Vegas.

Couriers knew each other, and the Post knew them. A courier from the Legion could march into any Post in the Mojave and ask to kip down in the middle of NCR space, and not only would they get a bed and a hot meal, but they'd get a night watch too. She'd heard-- knew, in her bones-- that the same was true for couriers from the other side of the war, who had business through the Legion. The penalty for harassing or harming a courier in the Legion was death. There was a reason she had been able to walk through Nipton unscathed.

There was a reason she could walk anywhere.

The Legion would protect her regardless of her business, and the NCR would protect her as long as her business was their business.

Fandom: Fallout 3 Working Title: Outsider Notes: Oneshot of Jay feeling homesick and a little like an alien outside the vault.

Jay tries not to be, but he is a bleeding heart and he knows it. Still, he does not give them money. He gives them food, and water, and a change of clothes, and a map. For those who want more, Jay has given enough. For those rest who weep with joy, Jay has given them the world.

And that scares him more than he wishes to admit, because they look up with worship and admiration, or they look on him with curled lips twisted in bitter venom. He does not know these people. He does not understand them, because they are not his people.

His people do not want him.

Fandom: Fallout 3 Title: The G.O.A.T. Notes: Oneshot, going to rewrite because it’s choppy and mostly notes but I do rather love it. What it says on the tin. Likely to contain Jay/Butch porn in the rewrite.

He was given a folder and a passcode to his new quarters, and Officer Mack led him there.

Turns out, Vault 101 had a chapel. Who knew?

(Apparently the Chaplain was supposed to be celibate and chaste, according to the Vault 101 charter-- among other things on the list the Overseer had given him, not all of which sounded like good ideas-- but Jay forgot about that rule the moment the king snake decided to help him move his things and break in the new mattress.)

Fandom: Fallout 3 Working Title: (Best laid plans) Notes: Slowgrow Vault fic between Jay and Butch. We’ll see how long it takes to actually write...

The Doctor would probably kill him in the morning. But damn it, he was so tired of being referred to as Junior, as Little James; at least if he changed his hair, he couldn't look just like him.

He had been thinking about that all week, but all he could think about now was the feeling of Butch's gloved fingers working at his scalp, the echo of nothing a quiet lull. Butch had put a towel over his shoulders, but he'd had to strip down to his waist to lessen the risk of getting it on his vault-suit anyway. Butch had admitted to never dying someone's hair before, when Jay had asked.

Fandom: Final Fantasy XV Working Title: N/A Notes: The next fic in Suddenly: An Army. So far it’s mostly hand-written notes and false starts, but it is in progress. Prompto takes Ignis to meet his family.

Fandom: Gundam Wing Working Title: N/A Notes: A clonebaby genderbender AU where it’s Dad and Seven Daughters.

There were three ways to keep a secret that Nate knew.

The first was to keep it totally to yourself. That wasn't going to work for Nate, exactly, since his secret wasn't some intangible thing.

The second was to tell only one other person-- get the secret out of your system-- and then kill them. Two could keep a secret if one of them was dead. This was also not going to work for Nate, though he would happily kill anyone to keep his secret secure.

The third way was tell everyone.

Fandom: Lord of the Rings Working Title: Wolflords Notes: A fire-watch child from Gondor dreams of Elves and their wolves

Giayl had known the fable of elven-wolves. Of course he had. Maybe his family wasn’t scholars-- he and his family had been looking after the watch-fire for generations-- but the black land could be seen in the distance, and on especially calm nights, there was claim the orc-wolves could be heard. Giayl didn’t know he believed that one. He much preferred the stories of of the elves and their wolves, sunshine-gold and moon-bright silver, midnight blue dappled with stars, all long-lived and all elegant and graceful like the elves themselves. Eternal.

Fandom: Lord of the Rings: Online Working Title: Caran Dagra Notes: Imorrael’s mortal son joins the American Military. James finds unexpected friends there.

“It's from my mother,” he offered to their silence, pulling out a just-as-new piece of card parchment.

Aeglirann, son of Imorrael, she wrote in her flowing, looping script. He had been reading Elvish for enough years it was easy to decipher. Not that there was a lot of it. Take this and know you are mine.

He sat the card aside, face up, and ignored the trio as they read it. He peered back into they envelope instead, then tipped it up into his palm.

A piece of ash-wood fell into his fingers. A simple oval slice, about as big as a quarter, with a penny-length shard of blue in the center, gemstone fused to heartwood. A small hole had been punched through the wood, and the whole thing had apparently been coated in clear resin to hold color.

Fandom: Mass Effect Working Title: Star-light, Star-bright Notes: Bobby Shepard and her wolf-queen, Danica, deal with the nonsense that is their life.

But then, it was hard to love anything more than she loved Danica, the sun-gold she-wolf that she was. An Alliance wolf from a strong line, a little temperamental but bred for endurance, strength, command. A bloodline that traced itself beyond the birth of the Alliance, beyond the deaths of the last trolls, beyond, beyond, beyond. Back before time. Before space.

Before the first wolves touched minds with the first wolf-brother. Certainly before wolves ever took to wolf-sisters. But Danica had decided that Bobby was going to be hers before anything else, before the chain of command or the loyalty of a pack. Bobby belonged to Danica, and Danica belonged to Bobby.

And when they did get a pack, when they cycled through training and ended up with a team, they didn't... quite fit in, but Danica would duck her head and Bobby would salute their team leader, and they would make it work.

When the Batarians attacked while on leave, Danica glowed bright as a star in the pack sense, and Bobby glowed with her, and beneath them, around them, people rallied under instruction and discipline of a wolf and Danica and Bobby dug in their heels and decided, no more. No one else.

Fandom: Miraculous Ladybug Title: Black Cats and Broken Mirrors, Chapter 5 Notes: Chapters 1-4 on Ao3. All the actual words I’ve got for chapter 5 is handwritten and everything else is notes. So I’ve nothing quite to share with you for chapter five, except suffice to say, Felix is unhappy.

Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Working Title: Wolfthreat Notes: This is going to need some rework and some more polishing, but overall I do like it and so I’m not anywhere near done yet. Why you gotta be frustrating, Soldier Harris? Lupercalia fic.

“Mister G!”

Giles had the good grace not to have been holding a cup of tea, this time. But his smile was wide and a little tired, and the book in front of him for once had nothing to do with demons or magic or anything like that. Not that Alexander accounted Son of None as a good book, but in a world without the Slayer, any literature at all making it's way whole and accounted for to the Hellmouth was a godsend, and comic books took their time making it around the Wolfmount.

Most places didn't want to deal with them.

Other wolfpacks didn't want to deal with them. A wolfpack living on a Hellmouth had to be considered pretty much gone, and anyone who stayed for more than a rotation wasn't considered fit for duty anywhere else, because everywhere else was tame and Sunnydale broke lesser wills to live.

Alexander had been here since he was born. So had Aurore. Neither of them were going anywhere, and if they had to teach the people coming in, that was okay too.

Fandom: Attack on Titan Working Title: N/A Notes: OCs everywhere! Because I couldn’t ever help myself :3

The girl brightens for reasons John can't fathom, except that she looks way too happy her brother is leaving. “Yes!”

Faolan then looks at him, and smiles again. “I'll keep Adam safe, okay kid? You can count on me for that.” John blinks and then nods, slowly, while Adam huffs and punches Faolan in the arm. “Ow! What was that for?”

“I don't need protection; you seem to be forgetting who had better scores!”

“So what? I still kicked your ass in hand-to-hand.”

“Titans are people-shaped, not people-sized!”

John doesn't know what any of it means, but it's not actually that reassuring.

Adam says goodbye to him again before he and Faolan are heading back to the other soldiers. When the bell tolls, the girl, Adolpha, is waving again.

“Come back soon! I'll be waiting!”

John takes the ferry back into Rose and makes his way home, and Adam's right; he doesn't really notice that Adam's not there. Adam hasn't been there for years.

Fandom: Space Pirate: Captain Harlock Working Title: N/A Notes: Logan contends with the difference between love and loyalty, and who is worth either.

The words Mom had said, clear and crisp in his childhood, had been the root of much Logan had done in his life. He had always tried to live by her words; not to never do anything he might regret, but to never regret anything he would do. Never to give his loyalty away to the first bidder-- and Mom had been big on loyalty, true, but the lesson had always struck with him the most, there in her garden.

Loyalty, Mom had said, is not love. Love is different. Love can kill you, if you let it; it can strangle those you care for. It can swallow you, and tear you apart from the inside. Which isn't to say it isn't beautiful or wonderful or precious. Love is... mistletoe. It flowers and blooms, and it only grows bigger with each passing year, so long as it has something to feed off. But mistletoe can kill you, if you eat it.

But loyalty is the most beautiful thing, because love just happens, but loyalty... Loyalty is a choice.

Logan had always loved Nami, he guessed. Like a parasite, they had just grew together. But Nami had married Ezra; Ezra, who had a stable job in the military and was moving up in the world. No one had any doubts he would make it to the top of the command bracket; he might even get a seat on the Gaia Coalition's Counsel. And Logan loved Ezra, the love of two brothers raised together, so close they might have been one person.

But he had been loyal to Ezra, too. He had never taken Nami to bed, even though he loved her. Even though he'd had his chances, every time Ezra was out on deployment. He'd longed every time he saw her that she had picked him instead, but every time he saw Ezra look at her, he just seemed so heartbreakingly happy...

Fandom: Thor Working Title: All the Little Children Notes: Lupercalia fic. Thor deals with the aftermath of Loki’s fall, sheltering his brother’s children from the wrath of their grandfather.

I could have done it.

No, Loki.

Time and time again, their father had charged the both of them with great quests, feats so impossible that they were nothing short of heroic. Feats only the princes of Asgard could accomplish. It was a hard pill to swallow, hearing his own words out of Loki's mouth. Loki, who had never debased himself so far as to say I could have. Loki, who was given impossible tasks, do not let the Giant finish the wall, and Loki who always came through for their father.

Thor failed occasionally. But nothing felt more terrible a failure than watching Loki let go of the All-Father's staff.

He couldn't save his brother.

I couldn't save mother.

The words echoed loudly through his head, sharp and full of piercing pain, his agony put to voice. But he had never called Loki mother. A sharp knocking on his chamber door jerked him from his reverie and he turned his head, blinking at it. He had talked with his father, after the Fall; Thor, listen to me, Loki was a frost giant, you did the right thing. It would not be a servant at the door, for after the conversation he had explicitly told them he would not be bothered. No courtier would risk it, would dare. He was to be alone.

I couldn't save mother. I couldn't-- I tried.

The knock repeated, more urgent.

Fandom: Overwatch Working Title: N/A Notes: McHanzo timetravel shenanigans. Because why not let them timetravel to meet kid!McCree before he’s their McCree...

There was also a frog on the third bench, complaining about the radio station. Jesse was pretending not to hear him talk. There were only two channels this far out in the middle of nowhere, and the only reason Jesse hadn’t picked country was because half of them were nursing injuries and the other half were fatigued to hell and back. New fangled rock and roll wasn’t was good as the classics, but it was still heavy on the drums and guitar riffs.

Mama had sworn by them. Lucio was just going to have to chill.

Fandom: Overwatch Working Title: N/A Notes: McSymmenji fic that’s had several false starts but I think I finally have a good one for. It’s just going to be longer than planned...

Fandom: Overwatch Working Title: N/A Notes: McHanzo Gift-fic, in progress, with a slice of bodyguard and worldbuilding. Probably wont post unless the recipient clears me to, but.

Not that Hanzo isn’t still otherwise. He is. He is the stillest thing Jesse’s ever seen, calm as a frozen pond on a bright-moon’d winter’s night. There’s no wasted movements with the man.

There aren’t many with himself, but Jesse knows when he’s lying and he’s always lying if he says he doesn’t have a flair for the dramatics. Which he does. There is a reason he keeps flash-bangs in his arsenal.

He’s American, after all. Nobody does fireworks like America.

Nobody does Hanamura like Hanzo, either. That’s why they’re here.

Though frankly, Jesse’s getting real sick of Hanamura.

Fandom: Ronin Warriors Working Title: N/A Notes: I’m thinking about a third done, honestly. There’s some more things I want to cover before I post this, even if this section feels complete save for a name.

"Arashinoumi."

Yulie's head snapped his way. "Huh?"

"That's her name. Arashinoumi."

Stormy waters, Mia noted. Like white-water rapids, or seafoam.

"Arashinoumi.." Yulie blinked again, glancing down at her. She sat primly in front of him, dark eyes looking up at him patiently. He stretched his fingers out, careful, aware enough that she wasn't a house pet or a tame dog. "Can I pet her?"

"She's waiting for your name," Torrent gentled. "She says you can pet her after."

Fandom: Ronin Warriors Title: Blood and Ashes Notes: Hariel/Arago Lupercalia fic that’s undergone several rewrites and false starts. Urgh.

“If we should be careful,” Hariel ventured, listening through Inferno’s ears to the fact that Arago had not left. “Then why are we still here?” He knew the answer, but Inferno reaffirming it would secure the knowledge. There were so many reasons.

Because a human and his wolf-brother had slain a dragon and tiger. Because one clanless samurai had slain an emperor. Because there were no properly bonded packs in Suzuran, just Bonded, scattered few and far between. Because this man had killed his blood-brother. Because the pair of them were from beyond the gates; humans from the ancestral home of humans, humans that were short-lived but burning bright. Because Inferno was a bitch, and Hariel was a bitch’s brother. Because it had to be lonely, being a pack of one.

“We want to meet them.” Inferno gave him a wolf-smile and nudged at his elbow with her nose, begging affection. He reached out and rubbed her behind the ear, where she liked it best. “They are young puppies, and they are full of curiosity. All we have to do is wait them out.” Not their tactically best plan, but she was right, and that was what mattered.

Fandom: Ronin Warriors Title: Coal Dust Notes: The next in Ink Stains On Paper, covering Ryo and his role in this world. I’ve had a bunch of false starts on this as I try to find the right way to do it, but I think I’m finally getting close.

Fandom: Ronin Warriors Title: Kagome, Kagome Notes: I need to rewrite part of the first bit, and finish the third and fourth bits. Go figure. Seiji-centric, covering a return to New York, dealing with the events of the OVA.

“Hey man, you ruined my shot!”

“My apologies.” New Yorkers, he thought, moving to the side of the alley; he pressed himself up against the wall, fingers unconsciously finding the ridges between mortar and red clay. It felt rough and filthy against his skin, catching at his clothes and hair like grasping hands, reaching to pull him in and under...

The stranger's camera flashed again and at once Seiji flung himself away from the wall, covered in goose-flesh; sharp amethyst eyes hunted the stained structure for the offending limbs.

There was nothing there to see.

“Hey.. hey man, you okay? You lost or somethin'?”

Fandom: Star Wars Working Title: Supernova Notes: Oneshot. Original Characters, Not A Canon Character In Sight, Eury deals with being a teacher and explaining what the Force is.

“The Force is in everything?”

“Everything,” he confirmed. “They are the stars, and all the space between the stars. The stars make light so we can see them, and the space between stars does not. Sometimes the space between makes stars, and they light up like other stars. And sometimes the stars go dark,” sometimes they explode. Sometimes they turned into planets. But those were things his little girl didn’t need yet. “But they’re still stars.”

“You and mommy are stars?”

“And you.” He leaned down to tap their noses, prompting a sleepy giggle. He hated having to explain it, but better she learn now than later, even if he would just likely end up teaching her again tomorrow. “You are a little star too.”

Fandom: Star Wars Working Title: Monsters in the Dark Notes: Oneshot. Original Characters, Not A Canon Character In Sight

(He remembers: You would condemn an innocent to death? You would cast yourself into the darkest of the dark, the murder of the unborn, and you would do it in the name of the Jedi? You fear the dead so much you do not know to fear the living! I refuse this, I defy it! This is an innocent, and it will live, you will protect it and it will live, Oriole, protection of the innocent is the keystone of Jedi teachings and this one you shall not break!)

(He was a Sith and the same way he would let her fears fester so she would come to him, accept his care, love, and affection, he would break her will to save his child. No matter what he had to do, no matter how Dark it made him.)

(He was a Sith. He did not fear the Dark. He thrived in it. Let any who dared to cross him try and see what monsters it made of men.)

Fandom: Star Wars: The Old Republic Working Title: N/A Notes: Oh. I forgot I had started this. Zabrak bounty hunter appears on the screen!

At least her father was with the Republic. If he'd have been on the other side of the war...

Well. Jeeri could safely say at least that they did more work for the Republic then they did for the Empire. The crews overall moral compass meant that Republic jobs spoke to the morals louder, and there was also that the Republic usually offered better pay, or at least jobs that were more or less straightforward.

Didn't mean that all jobs were Republic. The lab of horrors was a nightmare in her mind, never shaken. Sometimes Empire jobs were honest. Sometimes Empire jobs were things she would have done on her own, the Republic trying to win their war the wrong way. If she got paid for it... well.

Well. At least they didn't get caught. And her conscious was clean.

Fandom: Sword Art Online Title: This Is A Bad Plan, Chapter 4 Notes: I, uh, have notes on Chapter 4, but nothing written otherwise. Fic is a “SAO becomes real and some players read that book but tried it anyway.” Read Chapters 1-3 on Ao3

Fandom: Voltron Working Title: N/A Notes: The Keith-centric sequel to In The Wind (Or Lack Thereof). I’ve had an unfortunate number of false starts with this one, go figure...

Fandom: Ronin Warrior, Dragon Age Working Title: Dragons Breath Notes: Crossover. I think I’m going to flat-out rewrite this.. Sequel to Sympathy for the Devil

“But if you come with Morrigan and I, who would take care of the mabari?”

Flemeth had wrapped the king in Chasind clothing, which Cailan had kept; a wrapped tunic bound together with a sash, and a loose pair of trousers. The blue looked good on him-- not bright, but not dark either. It managed to make him stand out less then his armor, which had probably been the point. ...not that they did not stand out a good deal anyway, but until they figured out what Loghain had told to Fereldan, it was best they not announce that the king still lived.

A part of Alistair was selfishly glad he was alive. Another part entirely was horribly frustrated by it.

It could have been worse. The Darkspawn could have killed him; he wouldn't have even had the chance to give the other a proper funeral.

“Maric could come with us!”

...it was amazing that he had named the beast after their father.

Fandom: Final Fantasy X, Gundam Wing Working Title: Like Shooting Stars Notes: Crossover. Parts of this I like, and parts of this I’ll cut, but the idea is super shiny and I’m definitely running the whole way with this.

Wakka and his newfound, impetuous (but cute) Blitzball player had brought a young woman in from the surf when they had come back to the village. Yuna had saw her out of the corner of her eye during the Summoning, swathed in white, with hair lighter than Yuna's, but not nearly anything as pale as the young Blitzer's chocobo-yellow. She had watched, Yuna thought, leaning against the posts that made up the door of the Lodge, but by the time the Summoning was over and Yuna could look, the lady in white had vanished. Back inside, maybe.

The townspeople had demanded her attention, after. She hadn't been able to disappoint them, even though she had wanted desperately to rest.

She did see her again later, though, around the village fire.

Fandom: YuYu Hakusho, Naruto Working Title: Foxkids Notes: Sequel to More Precious Than Gold

Gaining custody of an orphan wasn't easy in Konoha. Kurama wasn't sure how he had thought it might be-- maybe because it should have been, because it would have been in the youkai. It would have been nothing; just his desire to pick up a child no one else cared for, scruff him and carry him back to the den. Easy.

Apparently in Konoha it required paperwork, and a large amount of it, and no small amount of Kurama's clever lies.

Fandom: Star Trek, Ronin Warriors Working Title: N/A Notes: ...I have no excuses for this that do not include a lot of things I don’t want to tell anybody. Moving on.

"Spread the word that we're not to use the torpedos, either."

That catches Spock completely flat footed. He stares at Seiji, bright-eyed and surprised, and it strikes Seiji as familiarity too. He looked so much like friends he had lost a long time. Maybe it's the shape of his face. He's not sure. It takes a moment for him to bring himself back to some semblance of control. "It is illogical not to use every weapon at our disposal." Which was Vulcanese for Spock asking why, even though he knew perfectly well why it was illogical in this situation. Bomb an enemy home world? Over a single escaped criminal? That would start a war, no questions asked.

Fandom: X-men, Ronin Warriors Working Title: Dragon Teeth Notes: Kenshin becomes a teacher at a certain school. In need of a rewrite.

Fandom: The Hobbit, Ronin Warriors Working Title: N/A Notes: The one where Seiji becomes Bilbo’s live-in house-guest after the Fell Winter and is still there when a specific wizard shows up to cause trouble.

Fandom: Gundam Wing, Invasion America, Final Fantasy X Working Title: Unlikely Notes: Relena, Auron, and Cale survive the first day of the zombie apocalypse. In theory.

“Do you know where we’re going? You seem quite lost for an earth-man…”

Talking. He’d been doing that since he woke up. Auron kind of wished he’d stop or go back to being unconscious. Certainly he’d been easier to carry. “Steenrade,” because he had figured out already that answering questions gained him some measure of quiet during the march. “The capital of the Sanq Kingdom.”

Cale-Oosha nodded. “Is that the capital of the world? I had meant to go there to meet with the king.”

“Queen,” Auron corrected. And the Queen of Sanq had once been Queen of the World, if his ventures in the local political system were correct. But that was nearly an elected position; like the Maesters. From the sound of things, the young woman hadn’t been Queen of the World in a long time.

Fandom: Gundam Wing, Naruto Working Title: N/A Notes: Shikamaru, Temari, and space colonies.

"Welcome to the outside world, Mister and Missus Nara. I see you have both arrived in civilization in one piece." At Missus Nara, Temari grinned. She produced a pair of paper from the fold of her robe and Agent Chang accepted them, breaking the seals pressed upon the first, reading it over, before then doing the same with the second. Dark eyes peered over at them when he was finished. "So you are the two they sent for the Winner job?"

Which sounded like something the Fifth Hokage would name an op, if they still let her name ops. The winner job. On paper it had struck him weird, but on paper they were going to be sent to protect important person, name undisclosed, delivered upon arrival. Now, out of Chang's mouth, it sounded like a person's name. Which... well. Okay then.

Fandom: Gundam Wing, Pacific Rim Working Title: N/A Notes: Unattached to the Hellfire universe. Dunno what I’ll do with this...

Because Catherine hated kaiju, and she hated the rangers that fought them, and she hated the mess it all caused, but No Name had carried the letter with her name on it for the last six months, the one with an attached but out-of-date photograph by at least a year, the one that had told him that she didn't have a firm address, she worked for the circus that was trying to eek out a living in these times, and make people forget the troubles of giant monsters for a little while.

She picked him out of the crowd for knife-throwing, probably to see if he would flinch. They didn't say a word to each other then, but he waited around outside the tent after her acts finished, and the first thing she did was slap him.

And then she burst into tears, and hugged him.

Fandom: Gundam Wing Working Title: N/A Notes: A GW daemon au fic I don’t know what I’ll do with...

Self-conscious, Jesse drew his hands into his sleeves a bit further, leaving the folder open on his desk. The owl whoooed. Jesse blinked. “Pardon?”

The owl's face pinched a bit, and the creature seemed to twist, becoming horribly small. The new recruit recoiled as it turned itself into something closely resembling vampire horror-stories. “Whooo are youuu?” Female tone and pitch, rolling tones that marked the owl's own accent, after a fashion. All daemon had them.

“Err... Agent Jesse.”

“Ahh. Sooo youuu are the newww boy.”

Well. Yes. But he wasn't sure why he needed to tell her that. “And you are?”

“None of youuur business.”

“Zulaykha, be polite.” The bird hmphed, even as the blond caught Jesse's attention once more. Gone was the business suit, replaced by a proper Preventer's uniform, ZERO stitched into the name placeholder.

I also have scraps/notes for: -- Another part in my Dragon Age Every Warden Ever series called Hounds of Gray. -- Scraps for a Fallout 4 Sil introducing X6 to Sanctuary. -- Notes for a With Bundles of Forget-Me-Nots verse fic, direct sequel to In Memory -- Notes for another part of Differences -- Scraps for an Invasion America fic for Nebrija and Arzu fic, two original characters of mine. -- Scraps for an Invasion America fic for poor Briggs -- The Stan sequel fic to Aitai -- The Hanzo/Yuuma prequel fic of Aitai -- The sequel piece of Quadrature, covering Seiji’s recovery and where Halo is -- Notes for the eight Invasion America prompts I still owe -- A short cutesy few hundred words fic for Fallout 3 character Joan -- Notes for the Ronin Warriors prompts I owe -- The sequels to Le Dragon, Step One, Silence is Golden, Confabulation, Here, There Be Dragons, Can’t Take You Anywhere, Lords of War, Pack and Pups (What’s Mine Is Mine) -- The mission fic sequel to Tango Sigma -- Notes for the Hellfire series, chiefly a vs Kaiju fic -- Notes for Kaiju Blue/Titan Red, Upon the Apple Lotus, Dogtags, First Words, Instinct, Like Good Soldiers, Dirt -- Notes and scrap for several fics inside the Teeth and Pawprints universe -- A hypothetical fic for Stars Which Never Were, as well as a potential second chapter to Of Empty Streets and Seasalt

Things I May Never Post: -- An unfinished pre-Vault Fallout 4 A/B/O fic that feels like it needs an overhaul to be less bad porn and more world-building. -- A couple Fallout 4 fics I was writing with a soul-sister who I am currently going through a rough patch with. -- A Kingdom Hearts fic I started with a soul-brother who is no longer talking to me.

AND IN OTHER NEWS, Things Not Fanfiction:

I have twelve novels in progress, in various stages, but still. Twelve. One of them is mostly finished and will be my July Camp NaNo project. The others are in various stages of disarray and or worldbuilding.

#fanfiction #prowlingwrites #meme #writing meme #my writing

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ablastulasrecipe-blog · 7 years

Text

Nanowrimo, Day 2

About 2 or so hours later Sherlock sits in whatever object he can find that resembles a bench. In this case, the bench was the remains of a 925-year old Red Cedar, the most prized log of the most prized lumberjack in town, cut down in a late autumn night, as the mildest rain started to fall that season. Most of its trunk was used to burn the fires of a fireplace that warmed the body of little Sally, as she faced the most dangerous cold a 2-year old can face. She survived and got better the day after, and the remains of the trunk was cut up and used to cover the hole in her bedroom, the one responsible for letting rain hit her and making her sick in the first place. A tiny log still remains of that tree, and it won two yearly log contests in a row, getting banned from a third entry because they realized how unfair it would be to the competition. Having no further use for it, the lumberjack now leaves it in the front of his house to show people he still has the best wood in town.

- Watson. Are you there? – Sherlock opens his laptop in hopes that his friend answers.

- Wow, I thought you were dead! Took you long enough, why didn’t you contact me sooner? Did you get Moriarty?

- He escaped, or rather, he’s hiding in this town. Sorry for the worry, I’m fine. I’ve been trying to look around for him, but to no avail.

- Huh.

- And no one in town helps! It’s like everyone thinks I’m a plague. And others are just going around shouting something about mirages.

- Weird, small countryside towns tend to be very hospitable.

- Right? Only one person so far has talked to me, but I didn’t learn much.

- That seems rough. What are your findings so far?

- Well, if no one’s hospitable to outsiders, that means Moriarty is either having the same issues as me or he knows someone from here.

- I can try and search for a list of criminals, see if anyone’s from around there.

- I love when I don’t have to tell you what to do. Thanks Watson!

- You got it. See ya!

Watson’s next step was as clear as that afternoon sky, or that boiling heat. Sherlock’s however, was not as obvious. He tried to talk to multiple townspeople, failing spectacularly in all attempts of human interaction. And the sheriff seemed to be nowhere in sight, as Sherlock couldn’t even get an answer as to whether or not he exists. Trying to search for the mayor led to nothing, as he was being persecuted for believing in mirages. Only two certainties were had: Sherlock didn’t want to stay there for long, as eating nearly-rotted food and having to deal with boiling heat under those clothes were the most inconvenient bothers he could ask for; And the other thing was, dealing with Moriarty meant spending a long time looking at footprints and hair strands.

- You know, the rest of my snot-eating family would never forgive a peasant like you for the disgrace you’re bringing to this poor lumberjack’s house. – said a tiny Lyra, coming from out of the corner.

- The kid from before. Were you following me? – asks the detective, getting up.

- Escaping my dad is hard enough, so following a man that had no idea were he was going was a decent move to end up in an unpredictable place.

- Escaping your dad? Are you even at the age to run away from home?

- Duh, I’m not running, I just wanted to be alone for a moment.

- Then I suppose this is my cue to leave.

Walking away, he hears something knocking on the log, and Lyra’s voice:

- Wait, are you a swordsman? – Lyra climbed onto the prized wood before stopping Sherlock.

“A swordsman? I suppose that’s how one can look at me, but I don’t think I’ve ever been very proficient at the job, it’s mostly just Isabela helping me out. Or should I shut down any hopes of entertaining this girl? I mean, I’m a detective first and foremost, but I happen to swing a sword around sometimes, does that mean I’m a swordsman as well? Is a swordsman an occupation or a set of abilities? But then again, I work alone as a detective, so is that an occupation? Maybe they’re both sets of abilities, and I’m actually an unemployed person who happens to make a living out of selling said skills. But isn’t that what ‘working’ is in the first place?”

Some would say Sherlock’s inner debates are the reason he can’t make a lot of contact with people in general. But either way, that lasted a few seconds before he turned around.

- Why you ask?

- Look here ponpon, you answer me, and then I’ll think about continuing the conversation, okay? – Lyra had a little teddy bear called Ponpon, but she made his stuffing pop from his head, forming something resembling a hair bun. Sherlock’s hair reminded her of that.

- Yeah, I suppose I can be a swordsman, sometimes. – Sherlock’s inner monologue is so unnecessarily convoluted right now he can’t even bother with Lyra’s attitude, or nickname.

- That’s good enough. I’m hiring you as my teacher.

Hoping to settle the argument around his profession, and using the excuse of learning more about the town through that little girl, Sherlock accepts the request and follows the girl to her house.

- Okay, stay here. I’ll call dad and tell him you’re willing to teach and be responsible for my abilities with a sword.

He regretted his decision fairly quickly, but still, he didn’t have a clear course of action to take if he left, so waiting around didn’t seem like the worst thing he could do. Some muffled discussion and arguments were had, until Lyra’s screams were very clearly heard by the neighboring houses. Not a lot of useful information to be had in that argument, though Sherlock was now aware of Lyra’s rebellious nature against not only her father, but her entire family as well. It made him wonder why he was never that rebellious at her age…

The door started to open, and a happy Lyra exploded out of the house.

- This is the one dad! He’ll be my teacher, he begged me for the position, so I decided to give him a chance.

From out of the room, came the man Sherlock recognized from earlier that day. His hair was better kept than any other resident in town, and his clothes were probably more expensive than everything in Sherlock’s apartment combined.

- I’m happy you accepted her pleas, stranger. By the tired look and unwashed clothes, I’ll guess you don’t have a place to stay.

- You’re right, but mostly I’m here to get information as well.

- I see. Then you’re welcome to live here for as long as Lyra’s teaching takes. What’s your name?

- Sherlock. Sherlock Holmes.

- Nice to meet you mister Holmes, I’m Cliff Desmond. Lyra, take mister Holmes to his room.

As the man goes back inside, Lyra picks his arm.

- I’ll guide you there.

- How did you get your father to accept a stranger like me to not only teach you, but to live in your house? – Thinking back on Lyra’s screams from before, he realized he had spaced out halfway through the discussion and didn’t understand a thing of what was going on.

- Dad tends to do what I ask if I scream loud enough. He has sensitive ears. This way.

…

His room was a lot bigger than he expected. And the shower helped a lot to alleviate the horrible heat from outside. Still, he made no progress in finding Moriarty that day. But maybe Watson did.

- Did you find something?

- I found out that this town has no sheriff whatsoever. Since the townspeople all knew each other, crime was rare, and eventually, nonexistent.

- So, how come there’s a series of robberies happening? Is the world just going crazy?

- I can’t answer the second question, but for the first… I think it has to do with why the town is so isolated in the first place.

- What do you mean?

- Apparently, until three years ago, there used to be a forest no so far from there, and the river was much bigger. But apparently that’s no longer the case. Everything outside of the river’s remains is a desert around you.

- And now resources are getting scarce, so people are starting to get things another way.

- That’s my theory as well.

Beneath his feet, Sherlock could hear a thumping sound. He was on the second floor, so that was clearly someone below. He ignored at first, but it kept going.

- What about the mirages? Do you think that’s just because people are not used to deserts, so anytime something like that happens they blow it out of proportion?

- Could be, but still, I can’t find a single thing about that. No one has reported on that. Probably because it hasn’t hit the news yet, I mean, there probably isn’t any journalists in there.

The noise continued. It got louder, but Sherlock kept ignoring it.

- Okay, I was able to find a house to stay. So at least I’ll have a place to rest now. I’ll keep updating you, and you do the same.

- You got it, I’ll search something about these mirages.

- Thanks.

Watson said something before tuning off, but Sherlock didn’t hear his voice over the bangs happening beneath his feet. “Is this going to happen every day? What even is that? Do I have permission to walk around the house and check? Maybe it would be best to just accept, I already had a place to stay, I can deal with something like that.”

“Or maybe that noise is because someone needs help? Maybe the house’s getting invaded and there’s no one to protect it. If Lyra hears It she might even try to stop the robber herself, giving her attitude.”

Creating doubt in his mind made Sherlock walk downstairs, to find a messy and very angry girl with a wooden stick banging on the ceiling.

- Wow! You have the most heavy sleep I have ever seen! Or maybe you just hate me and wanted to see if I could get angry. Well, I am!

- If you wanted to talk to me, why didn’t you just call me?

- If you want to live in this house, why don’t you treat me with more respect?

“Can she talk like a normal human being for once?” Sherlock realized what kind of person he was dealing with.

- Come on, we’re starting my training!

- Now?

- Now!

He accepted the job, but truth was, he had no clue how to start teaching someone about fighting with a sword, let alone a small girl in her early teens.

The backyard was big, as expected, but it also had a bunch of destroyed vases, unkept grass, and wooden poles stuck in the ground. All probably victims of Lyra. “Maybe that’s a good first lesson” though Sherlock.

- Okay, let’s spar! – Lyra ran with her wooden stick in hand and turned to face Sherlock

- Spar? It’s far too early for you to think about that.

- What?

- If you want to fight with a sword, first you must learn how to behave like a swordswoman.

- No way! I demand a sparring session! Now! Defend yourself.

Lyra came running, guard down, arms up, towards Sherlock, who decided to use the tip of the sheathed Isabela do knock her down in a single move.

- Ugh.

- Are you happy? Now, let’s learn something useful.

- No way, I can still keep going.

- I’m here to teach you how to be a proper swordswoman, not how to attack every piece of wood that crosses your path. If you want to behave like the spoiled brat you are, be my guest, but we’ll be doing things my way because if all you wanted was to try and hit someone you hardly needed to call a teacher like myself. Now, sit down!

He felt good about that, there was enough confidence in his words that it inspired him to try and teach her something. Her reaction was looking down before obeying. Sherlock realized that while he was teaching her, he could get through her impulsiveness.

- So, the first lesson I want to teach you is the most important one of them all. – He starts to talk as he walks in front of her.

- I really don’t need the same kind of fluffy talk about being an honest person that my other teachers tried to teach me, okay?

There wasn’t much more Sherlock said besides picking up her stick from the ground and advancing at her with extreme agility, hitting her in the shoulder and knocking her over.

- Ouch! How dare you! You told me to sit!

- The first lesson is to always expect the last thing your opponent could possibly do. – Sherlock stands near Lyra and hands her stick. – Now get up!

Lyra smiles as she obeys. Her teacher was much more than she was hoping for.

…

----------

I’m happier with today’s content, at least the first half. This is actually a lot more than I was expecting to write, and yet, I feel like I should have done more. Word count at 3170.

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jackjots · 3 years

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#9 Bones

Wayward Guide for the Untrained Eye 30 Day Prompt

(This takes place around Episode 6 and briefly refers to the corresponding podcast episode )

Day #9 @30daysofwayward

(I do not own any other characters or place names outside of Shelby St. Ranger, this is just for fun)

The mob outside, even as small as it was, was not missed when it dissipated. But the anxious energy in the air did not go away with it. I sat in the shadows and kept writing down theories as the noise outside the bar dwindled to the usual silence I was used to. I was trying to remember Aubrey, after Quinn had mentioned the name. I had gone to one town meeting when I’d moved, just to get a feel for the things, but I’d sat in the back and had, of course, realized it that community meetings weren’t for me. That’s when I found out about the fact that the mayor was a dog, and - that was it, that was when I’d met Aubrey. According to Quinn, he knew about werewolves. I wondered if there was a way to learn more about him without actively seeking him out. I tried to think of other people I could just exist around to maybe gain new information.

And then it occurred to me. The florists.

Now, I often avoided Mary Jo and Ellis for a very specific reason: they were the exact opposite of me. They had that extrovert energy that I found intimidating and almost scary. The little I interacted with them was enough to know that nothing I told them was sacred. It didn’t help that they clung to each other as if they were one organism and as a perpetually single person with little to no interest in dating, I found that disturbing. But I could look past that, if it wasn’t for the incessant gossiping and aforementioned intense energy. They were just not my kind of people. I sighed and finished my beer finally over my empty plate. I was going to have to do it. I was going to have to buy some flowers.

I decided to purchase some for all of the new graves that I assumed would be dug soon. It was a morbid thought, but a good reason to buy flowers. I wasn’t really the type to just have them in my house for no reason. Where would I put them? My desk? I would immediately knock them over and destroy my keyboard. These were just facts about myself I knew as deeply as I knew I was not looking forward to talking to Mary Jo and Ellis.

Their shop was so bright and sunny, contrasting the slowly encroaching rain clouds outside, that I squinted when I went inside. It was also way too small. I was immediately the center of their attention.

“Hello.” They both chimed simultaneously. “How can we help you?”

“I wanted to buy some flowers.” They nodded expectantly. “Um, what are good flowers for a funeral?” Twin eyebrow raises. Mary Jo asked in a loud whisper. “Which one?”

“I guess I’ll get one for all of them?” I intended to pick it apart for each grave, but I wasn’t going to tell them that.

“If you’ll allow us,” Ellis said, spreading his hands wide in front of himself, “We can pick a different flower for each,” he lowered his voice, “werewolf victim.”

“Did you know that we have werewolves here?” Mary Jo asked me in a way that suggested she was trying to be sneaky. But no one else was there and her voice was still quite loud.

“I’ve heard.”

“You’re new here aren’t you?” Ellis’ eyes swiveled at me suspiciously as they started to gather flowers together.

“Yes.” I admitted. “But I don’t feel like I’m really the werewolf sort.”

“That’s true. You’re not. You hardly speak. This is the most you’ve spoken. Ever.” Mary Jo seemed reassured.

Ellis was not. “Would werewolves speak though? If they’re animals?”

Mary Jo looked doubtful. “But aren’t they human sometimes? I feel like wolves that are human sometimes would have a lot to say.”

“Unless you are a,” Ellis paused for dramatics, “lone wolf.”

“Afraid not. Just a writer.”

“A writer. Oh, have you met Artemis and Paul?”

“Briefly.”

“They have a podcast.” Ellis smiled excitedly. “And soon, so will I.”

“Really?” I had trouble believing it.

“I’ve already started the tape.” He began, but Mary Jo gave him a look that calmed him down. “Probably.”

“Did you hear about what happened at the town hall?” Mary Jo asked me as another flower got placed in an arrangement that was becoming garishly bright. I thought about asking them to tone it down, but I did not have any control over this situation.

“Oh about Barney? Yes I heard.”

“Where were you during the town hall anyway?” Mary Jo asked.

“I was at home, I think. Yeah I was at home.”

“I didn’t see them while I was out and about.” Ellis said under his breath to Mary Jo.

“Were you not at the town hall?” I asked.

He seemed surprised I heard him and I heard him say. “Good hearing.” In a sing-song quiet voice with a side eye. To me, he smiled. “I was doing some investigative journalism.” He said the words in an over exaggeration.

“So you missed Barney’s death?”

“Yes. But I know all about it because Mary Jo is my eyes and ears.”

I nodded. “It’s good you had someone there.”

“How did you hear about it?”

“Quinn.” I said. “I had some vegetarian food at the Dead Canary.” I added.

Their shoulders relaxed at exactly the same time. The amount of energy it took not to roll my eyes. “Can I ask,” Mary Jo started as they wrapped the yellow, green, and pink bouquet, “why do you have two black eyes?”

I was taken aback. I had forgotten and I felt the heat rising in my face. “I had an accident yesterday.”

‘You know who else has a black eye? Crispin.” Mary Jo said.

“Didn’t you say he spoke today?”

“For the first time in who knows how long.”

“Too bad it was vulgar language.”

“Well he had just seen a person die. I almost said a bad word.”

“You did not.”

I felt like I’d started the gossip machine with such little effort. I decided to try to push it in the right direction and throw them a bone to follow. “Was Aubrey at the town hall?”

“Aubrey Dockweiler? Of course he was. And Artemis called him out for talking about werewolves.”

“His whole family has always been obsessed with them.”

“Too bad he’s the only one around for this.”

“His father would be so pleased right now.”

“Pleased people died?” I asked.

They both looked at me, their faces growing into hard pouts. “Of course not.” They gave me the flowers and charged me. It wasn’t very cheap, but I felt like I got a lot of information out of it.

“Have a good day.”

They nodded at me, suddenly mute. Bringing that up was a bit cruel, but I couldn’t help it. I still had so many feelings about the deaths that it was hard to see people being flippant about it. And it was nice to bring them down a peg.

I looked at the flowers and couldn’t handle how bright it was. I took them to the Dead Canary and offered them to Desmond who took them much like someone would take a screaming child.

“For me?”

“I got them to put at the graves of,” I gestured broadly, “Everyone. But I don’t know when they’ll be buried.” “Or taxidermied more like.” Desmond added.

I gave an expression that accurately depicted my fear of that prospect. “Egh, okay. Anyway, you can do whatever you want with them.”

Desmond nodded and put them under the bar. “I’ll find somewhere to put them.”

“The trash is okay too.” I volunteered.

He smiled. “Probably not that.” He put a glass in front of me and pointed with raised eyebrows. I nodded. I was just going to drink my way through this process, I decided. I still needed to talk to Aubrey, and now it felt like a more persistent need.

“Desmond, where does Aubrey Dockweiler live?”

#30daysofwayward #waywardguidefortheuntrainedeye #tin can bros #shelby st ranger

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jackjots · 3 years

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#3 Suspicions

Wayward Guide for the Untrained Eye 30 Day Prompt

(This takes place around the second half of Episode 3)

Day #3 @30daysofwayward

CW: Mention of blood, alcohol mentions.

(I do not own any other characters or place names outside of Shelby St. Ranger, this is just for fun)

Reading about silver mining while laying in bed eventually got me tired enough that I fell asleep with the book in my hands. When I woke up, the book was face down on the floor. I picked it up and found it was open where pages had been ripped out. I frowned and looked up what chapter was missing: “The Werewolves of Connor Creek”. I thought that was odd, and I wondered if the library knew their book had been torn, or if they’d blame me. I sighed and put the book on my bedside table as I got ready for the day. A day of catching up on my work, and then I could learn more about the town, I decided. With a fresh mind, it was easier to sort my priorities and shove that weird guilt I’d been feeling away from my mind.

I drank some tea I’d found in the back of a drawer, noting to myself to go get coffee from the market later, and got some writing done. I got stuck on another small detail about Norse life that would be such an easy Google search normally. As I waited for the page to load, I looked over at my notebook, flipping back to my notes about Connor Creek. I’d gotten a good chunk of writing done, the internet was being even slower than usual, and I started thinking about the book again, so I went back to the document containing my novel and typed a quick note to myself to look that up later, and closed out of everything. I brought the book to the couch and started to read again. My eyes dragged over words about the sustainability of silver mining next to gold mining, and suggested that the mysticism surrounding silver could account for the many bizarre tales that came from similar towns across the country. I thought of the chapter on werewolves, and looked through the index for any other such tales. Most of them were tales about the MacMahons greed, probably written by Connor descendants, and tales about the Connor’s inability to welcome change, probably written by MacMahons descendants. There were impartial footnotes at the bottom that suggested whoever compiled this wasn’t sure which side to believe.

My stomach growled, and I felt like I was going nowhere with this book, so I decided to go into town. Get some coffee from the market, get some lunch from the Dead Canary, and maybe, just maybe, ask questions about the current political situation in the town, now that I was getting an idea that the town was founded on a quarrel about a quarry, I was even more curious about the current quarry quandary. The possibility that I was creating something where nothing existed was still there in my mind, but was that so bad?

I brought the book with me, since I could read while I ate. I drove into town, and the ease in which I found a spot still made me happy. I knew eventually I would take free parking for granted, and I’d gotten a few tickets the first week before I knew exactly where to park, but for now I was pleased.

I noticed Ryan Reynolds' face plastered all over the outside of the Dead Canary. I knew it would be cold to take them down so soon, but it was hard to look at him smiling thirty smiles at me. I gripped the book in my hand and entered the bar that seemed to hold its gloom even in the middle of the day.

Quinn, the chef, took my order begrudgingly. I just wanted grilled cheese, but he insisted on making it bleu cheese with strawberries and balsamic for dipping. I shrugged and asked Desmond for an iced tea.

“How’s that book goin’?” He asked as he slid me the glass.

“Trying to read it quickly, since I have to return it to the library soon.”

“A library book?”

I showed him the stamp from the library. “Yep. It’s old school, but I kind of like that. Shame it’s a bit ripped up though.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah, someone tore it up. That’s why we can’t have nice things.”

He wiped a glass and shrugged. “Not sure I’ve had many nice things.”

“I’m sure that’s not true. It’s all a matter of opinion.”

“Wise words Shelby. We’ll get your food right out to you.”

I remembered the bleu cheese and grimaced. “Can’t wait.” I paused before I went back to my booth. “Desmond?”

“Yes?”

“What’s your take on the podcasters?”

“Podcasters?” He said the word like he didn’t know how to fit it in his mouth so it came out sideways. “You mean the nosey ones, Artie and Paul?” I nodded. “They’re alright. Nosey.”

“Yeah, you said that. What exactly are they investigating? The race? The murder?”

“I don’t exactly know. All of it, from the sounds of it.”

“That makes sense. But why did they even come here in the first place?”

“Why don’t you ask them yourself?” He gestured outside. “Word is they’re out there at Miner Mole right now.”

I shook my head. “I think I’ll stick around here for a while.”

“Good idea. Here’s your lunch.”

After a surprisingly delicious meal, which Quinn nodded approvingly from the bar at me while I did so, I washed it down with the iced tea and read a bit more. The closer I got to the chapter that was missing, the more the pages alluded to the chapter. I realized it would’ve been a nice chapter to have. Despite the silliness of the topic, I knew there would be information in there, even if it was open to interpretation. I decided I could try to find the book online and order it, from the library computer so I could simultaneously return the book.

I went up to settle my tab. “Where you off to now?” Desmond asked as I had my keys in my hand.

“Gotta get some coffee from the market, and then I think I might just head over to the library today.”

“Done with your book already?” He handed me my change.

“Actually, I think the chapters that were missing might be more important than I thought. I think I might go see if I can buy a copy myself.”

“Why is this so important to you?”

I tilted my head. “I’m not sure, but I’m just kind of going with it.”

“Good for you.” He patted the bar. “Have a safe drive. Those turns can get hairy.”

I decided to get coffee at the market, since it was cheaper and I’d probably forget by the time I got to the library. Besides, I liked supporting the town I lived in. The mailman, Odie Doty, stopped in and got excited when he saw me. “There’s a letter waitin’ for you, it’s from your editor. They’ve liked what you’ve sent them so far, but they want more violence. Not sure why, what you sent them was mighty violent already. At least the parts I read.”

I blinked a bit. I was still not used to the intrusiveness of the local postal service. But in some ways, it took the anxiety out of getting my mail. “Thanks Odie. Look forward to reading it.”

“You coming to the town council meeting tomorrow?”

“Maybe.” I said, which was the honest truth. My curiosity about the town was piqued, but it probably stopped at gathering with the locals. The introvert's dilemma.

“The mayor will be there.” He said in a sing-songy voice as he left.

I hadn’t met the mayor yet. All I’d heard of her, was that she was quite a dog. Just kidding, I knew she was actually a dog, but wouldn’t that be funny? That would’ve been funny. “See you later Odie.” I called to him as I headed to my Volvo.

“Is that your car?” His voice boomed from remarkably far down the street since he’d just been right next to me.

I pointed at the Volvo. “Yes?”

“Looks like you’ve got a flat!”

My face fell. “Thanks.” I looked. I had four flats. My tires were slashed. I looked around, but no witnesses were to be found. Grumbling, I threw the coffee beans in the backseat and went back to the Dead Canary. “Can you call the shop? My tires are...well slashed.”

“Are they now? ‘Fraid I can’t do that, they’re closed Thursdays.”

“Are they now?” I echoed Desmond. He just raised his eyebrows at me and I waved it away. “Fine, I’ll just walk home.”

“Want a beer before you go? You’re walkin’ anyway.”

I chewed on my cheek for a moment and then shrugged. “Fine. I can read around the chapters that are missing, right?”

“Couldn’t of been that good if they’re gone.”

“Or they were too good.” It was one of those moments where I didn’t realize what I was saying until I heard it myself. A memory resurfaced and highlighted itself in my mind. “Desmond, did you see anyone sneaking around this book last time I was here?”

“Not sure why anyone would.”

“Me either. Except I’m fairly certain it went missing long enough for that chapter to get ripped out.”

“Can’t imagine why.”

“Yeah, why would anyone steal a chapter about werewolves?”

“Can’t imagine.” He repeated, as he pointedly handed me a beer.

“What’s with all of this imagining Desmond? That’s not like you.” The curved shape of a human at the end of the bar slurred. I’d let my eyes slip over him enough times that I jumped when he spoke.

“Okay Henry, let's get you something to eat.”

I mouthed a thank you and went back to my spot.

Much to my chagrin, the book drifted farther from the town as the chapters went on. I didn’t care how the silver affected the coast of California. I didn’t care about when the first bank was established. I didn’t care about the guessing game the rest of the family feud story had devolved into. I shoved the book aside and found a new beer replacing my empty cup.

“You look like you needed it.” Desmond said and turned around.

Did I? I looked at the glass. Fine. I drank a big gulp. I saw a few patrons slip in and looked at the clock. I’d killed a lot of time with one beer and a few boring chapters I realized. I might as well stay for dinner.

By the time dinner was in my belly (something something caprese something something), I’d also consumed another two beers. I was usually good at pacing myself, but for some reason, with my tires and the book, I was just ready to be drunk. I didn’t see Desmond, so I put the exact change out under my plate with a note ripped from my notebook. I went to my car and pulled out my coffee beans. I was going to have coffee, that was for damn sure.

As I made my way down the street, I ran into someone lurking in the shadows; a solid form that was wearing a big fur coat. I said sorry as I blundered forward past them and passed the neon signs of Prism’s shop. I turned a corner and thought I heard something. I leaned my head back and with bleary eyes saw a shape running away. I walked back, cautiously, and looked into Prism’s shop where the door was ajar. The red stuck out to me as not red enough. It occurred to me this was my first time seeing blood, in large amounts, on a real live - a real dead person. Prism was dead. And there was someone else face down next to her. I tore back to the Dead Cannery and found Desmond cleaning a glass - how the hell does he have glasses to clean when no one was there was what my brain was saying before my voice started working. “There’s bodies, there’s bodies over at Prisms’. And I’m not sure I can handle it.” His face set grimly and he told me to sit down while he made calls and asked me where exactly.

I wasn’t questioned so much as told what I saw. The Sheriff gave me a ride home. Trying to keep my mind from seeing the not-red-enough-red, I babbled about my slashed tires, and when she asked me why I hadn’t gotten them fixed at the shop, I told her what Desmond had told me. And she gave me a look that told me I had probably misheard him. But I hadn’t. Even in my slippery thought state, where every thought I had felt like a wriggling fish I tried to hold onto, I knew I hadn’t.

I fell into bed wearing the same shirt I’d worn all day; the drunkenness already melting into a spiky headache. As sleep started to lurk in the corners of my eyes, I thought about Desmond. The book at the bar, the slashed tires, the fact that he was gone when I’d left the bar and conveniently back after I’d found Prism...something was wrong with all of these things, and though when I pinned them on Desmond I had trouble sticking them there, they still fit too well for comfort.

#waywardguidefortheuntrainedeye #30daysofwayward #tin can bros #waywardguide

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