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[anathemafiction]

To Put a Name on It

Commission made by a lovely anonymous.

What if Hadrian had met you while still with the Templars?

The breeze brings with it the scent of flowers. 

Gentle and airy, it sweeps across the long, open fields surrounding the village. Eternal plains where the grass is tall and bright green and seems to dance like an ocean made of plants instead of water. Hadrian shields his eyes, one massive gauntlet hand protecting his sight from the mellow, afternoon sun. 

Sunflowers sway in the breeze too. He orders his horse to a halt for just a moment, watching the countless yellow heads seek the approval of the distant sun. Drinking the sunlight like moths to a flame. It brings a faint smile on his face. Far beyond the fence of the earthy road, rising from the line of the horizon, Hadrian can see the faint outline of the lord's castle. 

The noble who called them here. His smile dies on his face, even before a hard voice breaks the peacefulness of the countryside air. "Bother Hadrian," his Commander calls. The winged helmet carves deep lines into his cheek as Hadrian turns his head. 

Standing tall on his stallion, with a heavy sword hanging from his belt and full Templar garb, Commander Ryder makes for an imposing visage. Just as intended. "My apologies," Hadrian says, spurring his horse forward, rejoining his brothers. There are only three of them. Hadrian, the Commander, and brother Clark, who gives him a cold glance when Hadrian's horse approaches. 

He hardens his face and sets his green eyes on the small village in the middle of illicit fields peppered by flowers enamored by the sun. As he looks at the frail wooden gates and short, basic wall, he can't help but think one Templar would have been more than enough. 

A young man waits for them by the gates, his eyes pointed to the ground. "M-my lords," the boy's voice rings too loudly, and he bows so deeply, his nose bumps into his knees. He then lifts a trembling hand. "I'm to get your horses."

Hadrian hears brother Clark's laughing scoff, and he tightens his hands on the reins. "Take them," Commander Ryder dismounts with a heavy thud and tosses his reins to the boy. Hadrian and Clark follow suit, but he makes sure to step closer to the boy and seek his gaze. 

The lad looks up when Hadrian approaches, and he sees the fear then. Stark and clear in the pale lines of his face. His brown eyes are blown wide, and he quickly looks away. Hadrian can see his shoulders shaking, his knuckles turning white on the reins. 

He always hated it. Always hated the fear the cross evokes. It was supposed to be the opposite. We are supposed to bring peace. "Here you go," Hadrian speaks gently, handing his reins. He accepts it with shaking fingers.

"The Inquisitor awaits in the town's center," the boy says to the Commander in a wavering voice. He points ahead. "He- he ordered me to-"

"God be with you," Commander Ryder coldly interrupts, already walking ahead. Long, white cape with the red cross swaying with each step. Brother Clark barks a laugh before following, and Hadrian tries to smile at the boy. 

But he is already running away, horses in tow. 

Letting out a long breath, Hadrian follows his brothers. The sun reflecting back on the three suits of armor, their steps echoing each other, bouncing ominously in the empty streets. Houses and small stores stand to either side of the dusty street, and it doesn't take long before it opens to a round, smallish square. 

There's a stone well right at the center, and a large storehouse with a flat roof stands to the left. On the right, a crude church has its cross pointed at the heavens. Lone, wooden door firmly shut and barred. 

The breeze carried the scent of flowers. But even those could not mask the stench of blood. 

Hadrian covers his nose, nearly choking as the air turns heavy. Death lingers. It makes his hand fall on the hilt of his black sword, makes his eyes harden. Makes the small group gathered beside the well the only thing Hadrian can focus on as they approach. 

At the head, like a shadow cladded in shreds taken from the night, looms a Holy Inquisitor. His hood ends in two peaks, like horns that come together above the head, and the gold threads that are sewed to the black robes sway gently in the breeze. 

"Inquisitor," Commander Ryder bows his head, making a quick and practiced sign of the cross. Hadrian does the same. The Inquisitor wears his mask, a smooth plate of white wood with only two holes for the eyes. 

They shine underneath. "Sir Templars, so you arrive," he points a gloved hand towards the people, and Hadrian follows the movement. Peasants and farmers, all huddled together in fear. His heart clenches when he sees a little girl with fat tears rolling down her hollow cheeks, but he forces himself to focus on the conversation. 

They have a holy duty. 

"The local head priest, along with the entire church congregation has been slaughter in the night," the Inquisitor's sizzling voice echoes through the gaps in his mask. The air turns colder, and Hadrian's eyes shoot to the doors of the church. Father in Heaven.

"By whom? Who dared commit such an atrocity?" Commander Ryder's voice is harsh. Brutal. He turns to look over the group of villagers, and Hadrian sees them cower. He has to bite his tongue to keep still, to keep the words from spilling out of his mouth. It couldn't be them.

But he should be silent, and years of training enforce that he does. The Inquisitor spreads his hands, but before he can speak, a voice drifts through the air like a gentle breeze on heated skin. A voice that rings between his ears and has his whole undivided attention. 

"By those long gone," it says. It's feminine and spoken quietly, but there's a strength beneath it. A strength mirrored in the eyes that hold the Commander's gaze without a hint of fear. 

Grey and wide and catching the sun like the gems he has seen engraved in the altars of the fairest cathedrals. Hadrian's heart leaps to his throat as his eyes land on you. You who walked to the head of the group, your hair pooling around your face in gentle waves of gold that remind him of the brightest halo. His mouth hangs open, and Hadrian knows he stares. 

But as much as he wants to, he can't look away. Your clothes are travel-worn but of good quality. Trousers that hug your curves and make him avert his eyes as heat blooms on his cheeks. Hadrian sees the empty quiver that shoots from your back. An archer. Perhaps that explains the fingerless glove on your hand. 

The grey in your eyes is not like steel, but silver instead. And the gold in your hair is not blond, but bright yellow. Like the sunflowers that seek the sun. But it's him that seeks you. The world seems to come to a halt as Hadrian's limbs feel too heavy. His cross burns over his heart. His thoughts both spin and freeze. Fall and soar.

Beautiful.

(…)

Here is a sneak peek!  The full commission is available on Ko-fi for supporters!

The Commission.

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[yodawgiherd]

Scars that time can't heal

>>>Read on AO3<<<

Rating: M Setting: A modern AU, an Ex-Soldier Mikasa dealing with her inner demons.

I've got this idea to do a short story in what is basically the setting of my main fic with just a few modifications. It's something new, and I would really love to hear what you guys think about it. If you like it, I might do a continuation, as this thing could certainly be expanded. Thanks a lot and Enjoy! :D

Lights. Voices. Pain.

Every breath Mikasa took prompted a thousand needles inside her to prick and tear, to create more and more of the suffering. She would cry if she could. She would scream if she could. But she couldn’t.

Mikasa couldn’t do anything.

They were taking her somewhere, formless faces and blurred figures, talking in voices that were drowned in the rush of blood in her ears. It wasn’t that hard to realize what was happening to her. Mikasa was dying, plain and simple.

A figure appeared to the right of her, catching up to the others, a face that seemed somewhat familiar. Could it be… ?

“Jean?”, Mikasa rasped, every syllable dearly paid for by more pain.

The figure leaned closer, revealing its face.

“Mikasa! Mikasa can you hear me?!”, his hand grasped hers, tightly squeezing the numb fingers, “Hang in there!”

She wanted to tell him to shut up, to just let her die in peace, but another coughing fit overcame her. The movement stopped. Hands lifted her for a moment before depositing the hurt soldier on a proper hospital bed, already smelling of someone else’s blood which soon mixed with the stench of her own, still gushing from the wounds on her body, leaking through the impromptu bandages. Mikasa could see Jean’s head moving from left to right as he looked around, desperate to find someone that would help her, but to no avail. She wasn’t that surprised, the sudden attack took them completely by surprise, catching the US military with their pants down. There must have been dozens of dead, hundreds of wounded, and Mikasa wasn’t that important anyway. Soon, she would be just another casualty of war.

Out of nowhere, another shadow fell over her, as gentle hands ghosted over the bandages.

“What happened?”, a new voice asked.

“A grenade, we didn’t see it coming. Exploded right next to us and….”, Jean’s response was rushed, but quite accurate, “Shrapnel tore into her, fragments…”

“God damn it,”, swore the new voice, “I’m not qualified for this, someone else has to…”

“I’ll take care of her.”

A new voice, young but somewhat rough. Mikasa couldn’t see the speaker, the only thing she could see was the burning tip of the cigarette in his mouth.

“You? Didn’t you hear the captain?”, the unqualified medic cut in, “You’ve been awake for over 24 hours, get some rest before you kill someone!”

“I said I’ll take care of her,”, said the cigarette, “Now either help me or get out of my way.”

The first shadow still lingered, not ready to give up.

“Listen, there’s no one else available to help her. Look at those wounds, if we wait, she’ll die.”, the rough voice dropped an octave, pleading, “Please, help me save her.”

“Fuck. FUCK. Fine!”, the first guy finally gave in, “What do you need me to do?”

“Take off her clothes, get some local anesthesia…”

“Local?”

“We can’t put her under, if she goes to sleep…”

“I won’t wake up.”, Mikasa finished for the rough voice, weakly.

Her head was swimming at this point, the only thing that was keeping her anchored in reality was Jean’s grip on her hand, feeling so warm against the coldness that began to spread its fingers through her body. The second shadow leaned over her, the burning cigarette tip bright as a sun.

“Hey there marine.”, said the rough voice, accompanied in the background by snipping of the scissors, as the other guy was working on removing the ruined remnants of Mikasa’s uniform, “What’s your name?”

Even saying her own name was a task that felt impossible.

“M-Mik…Mikasa.”, she finally pushed out. So tired.

“That’s a beautiful name, soldier. Can I drop the formalities and call you Mikasa?”

She nodded, her bloodied lips turning slightly up. It was funny, being talked to so formally at her own deathbed, but she really liked the way the cigarette pronounced her name. He didn’t choke on the second syllable, as a lot of people do, even Jean had trouble getting it correctly at the start. Not this guy though, whoever he was, he aced it the first time around.

“All right,” he continued, “Now do you know what’s going to happen?”

She swallowed, the coldness spreading further from her wounds. They used to burn, just fifteen minutes past, but the agony was gone, replaced by cold numbness. It wasn’t hard to guess what was going on.

“I’ll die.”, she stated.

The burning tip swung left and right, as whoever was smoking it shook his head.

“No, you’re not going to die, I won’t let you.”

There was a sharp smell of disinfectant in the air. A snap of latex, as the cigarette guy pulled on a fresh pair of gloves, saying something to his assistant before turning back towards her.

“I’ll pull those fragments out of you, sew you up, and you’ll be better than ever. All right?”

“You can’t… there’s too many.”

The rough voice didn’t even waver as he replied.

“I can do anything I want.”

The cigarette disappeared, replaced by a surgical mask most likely. An instrument exchanged between the two shadows, and a gleaming point neared one of the deep cuts on Mikasa’s body, ready to dig in in search of the invading metal. But before it could make contact, she spoke up again, in a small voice, the fear and lightheadedness taking over.

“Is it going to hurt?”

The instrument stopped, and even when Mikasa couldn’t see his face very clearly, she knew that he was looking straight into her eyes when he replied.

“Like hell.”

Then, the former cigarette smoker pushed the thing in, and the agony returned, most of the world disappearing behind the veil of Mikasa’s pained scream.

Eyes shooting open, she sat up, heart beating wildly in her chest. The way it hammered against her ribs was soon joined by the well-known hammering of a hangover, making Mikasa groan and massage her temples. Well, she wasn’t falling asleep again, that was for sure. Standing up from the bed her foot nicked the bottle next to the bed, empty thank god, and it whirled away before hitting the wall and remaining there, glistening in the moonlight. She could hear music, coming down from below, a certain disadvantage of living above a bar, but hey, she didn’t have to rent. Worth it. Hoping that the headache will recede soon, Mikasa set out for her bathroom, carefully finding her way between the heaps of clothing, empty bottles and other trash that she had to finally get rid of. Reaching the sink, she splashed her face, taking a moment after to look into the mirror.

A visage stared back at her. Pale skinned, boyish short dark hair matted by both sweat and water, dark circles underneath her eyes. Goddamn it, she really did look like shit. The nightmare still lingering in the back of her mind, she inspected the old scar beneath her eye, frowning at it. Everyone said that she was incredibly lucky, if that particular shrapnel fragment flew just a tad bit higher, she would have lost the eye. Lucky huh. Taking a step back, Mikasa knew what she will see but it was still a bitter pill to swallow.

What was merely a nightmare now was a reality, just a few years back. The scars were there, spread across her body, reminders of all the places where the fragments cut into her. She should have died there, on the table, bled out or something, but whoever that cigarette guy was saved her life, pulled her back from the dead. He was no magician though, and making the scars disappear was impossible. They were forever etched into her, a web across her skin, spread everywhere. Mikasa was not scarred only on her abdomen, but over her chest too, and the metal even cut into her legs, grazing the thighs. She liked saying that she came to terms with her injury, but sometimes it still saddened her, the permanent reminder of the explosion, destroying what could have been…

With a sneer, Mikasa turned away from the mirror. What a crybaby she was. Why would It matter that her body was scarred? It was only cosmetic, none of the fragments hit any important muscles or organs, her body was still in peak condition, if not too pleasant to look at. There was no point if thinking about it, she reminded herself, for what felt like a hundred time. It didn’t matter. It didn’t.

Returning to the bed, Mikasa checked the bedtime clock, seeing that there was still plenty of time before her training session. But as sleeping was not an option, she decided to just say fuck it and go anyway, get in a few hours of her own training before Louise comes in. After all, she did have the keys to the gym. Grabbing her leather jacket from where it lay on the only chair in the room, Mikasa took her bike keys and made her way out of the door. Passing the bar, she saw Jean leaning over the wood and talking to some girl with a huge grin on his face, handling it perfectly as usual.

It was a risky idea that they had, pulling all of their money together and buying this place after leaving the army could bite them in the ass, and it was purely Jean’s doing that it didn’t. While Mikasa was only the initial investor, she didn’t do shit for the bar, while Jean was the owner, barman, waiter, accountant, and everything that the establishment required. He handled it all on his own and literally carried the place on his back without a word of complaint. Honestly, he was the best business partner Mikasa could ever ask for.

The gym was exactly as dark as one might expect at three in the morning, and the parking lot in front of it nicely empty. Stopping her bike at the best one, closest to the entrance, Mikasa once again realized that there were still no designated places for the staff. She really should talk to Levi about it.

“You were so amazing! You did like boom, left hook, right hook, and that kick!”

“Louise, please, can you focus on your set?”

“Oh, right sorry!”

Rubbing her forehead, Mikasa watched the younger girl struggle with the weight, doing her best to push it upwards. Being a personal trainer to Louise could be mentally taxing, but she paid so well that Mikasa was willing to put up with it. They came into contact in the weirdest possible way too. After coming back from the war, scarred in both mind and body by the experience, Mikasa had certain anger inside her, one that desperately needed to be let out. And punching the bag didn’t quite soothe her. Yet before she could do something she would come to regret later, Levi approached her with a proposition. There were underground fights taking place in the city, mafia organized, where anyone could enter and beat his opponent nearly to death. Levi took part in those too, back when he was younger and desperately needed the cash to keep both himself and Mikasa out of poverty, and now offered the same chance to his sister. In short, she took it.

Mikasa was doing martial arts basically ever since she learned how to walk, desperate to protect her remaining family after the tragic demise of her parents. Under her brother’s tutelage, she became quite the menace, a fact that came in handy during the fitness tests in the army. Now in these illegal fights, she could finally fully unleash herself. They kept coming at her, because who could ever lose to a girl, right? And she kept beating them, one after the other. It felt great, it allowed her to let out some steam, and it paid well. The dream scenario, really. Those fights were also where she met Louise, her adoring fan.

Louise was a spoiled rich girl desperate to keep herself entertained. She tried everything, every drug, every kind of alcohol, every guy or girl that would go to bed with her. But none of these filled the void inside her chest. That was until she caught wind of the underground fights and went to see them for herself. As luck would have, right the first fight Louise attended was Mikasa’s, and ever since the girl saw her knock the lights out of a hulking beast of a man about three heads taller than her, she fell in love. First thing in the morning, Louise tracked Mikasa to Levi’s gym where she trained and begged her for so long until the former soldier caved in and agreed to train her. That was their partnership. Louise attended all Mikasa’s matches, tirelessly cheered her on, and had personal training sessions with her, endlessly talking about the fights her idol won.

“Do you have any action today? Or tomorrow? Or this week?”, Louise was basically bouncing on her toes with excitement, her sweaty face giving away just how much she loved watching Mikasa fight.

“I don’t think so,”, the raven shrugged, “Gotta check my email after we’re done here and…”

“You have to let me know if there is anything. You will, right? Please?”

She sighed.

“Of course I will, don’t worry. If it wasn’t for you, who would hand me my towel after a match, right?”

How such a simple compliment could make Louise smile so brightly was a mystery to Mikasa, but she had no intention of bursting her trainee’s bubble of happiness.

The bar was basically empty when Mikasa came back from the gym, but that wasn’t much of a surprise. Most of their business happened in the late hours anyway. But how Jean managed to look so rested and ready while being up to the early hours of the morning, now that was not normal. He greeted her with a radiant smile, moving behind the bar with practiced movements. Jean made it look so easy.

“How was your fan meeting today?”

“Grand as always. How’s the bar holding up?”

“Well, I don’t mean to alarm you, but there’s someone special today. Your six .”

Carefully, Mikasa turned her head to the indicated direction, seeing a man sitting by himself. She couldn’t see much of him, just a long hair tied back into a ponytail and his broad back. Looking back at Jean, Mikasa raised an eyebrow.

“And he’s special because….?”

“Because I believe he’s just your type.”, the barman gave her a wink, “Why don’t you head over and talk to him, he looks so sad, sitting there all on his own…”

“Jean.”, Mikasa sighed, “Could you stop trying to hook me up with people?”

“Why should I? Mika, you’ve been alone for years, why don’t you live up a little?”

She frowned at him.

“I do live it up.”

“Getting drunk by yourself every night doesn’t count.”, Jean reached over the bar, putting a hand on her shoulder, “You’re my best friend, a great girl too, and it would make me so happy if I’d see you smile for once.”

“Jean…”, she drawled, but he didn’t let her finish.

“I know a girl who needs some fun when I see one and take this from a guy you used to date, you definitely do.”, he squeezed her shoulder, “Just go talk to him, okay? And if he’s an asshole, then well….”

Letting go of her, Jean flexed his impressive musculature.

“I’ll set him right.”

Mikasa couldn’t help but giggle at that.

“You think I can’t handle him on my own?”

“Please, I’ve seen you fight. I know that you can kick anyone’s ass.”, he said, “I’m just saying that should you need backup, I’ll be right there.”

She knew that Jean wouldn’t stop nagging at her until she gave in, so Mikasa decided to just skip the persuasion phase and do it. Pushing back from the bar, Mikasa smiled at him.

“Thanks, Jean, I appreciate it.”

Walking over to the guy, Mikasa felt a tingle of nervousness up her spine. How does one flirt again?

“Hey.”

Nailed it.

The man looked up, his startlingly green eyes boring into her.

“Hey yourself.”, his gaze traveled all over her, settling back on her face, “Can I help you?”

Riiiiiight.

“I… Uh… I mean….”

You know what, Jean was an asshole. Luckily, before she could embarrass herself further, he offered her an out.

“Can I buy you a drink?”, he asked.

Accepting the invitation, Mikasa sat down, finally taking a good look at him.

“Name’s Eren,”, he said, “If you care to know.”

That made her smile.

“I do. Mine’s Mikasa, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you, Mikasa.”

He had a nice way of pronouncing her name, the way it rolled off his tongue reminded her of someone, but for the love of God couldn’t remember who. With one shot inside her and one more on the way, Mikasa once again picked her brain for a line, something that would say that she’s interested in the guy. She was, to be honest, he had a nice face, pleasing if a bit raspy voice, and from what she could see he was rather well-built too. And the eyes, Mikasa really liked the eyes, the emeralds made her feel all giddy inside.

“So…”, she cleared her throat, “What’s a good-looking guy like yourself doing here all on your own?”

Eren’s face split into a huge grin.

“The delivery of that was amazing, you do that often?”

“Eeeh, not really…”

The bastard had the audacity to be smug.

“Oh? I couldn’t say.”, he said, the irony oozing from his words.

No matter how awkward she was, however, Eren didn’t seem to mind, and their conversation flowed. Somehow, they managed to completely avoid talking about themselves, and even when it was dark outside and the bar began to fill, the only thing they knew was each other’s names.

“I hate to be that guy,”, Eren said, looking over her shoulder, “But I have to ask, is the barman your boyfriend?”

“My boyfriend?”, following Eren’s gaze, Mikasa saw Jean cleaning the glasses with the most innocent expression he ever had. “No, not that. He’s my ex.”

“And you parted on good terms?”

“The best. Why?”

“Well, he keeps throwing glances our way, so I’m just wondering if I’m not hitting on someone’s girl.”

“Oh, so you’re hitting on me now?”

A small smile appeared on Eren’s face.

“What if I am?”

Instead of an answer, Mikasa returned his smile, downing her shot right after. The place was popular, and they were quite a few drinks deep at this point, so it was getting increasingly hard to understand what Eren was saying. It was annoying.

“How about we take this upstairs.”, Mikasa suggested, “I live right above the bar and…”

The realization of what she just suggested struck her, and she was left staring at Eren’s face, who looked back at her with an unchanging expression.

“Are you sure about that?”, he said, slowly, making sure that she understands.

She did, but no reason why to back down occurred to her. Jean was right, after all, she would like to have some fun.

“Yes.”, she held his gaze without flinching, “Yes I am.”

Seemingly on board, Eren nodded, finished his drink and stood up.

“We better get going then.”

It felt rather unreal, leading him up the stairs. The last glimpse of the bar showed her Jean, who was giving her a thumbs up, making her frown at him. The key jingled in the lock as Mikasa pushed the door open, silently cursing in her mind the fact that she still hasn’t cleaned up her apartment. Luckily, Eren didn’t seem much interested in the place, as his hands almost immediately found her hips and then he was kissing her, her lips hungry on hers. Judging from how quickly he coaxed her mouth open, Eren was an experienced kisser, and his tongue knew what to do. Mikasa moaned weakly, her legs feeling like jelly, drunk on both alcohol and him. Fuck, she really wanted this, needed this. But when Eren’s hand went to her shirt, trying to lift it up, the sirens went off in her head.

No, she couldn’t let him remove it, he would see the scars if he did. And there was no way he wouldn’t get disgusted by what she was hiding. With a shove, stronger than intended, Mikasa pushed him away, much to Eren’s surprise.

“What is…?”

She didn’t let him finish, turning around instead and bending over the foot of the bed, offering him her backside. Face down, ass up, that’s what men liked anyway.

“Do me like this.”, she ordered, looking over her shoulder, “Come on.”

It was a damn sexy ass, Eren had to say.

“Yeah…”, he nodded, quickly catching on “Okay…”

With their combined efforts, they undid Mikasa’s belt pushing down her pants and underwear just enough. After that, Eren was quick to find a condom in his wallet, pulling down his zipper and putting it on with practiced movement. He really was no beginner in this. Not that Mikasa cared, however, all she craved was to feel that nice, big cock inside her, so wiggling her hips, she all but purred at him.

“Are you gonna stare all evening or are you finally going to fuck me?”

Eren chuckled behind her, his hand moving over her exposed firm flesh.

“With an ass like this, only a fool wouldn’t take that invitation.”, the thrust took her by surprise, as Eren buried his whole impressive length inside her in one move, forcing her to cry out. His mouth at her ear, he growled.

“And I’m no fool.”

Quickly overwhelmed, Mikasa couldn’t do much, only moan and fist the bedding as Eren fucked her, hard and deep, her eyes rolling back. It was too much, too much, and her world was coming apart at the seams. Demonstrating a surprising amount of self-control, Eren always slowed down when he was close, mindful of her pleasure, a trait not that common during a one-night stand. It gave her ample time to build herself up, writing around on the bed while he kept thrusting at a steady pace, fully in control.

“You’re so fucking tight, it feels so good,”, he whispered into her ear, his voice deep and primal, “I love the way your pussy massages my cock, baby.”

His tempo sped up again, the sound of skin slapping skin mixing with the increasingly loud moans he forced from her. Muscles winding tighter and tighter, Mikasa was on the brink, just waiting to be pushed over.

“That’s right..”, he growled, pinning her down to the bed, “Cum for me! I want you to squirt all over my cock.”

As if her body followed his orders, Mikasa came, muffling her scream into the bedding. And still he wouldn’t stop, fucking her through her orgasm, milking all the pleasure from her quivering, dripping pussy. She was completely done, feeling fucked beyond imagining when Eren couldn’t hold back anymore, coming inside the rubber with another groan. Quick to pull out, Mikasa whimpered a bit at the sudden feeling of emptiness. She was slumped on the bed now, nothing holding her up, warm and completely satisfied, much more content than she felt in a long, long time.

Eren was moving around, discarding the condom and zipping up his pants, suddenly restless. If Mikasa didn’t have her face squished in the bed, she would see that his face was filled with something close to regret, a clarity that wasn’t there before.

“I… I think I should go..”, he said, eyeing her fallen form.

Mikasa shrugged, not really caring anymore. Tired, exhausted by his intensity, by how well he fucked her, she was sure that this night’s sleep would be peaceful, the nightmares wouldn’t come. Mikasa got what she wanted, and the desired fun was much, much better than she ever expected, positively blowing her mind. She used him, more or less, used this random guy for her pleasure, and now that he’s done his thing the fact that he was leaving on his own was amazing. Didn’t even have to throw him out.

“Just close the door behind you.”, Mikasa yawned, turning around on the bed and pulling the covers over her body. She could remove her clothes later, once she will be alone and there would be no chance of Eren seeing her scars. No need to scare the guy, he served her well.

“Right… I…”, a sigh, followed by silence. Whatever he wanted to say, Eren ultimately decided against it, and hearing the click of the door, Mikasa knew that she’s alone.

Again.

#snk #fanfic #eremika #oneshot #modern au #soldiers

[adapted-batteries]

Out from the Facades

Fandom: The Librarians

Rating: General, sfw, some swearing

Relationship: Jazekiel

Word Count: 2236

Going off a previous post where I headcanoned Stone as a trans guy, this is a fic revolving around that, and the concept of found family for June 4th's prompt: Found Family.

Also posted on my Ao3.

-----

Jacob came home, hair cut short, with a button down shirt from the thrift store, trying to ignore the uncomfortableness of the too small sports bra he was using to bind. His father was usually home later, so he figured he’d have some time to think up what he was going to say, and where he could go if he ended up getting kicked out.

Unfortunately, Isaac Stone was standing at the kitchen counter, looking at some bill that had come in the mail that day. His father looked up, squinting at the open door from the bright Oklahoma afternoon. When Jacob unfroze and shut the door, Isaac sucked in a breath.

“So, you’re a boy now,” Isaac said, inspecting Jacob like he was a prize heifer at the county fair. While his feet could move, Jacob’s throat did not want to cooperate, so Isaac continued. “Since you couldn’t even be a decent girl, you better be a better man, you understand?”

Jacob nodded, mentally finishing the thought that came next: because I can’t have a queer for a kid.

So that’s what Jacob did. So long as he acted like a good ol’ boy, everyone went along with it. He was surprised how quickly people just decided that yeah, Rebecca Stone was actually Jacob Stone, star of the high school football team, more than capable of drinking with the actual linebackers, and making the same comments, though thankfully he never felt compelled to act on them like others did.

But the real shocker was how easily Isaac Stone swept the notion of Rebecca, the rough tomboy, under the rug like he had with his late wife's heritage. Surprising support wrapped in the ultimate thought that if things weren't right by themselves, he'd force it into a more acceptable image and move on. He’d drive Stone to Oklahoma City for hormone replacement therapy until he could drive himself, his father hid of all the pictures past baby stage that indicated a girl that wasn’t on board with being one, and somehow never misgendered him.

Of course, his father didn’t have to worry about misgendering if he wasn’t home, or was passed out drunk on the couch if he was.

By the time Jacob turned 18, no one made any mistakes. He’d been blessed by the transgender gods, spending most of his formative years on testosterone, and soon got top surgery in the city (thankfully paid for before his father completely ran the company into the dirt). To complete the perfect picture, he got himself a nice, manly job oil rigging. It was easy to forget he’d ever been Rebecca first.

But jacob couldn’t ignore how much of a fuckup he still was. No one knew that he’d went to college instead of “a stint up on the Keystone pipeline,” that he’d published dozens of scholarly essays on art and literature of all sorts while “apprenticing to be a surveyor,” that he still liked men even though he was a convincing fake womanizer. Despite briefly living more like who he really was, he was terrified of what would happen if the people back home found out. So, what better way to prevent that than to come back to Oklahoma and work long hours on a dead-end pipeline job, biding his time until Isaac decided he’d done enough to murder his company and let Jacob actually take over.

And then, when he was at the bar with some of his buddies, after dutifully hitting on the hot foreign chick with a Latin tattoo, ninjas showed up, and a NATO counter terrorism officer saved his ass.

The Library made it really hard to be Jacob Stone, manly oil rigger from Oklahoma, because he wasn’t any use to the Library for just that. No, Jacob Stone, brilliant scholar and expert in all things liberal arts, that was exactly who the Library needed to repeatedly save the world. And Jacob realized that, hey, it was pretty nice to actually be the real Jacob Stone, the one under all those facades.

The problem was old habits, ones that were decades in the making, were hard to break. It took him a few months to quit instinctively playing stupid before realizing, no, he didn’t have to do that. Only recently did he actually tell his colleagues what he was always busy working on in their off time, still publishing under Dr. Oliver Thompson, though the thought of abandoning the pseudonyms gave him the same fear that kept him hidden in Oklahoma.

At least the artificial interest in women was becoming not so artificial, but then there was Ezekiel Jones, doing his damn best to remind Jacob how not straight he was. And he still wasn’t totally truthful with the team; no one knew he was trans. Though he knew he didn’t owe them that bit of personal history, it felt like one more mask still hanging on his face.

And then the Library sent them to one of his father’s new sites in Wagner, and his past that he tried to shed came rearing its head all at once. Fortunately his father had hired local contractors who didn’t know Jacob, but he couldn’t do much about Isaac himself, or the fact they were dealing with some Choctaw mythology causing a ruckus, with protestors who seemingly could see through his white-passing visage and into his native blood.

It was as if the universe decided that he needed to actually confront the cultural past he’d carefully locked away years ago with his mother’s death, and the past he’d managed to lock away recently with becoming a Librarian. And maybe he actually would.

Isaac, of course, was off being useless in a bar, so naturally he got to introduce his colleagues to his father in his worst state.

“The hell you doin’ here?” Isaac was looking at him, just like he had that afternoon 25 years ago.

It took all of his willpower to not just turn around and leave. “...hey Pop.”

They managed to convince Isaac that he was just a surveyor assistant to Ezekiel, though part of him was on guard in case Cassandra decided to throw down with his father’s disgusting misogynistic behavior (he was convinced she gave Isaac a headache with all the jargon she threw around, so she got some revenge). It was easy knowing what to say to keep Isaac from suspecting anything, to get him to cooperate (especially considering he was oiled with alcohol), but after effectively being “out” intellectually for a year, it hurt to shove himself back into the good ol’ boy role, even if part of him was screaming it was the safe thing to do.

Being locked in the truth chamber was a thrilling experience, in that his anxiety about kept them from escaping. He thought he was going to have to come out right there to Ezekiel and Cassandra, but thankfully the door was happy enough with him talking about his father.

In the end, even after getting a practice run with Hokolonote, he realized it didn’t matter if Isaac had no clue who he really was. Isaac would never care, because Jacob still ended up being the family fuck up, just the “turnin’ your back on your family” one. He left Oklahoma with a different hurt, the low ache of realizing he never actually had genuine family to begin with.

And then he spent more time with the Librarians, and that ache began to fade. These people he worked with, saved, got saved by, knew him as he was, and loved him for it. And realized he felt the exact same way about them. He near spooked himself with how much he cared if Eve had died by Dulac’s sword, if Ezekiel got killed by anubis’s werewolves, if Cassandra didn’t make it through the surgery, if Flynn hadn’t been strong enough to take in evil while they scrambled for a solution to Apep, if Jenkins somehow died (thank god he was immortal). Family was only half of having people care about you; you had to care about them too.

He had family.

But he didn’t want any secrets with the family, and he still had one left tugging on his heart. And who better to tell than the other professional faker on the team.

He cornered Ezekiel in the main room while the others went about doing whatever they were doing. “Hey, Ezekiel, can we talk?”

Ezekiel looked at him, a mix of confusion and concern, since Jacob rarely pulled the first name card for him. “Sure, mate. Is something wrong?”

“No...uh, just, let’s go somewhere more private,” Jacob said, about-facing and walking deeper into the Library. Ezekiel followed him, and he knew the thief was suddenly hyper aware of everything because Jacob caught him off-guard.

The wandered for a bit, eventually far enough from the others and any main walkways where someone might come near. “Okay, what’s this about?” Ezekiel asked, folding his arms.

Jacob took a death breath. “I’ve not been completely truthful about my past-”

Ezekiel cut him off. “No one ever is, least of all me, so what of it?”

“No, just-” Jacob rubbed his face in frustration “-I know you and Cassandra found out I’d lied to my father about myself for decades, but that’s not the only thing about me you don’t know.”

“Okay?” Ezekiel just looked at him even more confused. “Are you like, coming out or something? Because that isn’t a big deal, I mean it is, but like, Cassandra has a girlfriend, mate, and you know I’m not the straightest bloke around.”

“You’re not?” Jacob shook his head, ignoring that bit of apparently obvious information for now. “I, uh, well, yeah, Jones, I’m coming out. I’m trans.”

There was an awkward silence as Ezekiel tried to figure out what Jacob meant by that. “Congrats?” He opened and closed his mouth a few times like he was trying out sentences in his head and deeming them not appropriate, and then a flood of words came out. “Um, so, do you have like prefered pronouns you want me to use? Are you thinking about a new name? Cuz that’s cool too. Are you still into women, or do you not want me to set you up anymore-”

Jacob felt like he’d been doing Atlas’s job for him, and Atlas had finally relieved him. “Ezekiel,” Jacob started to get the thief to quiet, “I’m a trans man.”

“Ooh, okay.” Ezekiel, despite his ability to don a quality poker face, had no control over the blush on his face right then.

Deciding he had nothing left to lose, Jacob decided to answer Ezekiel’s last question. “And you can stop with setting me up with women too...because I’m not straight either.” He let out a bark of a laugh at how surreal he felt, which made Ezekiel startle. Apparently Ezekiel realized how big this was for Jacob, because he was looking at him in amazement now. “I can’t believe I’ve not told anyone else that in two and a half decades.”

“You...it’s been that long?” Ezekiel blinked in disbelief. “How did you hide that?”

Jacob shrugged. “You’d be surprised how easily people will ignore things if you fit in somehow. And I wasn’t ever totally hidden...you met Slaten. He knew me, well, more than anyone else until the Library.” He knew what was coming next after he said that.

“Were you...together?”

A smile crept onto Jacob’s face, reminiscent. “It’s the worst when you fall for your straight best friend.”

“It really is,” Ezekiel replied, and then his expression changed to something more serious, his posture annoyingly more seductive with just a slight tilt of his head and angle of his hips. “Now I pride myself in reading people, a necessary skill for effective grifting, and, well, when I first met you, you gave off some repressed gay vibes for sure. Was there something more when you shoved me against that bookcase when ninjas were invading the Library for the crown?”

Jacob thought back to that moment. “Not exactly, I mean, I'm a fighter so my first thought was to immobilize you.” Ezekiel raised an eyebrow, but Jacob had more to say. He stepped closer to Ezekiel as he said, “then my second thought was you looked like you were enjoying it.” Now he was almost toe to toe with Ezekiel, and the thief had certainly picked up on where he was going. “And my third thought was that I enjoyed looking at you like that.”

Conveniently, they were near a bookcase, not the one from the memory, but close enough. With all other thoughts out the window, Jacob grabbed Ezekiel by the shirt and pushed him against the bookcase. Ezekiel let out a little gasp when his back hit the wood, making Jacob's heart flip in his chest. What he said was true; Jacob was enjoying pinning Ezekiel to the bookcase, and based on Ezekiel's turned on expression, he was too.

Ezekiel interrupted his observations. “Are you just going to look at me?”

“Hmm, I might with that attitude,” Jacob purred. Ezekiel scoffed, but he glanced down at Jacob's mouth, and then Jacob couldn't resist any longer. He relaxed his elbows and brought his face near inches away from Ezekiel's, but something making him hesitate.

Ezekiel read him like an open book. “You aren't second guessing, are you? There's nothing wrong with who you are, though your wardrobe could still use help-”

“Oh, shut it,” Jacob growled, but he didn't back away.

“Make me, cowboy,” Ezekiel retorted. That was enough to get Jacob to close the remaining distance and press his lips onto Ezekiel's.

It wouldn't be an exaggeration for him to say he felt fireworks when Ezekiel kissed back.

This was his family, this building, these people. Blood wasn't everything, despite what the folks back home thought. It only took him 40 years to find it, but he was very glad he did.

-----

Post Notes: So, this is some idyllic world where trans teens got HRT in the 80's, which as far as Google would tell me, wasn't a thing until more recently. Also, since I used “And What Lies Beneath the Stones” for reference on Jacob and Isaac interacting, I also noticed how the one protestor reacted when he looked at Stone, and my brain decided that was him recognizing Choctaw or another tribe in Stone because that's also a fun headcanon in my head from when people mentioned it way back.

I picture this happening after season four, so technically the LiTs don't remember the whole Jenkins dying bit (I feel like Flynn and Eve wouldn't say for time line stability, since Flynn does watch out for that already from “And the Final Curtain”).

#a. l. writes #the librarians fic #thelibrarianspromptmonth #the librarians prompt month #found family #jazekiel #jacob stone #ezekiel jones #trans character

[thesixthcircle]

Hunter’s Folly

Side by side, an old man and a young girl hiked up a steep slope. To the ordinary folk about, they would have made a strange and perhaps even frightening pair, the broad, dark-skinned old man clad as he was in hardened leather armor, bearing bow and sword. The girl was short, thin, and pale with short-cropped hair. She was covered in piercings and tattoos of strange esoteric symbols that would have made the good, god-fearing mothers in the local farm-towns cover their children’s eyes with wariness. But the trailhead had grown distant and in the isolation of nature, surrounded only by creatures without the capacity to judge, they were merely two humans whose paths happened to cross for the moment. As they hiked, the old man, a monster-hunter by trade, related to his companion the history of the mountain they climbed.

“This isn’t gonna be any ordinary haunting. It’s an old pilgrimage site for Black Hunters, you know. Hunter’s Folly is a densely-wooded ridge that’s known for hundreds of stone hunting-shrine idols abandoned there. It’s an old story. The hunt-mother told it to me some fifty years ago. Her teacher witnessed it first-hand, but he was only a young one then. It was his own teacher, the legendary Roonda, the hunter for whom the Folly is named. See, these were times before the gods left these lands. Before they were replaced by the psuedo-god Yoad Tsen. Members of the Red Hunt still provided their villages with game hunted and sanctified according to the old rites. Members of the Black Hunt? Well, in those days we didn’t hunt apothecaries and old widows, we hunted true monsters. The Corpulent Boar, fed to the size of a house on rotted meat and ravenous for the warm flesh of man, the cryptic Returned who rise from their graves when the dread Horned One declines to return the dead to the earth as he turns the seasons: these were the sorts of monstrosities we slew. The greatest beasts of all, however, were the Taejin. You see, Hahn - humans - are not the first creatures of this world capable of thought. The Shah-chi - the gods - created several races before us and found them each wanting, wiping them out as quickly as they brought their children about in the first place. Legend has it that the Taejin were created from a bird and a serpent to form a union between the earth and the heavens and that they were wiped out because the gods themselves lived in fear of what they’d created. Most of that story is nonsensical folklore, but it’s true that they were huge, scaled beasts much like serpents with wide, strong wings and it’s true that they were much more mighty in their time than we in ours.”

“I’m familiar with the Taejin, Batheer,” the young girl rolled her eyes and brushed her hair out of her face, “Come on, old man, you’re rambling again. Why’s it called Hunter’s Folly?”

“Hmph. If you didn’t interrupt so much, I would be able to get to the point more quickly,” the old hunter scoffed, “Regardless, as it happened, in Roonda’s time there was a Taejin still alive, which had been in hibernation for time immemorial. This Taejin, a grand jet-black behemoth awoke and it hungered, having been asleep for several thousands of years. Before it awoke, the valley now overlooked by Hunter’s Folly was a mountain covered in terraced farms and dense cities dug into the mountain’s face, but when the Taejin awoke with its ravenous hunger, entire tribes went into its maw. The terrace-city was abandoned; all the people either fled or eaten by the monster, but this was a heroic age. Refugees from the city sought out the Black Hunters and sacrificed their last riches to put countless bounties on the head of the Taejin. One by one, the hunters would take their hunting-shrines on procession to slay the beast and one by one the number of abandoned shrine idols grew, for the hunters never returned to claim them. If you see a statue in the visage of a man wearing a wolf’s pelt and carrying a bow made from serpents, turn back. It was the way of the Black Hunters to take such idols with them so that the hunting-god might be present with them on their hunt. The idols were placed on the ground where the hunt began, to be returned only by the party that brought them into the wilderness to begin with. The larger the hunting party, the larger the idol accompanying, and if an idol were to be abandoned… well, it means that the hunting party never returned. It meant that the monster had bested them.”

“Oh,” Batheer broke off, “here’s one now. We must be getting close.” He brushed the palm of his leather-gloved hand over the weathered head of a statue. It was about hip-high and in the shape of a man squatting, holding a bow in his left hand. He wore a wolf’s pelt and a canine mask carved with ornate lines that would have been painted in bright reds and blues long ago.

“That seems like an awful lot of weight to lug around for an entire hunt. You haven’t got a rock in your pack slowing you down, do you?” the young witch asked with a smirk.

“Very funny, Mura. No, I don’t carry an idol. They’re impractical and it, along with many of the other old practices, are banned as heresy against Yoad Tsen,”

“My area of expertise!”

“Yoad Tsen?”

“Heresy.”

“Ah, of course,” Batheer said dryly, in a voice like an eye-roll and the exasperation of a no-nonsense parent at once, “Besides, the old Shah were never real. Merely the superstitious imaginings of more primitive civilizations incapable of understanding the world around them.”

“That’s big talk coming from a century-old witch-hunter.”

“Ugh, this again? I may not have a rational explanation for everything I’ve seen, but that doesn’t mean their causes are magical.”

“But isn’t that kind of a philosophical difference?”

“Cut it out,” Batheer growled, “Do you want to hear the rest of the story or not?”

“Tch, fine,” Mura shrugged, “Have it your way then.”

“So, the curious thing was that at the time, Roonda wasn’t a Black Hunter. He was a part of an ancient order of warrior-monks, older than iron, which I can never seem to recall the name of. They claimed to be divine mediators keeping some sort of cosmic balance, and sought to be at peace with Yoad Tsen, in its original interpretation as the flow of the universe, rather than its current interpretation as an all-encompassing god. He did eventually become a Hunter, of course, and went on to found new Hunt - the Hunt “jahl Taejin”, named for the events of Hunter’s Folly, which led to his initiation. These warrior-monks had heard of the Taejin wreaking slaughter about the mountain and were experiencing a disagreement about what to do about it. Most of their council of elders viewed it as beyond the purview of their intervention and wanted to let events occur as they would, according to Yoad Tsen, but Roonda wasn’t satisfied with that. He decided to intervene with or without the approval of the council. He knew that he couldn’t slay the Taejin alone, though, and that the Black Hunters were, in theory, better trained and more well equipped to kill monsters. So, Roonda journeyed across the continent to most of the Hunt Lodges of the time and recruited the organized support of Hunts from far and wide to bring down the beast. He recruited the Bear-Lodge berzerkers from the northwest, the Viper-Lodge hunters, masters of toxins and trapping, even the Shark-Lodge hunters of the far southeast, with their great hooks and rafts. It’s the first and last time time that the hunters ever assembled into a mass that large.”

“He recruited an army of Hunters?”

“And it proved to be their undoing. The Hunters came by the thousands, bearing all sorts of armaments, to bring the fight to the Taejin. They brought these shrine-idols so that the spirit of the hunt would be with them.” Batheer gestured at the statues that had begun to litter the trail. There had only been a few, at first, but without Mura’s notice, as they ascended, the idols had accumulated and begun to form a wall of leering, crumbling faces on either side of the trail. Many of them were small enough to be carried by a single man. Personal idols, perhaps, that hunters had used in developing their personal relationship with the bow-bearer. Others loomed over the travelers at several times the height of a grown man, great carved pillars of granite that jutted out of the underbrush like as many exposed bones.

“Batheer, some of these are huge. That one must have taken dozens of people to move,” Mura said, pointing to a particularly large idol.

“As I said, they came in thousands and brought their idols to match. Some of these statues were carried all the way across the continent to come to rest here. The kinds of stone are as diverse as the people of the waking world or the prey these old hunters were used to pursuing. Ah, but hunting and war are quite different, after all. On a hunt, you know your quarry. You lie in wait until the moment is right and then strike with lethal quickness. In a hunt, you catch your prey by surprise and end its life with tools tailored to just that purpose. The hunt is not meant to be an even battle, but war? War is different. In a war, your opponent is as cunning as you are and knows you as well, and sometimes better than you know it. Even if the Taejin could rightly have been treated as a beast to be hunted, we thought them extinct. Creatures of legend. No one had tools tailored to killing Taejin, as one would a boar or a bear. Hunting the Taejin would always have been a war if it hadn’t been a slaughter.”

“But it was a slaughter, wasn’t it? Each of these idols…”

“Each one is a memorial. A grim reminder of the costs of hubris. A tombstone for long-forgotten corpses, whatever you want to call it, it means ‘dead hunters’.”

“Did they ever kill the Taejin?”

“Eventually, yes. It swallowed entire lodges and gouged the mountain into a valley with its massive talons, but eventually they wore it down with a tool Roonda is said to have received from the hunt-god themself. As the legend has it, Sandori gave to Roonda a thousand of the enchanted arrows they’d received from the Queen of Serpents which killed not by piercing the flesh, but by burdening the target with disease. As the hunters struck the Taejin with volley after volley of sickness, it at last collapsed to the ground, dead.”

The old hunter and the witch at last approached where the lines of statues converged - a idol-lined, precipitous ridge overlooking a vast, dense forest. Mura peered over the edge, but in the twilight gloom could not tell how tall the forest below had grown to reach as high as it did into the thinning air.

“They’re grand old trees.” Batheer offered, “Fed on the ancient blood of a Taejin, and on the enchanted carnage of countless hunters.”

Mura grunted and let herself down onto the ledge, dropping her bag behind her and dangling her legs into the abyss.

“It looks like an ocean,” she mused, “only of trees instead of water.”

“Indeed, and much like an ocean,” Batheer walked over to a fallen hunt-idol and sat down heavily, buckles and armor clinking, “if you go deep enough down, there’s no telling what you might find.”

Mura flopped back on her back, gazing up into the starry night sky. “That’s what we’re counting on. I wouldn’t have done all that awful hiking if there weren’t a mystery at the end.”

#the sixth circle #hunters folly #writing #first post woo! #hopefully the first of many

[spyvstailor]

Hey, @resurrectionofannabellee, are you enjoying this yet? I'm actually flying on this novel for you. Here’s chapter two...

Chapter Two

The bell tower was covered in bird shit and looked like it was going to give him some kind of disease, but the view from it was worth the filth.

Kicking some of the larger detritus out from his new nest, he unfurled his bedroll and began to make himself at home. If he stayed longer than a week, if he lasted longer than a week, he would give it a good, solid scrub down, but for now it was a place to sleep without worrying about having his ass snacked on.

Besides, he was pointedly warned against trying to settle into the cloister, the dorms where the nuns seemed to sleep. So he had to make his bed someplace other than the infirmary.

The clacking on the wooden ladder up to his perch alerted him to the fact someone was about to visit and he settled on his haunches, wanting to appear non-threatening to the woman who was about to appear.

A blonde head popped up into view, followed by a blue jumper dress.

The young nun carried with her a plate with bread smeared with what looked like honey and she smiled sweetly at him.

“Mother Philomena wanted me to bring you some food, she said you'd be hungry.” The woman said.

“That's very sweet of you, thank you.”

Setting the plate in his lap, the woman turned to leave.

“So...tell me about you nuns here, what's your deal?” He called out to her, mostly desperate for some conversation after months of solitude.

The woman turned. “Oh...uh...well, what do you...um. I'm sorry, I'm Mary Elizabeth, I'm a novitiate, which means I haven't taken my vows yet. We're a Cisterian order, which means we value stability and simplicity.”

“And you don't ever...do anything beyond pray?”

“Well, we garden and take care of our chickens and hives, mostly we supply...well, we used to supply vegetables and peaches from our trees and eggs and honey and bees wax to the local farmer's market to support our convent. Most of our funds go to charity in the church, people starving in other countries, disaster relief. And we reflect, on God, on man, on everything in between.”

Splitting the bread slice in half, he handed her the larger piece and bit into his.

Mary Elizabeth took the offered piece with a shy grin and squatted down like a lady to join him, knees together, skirt covering anything inappropriate, one hand on her knees to ensure this.

“Is it really bad out there?” She asked as they chewed in silence. “Some of our order went to the market nearly half a year ago and never came back.”

He nodded. “I can't give you any hope, they're probably gone. Swept away with the dead.”

The woman's pretty little face puckered in dislike of that idea, but she soldiered on bravely.

“It's like Revelations. The dead rising. Scares the dickens out of me, if I'm honest.”

The woman was so sincere in her fear, as she rightly should be. The Lieutenant had been forged by war overseas, by rigorous training and by all he had seen and done in his forty-three years.

This slip of a girl, barely old enough to vote, it seemed, was scared of the rotting corpses that walked across the land and he understood how she could be. It was bigger than them, out of control, there was nothing left but the dead and the vultures who picked at the corpses of society.

Downing the last morsel of his bread and honey, the Lieutenant stood up and pointed at her. “Well, either you're closing your eyes to a situation you do not wish to acknowledge or you are not aware of the calibre of disaster indicated by the presence of a pool table in your community.”

The woman clutched her hands together and beamed happily. “Oh! I love The Music Man!”

“Ya got trouble, my friend, right here, I say, trouble right here in River City,” he went on playfully.

Mary Elizabeth blushed shyly. “Mother Philomena says you're the trouble around here.”

“She's getting a hunter and protector out of this deal, Missy should watch her tongue.” He returned, easing his ass against the railing and folding his arms.

“I'd better get going, I have to do the washing tonight.”

“It was nice to talk with you, Lizzie.”

The woman giggled. “You too, Lieutenant.”

“Mind yourself going down now,” he cautioned, moving to offer her a hand down the ladder, before remembering that he wasn't to touch any of the nuns, so he drew his hand back quickly.

Mary Elizabeth beamed at him. “Thanks for the offer though. I like a gentleman.”

“That is a household worth of baggage, Lieutenant.”

He had just returned to the convent with a successful bounty, three ducks and a goose for dinner, when Sister Mary Agnes approached him. He had met her the other day when she was the one to bring him some food. He liked her plain manner of speaking and her matronly look.

“I got lucky,” he returned, preparing to clean the kills.

“I meant that pack on your back,” she said, kneeling beside him. “Doesn't it ever get awful heavy after all that walking?”

Glancing at his pack, the one he went everywhere with, he grinned. “It's my apartment, everything I own is in that bag.”

“How on earth can a man travel with so much on his back? Don't you ever get tired?” She demanded.

“Well, when you don't have a home, Sister, you make do. My apartment is on my back, ready at a moment's digging.”

The woman stopped them both, her dark eyes grave. “What's it like out there, Lieutenant? Really?”

“Hell on earth,” he admitted. “If it's not full of the dead, it's lonesome and abandoned. Like walking through a bad dream.”

He was on the wall later that evening, watching an uggie as it shambled from out of the woods towards the wall he was on.

Poor little lady in her bathrobe, one slipper still on, the other long gone.

“Didn't expect to be caught in your jammies, huh?” He asked the thing.

It grunted and made a mad dive for the wall just under him, hands clawing at the wall.

“Never actually thought people even wore bathrobes,” he went on calmly. “Maybe I should start wearing one. Look like one of those old Hollywood actors. Cary Grant, yeah?”

“What on earth on you doing up there?” Missy asked from the ground behind him.

“Bird watching,” he returned casually. “Wanna come up?”

“And fall off that wall and break my tail? I think I'll pass on the offer. Being up there in jeans is one thing, this habit is a wind catcher for sure.”

Turning around he held out his hand to her. “Come on. I won't let you fall.”

Hitching her robes to her, she moved to a spot where she must have propped an old ladder in order to climb up.

He moved to help her onto the wall, once more forgetting that he couldn't touch the nuns.

She held out her hand as he moved to grasp her elbow and stood on the wall, peering down at the uggie in her jammies.

“Do you suppose they're in pain?” She asked.

“I don't think so, think they're running on instinct and nothing else.” He said, running his hand over the butt of his rifle a little nervously, ready to steady Missy at a moment should she prove correct and the wind grab her. “Reminds me of this fact I heard about octopi and how if you put their corpse by salt their little tentacles react, but they're brain dead. Like that, I suppose. Them folks in Japan eating them basically raw, and their little tentacles grab at them chopsticks. Little undead squiggles putting up a fight.”

“This is a person,” she murmured. “She had things to do, goals and dreams.”

“We're born astride the grave.”

Handing her his rifle, he pulled out his knife and jumping off the wall, over the thing, he came up behind her and knocked the uggie against the wall, holding her there so he could drive his knife into the base of her skull. It sunk heavily to the ground and he eased the poor woman back into a dignified laying position. Kneeling by the corpse, he wiped his knife blade on her bathrobe, before looking up to find the nun peering down at him quietly.

“Do you want a hand with her?” She asked.

He moved to help her down, his large hand sliding around her waist so that she could hop against him to break her fall somewhat, the other day she had precariously climbed down and nearly fell, today she was wearing her full habit, she offered him a hard look as he set her on her feet.

“That had better been my only option of dismount,” she warned him.

“Unless you want to break your neck today, then yes, ma'am.”

Kneeling over the corpse, Missy pushed the woman's hair out of her face and peered upon the rotted visage.

“Last rites?” He joked.

“I can't give those,” she said. “I just wanted to look at the poor woman. I killed so many of these the past few weeks, I never had a chance to pause and give thought to them. I honestly thought it was for the best to put them out of their misery. They are abominations after all, but they were once people.”

Kneeling with her, the Lieutenant nodded. “Bet she was someone's mama. She looks like a mama.”

“I hope her babies are alright, but from what you tell me, I don't imagine they are.” She was quiet for the longest time, before adding, “you'll keep my girls safe, won't you?”

“If you want me to,” he replied. “I haven't got anywhere to be.”

She looked at him for the longest time, those pretty blue eyes of hers shining and hard, despite being the bluest things he had ever seen. Set against her white chocolate skin and framed by luscious dark lashes, she was hell in a habit. If he had to gauge an age on her, he would wager she was around the same age as him, maybe a little younger. She certainly aged well if she were any older, and maybe she had, she was in charge of her convent, after all, and it took a while to advance in any profession.

“Then if you advise me on how to keep them safe, I will listen, but I will not compromise our faith for anything. The bell will stay silent, and we will do a patrol of the wall, but I will not expect any of my girls to harm anyone or anything without knowing for certain that it won't damn them.”

“Fair enough,” the returned with a grin, holding out a hand to shake.

She considered it for a moment.

“Nobody went to hell for shaking a Cajun's hand,” he teased.

“Yet,” she murmured.

Reconsidering his dirty hand, the Lieutenant wiped it on the front of his shirt, before offering it again.

This time she took it, shaking gently.

“You know this reminds me of this story my mamere used to tell me,” he explained, grunting as he scooped up the dead woman. “About this--”

“Sorry, your 'mamere'?” Missy interrupted.

“My granny.” He said, moving the corpse onto the muddy cattle trail of a road leading up to the convent gate where a fire would burn better without starting the woods ablaze. If they were going to keep collecting bodies, he would have to begin burning them. That pile in the woods would soon be doing nobody no good. “She used to tell me about this old man named Gilliam, used to beat the hell out of his old hound. Never deserved the poor thing, so one night, my...uh...granddaddy, he goes over, dead of night, dark as Hades--”

“I don't mean to cut your tale off at the root, I'm certain it's a wonderful parable, Mister Lieutenant, but we are about to burn a body here? Perhaps some wise words or none at all?” Missy suggested.

The Lieutenant was quiet, settling the corpse up in the middle of the muddy trail, before reaching for his lighter. He set the woman ablaze, burning her clothing, knowing full well the parchment paper flesh that remained on her corpse would go up in smoke easily.

Standing back, he glanced around cautiously, knowing that uggies liked to pop up when least expected.

Finding them alone, he turned his attention back to the burning body.

“Uh, dearly beloveds we are gathered here today to, uh, burn this--”

“Are you marrying the corpse or laying her to rest, Lieutenant?” The woman demanded.

“Mais, girl, go easy on me. I ain't a priest.”

“Honey, even the heathens had idols they worshipped before the Christian God,” she pointed out.

“So I'm lesser than a heathen and yet greater than a toad, yeah?” He winked at her.

As the smoke began to choke them with the scent of burning flesh, the nun turned on her heel and headed back to the wall, hiking her hem up as she went tiptoeing through the mud.

“You're certainly bigger than a toad,” she said. “Now use that might and give me a hand up and over, please?”

She squealed and undignified and rather girlish noise as the Lieutenant came up behind her and scooped her up and at the wall with his hands.

“Mind your hands,” she warned coolly as soon as she recovered her dignity.

“Sorry,” he said easily, shifting his left hand from where it cupped her inner thigh, “there's so much skirt to you that I wasn't sure where the safest place to stick my hand was at. I guess I aimed wrong.”

“I nearly had to abandon my vows for you to make an honest woman of me,” she declared, hoisting herself up onto the wall.

Beaming up at her, the Lieutenant said, “hey, now, Missy. Mind your tongue before the devil cuts it off.”

As soon as she was safely on the wall, he said, “now hand me that rifle you got.”

“Aren't you coming up?”

“Well, I promised you some venison now didn't I?”

“This late? Lieutenant, it's almost dark.”

“Best time of day to hunt for deer, yeah?” He winked at her and held out his hand for the gun.

That night the Lieutenant stood in his bell tower watching over the land.

He had to admit, at night like this with only the cicadas chittering, he enjoyed the silence and peace.

As much as he loved people, he enjoyed his solitude as well and with the stars in the sky and the land absolutely still, he was able to just think his thoughts.

“Lord I was born a ramblin' man,” he sung to himself, wandering around the small perimeter of the bell tower, watching all sides for anything moving in the shadows below. Raising the rifle he peered down the scope at something that shifted, it appeared to be shrubs and the wind. “Trynna make a livin' and doin' the best I can.”

“And when it's time for leavin', I hope you'll understand,” he lowered the rifle as an uggie emerged from the woods.

It was just a shadow really, shuffling from the darkness, finding the wall with its chest, bouncing back and staggering to regain its footing. For a moment, the thing stood dumbly, head bent down, before it seemed to lift its chin and sniff the air.

It wasn't worth it for him to shoot the thing, his gun wasn't much use at times like this, the sound only drawing more to his location, but he liked the scope to watch as the dumb thing sort of collapsed against the wall.

From his perspective, he could only see the top of its head, but the manic bobbing told him it had caught their scent and was trying to find a hole in the wall to get at dinner.

Tomorrow he would have to reinforce the wall properly, a few sharp sticks, some hole traps, he'd head into the nearby town to find something that still drove that he could back against the wrought iron gate.

He wasn't sure about that one, most of the time the vehicles didn't turn over at all. Having never pondered it, he supposed that maybe the gasoline had gone south. He knew it could stale, had tried to drive old lawnmowers enough times to know you had to drain the gas out from the tank if you weren't planning on using them for a good, long while.

Maybe he'd find one though. He only needed her to limp to the convent, it didn't need to win no races.

“Good morning, Lieutenant.”

He had emerged from the church the next morning to Sisters Dymphna, Felicity Perpetua and Mary Claire standing around the steps in the cool shade of the north side.

“Good morning, ladies,” he returned. “What kind of trouble are you up to today?”

“Only the worst kind,” Dymphna replied, her brown eyes sparkling. “Are you heading out?”

“I was planning on doing a little work on the wall today. Did you need me to head out for something?” He asked, coming to stand in the little clutch with them. So far he had found the younger nuns more receptive to his presence than the older ones.

Except for Sisters Gertrude and Boniface, he adored Gertrude and her cats and Sister Boniface was a Quebecois French woman, so he felt a sort of kindred spirit in her.

“Maybe we wanted to do something for you for once,” Sister Mary Claire said with a smile that could brighten a stormy day.

“Something for me?”

Sister Felicity Perpetua, who had been standing with her hands behind her back, produced a child's lunch kit and held it out to him proudly. “We made you a lunch if you're planning on leaving.”

“You have to stay strong,” Sister Mary Claire added. “An army marches on its stomach.”

“Plus, you know, we appreciate you being here for us.” Dymphna added.

There was something sincere in their eyes, something which made the Lieutenant give a slight, unsure pause, before he accepted the lunch kit.

“Thank you,” he said. “I'm going to be just outside the wall working on it today, but maybe at some point I might hike it into the nearby town, see if I can find a big enough truck or some kind of van maybe.”

“What for?” Felicity Perpetua asked.

He motioned for the nuns to follow him towards the gate. They all stopped before it and he motioned with the hand holding his lunch at the rusty gate. “She's solid enough, but old and if enough of those things out there pushed against her at once she could go. I'm going to back a heavy girl up against her and reinforce it.”

The nuns were quiet for a bit, before Dymphna said, “I'm going with you.”

“Nope,” he declared firmly.

“Yes,” she insisted. “You can't go into the town alone with those things out there.”

“I lived this long on my own, I'll be fine.” He stated. “You nuns don't go anywhere outside these walls without me. My job is to keep you safe, your job is to make my job easier by staying here and being your cute little selves.”

“What if something happened to you?” Felicity Perpetua whispered. “My soul would know no peace.”

“Don't you have chores?” Someone asked from behind them, causing a couple of the nuns to jump.

Sister Thomas Aquinas, a stern faced woman of about seventy stood behind them, her arms full of blankets.

The three nuns all ducked out quickly, but not before Dymphna grasped Faye's forearm with a strong, small brown hand.

Looking at him with a hard, glittering stare, the older nun seemed to be sizing him up for a moment, before handing him the blankets.

“Here,” she said. “We found some of these to spare. I thought you might like to keep yourself warmer up in that bell tower.”

“Thank you.”

“You're welcome,” she said tersely, before turning and walking off, muttering to herself about a 'fox in the hen house'.

He missed the days when he could go out into the woods and just sit and enjoyed the peace.

Now, whenever he was in the woods, he was vulnerable and on edge. Always prepared for something to stagger out of the underbrush.

There was a time, when he was a boy, he'd duck into the woods by his rural home near Eunice, what wasn't swampy bayou, was pretty little woods filled with mostly with cypress and oak trees, the forest floor was always good and moist, carpeted with the soft needles that the bald cypress trees shed.

The smell of the forest was always the way he found peace. That scent of good, clean country air, with a little harmless stank from the bayou, coupled with the scent of the damp earth. It was home sure enough and he missed it.

Georgia had it's own smell. Less bayou, more fresh water on the air. Rivers and streams and creeks. Nothing like the stagnant scent of the swamp.

He supposed, it was perhaps a little more fresher air, though it just wasn't home and that made all the difference.

Georgia was True Love Ways compared to Louisiana's Oh Boy, if Buddy Holly songs could be used to compare the two. Both good songs, though one was a little more melodic and slow-paced, the other had a bit more get-up-and-go.

“Boy, what are you doing to my wall?”

The voice came from above him on the wall and he looked up to find a furious nun standing there, swaying a little unsteadily in her habit and the mild wind.

“Just reinforcing it, Missy,” he said.

Philomena sighed. “We look like an ancient castle with these sharp sticks poking out.”

Stepping back, he admired his work and nodded. “Yeah, palisades, that's where I got the idea. Figured if it kept them old Celt tribes out, it'd work for us.”

“It doesn't look very inviting,” she muttered.

“It's not supposed to be a welcome mat,” he replied.

“Well, I suppose that's fine, just please don't hoist yourself on your own petard,” she said after a moment of thought.

He wiped his hands off and dug through his pack for the lunch the nuns had packed him. “You up there for a reason?”

“Sister Mary Claire says some of the younger nuns expressed interest in helping you outside these walls.”

“And you want to slap my wrist for tempting them?” He used the gate to climb onto the wall and sat beside her to eat his lunch.

“Not entirely,” she admitted, easing down a little clumsily beside him. “I think...well maybe you could be permitted to teach those of us interested in a few ways to defend ourselves from the abominations.”

Plucking a half a carrot out of his mouth, he crunched on the bitten half for a good long while. It was so delicious. He had forgotten what fresh veggies tasted like.

“Really?” He asked.

She stared off down the cattle trail before them, and he followed her gaze. The path was hung over with oak branches and Spanish moss, pretty for the late summer, but it was tainted by the dead. Somewhere out there in those pretty trees and green shrubs they ambled and shuffled and staggered and crawled, gnashing and drooling for their next meal.

He supposed those uggies all had hopes and dreams and plans set aside now for one thing and one thing only. Same and him, same as the woman sitting beside him, same as all the nuns in the convent behind them.

“Our wills and fates do so contrary run,” he began with a sigh, reminded by something she had said earlier.

Beside him Missy was quiet still, eyes on the world beyond her walls. “You're well read, for a soldier.”

“I'm sure you had to read Hamlet in high school too,” he teased. “A lot of it just stuck with me, I suppose. Don't be fooled,” he went on with a grin, “I'm just a simple country boy from the bayou.”

“I grew up in Savannah,” she said. “Have you ever been?”

“No,” he admitted. “Didn't get a chance before all this and I damned well won't go now. It'll be overrun.”

“We've been so secluded here,” she admitted gently. “I thought though, that someday I would be transferred out to a school or a...missionary, but I suppose this is my life now.” She hurried to add, “not that I'm complaining. I will bear this with grace, only that I miss the outside world, God's real world out there. Art and books, beauty created by the hands of His creatures, so much lost now.”

Faye stared at the woman as she continued to gaze wistfully out at the trees. He so struck by how easy she made being beautiful look. “Has anyone ever told you that you look like Vivian Leigh?” He asked.

For a moment, the woman's face read irritated, then puzzled, before she finally smiled sweetly and looked down. “Tell me, Mister Lieutenant, is it nature or force that compels you to flirt with every woman you meet?”

“Sometimes it's not just women,” he teased.

“Oh!” She offered him a scolding look, though her face was still mostly smiles and amusement.

He beamed.

#These are rough edits I'm tagging you in. #But that's because I want you to enjoy them first before I compile these into a novel for publication. #And only you seem to miss the Lieutenant this much.

[countrymadefoods]

Archaeologists granted access to Japan's sacred tombs

“The opaque bureaucracy that runs the affairs of the imperial family - is unlikely to shed new light on the origins of what some believe is the world's oldest monarchy, for Japan's increasingly vocal ultra-right, even this modest concession is a step too far. They subscribe to the ancient myth that holds that Japan's emperors are the direct descendants of the sun goddess Amaterasu Omikami, and that the current monarch is the latest in an unbroken line of 125 emperors stretching back more than 2,600 years to Jimmu in the seventh century BC.”

“Although the wartime emperor, Hirohito, renounced his divine status after Japan's defeat in 1945, ultra-nationalists regard his son, the current emperor, Akihito, as a living god, and have issued death threats to archaeologists involved in previous attempts to gain access to the tombs.Their greatest fear is that proper inspections of the tombs will reveal compelling evidence that the Japanese imperial family originated from China and the Korean peninsula.”

“Akihito alluded to his Korean ancestry on his 68th birthday in 2001. In remarks that were ignored or played down by most of the domestic media, he said: "I for my part, feel a certain kinship with Korea, given the fact that it is recorded in the Chronicles of Japan that the mother of Emperor Kammu was of the line of King Muryong of Paekche."Kammu reigned from 781 to 806 AD while Muryong ruled the Paekche kingdom in Korea from 501 to 523 AD.”

(via Archaeologists granted access to Japan's sacred tombs | The Guardian)

Giru of Paekche

“Giru of Baekje ( 기루왕 ; died 128, r. 77–128) was the third king of Baekje, one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea.”

Muryong of Paekche

“Muryeong of Baekje (462–523, r. 501–23) was the 25th king of Baekje, one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea...According to the Shoku Nihongi, Emperor Kanmu's mother, Takano no Niigasa is a descendant of Prince Junda, son of Muryeong, who died in Japan in 513 (Nihon Shoki Chapter 17).”

Emperor Kanmu

“Emperor Kanmu (桓武天皇 Kanmu-tennō, 735– 9 April 806) was the 50th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession. Kanmu reigned from 781 to 806... According to the Shoku Nihongi (続日本紀), Yamabe's mother, Yamato no Niigasa (later called Takano no Niigasa), was a 10th generation descendant of Muryeong of Baekje.”

Kanpai! Sake through the ages

“The notable event of that time was the Kenmu Restoration, a doomed attempt by Emperor Go-Daigo in Kyoto, the ancient capital, to wrest real, as opposed to merely ceremonial, power from the Shogunate — the regime of military “eastern barbarians” in Kamakura.”

“Most amazing were the aspects of these men’s parties and meetings! In offering wine, they made no distinction of degree between the high and the low. Likewise, men cast off their caps and loosened their top hair, while monks showed their persons in white undergarments without their gowns. The wine was served by more than 20 maidens of 16 or 17 years, clear-skinned and superior in face and figure, through whose unlined robes of raw silk the snowy skin gleamed fresh as lotus blossoms...The guests sported and danced and recited verses. Yet all the while they took counsel together, how they might strike down the eastern barbarians.”

”‘There came over (to Japan)…a man who knew how to distil liquor,” another eighth-century chronicle, the “Kojiki,” tells us. The man was a Korean, Susukori by name.“So this Susukori distilled some great august liquor, and presented it to the heavenly sovereign” — the Emperor Ojin, roughly datable to the fourth century A.D.

Not much is known of Emperor Ojin (he is vaguely associated with an invasion of Korea), but evidently he knew how to enjoy himself. The “Nihon Shoki” records a subject people known as the Kuzu, mountain folk of the remote Kii Peninsula, coming to Ojin’s court to present “thick sake” and singing, “We have brewed the fine great liquor:/ See how good it is — / Come, partake, down it with joy,/ Our father.”

“The earliest sake was termed kuchikami no sake — literally, “chewing-in-the-mouth sake.” “This sake...was made by chewing rice, chestnuts or millet and then spitting the wad into a large wooden tub where it was allowed to brew for several days...only young virgins were allowed to chew the rice. These virgins were considered mediums of the gods, and the sake they produced was called bijinshu, or ‘beautiful woman sake.’ ” Refinement proceeded slowly, over centuries. Thick sake grew thinner, ultimately turning liquid. Black sake grew white and finally transparent.”

”Sake-brewing was Japan’s first commercial enterprise. Associated both in Heian times and before exclusively with shrine and court, it passed into entrepreneurial hands in the early years of the Kamakura Shogunate (1192-1333). That period is known mainly for inaugurating Japan’s stern military tradition, but it has another claim to fame: Its stable currency fostered a commercial spirit.”

“Descendants of the families that had run the sake brewery of the court...now sought permission from the new government to establish themselves as independent brewers, or formed guilds associating themselves with powerful temples and shrines and going into business under their protection.”

Fortunes were made. Warriors were not supposed to be drinkers, but they proved open to temptation after all. Kyoto culture, despised in the Kamakura Shogunate’s early years as effete, gradually took hold. Battle-hardened samurai became Kyotoized in spite of themselves. By the 14th century...there were 342 sake brewers in Kyoto alone, Kamakura being a prime market.”

“The hostess and maids of the house receive you very hospitably and lead you to a room upstairs...Everything in the room makes you comfortable. A clever-looking maid comes up with a tea-set and serves tea and cakes, then asks you whether you want to take sake and some dishes, hire geisha and jesters...In another room the samisen is heard...Lots of sake and good food produce in the guest an amorous nature.

At the gate of a tea house...stood the funny but inevitable little Japanese girls, gaily bowing and smirking...asking the ‘honorable’ gentlemen to come in and rest and laugh and chaff with them and take just one cup of their ‘honorable’ tea. Tea in a modern Japanese tea house in these days of civilization means, I fear, whisky with or without water...Peach blossoms may surround it (the tea house), but the almond-eyed maidens are employed here to tempt the traveler to drink and romp.”

“For 1,000 years and more, “drinking” in Japan meant, almost exclusively, but not quite, drinking sake. The exception was shōchū...And so in the popular imagination if not quite in actual fact, “drinking” and “sake” were synonymous — until Japan’s mid-19th century opening to the West...What is indisputable is that the “soothing liquor, smiling liquor” celebrated all those misty ages ago by Emperor Ojin has been in sad popular decline ever since, though it’s said very lately to be on the cusp of a revival...businessmen were as likely to be drinking beer, wine or whisky as sake ”

Soju: the most popular booze in the world

“There's a brand of one particular spirit that sells more than twice as much as any other in the world...soju, national hooch of South Korea. Jinro Soju – available at Waitrose and Amazon – has topped Drinks International's annual list of best-selling global spirits for years.

Soju now sells in 80 countries, with a rising profile helped by Korean superstar Psy, who not only proclaimed soju his "best friend" but also lent his dark-glassed visage to various campaigns to get the rest of the world smitten too. K-Pop K-Shot" billboards sprouted across America, showing Psy clutching a bottle of Chamisul soju (available via Beers of Europe).”

“In a country with the world's highest per capita alcohol consumption...soju takes a whopping 97% of the spirits market. But this is a drink embedded in Korean culture since the 14th century, when Mongol invaders taught the locals how to distill, with fermented rice as the traditional starter.”

(via Soju: the most popular booze in the world | The Guardian)

The Story Behind Kirin Beer Labels

“The kirin depicted on Kirin Beer labels is a legendary creature derived from ancient Chinese myths and is said to be a harbinger of good luck...When Kirin Beer first came out in 1888, beers imported to Japan had labels that featured animals such as cats and goats. Japan Brewery Co., Ltd.—the forerunner of Kirin Brewery—chose also to use an animal as the central theme for its beer label.

A close-up of Kirin Beer labels from 1933 to the present day reveals that the three tiny Japanese kana letters for "ki," "ri" and "n" are embedded in the mane of the kirin depicted in these labels. We do not know exactly why this started: Some say the graphic designer who created the original 1933 label may have simply added an amusing touch to the design, while others claim it was an attempt to prevent forgery of the labels.

(via The Story Behind Kirin Beer Labels | Kirin)

Kiringul

“Kiringul (Korean: 기린굴; "Kirin's Grotto") is a cave in North Korea said to have been the home of the kirin, a mythological chimeric beast that was reputedly ridden by King Dongmyeong of Goguryeo in the 1st century BC...kirin (or qilin), a mythological chimera-like beast with "the body of a deer, the tail of a cow, hooves and a mane", as well as a single horn on its head. The creature was said to have been King Dongmyeong's favourite means of transport. The place in question is called Kiringul or "Kirin's Grotto". Despite the name, it was not literally supposed to have been a place where kirins lived, but was instead a mythical name akin to the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland.”

Coin from Kirin Province, Manchuria (1901)

Jilin

“Jilin (吉林; 기린;   formerly romanised as Kirin)...The name "Jilin" – which literally translates to "Auspicious Forest" – originates from girin ula ᡤᡳᡵᡳᠨ ᡠᠯᠠ, a Manchu phrase meaning "along the river". This would have been transcribed into jilin wula (t 吉林烏拉, s 吉林乌拉) in Chinese, then shortened to "Jilin."

Anti-Manchuism

“In 1911 Xinhai revolutionaries proclaimed that Han and Muslims were equal, but deliberately left out the Manchus in the original proclamation, and thus "can be seen as sanctioning" the massacre of Manchus in Xi'an.[1] The Muslims, led by Ma Anliang and Ma Qi proceeded to ignore the proclamation, and continued to fight for Qing against the revolutionaries. After the Manchu men in Xi'an were all killed, the Chinese Muslims rescued attractive Manchu girls and converted them into Muslims.”

How Beijing Turned Koreans Into Chinese

“Of the approximately two million Chinese Koreans living in China, about half reside in Jilin Province, one of the country’s three northeastern provinces...Given such a strong Korean influence on the region, it may seem logical that of Jilin’s ethnic Korean population many (if not most) would identify with one or both of the Koreas...to the youngest generation. For them, the contemporary connection with South Korea is little more than functional, while that with North Korea barely exists at all.

Having grown up in the era of China’s rise, at a time when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has shown very little practical interest in the preservation of ethnic minority cultures and devoted a great deal of attention to forging some kind of “unified” Chinese identity, today’s youth of Yanbian identify as resolutely Chinese.”

“The government was in no mood to let a surfeit of independent spirit get in the way of the country’s trajectory, and this — coupled with the disintegration of the Soviet Union —  necessitated a recalibration of national policy toward ethnic minority education. The impact was readily felt. In 1990 there were 1,106 Korean elementary schools in the Yanbian autonomous region, but this was down to just 138 by 1999 and 31 another decade after that...The same pattern has been repeated — and amplified — elsewhere in Jilin. In 1991, 26 Korean middle schools were in Liuhe County, an administrative district of the industrial city of Tonghua in the west of the province, but by 2011 there remained only one.”

“The reasons for the dominance of Chinese-language education among Chinese Korean youth, a local university professor informed us during our recent visit to the region, are twofold: First, sustained economic growth and development has altered perceptions of the Chinese state and what it means to be Chinese today. While political challenges to the CCP’s right to rule exist, economic opportunity for those who more fully assimilate, reinforced by a sense of pride in being Chinese, means more people (parents prominent among them) are willing to buy in. And second, in part a response to the challenges facing the Party today, the CCP has changed its nation-building strategy. Whereas in the past it was possible to be Chinese and ethnically Korean, today one is expected to be thoroughly Chinese.

Taken together, this provides a powerful explanation for not only the decline of Korean-language education and Korean ethnic consciousness, but also the success of Chinese nation-building.”

(via How Beijing Turned Koreans Into Chinese | The Diplomat)

Ethnic Koreans in China not bound to N.Korea

“China quite possibly fears that some Korean government might one day lay claim to the area that encompasses the Yanbian Autonomous Region (YAR.) Recall that there have always been Koreans there, and the area is now home to an estimated 2 million ethnic Koreans. China has no wish to see an increased sense of nationalism among them. This is a major reason why China does not want defectors from North Korea that might ignite any latent feelings of irredentism and nationalism in the ethnic population of its northeast provinces.

The younger ethnic Koreans in the YAR are undoubtedly aware of the differences between the two countries, and they can easily see that their future is brighter in China than it would be in North Korea...The point here isn’t that ethnic Koreans in China would likely prefer to remain as Chinese citizens in China rather than return to the chaos of North Korea. Ethnic Koreans do indeed know that North Korea is a failed state, that they have far more freedom in China and that they enjoy a better standard of living in the YAR than the average citizen in North Korea.”

”Many ethnic Koreans in the YAR, in the event of a collapsing North Korea, would likely see excellent opportunities – the real draw being South Korea with its bustling cities, readily available consumer goods of high quality, astonishing personal freedoms – and ways to make money. To be sure, those former “exiles” and their descendants certainly realize that their homeland culture has transformed radically since they were last in Korea.

Nonetheless, culture and heritage are important in Asia and that, along with the shared historical ancestry, could exert a powerful pull, particularly if older generation ethnic Koreans consider returning to the peninsula. If nothing else, ethnic Koreans with their intimate knowledge of China would likely see great opportunities in which they can play significant roles as South Korea grows its trade with its larger neighbor.”

(via Ethnic Koreans in China not bound to N.Korea | NK News)

Ethnic cleansing makes a comeback — in China

“Since last year, hundreds of thousands — and perhaps millions — of innocent Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region in northwest China have been unjustly arrested and imprisoned in what the Chinese government calls “political re-education camps.” Thousands have disappeared. There are credible reports of torture and death among the prisoners. The government says it is fighting “terrorism” and “religious extremism.” Uighurs say they are resisting a campaign to crush religious and cultural freedom in China. The international community has largely reacted with silence.

Horrific as they are, the camps constitute just one part of Beijing’s effort. The government has destroyed thousands of religious buildings. It has banned long beards and many Muslim names. People are forced to eat pork against their beliefs. The Chinese government’s persecution of innocents continues even after their death. Crematoria are being built to literally extinguish the Uighur funeral tradition, which insists on burials.”

“Add to that the unprecedented security and surveillance state in Xinjiang, which includes all-encompassing monitoring based on identity cards, checkpoints, facial recognition and the collection of DNA from millions of individuals. The authorities feed all this data into an artificial-intelligence machine that rates people’s loyalty to the Communist Party in order to control every aspect of their lives.”

If that doesn’t bother you, consider that this draconian expansion of Chinese repression is being exported to the United States and around the world. Families of U.S. citizens who speak out against Beijing are targeted as part of Beijing’s effort to snuff out all international criticism.”

“Despite Beijing’s efforts, mounting evidence of the camps has managed to make its way to the outside world. Massive camp construction can be seen from satellites, and advertisements for new construction contracts are publicly available. Witnesses have told their stories. Yet the world has failed to respond...The Chinese government is attempting to “Sinocise religion” and “transform religion and ethnicity in Chinese society” in a scheme more ambitious than Mao’s Cultural Revolution...“The scope of this campaign is breathtaking.”

“The Chinese government’s obsession with its international reputation is its main vulnerability. Calling out these atrocities in public and to Beijing directly is key. The horror in Xinjiang is not a China issue, it’s a global issue. China uses its position on the U.N. Human Rights Council and the U.N. Security Council not only to stifle discussion of its actions but also to attempt to rewrite international human rights norms to allow expansion of these practices by any dictatorship with the means.”

(via Ethnic cleansing makes a comeback — in China | The Washington Post)

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