#Like the face image would move around to illustrate the riddle

[sevrats]

He has a riddle! I made the grave mistake of listening to The Riddler: Secrets in the Dark podcast and holy moly is he just a silly little guy. I am not a super avid DC reader but this podcast makes me crave a series where Riddler and a robin team up to find batman - where Robin is doing it to save him, and Riddler is just kinda doing it to solve the mystery. What a guy

#the riddler #riddler #the riddler: secrets in the dark #DC #dc art #dcu #Also I imagined Riddler as having a moving mask like Rorschach Watchmen #Like the face image would move around to illustrate the riddle #he's a programmer and a hacker he can do that kinda stuff #anything for the aesthetic

[paper-n-ashes]

Here

Characters: Dan Jones x Reader

Words: 1.9k

Warnings/Tags: Explicit (18+), mentions of sadness/depression, PIV sex, otherwise it’s the fluffiest fluffy fluff

Author’s Note: The last repost. A piece I wrote to work through my own issues at the time. A reminder to anyone, if you feel down, unhappy, or even just a bit flat, feel free to reach out to me. I will always make time for you as an ear to listen or a distraction with Oscar or Adam gifs 🥰

It had been a long and draining day. Not unusual really. Every evening Dan trudged up the stairs to your shared apartment, he felt much the same way.

Tired. More emotionally than physically. The things he read, the truths he was unravelling… It was truly soul-sucking work. Yet just the image of you, patiently waiting for his return home after another late night, provided a stark light in the darkness he found himself momentarily falling into as his muffled footsteps echoed down the hall.

He knew he was lucky. Lucky you were so patient. So understanding. Always waiting on him. Spending more time apart than together. The cancelled dinner dates, the events you’d had to attend alone, the weekends away you never got to plan, believing his work was more important.

There wasn’t a single time you complained. Always giving him the same loving smile, one he wasn’t sure how he deserved.

It wasn’t on your face when he slipped through the door. Curled up on the couch, knees hugged to your chest, you looked… sad.

Noticing his entrance, your expression quickly changed, beaming as your eyes locked with his. “Dan,” you breathed, a relieved edge to the name, releasing yourself from the tense ball and rushing to join him at the entryway.

The room was dim, air filled with silence as you slinked your arms under the jacket of his suit and around his torso, squeezing tight.

“Sorry I’m late.”

“You don’t need to say that every night,” you urged, words muffled into his chest.

“I know.” He still would, no matter how much you protested. Stroking a palm over your hair, Dan touched his lips to your forehead. For a moment, he simply breathed you in. Relishing the flowered perfume still lingering on your skin that would forever remind him of you.

It was such an unexplainable phenomenon. How you eased his stress with a single warm embrace. He hoped he could do the same for you.

“Is everything alright?” he asked softly.

“Absolutely,” you lied, nodding against his crisp, collared shirt. “You’re home now. Everything is just fine.”

Dan couldn’t help but smile at the sweetness of your response. But he also wasn’t stupid. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

You shifted your head to look up at him. “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong.”

There was a redness around your eyes that became glaringly clear. Crying. You’d definitely been crying.

A thumb traced the line under your lower lid. “Please don’t lie. I have to deal with enough of those every day.”

Your mouth twisted, feeling your throat tighten. Unknowingly, he’d illustrated exactly why you tried to hide your sadness in the first place. He didn’t need your burden. He already had enough weighing on his shoulders.

But you also knew he wouldn’t let this go. The man was a bloodhound for seeking the truth, and the way he was looking at you now, features filled with heartbreaking concern, your resolve weakened.

Taking a deep breath, you were honest. “I’ve just been feeling a little… sad lately. Not a big deal. It’ll pass.”

Dan’s eyebrows drew together, heart already aching at your admission. “How long have you been feeling like this?”

You shrugged, pupils darting to the floor. “A few days. As I said, not a big deal. Nothing you need to worry about.”

Two palms quickly found their way to your cheeks, forcing your stares to lock. He looked almost panicked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You’ve got other things that need your attention-”

“You think your sadness is not worth my attention?” he cut off, positively stunned at how casually you’d spoken your answer.

It’s what he’s always feared. This. Shielding him from the troubles in your own life while you joined in fighting his. Being his remedy, his source of comfort, while you struggled alone.

“It’s okay,” you attempted to soothe. “I can handle it myself, really.”

He shook his head. “No. No. You shouldn’t have to.”

Your fingers grazed lightly over the clean-shaven line of his jaw. “You’re so busy-”

The sentence couldn’t be finished, pulled into a squeezing embrace, hands cradling around you. “I will never be too busy when you really need me. Ever.” Breaths began to waft over your hair, Dan’s voice riddled with a gentle urgency. “And I’m here right now. Tell me how to make this better. Please.”

His caring hold had your resilience failing, unable to camouflage the misery you’d been feeling any longer. “I don’t even know h-how… What I need…” you quivered, voice starting to break. A sniffle escaped, barely able to suppress the urge to cry.

Dan wasn’t ever particularly good at solving problems. He knew that. Finding them, providing the support others needed to take action, that was his sweet spot. What he was good at. So that’s what he would do now.

The pressure around your body vanished, only for Dan to dip down and pluck you into in his arms, bridal style, carrying your body effortlessly to the bedroom.

His movements were cautious, making sure to place you delicately into the mattress. Without removing a single piece of clothing, shoes still on, he laid down, making your shape curl into his.

“We’re going to lay here for a while, okay? However long you want. You don’t have to talk. You can just… be sad.” Another kiss landed on the top of your head. “If you need me to do something, if you figure out what might help, I’ll be here. I’ll be right here.”

That did it. The wall you had been forcing to remain standing, now a crumbling pile of rocks, leaving you exposed. Vulnerable.

You began to cry.

At first, it was a soft weeping, tears wiped away by your own shaky fingers. Yet restraint withered into nothing, succumbing to the gloom that had haunted you for days.

Your breaths were harsh through heaving sobs, first clutching into Dan’s shirt, salted droplets staining the white fabric.

He couldn’t deny, it was painful to see you like this. To hear the whimpers of your distress. A slight wetness appeared at his corner of his eyes, clutching you closer. It was all he could do. Remind you of his presence, stroking your back as you let your emotions spill over.

As minutes passed into the next, your crying slowed, yet the quietness that followed was never broken. You both remained muted in the darkness, a tangle of limbs, your face nestled into Dan’s neck, his cheek resting over your hair.

Soon, without intention, the two of you fell asleep.

*

It was close to 3am when you woke again. Blinking through the haze of slumber, Dan rustled next to you, still fully dressed in his work attire.

Recent memories came surging through, the way he’d given you everything you needed, by doing nearly nothing at all.

Illuminated only by the light streaming through a set of half open blinds, your eyes wandered over his peaceful, dreaming face.

You didn’t get to see it as often as you liked. But when you did, you were infinitely grateful. Every long absence kept you savouring the time together more deeply. Quality over quantity.

A crackled snore suddenly broke through, having you fighting back a laugh. Dan shifted, still unconscious, turning closer into you, draping an arm over your waist. With a humming sound, you noticed a tiny smile curl his lips.

Oh, how you loved him.

You wanted to show him that, right now.

Carefully, you wriggled upwards, enough that you could press a dainty kiss just above the bridge of his nose. When he didn’t respond, you repeated the action, bringing your fingertips to his hairline, nails skimming over the inky strands.

You watched as his eyes fluttered, a sigh leaking from his throat. Before he could enter back into reality again, your lips landed on his, rolling over the supple pillows of flesh.

His reaction was sluggish, still gripped by a fog of fatigue, although soon his fingers were reaching into your hair, pulling your face even closer to strengthen your adoring kiss.

Words weren’t needed, Dan realised this as you began to unfasten the knot of his tie.

You’d figured out something he could do. Funnily enough, it was what he needed too. To make sure you knew exactly how much he loved you.

You’d done this dance many times, peeling off each other’s clothes. Yet this time felt… different. There was no rushing, no impatience. You both took your time, uncovering each portion of skin without reckless abandon.

With more exposure, Dan had more parts of you to kiss. So he did. Trailing them down your arms, your legs, his touch skating over your skin with such tenderness it made you shiver.

Eventually, the last piece of clothing that remained was your panties. Usually, being so desperate to fuck you after days going without, they’d be ripped off, sometimes even pulled to the side in his hastiness to fill you.

This time their removal was unhurried, restrained, Dan gliding the flimsy material down your legs with a calm poise.

Below, you noticed his touch disappear, looking up to see his stare roaming over your bareness.

So beautiful, he thought. Your body bathed in moonlight. While he wanted to speak it out loud, there was something poignant about the way the silence had continued to linger. He didn’t want to disturb it.

Instead, Dan covered your figure with his, skin to skin, scooping hands under you jaw. Another collision of your lips ensued, the exchange unabashedly passionate and filled an emotion too intricate to name.

Within an unspoken moment of harmony, Dan moved, lining himself to your entrance between your opened legs.

You’d been taken by him many times. In the bathroom stall on your first date. Over tables. On chairs. Floors. Kitchen counters. Countless times in this very bedroom. On this very mattress.

None of those scenes produced the same sense of satisfaction you felt as he sunk into you now. Not from the sensation itself, but the meaning behind it.

Words were fickle. They could be misconstrued. Altered by tone. Changed by moods and attitudes.

The way Dan began to thrust, steady yet severe, bruises being made from his grip at your back, kiss consuming your mouth and every facet of your thoughts…

There was no differing interpretation. No miscommunication. The definition explained merely by the feeling invoked from every action each of you made.

Two people. Expressing love in the most basal way in existence.

For a long time, longer than previous encounters, Dan worked himself in and out, relishing the feeling of your silky wetness, the whimpers he heard with each drag of his length.

Although, the feel of you clenching around him, when your thighs wrapped around his hips to to force his pelvis into yours with increasing intensity, soon had Dan struggling to stave off his release.

He didn’t ask to let it overtake him. Somehow, he knew didn’t need to.

Hurdling into a decadent climax, Dan drove hard into you, painting the deepest parts of your centre, filling you with everything he could give.

Slumping into your form, his nose burrowed into the curve between neck and shoulder. “I know I’m not always here,” he murmured. “But I’ll always be here. For you. Please remember that.”

Fingers swept over his messed hair. “I don’t think you’ll let me forget.”

One final kiss brushed over your throat. “Never again.”

*

@tlcwrites @roanniom @maryforyou @mariesackler @sacklerscumrag @barbers-glimmerin-darlin @finn-ray-nal-beads @mylifeisactuallyamess @hopeamarsu @foxilayde @goddesstonythetiger @caillea @direnightshade @blackberries45

#dan jones #dan jones x reader #paper-n-ashes #adcu

[ammunitionist]

a small gift brings a little life to king company. 

or, ack ack finds a guitar- and hillbilly remembers how to play. 

ao3 here | full first chapter under the cut

Ack Ack honestly has no idea what it is for a good minute. 

He doesn’t bother to get up to check- never stand when you can sit- so the wooden thing leans, an odd little enigma, just in the peripheral of his sight for the better part of ten minutes. It’s definitely wood, he can tell from the hint of grain at a distance. The angle is just so that the neck looks uniform, that he can’t see the strings at all. It almost looks like a broom handle. 

It isn’t that Andy’s never seen a guitar. He’d had a friend in high school who played (just not very well) and guitars were common enough in small town New England. It wasn’t unusual to walk down the street at dusk and hear some old timer picking away at the instrument.

It’s funny to think back on himself, sixteen or so, thinking of anyone as elderly. With the new recruits popping up around him on the daily, he’s starting to feel like an old timer himself. 

Ack Ack tries to ignore the odd chunk of wood, get in another nap before sundown, but they’ve been eating good lately. Sleeping good, too. He simply has too much energy to let go of the curiosity. 

Without moving- never sit when you can lie down- he calls out to the man sitting closest to him, scribbling in a small book held in his left hand. 

“Hey, Sledge,” he asks genially, his hands resting behind his head. “What’s that wooden thing over in PX? I can’t see it all too well.”

Eugene looks up from his book almost too fast, glancing first at Andy and then leaning over to scrutinize the object of interest. Ack Ack stifles a small smile at how eager the mortarman is to please. 

“Hell, Skipper,” he says, blinking. “It’s a guitar.”

“Really?” Ack Ack says, almost embarrassed at his lack of observational skills. “Shit, I am getting old. I thought it was a broom.” Sledge laughs, because of course he does, but Andy’s already sitting up, looking directly at the handle of the thing. The neck, he recalls its specific name being. Slender and slightly curved, it looks out of place with the crudely made shipping crates stacked around the PX. 

“Is that all, sir?” Sledge asks. Andy barely acknowledges it, too occupied with the discovery. He nods, waving the younger man off with a hand and a vague ‘yes, Private’.

Hillbilly plays guitar. Ack Ack knows because he mentioned it once, and just once, but that’s the kind of information you store away for people you care about. Somewhere in the long list of things Andy knows about Eddie- a list riddled with question marks, smudges, and the not infrequent total censor- is the fact that he plays.

 He learned from his daddy, apparently. That was the kind of skill they handed down in the Jones family. Workin’, fightin’, n’ the guitar, Eddie had put it, the end of his cigarette a glowing ember in the darkness. He only really taught me th’ middle one. 

Andy hadn’t interrogated, but between that one night and the other things on his list about Eddie Jones, he’d figured out what that meant. 

Knowing Hillbilly played the guitar just- always did something to him, something strange. Not like giving him a hard-on, it was never the subject of a sexual fantasy, but some aspect of the idea of Hillbilly’s large, callused hands cradling the neck of an instrument was an image that stuck in his mind. Knowing a man like that could make music- enjoyed it, even- just pushed Eddie deeper into Ack Ack’s heart. 

Despite himself, Ack Ack slowly hauls himself to his feet, brushing sand from his palms on the nearly-compromised fabric of his dungarees. No one pays him much mind, just another man wandering towards PX. The Seabees had touched down about a week ago, so the postal exchange is more or less looted, but Ack Ack has no burning desire for candy bars or magazines. 

Still, when he gets there, he feigns interest in the dregs of merchandise. Back issues of Superman, a few melted Hershey’s chocolates, a copy of Sports Illustrated. If he beelines for the guitar, the corporal sitting in the corner will definitely upcharge him. Pocketing an extra few dollars was never above the Merchant Marines, and this young man- chubby, blonde, picking something out of his teeth with a Jap bayonet- looks like no exception. 

Finally making the wide, lazy half circle to the guitar, Andy feigns mild interest in it, tilting the head of the instrument towards his belt. Upon closer inspection, it’s practically beaten to pieces- the body has a fair few dents in it, and a concerning looking crack runs nearly the entire length of the neck. One of the tuning pegs had been replaced with a roofing nail at some point, poking out like an odd splinter at a not-quite right angle from the headstock. 

“You play?” The corporal asks lazily, examining a caught piece of food on the end of the bayonet with catlike self-satisfaction. 

“Me? No.” Andy shakes his head, letting the guitar back to rest against the crates. “One of my boys does, though.”

He almost smiles to himself when he refers to Hillbilly as one of his ‘boys’. It’s not unlike calling the White House a ‘big ol’ mansion at 1600 Pennsylvania’. 

“He any good?” the blond asks. Andy shrugs, pocketing his hands discreetly. He really has no idea if Hillbilly is any good, but it doesn’t matter much if he is or not. Ack Ack would pay out in spades to see him play even if he couldn’t sustain a single note.

Upon receiving no verbal answer, the corporal takes Andy’s silence as permission to keep chatting. He sighs and sets the bayonet down, kicking his feet up on the shoddy crates nearby. The containers creak ominously.

“That there belonged to Johnson. Buddy of a buddy, or somethin’.” 

Ack Ack glances at the corporal in mild interest, mostly playing along in favor of a discount. 

“Went lookin’ for some dead Japs to loot a couple nights ago.”

Andy figures what happened before the man finishes his thought, but that doesn’t stop him from clarifying. It’s with a sick glee that Ack Ack only sees in men that have never once seen a friend die in their lives. 

“Got blown to hell on a landmine. Skipper said to put the thing in the PX or use it as firewood.”

“Ah.” Ack Ack says, less keen on the conversation than he would be to sitting on a land crab in his skivvies. The corporal grunts in acquiescence.

He almost up and leaves the exchange there and then. What kind of earthly gift would a dead man’s guitar be? Hillbilly’d show no outward insult, likely feel none inward either. Ack Ack can’t begin to express in words the amount of gratitude he feels for Eddie’s tolerance. Still, he deserves better than this. 

But where else could he find a guitar in the whole of the Pacific?

“How much?” he asks succinctly, looking up from his boots. He hopes the curtness in his tone reminds the corporal of their ranks, of his decidedly upper hand. 

“Seven dollars.” The blond replies, eyes narrowing slightly. Andy has to stifle a scoff. 

“It’s not worth more than three, Corporal,” he sighs, nudging the body of the instrument with his boot. “Look at it. Beat to hell.”

“Six.”

“Four.”

“Deal.”

He leaves the postal exchange with the thing in hand, simultaneously lighter than it looks and much, much heavier. Sledge glances up at him with interest as he walks by, glancing between Ack Ack and the instrument. 

“You play, Skipper?” he calls out as Andy passes, heading deeper into K Company’s cluster of men. 

“No!” Ack Ack replies, a wry smile countering Eugene’s expression of confusion. 

Hillbilly never went far from King Company, but he also avoided its center. Ack Ack liked to think he prowled its perimeter like some kind of guard dog, keeping an eye on even the rowdiest of the unit. It’s a reliable kind of safekeeping, one that Andy has come to value more as they’ve moved further towards the mainland. Both for himself and his men, that protection is beyond invaluable. 

He’s smoking a cigarette up against some concrete rubble, the slowly setting sun dying his pale brown hair a burnt orange. Between the small ember at the end of his cigarette and the dying light, Hillbilly’s almost golden. 

Ack Ack sits down quietly in front of him, the slight sound of shifting rubble enough to garner a glance from his Lieutenant. His eyes catch on the guitar and linger, though, and Andy holds it out- an offering. 

“Where th’hell did y’ get that?” Eddie asks, sitting up to take the proffered instrument. Andy shrugs, pulling a crushed carton of cigarettes from his breast pocket. 

“PX.” he replies simply, biting one out of the package and lighting it with a quick turn of his wrist. 

Eddie turns the guitar over in his lap once, twice, three times, examining it. Andy watches mildly, his eyes catching on the neck of the guitar resting in the crook of Hillbilly’s palm. His stomach warms, just slightly, the sight of the slender thing in his lover’s hand like a hot cup of coffee on a cold morning. 

“How did y’ know I play?” Hillbilly asks again, tone slightly sotto with confusion. 

“You told me.” Ack Ack answers, mildly surprised that Hillbilly forgot. “A few months ago. Remember?” 

Eddie shakes his head vaguely, but his attention has already re-allocated to the instrument. He settles it in his lap, the curve in the hollow body fitting over his thigh. It’s a small guitar- that, or Hillbilly’s just bigger than the last person Andy saw holding one- but he still supports it comfortably. 

He runs his fingernails across the strings experimentally, and both of the men wince in tandem.

“Is it broken?” Ack Ack asks, momentarily worried that his gift is damaged beyond utility. Hillbilly snorts. 

“Nah,” he sighs, a wolfish smile cracking his face in half. Ack Ack has never quite seen him smile like that before. 

Unbothered, Eddie turns one of the pegs in the head, thumbing the top string in rapid succession. The tone wobbles slowly higher. 

“Jus’ outta tune. I think I can handle it.”

Andy smokes as Eddie coaxes the instrument into tune, slow going considering the state of it. It’s a pleasant experience, to hear the strings slowly come up to par, and the surprising gentleness with which Hillbilly tunes it brings up the warmth in Ack Ack’s belly to a low simmer. To watch his broad hands dance across the head, fiddling with the pegs, is certainly an odd sight for the middle of the Pacific Theater, but it’s one Andy more than welcomes. 

Finally, Hillbilly strums the guitar’s strings again, and even though the sound is unremarkable Eddie seems to find it satisfactory. 

“Does it play?” Andy asks, tapping his cigarette on a nearby block to ash it into the sand.

“Well, why don’ we find out?” Eddie grins. He adjusts his hand against the neck of the guitar and strums carefully, a gentle note ringing out from its body. Tension leaches from Andy’s shoulders immediately. Between artillery, rifle fire, and bodies hitting the dirt, it feels like the first soft sound Ack Ack’s heard in months.

“Oh,” he breathes, and Eddie glances up to meet his eyes. They both pause for a moment, holding the gaze, before another smile breaks Eddie’s face and they start laughing. The absurdity of it is captivating. A fucking guitar, here, in a warzone. A flimsy, breakable little thing that somehow made its way to them unbroken. It feels like watching a daisy bloom on the rim of a shell crater. 

“Shit, sir,” Eddie chuckles, broad shoulders shaking in amusement. “I didn’t think I’d be seein’ one of these for a long time yet.” 

Ack Ack has to grin. The sun had all but fully set in the time it had taken Eddie to tune the guitar, and the long shadows on his companion make the moment all the more absurd, a strangely stark figure against the rubble.  

Small fires have started up again throughout the camp. They dot the landscape like little flowers, flames blooming upward into the black sky. Ack Ack and Hillbilly have a favorite, one nearest the Captain’s tent, and relatively sequestered. Them, Haney, and a few select NCOs. It’s a good crowd, and none of them say anything if Hillbilly’s hand drifts a bit close to Ack Ack’s knee, or if Ack Ack’s head dips momentarily onto Hillbilly’s shoulder. They’re still careful, of course, but it’s good to know that a toe over the line goes unnoticed, for virtue of respect or some other unnamed force.

They get up in tandem and wander deeper into King Company, towards their fire ring of choice. Haney is sparking at some dry tinder just as they arrive, coaxing a small flame to life under the larger logs. He glances up as they settle in, eyes falling on the guitar in Hillbilly’s fist. 

“The Marine Corp,” he starts, sitting back with a grin. “Must practice leisure with the same fervency as the act of war.”

Hillbilly smiles at him, the exact same accommodating smile Ack Ack gives to the Gunny when he starts his tangents. Ack Ack settles back, shifting in his seat. 

“And in that leisure,” Haney continues, a wolfish grin splitting his weathered features, “Each Marine must be invested in his brother’s recreation as well as his own.”

Eddie nods, equal parts amused and obliging. Haney gestures at the instrument.

“Play us a goddamn tune, Jones.” 

Eddie adjusts the guitar in his lap, fingers hovering over the fretboard in hesitation. 

“I, uh, I ain’t played in a long while,” he starts, but Ack Ack nudges his side at the same time Haney gives him a genial wave of the hand. No one minds. Even bad music will be the first melody any of them have heard in months, other than the terrible raucous ballads that swell up among the men sometimes. Ack Ack tolerates those songs for the morale boost they are, but he never feels an impulse to sing along. 

Hillbilly arranges his fingers against the fretboard and strums quietly, picking up a lazy pattern. Ack Ack watches his nails hit against the strings, his strong fingers even further golden in the firelight than the dying sun. He has the same sheen as a bronze statue, like the ones Andrew had seen in the greens at Bowdoin.

Eddie swaps the chord, pausing for a moment in between. He swears under his breath, obviously frustrated with his apparent rustiness. 

In the protection of the shadow between their bodies, Andy presses a supportive knuckle into Eddie’s side, up underneath his jacket. 

His skin is warm to the touch. 

After a few minutes of fumbling around the frets (and growing gradually bolder), Hillbilly pauses, letting his arm fall from the guitar’s neck. He swipes the back of his hand across his nose discreetly, glancing around the circle to gauge his company’s apparent tolerance. Ack Ack follows his gaze, just to realize they’d accumulated somewhat of an audience. Five, maybe ten of the enlisted men from a nearby group had heard the quiet strumming and crept up on the edges of the firelight to listen. From where he sits, Andy can recognize Burgin and Shelton, meaning Sledge probably isn’t far. 

“Why don’t you fellas come and join us?” he calls genially, gesturing for the men to have a seat, instead of crouching in the semidarkness like a bunch of house cats. They start, with the guilty countenance of children caught in the cookie jar, but move into the light anyway.

“Instead of standing out there like a bunch of Peeping Toms, at least.” Andy murmurs, settling in subtly closer to Eddie. From what he knows of the men, they’re either dumb as a bag of rocks or queer themselves, so there should be no issue with their standard dance on the edge of obviousness. He knows Hillbilly probably isn’t happy with the added volume, but Ack Ack figures it won’t do any of them much harm for a little

entertainment. 

“Just play them one song and I’ll make ‘em leave,” he murmurs into Eddie’s neck, making it look like a subtle stretch on his part. “Promise.” 

Eddie sighs, shifting uncomfortably, but Andy knows that he’ll do it. He knows that Eddie will do anything when he asks like that. 

It makes his heart stutter a bit in his chest. 

The strings squeal faintly as Hillbilly leans back, tongue running over his teeth while he considers his options. “Any of you, uh, heard’a Midnight Special?” he asks tentatively. 

“I have,” Snafu interjects, drawing most eyes in the circle to him. His accent is deeper than Hillbilly’s, and his drawl makes his Is into long, lazy ‘ah’ sounds.

“Can’t sing, though.” he adds, picking something from his teeth. 

Someone snorts. Ack Ack’s pretty sure it’s Sledge. 

“Well,” Eddie sighs under his breath, nearly contemptuous, but he doesn’t finish the thought. Instead, the guitar starts up again, and everyone settles in a bit closer. The fact it’s music would probably interest most of them alone, but Andy has no doubt most of these men would pay real money to hear their very own Lieutenant Jones sing a ditty.

The introduction to the song lasts for a while, a simple and slightly jaunty chord progression, but right as Ack Ack is starting to think Eddie’s stalling he opens his mouth and he sings. 

His voice is nothing special. A gentle, sweet tenor, making up for lack of range with modesty. It’s about the voice expected of a man who played music as a child and fell off, being as his instrument of choice is not included in the provisions of a Marine. 

It may be nothing special to everyone else in the world, but to Andrew, it’s fucking magical. 

“Yonder comes Miss Rosie,” Eddie intones, over the soft notes of the guitar. “How in the world you know.” 

All at once, some otherworldly tiredness sinks into Ack Ack’s bones. 

It’s strange, though, to call it that. He had felt exhaustion before- Hell, almost every single day since their landing on Peleliu- but this is different. Hillbilly’s voice makes him want to rest, to tuck his head into the crook of Eddie’s shoulder and let his voice carry him away to gentle oblivion.

“Well, I know her by the apron,” Hillbilly carries on, a loud pop from the fire interjecting in the middle of the lyric. No one so much as jumps. They’ve all been through worse. “And that dress she wore.”

“What kind’a dress?” Someone calls, to quiet chuckles. Ack Ack smiles faintly. If there’s nothing else to be said for King Company’s crude banter, it’s at least endearing. 

“Umbrella on her shoulder, Piece’a paper in her hand.” Hillbilly sings. A couple men have joined their circle since the song began, ones apparently more familiar with the music the Lieutenant grew up on. Their voices join in slowly, crooning the ballad towards the smoke rising into the black sky. Andy doesn’t mind- with his proximity to his lover, Eddie’s voice easily overpowers the rest. 

A few more lines pass like that, slurring together in a pleasant melody in the Captain’s head. He has to fight to keep his eyes open, but he doesn’t struggle after fixing them on Eddie. 

His curls burn amber in the firelight, same as the angular plane of his cheek and just the barest corner of his jaw. With his eyes closed and lips parted, Hillbilly looks like a fucking fever dream of a man. 

“Let the Midnight Special,” They all sing at once, loud enough that Andy’s pulled from his momentary reverence. Even Snafu joins in, apparent vocal ineptitude nothing but another one of his little quips. 

“Shine her light on me.” 

Ack Ack watches the smoke from the fire carry sparks up towards the stars.

“Let the Midnight Special,” he joins in quietly, a second after realizing the lyric repeats.

“Shine her ever-lovin’ light on me.”

#WOOH this one is long for my usual ballpark #over 3k words in just the 1st chapter #it's a lot for me #the next chapter will b up in a few days! pinky swear #andyeddie #andrew ack ack haldane #edward hillbilly jones #Snafu Shelton #eugene sledge #the pacific

[chiseler]

Peleshian: Life & Nothing Less

For over sixty years, Artavazd Peleshian—Артавазд Пелешян; Արտավազդ Փելեշյան—has been slowly sifting through the mountain of debris that has built up around the cinema. His films seem to intrude upon a present which smugly believes that it has solved all the old problems from a static horizon, that all is over and done with, that everything has been settled. What is left is merely the production of ghosts.

In Kyanq (“Life”), made in 1993, Peleshian ignores the diegetic revolution which followed the discovery of the power of cutting within a single sequence. Cross cutting has become another prison, and making a film seems almost unimaginable without recourse to its seductive shifts and its promises of infinite simultaneity. But passing through Eisenstein and Dovzhenko, starting again after the hard-won miracles and defeats of the past, Peleshian has come out from the other side. He has made a second beginning for cinema by rearranging ideas of the past.

The film opens with a beautiful woman in close-up profile, apparently in the throes of ecstasy. Soon, an arm in scrubs enters the frame and we see that she is actually in a medical theater (the hand is a doctor or relative’s; blurred vertical planes are parts of the metal delivery bed; a glowing orb is hospital lighting). She is in labor, which is a mundane and sentimental subject for a film. The use of the close-up in film, crowding the screen with sweat and ‘emotion’, is an easy manipulation of the viewer’s emotions. It also bares the chill of forensic pathology, which seizes the living as if the body were a puzzle useful only for illustrating hazard or solving its own crime. The soundtrack is music by Verdi, which stops and starts fitfully until it is finally freed from the film’s editing, adding a skipping unreality to the formal ‘realism’ of Life. The only other sound is a heartbeat amplified over the beginning (and note, not the electronic blip of a monitor), which remains slightly audible under the requiem mass. 

Though the film follows the simple timeline of a woman giving birth, the editing follows the inward time of a mother. The use of extreme close-up is now clear: in the epochal scheme of a general, universal time, the close-up is used to make myths into statues or it captures momentary passions as if these passions or myths were the only ones in the world. But through a subtle use of jump-cuts, the viewer starts to feel an odd remove from the girl’s lovely features. She begins to resemble a landscape, as in those old enigmatic Dutch paintings where hills and rivers form a great human face. We have returned to painting, the first inspiration of filmmakers, but the laws of perspective and the order of objects are far less important than the alternation of internal and external time. Filming and watching take time, are revealed in time, try to trick time by poking it full of holes (visible first in the sprockets of exposed film, as it feeds and moves in light projection). Life is made of different times, a fact which seduces us into believing that time is all that governs life and that all time is reducible to the power of a dominant course. 

Rembrandt said: Life etches itself onto our faces as we grow older, showing our violence, excesses, or kindnesses. 

Do not children kill their mothers in childbirth, all or in part, with the violence of birth, with the all the terrible duties that child-rearing demands? And one of the last taboos—maybe also the first, if we accept that the horror of incest is inseparable from it—the link between orgasm and birth is also the possibility of dual death and the ruthless affirmation of Life over death which dictates that the life of the child is a supreme right against its mother. Life at all costs—the greatest of tyrannies, a monstrous physical drive which unleashes a tsunami of living over the earth: the atrocious flood of total creation. Life as something that equals what is most terrifying within it—of it—the blank face of a genetic machine wanting itself and nothing else, consuming itself via the temptation-engines of a chattering god of sheer velocity (this is also the god of information, beloved of the tech wizards). It is not the phantom of Death that haunts the living, but the phantom of Life. And the individual life strives to fool this specter, to shock it in its own wild onrush by producing a single life in the monolithic barrage of limitless coming-to-be. Bearing witness against this crude biological nihilism which William Blake identified as The Beast, the machine mills of the slavers’ empire, one single life then occurs as many—each without repeat, yet each one the selfsame in the body of the swarm.

Against this omnivorous shadow—a cellular destiny which rises out of the solitary reflections given us by our vague notions of science, by a primary education that teaches biology as fate and terror only—Peleshian projects a woman in contortions, giving birth down by the walls of the hegemon. Things get smaller in the film. Life shrinks down to a mouth, a hand, a slight bewitching smile, ringlets of hair and beads of sweat. And here we realize that exaltation—accompanied by an Italian death mass and the heart’s regular drum—is always done alone, and that its joys must be betrayed by the world from which each ecstasy severs it time and again. Entering back into the crowd (via the film, via an audience she cannot know), what is unique returns in this disorder of movement and gesture—which is everyone’s autobiography. Just as when ‘something strikes you’, striking the eye with an immense force: a face on the bus, corner stoop faces, faces and faces from whose vast gallery one singular expression comes into clarity for an instant and then returns—on the verge of life or leaving life, there is nothing else at this hypothetical moment—almost caught at the corner of the eye. 

It is strange that in extreme close-ups, faces seem at their most indistinguishable but also at their most familiar (you mistake someone for someone else and stare at them to be sure, staring ever more intently until you are far more than unsure—you are lost in that other face). The film’s other close-ups are of hands. The human hand is midway between the features of the face and the wild movements of the limbs. Hands riddle and grasp, make knots, then relax for a split second; they curl like mites, tree branches, or Chinese brushstrokes; hands touching, climbing, cradling, joining. Think of those famous handprints in red ochre found on cave walls—and finding that which is before art in these images, we still foolishly call this act which far outstrips any cultic or imaginative art, just as erroneously as we do the images made with hands, an ‘expression!’—palms measuring breadth, and not just the span of vital time but the time of an imprint that will remain for an accidental 80,000 years. The Peleshian-captured hands clench and constrict life, that nothing be left undone. It does not matter whose hand the woman in the film clasps—anyone, someone, for a moment the only one (perhaps all together, all those she has met, summed up in a stranger’s hand). Dark supposition: that everyone only knows life by their separation from life, lives peering at Life across an impenetrable gulf. But life is also the work of hands. 

She raises a finger to the corner of her mouth with its intricate sloping shadow, touching the ghost of a smile. The woman is lost in some reverie and giving birth would seem a strange time for letting the mind wander. But from the jump cuts, we know that Peleshian has edited this sequence internally, so it is far from certain when moments like this actually occurred (I counted 15 cuts in a sequence which accounts for about 5 minutes of the film’s 7-minute running time). At the end, the child is tossed to her mother like a bag of apples, after being bathed in torrents of spurting water (there is no afterbirth or blood, another conscious omission). The young woman and her child then stare at the camera in freeze-frame. I can think of a thousand reasons why you shouldn’t have, but you did, despite all—and I now understand why in the flood of existence you added one more as if you were adding nothing at all. This is Peleshian’s only film in color, which ads credence to the rumor it was to have been his last (Happily, it was not). Color is the first sight of a guileless world seen by guileless eyes, eyes soon to fall upon the architecture of black and white and the gridlines of working rooms.

“Fac eas, Domine, de morte transire ad vitam…” Verdi’s Requiem Mass, 1874: deliverance (and delivery, “Libera animas omnium…”) and liberation (from life, from hell, the lion’s jaws), faithful souls, holy light, deepest pits. “Grant O Lord that they might pass from life death…” Thus is the    connection between life and the  freeing from life, death and multiple birth sealed (Verdi’s Offertorio is cut and partially repeated on the soundtrack). Now the hand at her mouth, in her hair, rack of contractions. Take and in taking, receive, “Tu suscipe pro animabus illis, quarum hodie memoriam facimus.” The others—all souls—hostias, “we offer...” 

Endnote/ Links:

Artavazd Peleshian’s entire completed work takes about two hours to view (his longest is his latest, the 63-minute La Nature, 2019).  Kyanq and many others can be seen here: https://www.ubu.com/film/peleshian.html  

Peleshian and Godard: https://kinoslang.blogspot.com/2013/07/before-babel.html

Peleshian speaks: http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/going-the-distance-20120106

[neptunium134]

Death of the Small Coopers mini-analysis, part 4

Okay, reveal scene, let’s go-

These may be a little out of order cuz I took them on different days, but I’ll do my best to put them in order

Y E E T-

I love this look- John’s face is a mixture of concern and surprise

‘You kissed my son and now he might be in danger, damnit woman’

I think this just perfectly illustrates just how much John cares for Jamie, you can see he’s trying not to panic here, or give off the impression he’s panicking, but the audience can see it, and it shows just how much John and Jamie’s relationship has developed since The Village That Rose From The Dead (S19, E1).

It’s one of those nuggets that, as the audience who have seen this development, we can pick up on.

So these two shots are effectively mirror images of each other. The top one is a medium-close up on Jamie from a narrative perspective while the bottom one is an over-the-shoulder shot placed upside-down, in the way Jamie would be seeing. Both shots are there to establish a narrative so the audience knows what’s happening.

Also, they’re pretty cool shots.

That’s one way to get someone’s attention

Okay, let me geek out over this shot for a moment

It starts out upside-down, as we’re seeing it from Jamie’s POV after Leo slaps him, then the camera rotates 180 degrees to give us a mid-shot of Leo.

I’d say the rotating motion is meant to signify things coming into perspective as Jamie realises Leo’s the killer (no duh).

Obviously Jamie isn’t moving, he’s still upside-down, so the shot is meant to be for the audience.

Then this quite fast zoom from a mid-shot into a close-up onto Jamie’s face when Leo reveals the crossbow. The speed of the zoom could represent Jamie’s sudden realisation of just how much danger he’s in.

This riddle was actually one of the first ones I ever did, and I laughed as soon as Leo started reciting it cuz I already knew the answer.

It also links back to the scene in the bar when Eddie was about to tell Jamie the riddle. It’s the irony- if Jamie had listened to Eddie then, he would know the answer and wouldn’t be held at arrowpoint for 5 minutes.

But then there was the risk of Leo firing early and killing Jamie anyway cuz Jamie knew what Leo did.

It’s that sense of irony- Mahesh was “made a victim of his obsession”, Grady was made “a victim of his lofty intelligence” and Jamie was about to become a victim of irony, of not listening to Eddie recite the riddle that was in the Circulus paper, the paper Leo took.

Once again, we see John’s concern for Jamie. In the top picture, we can hear John’s concern, his worry. He’s scared for Jamie.

In the second picture, we get a close-up of his face, he’s trying to get the info out of Leo as a distraction, to lure him away from Jamie, give Jamie a chance to try and escape.

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN KIDS ARE PUSHED

Okay, not literally, but every kid has a breaking point. Sure, kids don’t usually go around murdering people because they’ve been pushed to lengths, but it’s an allegory for kids being pushed way past their breaking point.

What makes this scenario even sadder is Leo was pushed to this point by a couple of factors; his mother died, one of his teachers was his mental support and who ended up being his dad’s mental support as well, his dad stopped his relationship with the woman who made him happy, his headteacher was going to sack the person who was there for Leo and his dad, the editor of the local newspaper for a town that thrives on gossip was going to publish a biased article about his dad and his teacher, and he thinks that this new guy is trying to steal the woman that made his dad happy from his dad.

There comes a tipping point for children. Like I said, kids don’t usually start murdering people, it’s usually something like drugs or some other kind of self-harming actions, but you can understand why Leo went as far as he did- he’d reached his tipping point and lashed out violently because he thought it was the only way to get his voice heard.

It’s a sad story, but the general understanding of it is something that a lot of kids face- a tipping point that gets ignored by adults until it’s too late. Hopefully this episode showed adults that.

Coming off from the above idea, this is another thing that kids are taught. ‘Rules are rules’, ‘stick to the rules’, ‘do as you’re told’- it accumulates, it builds up until the aforementioned tipping point.

This is another thing adults seem to forget that affects kids- stick to the rules, make sure you please the adults. Who cares if the kids grow up traumatised? Who cares if the kids grow up with this toxic mindset? They’re sticking to the rules.

Okay, enough about the issues with society-

John asks Leo what the question was so he could have a chance to save Jamie, while Jamie does what most kids do when they’re scared- they look to their parental figure for help. 

It’s just more evidence of the familial bond they have.

I find this interesting- John probably knows the answer to the riddle, or at least he could work it out quickly, yet he pleads with Leo to stop.

Why?

He’s panicking. He’s scared. He thinks Jamie is going to die and he is helpless to stop it.

It isn’t a terribly hard riddle, but it requires concentration, and what’s one thing you can’t do when you’re scared? 

Concentrate.

Neither John nor Jamie can concentrate in this situation, they’re too scared.

However, Birgitte can concentrate. She doesn’t have that bond with Jamie, she’s only known him for maybe 3 or 4 days, and she took the paper the riddles was on.

She is able to step in and give Jamie the answer, not because she has that strong bond with him, but because she knows how strong John and Jamie’s bond is.

Don’t get me wrong, she probably does care about Jamie and doesn’t want him to die, but that newer, weaker bond gives her the ability to step back and concentrate while everyone else is panicking.

John echoes Birgitte, yet his “Yes?” is slightly more panicked. Birgitte’s is calm, rational, leveled while John looks like he wants to run over to Jamie and protect him physically.

To me, it’s the bond thing again. Birgitte is more leveled because she knows she has to be in order to save Jamie. She knows there’s no use in both her and John panicking, so she keeps calm and gives the answer. The "Yes?” is the prompt to Leo to let Jamie go.

Even with Jamie reciting the right answer, Leo pushes the button and we get this moment.

Birgitte is the only one who appears shocked, she is turned to Jamie and for the first time, she looks scared. Even with her help, it’s possible Jamie could die, they could be about to witness the death of someone her friend holds dear.

Ignoring Colton and Penny, mostly because I don’t think the shot actually shows their reaction, we’re going to skip right onto John.

Leo pushes the button and John runs to Jamie. He calls him “Jamie” instead of “Winter”, like he usually does.

He panics, he rushes forward as if he’s hoping he can either put himself between Jamie and the arrow, or, even better, push Jamie out of the way and avoid anyone getting hurt.

But it’s the running compiled with the use of “Jamie” that really hits home- John cares a lot about Jamie, and this one wide shot with Jamie in slightly blurred focus and John more in-focus, really shows it. He calls Jamie by his first name, something I don’t think we’ve seen before, and rushes to get to him.

Like @tiger-moran​ said, we’ve gone from John not knowing Jamie’s name in Last Man Out (S19, E3) to this, to John wanting to protect Jamie, to save him. To calling his name in a panic the same way parents will to their child if their child is in danger.

Jamie attempted kill count: 3

And the importance of bonds come back; Jamie made a bond with Ginny after she almost shot him at her farm, and she created a bond with Birgitte when Birgitte went to see her. Without that bond Ginny created with these two, Jamie would have been hit with the arrow, not doubt about it. Ginny’s line confirms that. 

Then, once John knows Jamie’s safe, he runs to Leo, to pin him against the tree until the PCs arrive.

It’s similar to what he does in Til Death Do Us Part (S20, E5), when he finds Hazel holding a pair of gardening shears to Sarah’s neck- it’s that instinctive reaction to stop the cause of his loved one’s pain. It’s that closeness again, he has similar reactions to both Jamie and Sarah almost being killed.

He checks Jamie is safe, that Jamie is alive, then he apprehends Leo to stop Leo from potentially trying to hurt or kill Jamie again.

Gonna leave this part here cuz it’s long enough anyway. I’ll do a short Part 5 for the final scene, then this’ll be over, you’ll be happy to know

#Midsomer Murders #Death of the Small Coppers analysis #Part 4 #John Barnaby #Jamie Winter #Birgitte Poulsen #Penny Kingdom

[fullmetalscullyy]

i can hear the echoes of the past

written by: @havocsss and @hyuroiofficial

summary: Roy had lost - traded - his vision, in exchange for this monster to wear Hughes’ skin [an illustrated fic]

read on ao3

ship: hyuroi | rating: t | words: 3187 | tags: hyuroi, canon character death, blind!roy, homunculus!hughes, emotional manipulation, implied alcohol abuse, one-sided attraction

an: this is an illustrated fic on ao3. all the fantastic artwork has been created by the brilliant mind of @hyuroiofficial. you can find their tumblr post containing the artwork here

“Yo, Roy!”

Roy froze in place. His head whipped around of its own accord, trying to see where the voice was coming from, but it was a pointless search. His eyesight was gone and no matter how hard he willed himself to see, it would never happen.

But still… That jovial greeting. That voice… Roy knew it. 

It was not the first time he thought he’d heard it. The voice was something that haunted his nearly every waking moment. With gritted teeth, Roy forced himself to continue forward.

It’s not real. Stop it! His brain shouted, but it did nothing to stop his mind from conjuring the sound of the late Maes Hughes. Roy would scream and yell until he went mad with it, trying to rid himself of such a cruel trick. 

There were times when the deep reverberation of Hughes’ imagined voice echoing through the confines of his skull reassured Roy, pushed him forward and fueled him, but now Roy became completely unsettled by it. The uncomfortable feeling coiled inside of his gut, threatening to crawl up his spine and arrest his movements completely.

“Ignoring me? Well, that’s just rude,” Hughes scoffed playfully.

“Shut up,” Roy muttered through his teeth. Not real, not real, not real. It was a mantra that sounded in time with the loud patter of his footsteps.

His body was viciously jerked to the side. Vicious for Roy, because of his blindness. Being beyond the gate had seen to that. His cane dropped from his grasp in surprise, hitting the ground with a loud clatter. Instinctively he reached for his pocket to get his gloves, but a hand quickly batted it away.

Hughes tutted. “As if I didn’t expect a move like that,” he chuckled. “I’ve known you too long, Roy.”

This was not Maes Hughes. He was dead - 

“Wh - What?” Roy gasped in pain as the grip on his arm grew stronger. There was something sharp on his bicep, threatening to cut through his clothes with a heavy stinging pressure. It might have already sliced through. If only I could see!

Jerking his arm free from the grasp, Roy stumbled as the arm pushed him forward. It left him off balance and unaware of what direction he was facing. From the smell of damp and food waste, they could be in an alleyway. However, without his sight and after being thrown so off kilter by the sudden supposed appearance of his very dead friend, Roy was unable to determine where the exit was. He cursed his lack of attention to his surroundings. He used to be a military man, his lack of sight leading to his early retirement. The military had no use for a dog that couldn’t see. But with Roy’s past military experience he shouldn’t have been reduced to such useless stature, regardless of who was in front of him and no matter how much they used to mean to Roy.

“Hey.” Roy could almost picture the grin on this person’s face. It was evident in their light, flirty tone.

“What do you want?” Roy growled. He wouldn’t have someone trying to cruelly trick him into thinking his best friend, his… They had been so much more than best friends at one point… The memories of what had been - what could have been if they’d only allowed it to blossom further - flooded Roy. It weaved through his ribs like ivy and strangled the oxygen from his lungs, leaving him suddenly breathless. 

“It’s me, Hughes!”

Roy froze again, stricken with the pain that name gave him. He was foolish to think he could hear Hughes’ name without experiencing agony. No, keep it together!

“Just wanted to stop by and see how you’re doing.”

“Maes Hughes is dead,” Roy replied, forcing a deadly calm to take over his entire being. Just underneath the surface of his skin, anger was beginning to bubble. His fury was a fiery thing, like the flames of his alchemy, as it hotly licked through his veins. How dare this person try to impersonate Hughes -

Roy grunted as his back hit something solid and hard, the air temporarily knocked out of him with the shock of it. A hand gripped his hip, but not painfully, nearly gentle, yet in a mocking fashion. A thumb slipped underneath his suit jacket, caressing Roy’s skin softly through his white shirt. Roy shivered despite himself. The other hand tangled in Roy’s hair as he voiced a protest, only for it to be swallowed by wanton lips. Teeth nipped at Roy’s bottom lip and he groaned.

He knew that mouth. The kiss was all too reminiscent of something that had been precious to Roy, no matter how short lived that something had been. 

“Now are you convinced?” Hughes murmured quietly. Roy shook as Hughes’ hand caressed the skin of his jaw, crawling slowly up to tangle in Roy’s hair. But… The nails were sharp. They dug into his scalp with a whisper - with a threat - of pain. Yet where Hughes’ touch had always been kind, this touch taunted him, bordering on cruelty. “Humans have been known to say they always remember a touch of a lover.” 

Maes Hughes is dead. You were at his funeral.

Roy shoved the man off and away from him, wiping the back of his hand over his swollen lips. The teeth that had nipped at him had not been kind. In the spur of the moment, the remembrance of his past lover’s touch, Roy had been lost to it. Now, his lips stung.

“Wh… What are you?” Roy whispered. He cursed his inability to see. He needed to verify what was happening with his own eyes. Despite his distrust, hope was building in his chest, a fruitless thing. Feelings that had long lain dormant were beginning to rebloom, like a flower in spring.

“It’s me, Roy. It’s Maes.” Hughes pleaded all false promises. 

Roy shook his head. “He’s dead. He died. I was at the funeral. I tried…” Bile stopped him from talking further, bitter and thick on his tongue. The guilt and the shame of what he’d done haunting him.

“I know you attempted the transmutation,” Hughes replied. Roy heard him step closer and his body tensed, every muscle pulled taunt with encroaching panic.

He had to attempt it, his grief had been too palatable, a world without Hughes too heavy a burden to bear. The loss of Hughes had consumed him, pushed him, and left Roy recollecting everything he’d learned on human transmutation years ago to finally put it into action. 

“And I know it failed. Or could it be considered a failure, if I’m here now? Regardless, it’s all because of you, so thank you. And…” Roy knew that sickening smirk was back. “I  thought I’d show you it was really me.” Hughes’ voice was low and soft, a nearly inaudible whisper that left Roy leaning nearer. Almost like it had been when they shared tangled limbs, lips, and breaths back in academy…

They’d never had much more than that, nothing more than youthful foolish passion. Or so Roy told himself. But it didn’t stop the feelings he held for Hughes from developing further. Nothing could stop that. Nothing could stop the way his heart beat hard against his ribcage every time Maes Hughes smiled at him or slung a muscular arm across Roy’s shoulder. Or when Hughes was so close Roy could smell the coffee on his breath. They were feelings Roy forced himself to swallow. They would not further his goal and would only torment him. 

He was unsure if Hughes knew of his feelings for him and how deeply they were rooted. Obviously, Hughes had made his choice and he’d married Gracia. Roy respected that and would support his decision completely, because Hughes’ happiness was of the utmost importance. But it didn’t stop Roy from loving him, from aching and yearning alone at night, a once full bottle of whisky in his weakened grasp. Anything Roy could get, whether it was friendship or simply being an acquaintance due to their past, Roy would take, would eagerly devour.  He was always thankful Hughes had decided to keep him in his life.

“I can’t trust that… Or you,” Roy admitted in a whisper.

“I know you can’t,” Hughes replied casually. It sounded like he shrugged. “But it was a nice way to try to convince you. Probably the best way, actually, seeing as you were about to set me alight.”

Roy’s blood ran cold at the reminder. That simmering anger was making itself known again, spilling forth into the forefront of his mind. It coursed through him quickly, almost leaving him breathless. A reminder that this can’t be real. Not in the way he wanted it to be. Not in the way his alcohol riddled brain dreamed of.

He’d never seen his failed transmutation. He couldn’t after what the gate took from him. Hawkeye had cleared it away for him. She told him what it was like and that grotesque image he’d created from her description would be burned into his mind for the rest of his days. Another horror added to the long list of those he’d cultivated already.

You tried the transmutation. Maes Hughes is dead.

“You’re not real,” Roy muttered, shaking his head, resolute in his denial. Hughes sighed heavily. “What have you done -?” Roy growled.

“Jeez, Roy. I haven’t done anything. It’s me. Hughes. Well,” he added the smug tone returning to the conversation. Roy’s nauseous stomach rolled with it. “Not exactly. And I prefer the name Lust now. It’s got a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

“What?” Roy paled.

“Yeah, I like it! Okay, maybe this will convince you. In the academy, we used to sneak away to the guard tower and kiss until we couldn’t breathe anymore.” His voice grew closer, like he was approaching slowly.

Or like a lion stalking its prey. 

If it were possible, Roy paled further, suddenly cold. He remembered it clearly and always would, in the way the memories were just as much a blessing as a curse. The feel of Hughes’ calloused palms framing his face, the adrenaline that coursed through Roy’s veins at the thought of getting caught. They’d been young and reckless, eighteen, hidden away in the empty tower as moonlight painted their skin silver. 

“Hughes was very aware of your feelings for him, but downplayed it. Then, he met and married his wife.” If Roy hadn’t been shaking, he would have smacked the smirk off this thing’s face. “He left you behind, choosing her over you. But he never forgot. He kept you in his life, kept you close, just to see if you’d ever snap. He knew you wanted to.” Hughes’ voice dropped low. Dangerously so. Roy’s breath hitched when he felt Hughes’ hot words ghost over the skin of his face. “He always admired your self control,” Hughes chuckled.

“That’s a lie. You’re not Hughes,” Roy whispered, sweat collecting anxiously at the nape of his neck. Hughes would never be so manipulative or callous towards him. Yet still it pained Roy to hear. 

“In a way… No, I guess I’m not. But I’m so much better.” He said violently, the smirk reappearing in his tone.

“Lieutenant Colonel… Hughes?”

Roy stiffened. The voice came from behind him. It sounded so frightened, so shocked.

Edward and Alphonse.

Roy had been so distracted he hadn’t heard the boys approach. 

“Hey, kids,” Hughes greeted.

“Wh…” The clank of metal shifting signalled Al’s armored steps. He stopped dead in his tracks a few feet away. Roy didn’t blame him. If Roy could see Hughes, he would have had the same reaction. But Roy had lost - traded - his vision, in exchange for this monster to wear Hughes’ skin.

“What are you?” Edward barked, immediately on the defensive.

“Ed?” Alphonse asked quietly. Surprise still laced his tone as he tried to recover from his shock.

“Look at his clothes, Al. And that tattoo. What are you doing?” Ed repeated, raising his voice to call over to Hughes.

“I think you can guess. I imagine you already know,” Hughes replied, his tone full of smug cruelty.

“Mustang, get away from him. Please!” Alphonse begged.

It made sense they’d connected the dots right away. Hughes must be wearing the homunculus’ style of clothing. And the tattoo… Roy’s stomach flipped, sickeningly. He swallowed hard against it. He hadn’t even thought about a damn tattoo.

“That’s not Lieutenant Colonel Hughes,” Edward snarled. “And how dare you use his face!”

Heavy footsteps rushed forwards, approaching at a rapid pace. Edward was charging, ready to fight, but Roy seized up with one thought alone inside his head. That can’t happen.

Roy reached out frantically, and miraculously, his arms snaked around Edward’s torso. He gripped hard, as if all their lives depend on it - and maybe they did.  Roy stopped the teenager from getting any closer. A part of him, the largest part, had his instincts screaming at him to protect Edward. Without his sight Roy couldn’t fully assess the risk Hughes’ posed, but Roy deemed him dangerous enough. His heart wanted to believe Hughes would never harm Ed or him, however his head won out. And Roy may not be the boy’s commanding officer anymore, but he would still protect Edward as best he could.

A smaller, more vulnerable part of him, that swelled within the cavity of his chest and was ruled by the pulse of his heart, told Roy not to let anyone harm Hughes. It was Hughes’ voice he’d heard. It was Hughes’ touch that had graced Roy’s skin, regardless of the hint of cruelty that had been there… Roy recognised it and he wouldn’t let anyone hurt Hughes. Not after he’d just been returned to Roy. Losing Hughes a second time was a weight that Roy wasn’t sure he could carry. 

Edward fought, and fought hard, swearing and pushing with his efforts to escape Roy’s grasp, but Roy’s grip was ironclad. He wouldn’t let go. He wouldn’t let Hughes’ hurt Edward and in turn, he wouldn’t let Ed hurt Hughes. 

“Brother, calm down -!” Al peeped, metallic and echoing in his armored suit. 

The thunder of two gunshots sounded. Roy’s body tensed, expecting a blow, but none came. Quick steps moved towards him, causing Roy to grip onto Edward tighter. Whatever new threat had arrived, Roy would do his best to protect the boys.

“I’ll be back to see you soon, Roy.” The emphasis Hughes made on his name caused Roy to shudder, a steady set of tremors travelling down his spine. Not in anticipation, but in fear. It was foreboding. So unlike the Maes Hughes he once knew.

In the group’s startled moment, Hughes took advantage and darted off. Roy, unable to watch him disappear, listened to the sound of his shoes dissipate down the alley until there was no sound at all. His heart sunk to the pit of his gut. The floor collapsing beneath his feet. 

The following silence was all encompassing as Edward stopped struggling. The fight had gone from him so Roy loosened his grip. Roy’s knees shook and he felt himself falling steadily to the ground. He landed with a thud, but there was no pain. Only disbelief as it caused his limbs to shake. His palms were sweating against the legs of his slacks while gripping his thighs in an attempt to quell his trembles.

“That… That was... Lieutenant Colonel Hughes…” Alphonse whispered from behind him.

The sound of heavy footsteps approached, but Roy barely registered it, too lost in his clouded haze of sorrow and shock. 

“Is… Is that how you really lost your eyesight?” Edward asked. Then his tone turned hard and unforgiving. “Is it?” he growled.

Roy didn’t reply, didn't need to, his sins so very apparent. Even if Hughes never held him again, never kissed Roy’s lips or professed his love again, Roy’s motivations behind his transmutation were simple. Roy just wanted to see his friend - the one that held his heart always - smile at him again. However, because of his efforts, he'd never see again.

“What did you do?” Edward shouted, suddenly very close to Roy’s face, breath hot and angry.

It was ironic, Roy thought, that Edward should face him with such fury - a fury Roy felt deserving of - for if anyone could understand Roy’s drive to see a loved one again, it would be Edward. But perhaps it was that understanding that left young Edward so shaken. 

“Edward.” The bark was short and sharp, a warning. Roy would recognise it anywhere. The new voice explained the sudden gunshots perfectly. In the heat of the moment, and with the fear of Hughes’ warning, Roy forgot that had happened.

Suddenly, gentle hands were on him, guiding him to stand.

“On your feet, Mustang,” Hawkeye commanded. Her tone was soft so it didn’t jarr him too roughly back to reality. “Here,” Hawkeye murmured. The familiar shape of his cane was pressed into Roy’s shaking hands. He gripped it tightly, the certainty of it a reassuring thing even as his fingers quivered around it.

“Th - Thank you, Hawkeye.”

"What was that, Sir?" He wasn't her superior anymore, but old habits die hard, Roy supposed.

"It was him."

"Who?" Riza urged. She was on edge. Roy heard it in the swiftness of her question.

Roy paled, finally admitting it for the first time to himself. The reality of what he’d done - what he created - was crushing. "Maes Hughes."

No one spoke. Silence fell as Roy tried to get his breathing under control. The only sound in the small alley was the desperate gasps of his inhales and frantic wheeze of his exhales. 

“All right, Sir,” Hawkeye agreed quietly, and he was grateful for her continued kindness and support despite his faults. She was his best friend and Roy owed her, for so many things, for not refuting him, for allowing him, no matter how false, the image of Maes Hughes he clung to. She grasped his arm carefully, tugging him forward, encouraging him to walk. “Let’s get back to the car.”

Roy knew from the tone of her voice she didn’t quite believe him, but she didn't argue. Not yet, and Roy didn’t blame her. Hell, he wouldn’t have believed it either, if it weren’t for the press of Hughes’ eager lips against his own and the deep rumble of Hughes’ voice through his chest. They were familiar things, even if now they haunted him and stained him with fear and uncertainty. Roy wasn’t ready to let the frightening comfort of their familiarity go yet. They branded him - consumed him - and he allowed it. Even as his common sense returned and his heart rate slowed, he was struggling to accept everything.

Roy was glad Hawkeye was giving him this small solace. For now, anyway. Because as Maes Hughes had spoken - threatened - he’d be back again soon. 

And Roy would be waiting. 

#hyuroi #hyuroi fic #hyuroi fanfic #hyuroiofficial #collab fic #emma writes #i can hear the echoes of the past

[gerbiloftriumph]

Captive Crown

(also on ao3)

Someone wanted the newly crowned King of Daventry and all his friends dead. Someone got close, once.

(warnings for the whole thing: kidnapping, bruising, starvation, nightmares, healthy dosage of angsty musing, sicfic, story-coherent vehicle for all my favorite ch2 headcanons)

~*~*~

2/7

(1: to steal)(2: to hide)(3: to seek)(4: to find)(5: to break)(6: to mend)(7: to heal, and to end)

~*~*~

There was a city beneath Daventry.

This wasn’t surprising. Graham had heard stories about all kinds of things living in the tunnels beneath his country. Elves and leprechauns and dwarves and giant spiders and more. He’d even met some of them, back when he’d been looking for the kingdom’s lost treasures.

Still, the leprechaun city had been positively tiny compared to this city’s sprawling chaos. The goblins hurried him along meandering streets overshadowed by drunkenly teetering buildings. Lights sparkled in odd places, lamps and a wild assortment of colored fungi illuminating the cavern darkness like little stars.

It might have been pretty, from a distance, were he not distracted by the ache in his shoulders and wrists and head, and were he not shepherded along by spears, and were it not so gloomy and the company not so grim and…well, all told, it wasn’t pretty at all.

They moved from the open caverns into something that felt much smaller and contained. This new area was guarded by thick, heavy doors—which slammed behind them the instant the last goblin was through.

Startled, Graham whirled, but he tripped over the nearest goblin’s foot, and he fell hard, unable to throw his hands out to catch his balance. He groaned, trying to sit up and finding it difficult with his hands tied like they were behind him. Over his head, his captors grumbled a brief conversation that he didn’t understand, filled with lots of irritated pointing at him, at the room, at the doors. After a minute, they reached for him—he flinched back, alarmed—but they only untied him. He rubbed and rolled his aching shoulders and wrists, curling forward. One of the spear-holders gestured, and hands clamped on his arms and yanked.

“Wait a second,” he muttered, swaying to his feet. A sharp twinge in his hip made him gasp, and he pressed a palm to it, leaning into the pain.

Another gesture, this time with spear prodding into his side. Graham raised his hands. “Please.” They pointed toward the tunnel on the far end of the room. “I—I understand.” He wasn’t sure they understood him back, but once he started walking, arms wrapped tight across his chest, they calmed down.

He tried to focus, tried to memorize details that would surely help later. Failed. This was too overwhelming. It was too dark, and it smelled all wrong, and his shoulders and head and now his hip hurt, and even after all this he still didn’t know what they wanted.

Despite himself, Graham could sense that there were additional tunnels branching from their spiraling route, but he couldn’t make out much more than gloomy shadows. With his vision less than useful, though, he could hear more. The shuffle of his boots, and his guards’ lighter, padding steps, and someone crying, not too far away. He hesitated—it sounded distressingly familiar—but his captors shoved him deeper into the caves.

Eventually, they ran out of corridor and halted. Most of the guard scurried away, leaving him with a small contingent of goblins. Still too many to attempt escape, especially with those spears tilted just enough to slash him if he dared try. He could hear something growling behind one of the barred doors along the hall, and behind him something was breathing raggedly, like it was sick, maybe dying. He stared into nothing, nausea and frustration hot in the pit of his empty stomach.

Was anyone looking for him yet? Did they realize anything was wrong? Or did they think he was just walking the forests? In the rain? What moron went wandering off in the rain? Oh, right, me. What about Olfie? Had he heard Graham scream, or had the rain muffled it?

Rhythmic thumping echoed down the ramp. Like footfalls, but much, much heavier, resounding along the halls. Something big. He itched to have his archery kit, clenching and unclenching his fists like he was holding a bow and not empty air. No one around him seemed to be reacting, though. He could do nothing but wait with growing dread.

In the end, it turned out to be just another goblin in some sort of ridiculous self-propelled cart. Graham blinked. The goblin clutched a book close to its chest. Perhaps it was some sort of scribe? Did goblins have a written language? Shouldn’t Graham know about this already via some dusty Peoples of Daventry manual or something?

The newcomer turned pages delicately, ignoring the captive, until it settled on a page with an illustrated king. Graham could just see the little painted crown, and he felt his own crown’s weight more than ever. The goblin glanced up at Graham for the first time, for a mere scrutinizing instant, and then with a sharp nod it slammed the book shut and wheeled around and left.

And that was it. Not a single word had been exchanged, no explanations given, no questions asked, no decisions spoken, or orders made, or anything at all. He gaped after it, baffled.

So he was already off balance when his guards seized him and yanked—he collapsed in a scrambled heap, too startled to protest. And then they lifted him upside down, gripping his legs, standing on each other to get enough height that his face didn’t hit the floor, and they shook him wildly until he thought his legs might snap off. A literal shakedown. He desperately clutched the crown on his head, refusing to let it fall and dent, but he couldn’t do anything about his pockets. He wasn’t carrying much today: a couple of old coins with King Edward’s face printed on them, scraps of paper with scribbled notes from an earlier addenda study session, pocket fluff, and his feathered cap. It all knocked loose into a little pile beneath him.

Once the hat fell, they dropped him, along with all their apparent interest in him, to pounce on the hat. Like kids fascinated by a new toy. They passed it around, cramming it on top of their masks, and imitating Graham’s long limbed, swinging gait.

Frustration finally overcame fear. He’d been given nothing, no explanations or instructions, and now they were fighting over his hat with his mother’s feather in it, and he was tired and sore and done. “That’s it!” he snapped. “Who’s in charge here?” He cleared his throat, trying to sound intimidating: “I demand to speak to your king!” They had a king. He knew they did. Surely, king to king, they could work out something.

They glanced at each other, glanced at Graham, then jumped him. Again. He went down easily under their weight, flailing. They caught his arms and legs and pulled and twisted and got him on his back, their rock-hard hands gripping too tight. He fought and kicked and achieved nothing. They swung him back and forth through the air, laughing like they were still playing a game, and with one coordinated motion, they flung him through the nearest dark opening in the rock wall. He hit something solid at the same time a door slammed behind him and a lock snapped home.

There wasn’t a trace of light here—they may as well have thrown a blanket over his head. He lay on the ground, staring into the darkness and growing increasingly suspicious that it was staring back, when he realized water was soaking into the back of his clothes. Yelping, he scrambled up, feet swishing in half an inch of water. Clean? Dirty? Cold. He wrapped his arms around his chest, hugging tight, as though that could make it better. It didn’t help.

“Hello?” he called. He hated how thin his voice sounded, how weak he must seem to whatever was in here. He stepped forward and immediately barked his shin on whatever he’d hit when he’d first been chucked in here.  

A squeak came from the dark.

“What was that?” Images of rats wouldn’t get out his head. Big, fanged, plague-riddled, wild, angry things. He bit back a shivery squeak of his own and nervously hummed a few fragmented notes of some half-forgotten song instead, desperate to fill the sucking emptiness of the room.

Something began to glow, the faintest touch of blue. It seemed to like the broken melody, whatever it was. He stepped forward gingerly, lost in the fractured chorus, and jarred his side against a protruding pipe. His song cut short. That’s gonna bruise. The blue glow dimmed, but it didn’t go out. Cautiously, hands outstretched, he fumbled toward it, the sole pinprick of light in this place.

Some sort of lizard?

It jumped down, skittered between his feet, hurried to the far wall. Maybe the room wasn’t that big after all. Feeling a little more courageous, he tripped his way over, this time remembering the pipe (he banged his elbow against a different pipe). Again, it squeaked and bolted, tail cutting a wave through the puddles of water. But as it climbed the far wall, he thought he saw—

His breath caught in his throat, and he staggered back, iron pipes ringing against him, trembling hands clapped over his mouth, but he couldn’t silence the whimpers through his chattering teeth.

Dragon.

It was so close. It was right there. He had no defense. No place to hide. No way to outwit something so close. Couldn’t even see where it had gone. It could be sneaking up on him now and he couldn’t see it in the dark, its teeth glistening with saliva, fire curdling in its belly—fire hot enough to melt armor, to kill a friend, to kill him, right there.

Finally, some miserable, silent eternity later, he forced himself to think, It can’t be real. It’s not. “I’m fine,” he told himself sternly. At least, he wished he sounded stern. His voice cracked. “I’m fine.”

After another minute or two, he had to give himself a royal command to walk. Even then, all he could do was crab sideways along the wall, feeling desperately for some break in the stone, some way to slide out of this pitch-black hell and the bleak memories it contained. His foot bounced against something glassy. Grateful for the distraction, he managed to scoop it up. Some jar with a lid, maybe? Steeling his spine, he felt around inside, but it was free of all peeled grape eyeballs and noodle intestines. He found nothing but air. Empty.

Okay. Let’s make a lantern.

Graham had a vague sense of the room layout now, and he slipped up behind that glowing thing, humming those few silly bars of song under his breath. It didn’t move, and he slammed the jar over it triumphantly. “Ha! Got ya!” He held it close to his face and stared at it. It stared back, flicking its tail in irritation. Well, only one name could be given to a glowing newt. “I shall call you Newton,” he pronounced, beaming, enormously pleased with this one tiny success after what was surely one of the top three worst days of his life.

It opened its mouth and screamed. He nearly dropped the jar.

Light burst around him, dozens of glowing salamanders answering Newton. Truly, it was only a halfhearted sparkle, not much better than a moonlit night, but after the complete darkness it made all the difference. He sagged, both relieved to find the room dragon free and upset to discover that it was a proper cell with barred door, four very solid walls, and no way out. Twisting pipes snaked in and out of the stone, ending in some sort of drain that was far too small to do anything escape-y with—it was struggling just to drain the water dripping down the rocks. Water pooled around his ankles and marked every step with a splash. The salamanders had kicked up some fungus and it was glowing, little motes of colored light drifting in the air.

He gently put Newton’s jar on the large stone block in the middle of the room (a table, complete with molding tablecloth, charming) before turning to glare at the door. It was quiet out there, and he had no idea how much time had passed while he’d been paralyzed by the thought of dragons, but surely the goblins hadn’t all left. They’d leave at least a guard, right?

He pounded against the splintery wood. “Hey! You can’t do this to me!” Pause, then, “Okay, fair enough, you did.” He gripped the bars and craned his neck, trying to see around the corner. “Are you listening?” He shook the door, kicked it, and waited. No response. The hall was deserted. “I demand someone get over here!”

His stomach grumbled. He pressed a hand to his belly, frowning. “’Problem with dinner; care to reorder?’” he muttered. “Great.” He’d barely picked at his lunch, either; butterflies in his stomach had overwhelmed him, and he’d ducked out to read more of that official paperwork he was expected to know. Regret panged almost as sharply as his hunger.

“You can’t treat me like this! I am the King of Daventry, and I demand to have respect! And—and also, I demand someone be here to listen. Is anyone out there? Hello?” Graham pushed on the door, staring out and hoping for something to look back (as long as it was helpful and holding a key and wasn’t full of fangs and drool). “Anyone? Goblins? Please?”

Something growled from down the hall, low and throaty and promising all sorts of pain if he didn’t shut up. He let his hand fall against his side, lamely. “Okay. Okay, that’s fine. I’m fine. I’m…ohhkay.”

He sank against the stone table, staring at the bolts and bars in front of him. They meant to keep him. He didn’t know for how long, or for what, or anything at all. Whoever that creature in the chair had been had given him such a strange, appraising look, comparing him with a child’s picture book of all things. Against the little illustrated king with its little painted crown. His own crown pressed against his forehead, and he eased it off with both hands, staring at the jewels. At his reflection. He told himself it was just the distortion of the gems that made him look so drawn out and frazzled. A proper king would be keeping his composure in a situation like this. Definitely.

It’s a puzzle, Graham. Find a way out.

If it could just be that easy.

#this should be more or less the only time it feels like such a one-to-one game expansion sequence #King's Quest #kings quest #King Graham #goblin appreciation blog #ch2 #fic'ing

[aletaevers]

( cisfemale ) haven’t seen ALETA 'PIXIE' EVERS around in a while. the FREYA MAVOR lookalike has been known to be (+) DRIVEN & (+) RESILIENT, but SHE can also be (-) VAIN & (-) UNRELENTING. The 22 year old is a JUNIOR majoring in NURSING. I believe they’re living in TERRA FIRMA, but I popped by earlier and no one answered the door. ( james. 20. EST. she/they. )

i’m......so excited......................like i LOVE aleta and im so iskdjfg !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

pleathe give this a like if u’d like to plot w/ her !!! esp if u have a hendrix bb as they’d know her more ... obv

TW: child abuse, alcoholism, death, violence, grief. just some really tragic shit, man. self loathing.

a e s t h e t i c s

french-pane windows and ivy-coated bricks, silk pajama sets and champagne bubbles, wind through hair and constant, constant running; red cards and penalties, explosive words and hair-tugging, tear-soaked pillows and red eyes in empty bathrooms, the smell of roses and death, loose curls and sharp scissors, fairy tales and their endings -- how bittersweet, nails against desks, against backs, nails down a chalkboard, nails breaking skin. thrown fists and bruised knuckles, late night cereal-runs, getting lost in the woods, sleeping in fields. choking down insults, forced smiles, a wish for comfort.

general information !!

full name: aleta marit evers

nickname(s): pixie, tbd

b.o.d. - june 17th, grand ol’ gemini

label(s): the vixen, the amaranth, the hellcat, etc. etc.

height: 5′8″ tbh

hometown: giethoorn, netherlands

sexuality: bi as hell

pinterest

stats

biography !!

all aleta has ever wanted was to be happy. to just, for once--be content.

born to anton evers, a well-known neurosurgeon and eleanor evers (nee du pont), a talented actress appearing on several tv shows in her youth -- privilege is, essentially, her middle name

her parents met on the set of a hospital show, anton a consultant and eleanor a ‘patient’; it was the kind of love that was volatile and loud and known -- dangerous, in the end, maybe.

this was only possible because eleanor had always dreamed of being a star, instead of inheriting her families’ horse racing business; which thus resulted in her traveling across an entire ocean to pursue her dreams where there wasn’t already a name made for her.

lil fun facts about the evers: anton’s older brother is a partner with their father at evers & evers, and his younger brother is koninklijke marechaussee.

life was normal in the beginning; eleanor had her firstborn, rhys -- a son, which made anton happy. then, her second born, aleta -- a daughter, which made anton less happy. a few years after aleta came laurel, another daughter. and that was that.

it was supposed to be the three of them.

anton evers, in all his glory -- was nothing more than a no-good cheater with a bad temper and a lack of empathy. which, of course, led to his numerous affairs with one of his nurses. which -- in turn, led to the birth of one ramona evers, only to be discovered six years later. 

pre-ramona: when the kids got too much for eleanor, she’d let them fall into the hands of the nannies. plural, as there were many; not all willing to deal with three spoiled devils from the deepest pits of hell. she loved her children, but god, was she not built for motherhood. eleanor spent her days drinking wine and champagne, excessively, while the nannies chased after mud-coated children and faced their tantrums head-first.

their house was old and ~vintage~ and more like a mansion than anything else, a backyard leading into woods--countless woods. this is where aleta spent most of her time, when she got sick of rhys pulling her pigtails and him refusing to play knights and princes with her.

after a severe accident, ramona was suddenly left motherless and thus: custody went to anton. it came to a shock to the entire family, but eleanor the most -- she’d gone six years unknowing of the fact that her husband had another child.

it was like watching their mother turn into a completely different person overnight -- while never cruel to her own children, eleanor was relentless towards ramona. whether it were insults or nails dug into arms; more often than not a martini glass in her hand.

aleta had always loved her mother -- even with nannies looking after her more often than not. in her eyes, her mother and father had a marriage that fairy tales were based off of. anton worked often, but everyday he’d bring home flowers for eleanor; their home was essentially a garden; vases and vases of roses.

if her mother hated ramona then aleta hated ramona. rhys had begun closing up and laurel, out of fear than anything else, stayed clear of the soap opera that was now their life.

these were aleta’s nightmare child gone extreme years. unapologetically violent towards any other student who dared step in her way, she took what she wanted and was a typical bully throughout her school years. she was essentially just. a really angry brat. with dyslexia, which also made school Hard which in turn made her Hate School. 

more often than not, she was alone at home. more often than not, she was in the woods. they were her only source of peace. it was in the woods that she met vos. whether that was his real name, she didn’t know. she didn’t care. he’d gotten his foot stuck in a rabbit hole, and she’d gotten it out. and from that point, they were friends. it was like a fairy tale, which aleta had always been big on. she went by duif, going along with his shenanigans.

together they played knights and princes (aleta, always the knight. always. vos, the prince. always.) practically everyday until sundown, where they’d part ways.

throughout this all, eleanor had been getting worse. her alcoholism had taken an extreme turn for the worst.

when aleta was 12, she found her mother dead. she doesn’t remember much, just red wine mimicking blood and pearls strewn across the room, shattered glass and her own screaming sobs.

the day after the funeral, they moved.

aleta was, essentially, alone in the world after that. rhys had gone off with the bad sort of crowd and had no time for his mourning sister; he was grieving in his own way. laurel had befriended their neighbor, eva, and aleta had immediately taken a dislike towards her. she thought she looked like a rat. aleta told eva that much. and ramona was...off doing ramona things, avoiding her family by any means necessary.

time sort of...flew, after that. aleta channeled her anger through sports--and as she got older, into parties and general reckless activity involving alcohol and whatnot. grief still hung heavy in her throat, but she put on a mask of cynical coldness and became known as the resident bitch. it fit her. she didn’t care.

her moods calmed a bit as she entered university, but not by much tbh.

uuhhh hmmm. met tiago through her brother, and only pursued him because she had overheard ramona gushing to either laurel or eva or whomever the fuck about her little ~faraway crush~. so, like, obviously aleta fucked him? and somehow! they wound up dating! she’s very much in love with him, which terrifies her because she’s very scared of loving someone.

also...........uh......................may have gotten ramona expelled out of sheer pettiness. more on that later. :~)

personality !!

frank, rude, and spiteful -- at least she’s honest. even if her comments are riddled in backhanded compliments and eye-rolling. 

she’s not the....easiest person to befriend. has a habit of really only paying much attention to people she finds interesting; if you bore her then you’re out! thanks for playing!

despite how off-putting she can be, she’s pretty well-known. whether its because of her viciousness on the field in the many, many sports she has played for hendrix, or her presence at parties, or ‘cos she made your cousin or best friend or whomever cry in the bathroom, or y’know. her famous, dead mom.

doesn’t...seem to have a problem with her reputation? likes being seen as this tough, untouchable person.

is soft with very very few people, like, maybe three at the max? and she’s not even soft towards her siblings so difjgkh. one of these people is obv tiago.

she’s endlessly loyal, even if she does flirt with other people to make her bf jealous ?? like, she’d never actually cheat. not after what her father did to her mother. does it excuse her actions ?? fuck no. she’s still a bad person

hates her dad so yay !! daddy issues. p sure papa evers is part of a secret society but, y’know. just dad things.

she’s....very emotional. very prone to sudden spouts of just, anger. it doesn’t take a lot to piss her off, and she’s not a particularly friendly whirlpool.

cries a lot tbh. usually before she sleeps, or in the shower, or in one of the campus bathrooms. doesn’t let people see her cry but like...it’s also not surprising to catch her fixing her eyeliner in the bathroom after an episode.

she’s just in general p moody ?? petty ?? will talk shit to you in dutch, even if u fucking speak it. she doesn’t care. would probably spread a rumor about u just for funsies.

she’s gr8 at parties, usually ‘cos shes too crossed to be actively mean.

like, okay, i’ve made her out to be pretty Horrible but hbjnfdmgh she isn’t going to look at your character and just. start beating them down with words n fists and shit, y’know ?? she might be thinking it, but she’s not That impulsive

is apathetic at best towards most people otherwise, like, idk -- if she doesn’t have a reason, even if its a very small reason, she won’t bother with you. 

this VIDEO right fucking here. GOD. that’s an aleta vibe. it’s probably not something she’d say but just. the tone ?? awful. it gave me flashbacks to middle school when i watched that video.

has a sketchbook which is essentially anatomy notes and like, lil doodles n shit of fantasy scenery n shit

kinda...escapes into her mind sometimes ?? is still in love w the concept of fairy tales and perfect love and just. happiness. like she’s kind of obsessed with it ?? with the perfect image ?? which, hence, leads to her illustrating it. hence why she’s just so. in love. hence why she sabotages everything for herself too ‘cos ! she just sort of hates herself and knows nothing will ever be magical and perfect and shit.

so like, big secret fantasy nerd. probably has tried to sing with birds once when nobody was looking. she cant even sing. she shower sings and like maybe the bathroom acoustics make her sound not horrible but ?? she’s mediocre at best. it’s tragic, really.

there’s sm more, like, she’s just got a lot of feelings and contradicting personality points and she’s udfjighk she’s annoying. that’s what she is. aleta is CANCELED

ok ok ok but GOD is she good at sports ?? like genuinely just. she does like, track, hockey, lacrosse, tennis prolly idk, maybe other shit. and like granted she gets angry n then gets penalized for almost beating a girl down but isjkdfg she’s good at sports 

got the nickname ‘pixie’ on the field ‘cos shes fast and also has bitten a few people and is just very aggressive

EDIT: i forgot to mention that she !! stopped relying on her father for money (this does not include....stealing from him, which she most definitely does!!) and she’s kinda paying for things w/ savings and like...soon, she’ll get a job, i promise uhdfijfkg 

wanted connections !!

like...two close friends. pleathe, for her sanity.

uuuuuHHH god, just enemies of all sorts. ex-friends or never-friends or exes before tiago. people she’s talked shit about, or spread shit about

maybe she fucking poured her alcohol on ur muses’ head during a party

GOD i don’t know she drops people so much !!

other....friends, y’know, that she isn’t ~close~ to, but she gets along with fairly well

people she flirts with to make her bf jealous !! because she’s awful !!

temptations...b/c commitment is difficult for her b/c of y’know. her parents. not an actual affair but just...y’know. checking each other out, flirtatious banter, the whole ‘no i can’t ive got a boyfriend’ and shit like that.

teammates !!

dead parents club.

somebody who caught her crying in the bathroom hfdjgkh whether theyre concerned for some fucking reason or r straight up like ‘lmao...u deserve it’

ummm give me rhys ?? and laurel ?? or people who know them

rhys is a drug dealer so like.............she prolly knows a few ppl who get their drugs from him

friends of ramona’s before she uh . . . disappeared / got expelled

good influences who r like ‘stop being such a fucking dick aleta get ur shit together’

cousins !! she prolly has a ton

maybe......an online friend ?? who shes known for a while ??

bad influences who r like >:3 yes stay angry. stay bad. here, break this fucking window with this bat. yes, good.

literally i will take anything sjkfdg

people she’s tormented ??? has bullied ?? has embarrassed ???

#water:intro #child abuse tw #alcoholism tw #death tw #grief tw #violence tw

[levaire]

New Post has been published on https://levaire.com/22-ways-to-make-your-annual-report-remarkable/

22 Ways to Make Your Annual Report Remarkable

Ah, annual reports.

Awful things.

Full of stale, self-aggrandizing copy, dry pie charts, confusing bar graphs and committee-selected stock photos. This is 4-color, full-page bleed shredder-fodder at its finest.

Your annual report probably even has an opening letter from your Supreme Poobah, doesn’t it? And there they are, smiling away with that plastic, you-can-take-the-picture-anytime-now grin, their stiff image stuffed onto an entire page no one is ever going to read. Maybe even a chicken-scratch signature added for flair.

In fact—due to all the sub-par letters-from-the-chief we’ve seen over the years—you and I have actually been conditioned to skip that page entirely.

Tsk.

Oh, wait. Did I just describe your last year’s annual report?

I’m not asking you to feel condemned. I want you convicted. I’m trying to convert you.

What’s your plan to get people to actually read this typo-riddled train-wreck?

That is your intention, isn’t it? It should be.

Or are you just checking a box to please your board and trying to spend down this year’s print budget? (Now that’s stewardship. I see why they’re paying you the big bucks.)

What do you plan on doing about this year’s annual report, Sparky? I want you to consider turning over a new leaf. Or maybe not even printing any leaves at all. (Going completely digital is an option, you know.)

Here’s a not-so-novel concept: Your annual report is not a report; it’s a marketing piece.

I think it’s the word “report” that trips us up. When we hear the word “report”, we often think of things like driver’s license applications, tax forms and rows of numbers on spreadsheets with one-meeting lifespans.

If your annual report is a little slice of annual drudgery to produce, it’s time for a revolution.

In fact, your annual report can actually be leveraged as a springboard for your entire year’s marketing and outreach efforts. Sit with that for a moment.

The Annual Report 2-Step: Produce. Promote.

In this article, I’ve listed several ideas for improving your typical-fare annual report. My goal is to get you thinking out of the box.

Beyond that, you’ll find several fun ways you might deliver key information from your annual report to your anxiously awaiting audience.

Remember: You don’t have to stuff the whole report down their throats; just the important, most striking reveals.

Note: For these annual report ideas, I am targeting an industry we serve: homeless and humanitarian aid organizations. Obviously, if you are working in a different space, brainstorm on ways to adopt these ideas to your own niche.

Ways to Improve Your Annual Report

If you must print (and some do, appeasing federal, state or board requirements), here are 10 ideas for getting creative with your annual report format, design and content.

Produce the annual report as a newspaper. One of the smaller “articles” will be titled “Newspaper is Not a Blanket”.

Produce the annual report as a fold-out state map. Begin with a template provided by your state’s Department of Transportation.

Use the familiar. If the conventional booklet format is used, design one of the pages after the PIT count sheets provided by HUD (https://www.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/Model-Service-Based-Count-PIT-Survey.pdf). As a subtle nod, this will be recognized by industry professionals but will pass unnoticed by most in the public square.

Show maps of declining/inclining numbers across the state or country. Compare against 10-year averages.

Illustrate the numbers. For key statistics, give real-world examples to give concepts of population sizes and impact as illustrative equivalents.

Use comparisons. While providing state-based statistics, contrast against national numbers for larger context.

Provide testimonials, case studies and success stories. Point to your website for additional stories.

Interview your partners. Conduct an interview and highlight best practices from service partners. Ask them to speak to the impact those efforts have made in their communities.

Include ways for the public to get involved at the local level (CTA). Ideas for getting more involved may include recurring volunteer opportunities like serving meals, fundraising, event support, board participation, lending creative services (photo, video, design, web), setting up recurring donations, etc.

Ask for commitment. Perforated tear-out sheet containing homeless veterans pledge card or some other “get involved” or “get connected” message, form or survey. (If the newspaper format was used, this could simply be an insert.)

Ways to Promote Your Annual Report

As you may have guessed (or experienced), though you have produced this glowing gem of a report, there is still work to do. This is where you can allow all the work that went into your annual report to inform your ongoing marketing. If you did your homework in producing a thoughtful report, you should now be well-positioned to broadcast those golden nuggets of wisdom uncovered by your research. Here are some promotional ideas to consider:

Public Service Announcements. Launch a PSA campaign, sharing vital stats with illustrative equivalents.

Signs, signs, everywhere there’s signs. Use paid graffiti, stencil or reverse graffiti, or stickers to raise awareness around key stats. (Secure permission from local authorities.) Deliver on the sides of buildings or across high-traffic sidewalks. Develop and deliver yard signs. Ask local shops and restaurants with foot-traffic to display sandwich boards. Buy billboards. Scale to budget.

Blogger/influencer outreach. Offer influencers advance copies of the annual report so they can scoop to their audiences on the day the report is released. Engage whatever positive or negative commentary comes your way.

Make it into a video. Create a short video telling select pieces of the annual report story. Promote the video across the website and social media channels. Link back to your website.

Use maps. Is there a way to illustrate the impact on a map? Would it make sense in a GIS application?

Undercover marketing. Pay actors to approach people, strike up conversation and eventually deliver key stats and invitations to get involved. Caution: When revealed, this one could be seen as deceptive. It may be better to conduct a…

Street survey. Less “undercover” than undercover marketing, street-level, face-to-face surveys across the state could be conducted to poll minds and hearts toward the homeless issue while educating participants at the same time.

Road rally. Construct a road rally treasure hunt where participants are led across participating cities with clues that educate on key homeless issues as they go. The finish line ends with a meal in a soup kitchen and a brief interview to collect experiences and revelations.

Youth poster contest. Conduct a poster or infographic contest across high schools and/or colleges zeroing in on key report takeaways. Posters are reproduced and posted across cities to raise awareness. Winning designs earn students a monetary award and bragging rights.

Gamify the experience of becoming homeless. Players select their characters who are becoming homeless (financial instability, drugs, mental health, domestic violence, etc.) The game moves players through several scenarios in choose-your-path manner, forcing decisions on what to do, where to go, how to take care of children (or losing children into the system), how to find meals, lack of safety on the streets, bureaucracy, etc. Players are exposed to real-life accounts, testimonies and/or key statistics along the way. At the end of the game, players are presented with a brief message/video along the lines of “Homelessness is not a game. Get involved.” and ideas for getting involved locally.

Shareable graphics. Develop and employ simple, shareable social media graphics and infographics containing key stats and a link back to your website. Use #(your state), #(your city), #(state-cause), #(country-cause), #homeless and other popular, relevant hashtags across social media channels.

Make it easy for the media. Establish a media kit for housing the report, shareable graphics, quotes, links to new releases and all other pertinent marketing assets. Send to media outlets.

Conclusion

Well there you have it: 22 ways to revive your annual report experience, with a dash of guerilla marketing to taste. I encourage you to press in on your next annual report. Why settle for the standard, blasé, check-the-box annual report when you can enjoy the whole process from start to finish and come away with a much better product and a much bigger impact.

In support of your efforts,

References

Marrs, Megan. December 18, 2017. 20+ Jaw-Dropping Guerilla Marketing Examples. WordStream. Retrieved from https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/09/22/guerrilla-marketing-examples .

McCauley, Jim. January 30, 2018. 10 beautiful paper portfolios to inspire you. Creative Bloq. Retrieved from https://www.creativebloq.com/portfolios/paper-portfolios-5132559 .

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#homeless #marketing

[jadestormbrand]

Memories Best Forgotten

Short Story, a lot more below the cut.

Trigger warnings : Violence, abuse.

Jade lent carefully against the door, the marble framing cold to the touch, was it as heavy as it felt, or was she hesitating? Never the less she pushed onwards into the darkness of the library. She stood at the threshold, the moon silhouetting her frame, dust motes dancing in the moon light as she stepped through them, It wasn't dark for long however, candles lit, hanging aqua crystals began to glow an eerie blue.

The cold from outside quickly faded once she got deeper into the room, the door slowly swung closed behind her, sighing with relief she took her heavy coat from her shoulders, letting it drop to the floor, dust and paper billowing from around it, she had needed it on the way, but now she was here her himation would be fine. The white and blue velvet suited her well, contrasting her crimson hair, tapping her thigh boots off against a table she adjusted her outfit, readying her planisphere. The chime of metal becoming charged with aether echoed around the room, the metal rings orbiting around one another and in turn a central disc, she'd personalised it some strapping autumnal branches to the outer most static ring.

Taking a deep breath she started to scan the shelves of books, musty and long forgotten tomes sat on the shelves around her, most of them in languages she didn't recognise some in those she did, Sharlayan for the most part. She'd have to get help translating them, not that she had seen thus far were what she was looking for.

She pressed on into what at first looked like a dead end, then a ghostly staircase extended before her into a massive chamber that echoed with her every step, books as high and low as the eye could see and in the centre of it all a platform with smaller book cases and a few dilapidated tables strewn about it. Across the other side of which another staircase, just as spectral, leading up deeper into the building. Carefully she tested the stairs with a tentative foot, not entirely trusting them to be nothing more than light, they held her weight and cautiously she set about them, she'd be having words with the architect if she ever met them, baffled by the idea of not using a more trustworthy design.

It wasn't long before she came across her first real problem, a magical barrier, an intricate pattern of glowing aether blocked her path, it faded between blues and reds, shifting colours slowly, it taunted her.

“Gods damn it, just what I needed.” she sneered at the barrier, half expecting it to sneer back at her. Searching the room she found a chair, lifting it she hurled it at the barrier testing to see what would happen if she herself touched it, the chair collided with the barrier sending a pulse of energy from the impact point, then it fell to the ground, but then, something else fell, it dropped from a shelf not far from the barrier. A large leather bound book old looking and at the same time uncomfortable to be around. It slowly opened, a sickening feeling of dread filled the room as the top half of a horned bald head peaked from inside, bloodshot eyes flicked to Jade, almost immediately a red beam shot from it's forehead, ripping the air with dark aether, She dived behind a table which promptly exploded into shards, splinters showering her as she staggered to her feet.

Jade tried her best to keep her head clear, focusing her aether into a protective barrier, a second beam impacting it, grimacing she kept the barrier up, the beam faded, giving her an opening, focusing her defences into an attack. A moment later a blast of astral focused aether opened around the voidsent burning the edges of the book, a third beam shot from inside the astral light engulfing the book, the darker aether lancing into her magical barrier, cracking it, she had to end this fast. Focusing herself then pressing forwards with her arms, she sent another bolt of astral aether into the creature. A sickening scream came from the book as it caught fire, red and blue smoke spewed from the pages, then silence, the only sound coming from the smouldering remains of the book.

As the smoke cleared the magical barrier flickered and then faded away, Jade peaked around the corner into another dark corridor, further down it however there was a window, but she was inside a mountain last she knew. Carefully she approached the window, sure enough it was real, but there was nothing outside it, in fact she couldn't see anything but light. Turning away from the window she let her eyes adjust before carrying on.

A long corridor with more of those windows and then, there it was, the room she had heard about back in Ishgard. The Astrology and Astromancy Camera, though there weren't many books inside but she walked right for the books she did see, scooping them up and placing them into her bags. She looked around the room, more marble and a massive open book in the centre, how did she miss it? It covered most of the floor The pages that were open were discoloured, stained with what looked like blood, she couldn't make out the text inside but there was a picture, almost life sized. The image made her feel sick, a female form with Elezen like features bar two large backward facing horns, long flowing robes and large knife like fingers, it sent shivers down her spine.

“Some things are best left not found, Memories best forgotten, but where is the fun in that?” the voice was sickeningly sweet, she couldn't help but listen, every fibre of her being was telling her to run, but she wanted to stay. She turned to face the source of the voice, the creature illustrated in the tome now levitating a few yalms from her. She didn't hesitate, she bolted for the door on the opposite side of the room.

“Oh, how I do so love a chase!”  a shrill laugh emanated from the Voidsent, Jade was already through the door, turning and finding a set of stairs, she ran down them, not stopping for a second. She had to find somewhere to hide, fast. The corridors opened up into a large room, Jade ran along the balcony, shelves and shelves of books coated the walls.

Red eyes stared at her from the shadows, a bird-like frame stood before her, she couldn't fight it and still escape, luckily for her it didn't seem interested, moving passed her into the path of the approaching danger.

“No! Come back it'll kill you!” grimacing she kept running, following the balcony around and then down another set of stairs, another laugh, it chilled her to her very core, then a loud sicking crunch as the body of the red eyed cloudkin slammed into the ground before her. She screamed in shock, it had only missed her by ilms, she jumped its body continuing her run as the Voidsent floated from the balcony.

She had made a mistake, looking around the room she was in there wasn't an exit, only the way she came in, the room was circular, bookcases once again coated the walls.

“No where to run now, come here, let me give you what you desire, knowledge yes? We succubi can give more than just pleasure, any form of desire.” It's arms were spread wide, bladed fingers out spread, a sickly smile split it's face.

“You...You're a Voidsent, I'd rather die!” She readied her planisphere staring the succubus down, she was shaking from head to toe and worse, the succubus could see it, she threw out a bolt of astral aether missing her target, the Succubus rushed forwards, arms still out stretched, it lunged through the air screeching.

She dived backwards in an attempt to avoid the attack, the succubus' claws raking her side, sending her spiralling across the floor, trailing blood across it. She was in trouble, there was no way she could fight this alone, she staggered to her feet flinging out a desperate spell, the starlike bolt striking it's mark into the Succubus' chest. It chuckled at her waving a daggered finger from side to side.

“Deary me, aren't we adorable, It'd be a shame to damage such a beautiful body further, perhaps I should possess you?” It moved towards her, the robes about it's shoulders billowing behind it. Jade attacked again throwing out another astral bolt, the Succubus knocked it aside frowning, the foul creature lashed out again, claws barely missing as the Miqo'te ducked underneath its attack, it's second swipe however, struck home, cutting a gouge across her left shoulder, ripping at the scarred skin, pushing her downwards and knocking her prone. Her planisphere flew from her control clattering to the ground.

“Now, Now, no need to struggle, I won't make this quick however, so best enjoy it while you can.” Taloned fingers impaling her damaged shoulder it lifted her. She squirmed, trying her best to free herself from its grasp, panic set in, she was going to die here. It chuckled at her caressing the side of her face with the backside of its nails.

“Shhh, It'll be over soon, but first I'm going to give you some of that knowledge you wanted, that is why you came here, is it not?” The succubus chuckled, lowering Jade to the floor, letting her slide from its claws. She dropped to her knees and looked at her tormentor, dizzy from blood loss and exhaustion, she didn't fight back, she couldn't. The voidsent held out a hand just over her head, looking down to her, tendrils of long black and purple mist flooded from it's palm surrounding her head.

Visions flooded into her mind, memories long forgotten forced from the back of her consciousness suddenly surfaced. From inside a tent she heard her name being called but that name wasn't Jade, It was Tohmu.

“Tohmu, Tohmu! Move damn it they found us! Get your sisters!” a flash of light and she was outside the tent, she knew now that the voice belonged to her Mother, she was dragging her free from the tent.

“Dire'sae behind you!” The call was too late, his head flew from his shoulders, a long sword parting the two, Her father was dead. Arrows flew, hitting her in the shoulder and riddling her mother.

Everything was black, then slowly her eyes opened, was she still in the memory? She was being carried, her breathing shallow, a familiar voice broke the haze, but it didn't comfort her, chilling her to the core instead, it was Alward's voice, her adoptive father.

“Hah! That'll teach the tribal scum, reckon that's the last we'll see of them for awhile!” he had looked down to her, a sombre look shaking his head. “Shame about this one, hopefully someone will take her in, that's if she lives.”

“Stop, Please Stop! I can't see this, I don't want to see this!” Tears flooded from her eyes as she screamed at the Voidsent, it chuckled at her forcing more memories out from deep within her subconscious. Energy rushed into her, unknown reserves of aether being tapped, the dark aether surrounding her fading as did the smile on the succubus' face, light beginning to radiate from Jade's body.

“I said stop!” She bellowed into the room, her voice echoing as a blast of pure aether exploded from her, her emotions amplifying its strength. Her wounds stopped bleeding, her arms outstretched as she rose into air for a moment, then landing on her feet, bringing her hands back together, the light collecting between them and slowly fading, then nothing but echos, ringing in her ears, opening her eyes she staggered as the energy left her, dropping to her knees.

The Voidsent was missing, at least she couldn't see it, scanning the room it was indeed gone, alone finally. Her himation was in tatters where she had been wounded, blood still staining the delicate cloth, a new scar joining the arrow wounds she had sustained as a child, she knew that now, it wasn't wolves, Alward had lied, everyone had lied to her.

“Some things are best left not found, Memories best forgotten” The Succubus' words echoed in her mind, she pulled herself to her feet again, collecting her planisphere, she began to retrace her steps, finally finding the exit to the library. She gathered her coat putting it back on, then pushed against the cold marble of the library doors, leaving the building behind as she began her walk back to the town.

Some things are best left not found, Memories best forgotten.

#short story #Final Fantasy XIV #final fantasy xiv roleplay #FFXIV #ffxiv rp #roleplay #violence #miqo'te #keeper of the moon #voidsent

[fj-stories]

The Emperor’s Runes

Olav reached the chapel too late for spoils. It was obvious before he’d even stepped through the big red door that his brothers and cousins had stripped the place of anything portable and glittering while he raided the wine cellar and then the scriptorium, but he didn’t mind. He was content with the bottle of wine in his off-hand and the gilded pages and book covers under his arm.

Olav stepped into the chapel and took in the carnage: women and children and monks. Some were dead on their knees. Most were stacked in piles, bodies searched. The gold the raiders craved was in the monastery on the edge of town, but the violence was worst in the chapel.

It was always worst in the chapel. His people had been raiding along this coast for decades, but, wherever they went, the not-fighting and religious folk always gathered in the chapel. It puzzled Olav. The boats of the raiders were fast, but this village was close enough to the sea that they must have had warning. Why didn’t they run and hide in the woods?

At Olav’s feet, one of the monks, with his brown hooded robe and perfectly round bald spot, lay face down on the floor. His left arm was twisted at an odd angle and blood pooled at his right side. The monk didn’t move. The only way Olav knew he was still alive was his breath, exhaled in a hiss through clenched teeth. Olav raised his ax and sank it into the monk’s back as easily as if he had been lodging his ax in a log after a day of chopping wood.

It was an act of mercy. The cherry trees and rye fields were burning. The stores of food—meager for a village on such fertile land at midsummer—were raided and would barely keep the raiders fed through the long voyage home across the North Sea. Death for anyone left behind was inevitable. The only question was if death would come for the survivors fast or slow.

In truth, the entire raid had come too late—or too early. They’d carried away all the wealth from this village themselves only a few summers before, and the village and monastery hadn’t recovered a fraction of what they’d carried away last time. Olav had advised against the raid at the Thing, but his lord was a nostalgic man who liked doing what he’d done before, especially when what he’d done before filled his hoard with gold. This monastery had been surprisingly rich last time.

There were becoming too many last times for Olav. His arm was ax-weary, and he sat on a bench with his back to the wall and took a swig of wine, holding it in his mouth to fill his nose with alcohol to cover the stench.

In a room to the right of the altar there was a crash, and he stood quickly and raised his ax, but the noise was quickly followed by singing, and he sat back down. He recognized the voice—or lack thereof—of Snorre, his older sister’s son, and he sat back down. It was Snorre’s first raid, and Olav decided Snorre’s inevitable disappointment in the meager haul could wait until he’d worked off some of the heat of battle by throwing things around.

Olav would wait, he decided, for that moment to come and break the news himself. While he waited, he considered the treasure he’d taken from the scriptorium. It was book covers, mostly, a few beautiful pages illustrated with bright colors and gold ink, but the treasure that held his attention the longest was a page that was relatively unadorned. It contained only a single symbol drawn in blue and red that took up the whole page. Only the inside of the symbol was decorated in complicated knots and cords.

The people they raided were as fond of puzzles as Olav’s own people, and he searched the page for the hidden image that was likely twisted into the cords. The artist had, apparently, little faith in the intelligence of those who came after him and the riddle was given away immediately by two green dots representing eyes. The rope-wrought creatures were meant to be birds of prey fighting. The only question was if they were hawks or eagles, and that puzzle, Olav decided, came from lack of skill rather than the cleverness of the monk who drew it.

The ease of the riddle’s solving would have disappointed Olav were it not for the puzzle of the page’s central symbol itself. It was this puzzle that inspired him to take the page. The symbol was a bind rune, two characters from the runic alphabet laid over each other to make a single sign. The larger symbol looked like a P made with all straight lines. The smaller was an X centered on the stem of the P.

There was nothing unusual about runes, not even on this side of the water where the kings were all converted to Christianity longer than anyone alive could remember. Here the runes had been reduced to a local alphabet, but everyone in Olav’s village knew the magic of rulelore. They all had basic knowledge. They knew how to recognize the symbols. Young children sang the Futhark song and knew how to write their name and recognize the names of family members as soon as they were old enough to hold a knife and carve them.

Olav, though, was probably the only man in the raiding party capable of recognizing the symbol on this page as being made of runes at all. The runes that were bound together to make this symbol were old, terribly old. Year by year, it seemed the alphabet known to his people shrank, but his father and his fathers before him had, being especially dedicated to Odin, preserved the old letters for their own use in working spells.

He knew the bind rune he held in his hand was a spell of great power. He could feel it humming in his hand like the air before a thunderstorm. What it meant, however, eluded him.

He had never seen these runes combined in this way before. He knew they meant “peace” and “gift,” but what did that really mean? How could “peace” or “gift” protect your mead horn or your ass in battle. Most importantly, why would a Christian monk do Heathen rune magic?

His puzzling was interrupted by Snorre. Satisfied that he had raided what there was to raid of the room next to the chapel, Snorre crashed into the chapel, throwing an empty bottle of communion wine against the wall.

“You didn’t tell me this was a women’s cult, uncle,” Snorre said. “I searched the whole place and found nothing but dresses.”

“Last time we were here, I raided that room with your mother,” Olav said.

Olav’s sister, Vigdis, was a powerful healer who had, in her youth, traveled all over the northern lands and abroad, offering the skills she learned from their mother in exchange for hospitality. Now that she was older and her sons were grown or nearly grown, she accompanied them on raids, hanging back from the fighting until the worst of it was over. She was no fighter, but she knew things and was wise. She had traveled among the Christians, and she and Olav had spent a long time in that room while she showed him ritual objects and explained their significance.

“Your mother found a heavy cloak in there, stitched all over with gold thread,” Olav said.

“I don’t remember anything like that from the takings,” Snorre said. “I’d remember something like that.”

“You don’t remember because you weren’t there and I burned it before we got on the boat,” Olav said. “It reeked of magic.”

Snorre snorted. “I’m not afraid of Christian magic. If their magic was any good, we’d all be dead.”

Olav would have agreed with Snorre usually, but the page with the bind rune he still held in his hand made him feel uneasy. He frowned and didn’t answer. Snorre started to sing again and searched the altar. Olav studied the page for a moment and then flipped it over. There was nothing on the back. The book had been open to that page when he found it. A monk must have been working on it when the boats had been spotted. The page after it had been blank, too.

Then, Snorre stopped singing and shrieked. Olav looked up and saw Snorre was kneeling in next to the altar, hands in front of his eyes.

“I can’t see, uncle,” Snorre wailed. “I can’t see!”

Olav carefully tucked the mysterious page into his belt, but the half-empty bottle of wine and the rest of the book pages and covers fell to the floor as he ran to Snorre.

Olav crouched down to examine his nephew. He took his chin in his hand and tilted it up toward the light. Snorre’s eyes were milky white, like Olav’s grandmother’s had been when she went blind in old age.

“What did you get in your eyes?” Olav asked.

“Nothing!”

“You touched something and then touched your face,” Olav said, trying and failing to keep an accusing tone out of his voice.

“I didn’t touch anything!”

It was easier to blame the boy than admit the possibility that the Christian god had heard what Snorre said about his magic and struck down Snorre in his anger. Olav wasn’t like his sister. He didn’t know much about magic that wasn’t rune magic, but he knew this wasn’t elf shot. He suspected, even if a god was involved, without a lightning bolt or some other display of natural power, you didn’t catch a curse like this without touching something charmed.

“You touched nothing?” Olav asked.

“Nothing,” Snorre said. “Nothing but the cross on the altar.”

The altar cross lay on the floor next to Snorre, but crosses didn’t concern Olav. He had pulled a dozen crosses off a dozen Christian altars, and he had never been harmed for it by the Christian god or anyone else. The monastery still hadn’t replaced the gold cross that had adorned the altar last time they raided, and the brightly colored wooden cross they’d used to replace it had been broken in its fall, the arms of the cross lay on top of the back slanted like the rune Naudhiz. It was an omen for sure, but Olav didn’t think it was an ominous one. Naudhiz was just a protective rune. Olav himself was in the habit of carving it on his fingernails before a feast to protect himself from the morning after effects of too much ale. He was certain it hadn’t been the cause of Snorre’s blindness.

He looked around for spells, and he saw, carved on the altar three characters: IHS. The symbols weren’t exactly right. The S should have been angular instead of curved, and the bridge in the H should have been slanted instead of straight, but the magic was unmistakable. These, too, were runes: Isa, Hagalaz, and Sowilo. Ice. Hail. Sun. If the Christians knew what they were doing and carved these runes to cast a protective spell after the last raid, it would have worked against the Northmen with sick irony: It would have caused snow blindness.

He doubted Christians were capable of working a spell that complicated. His sister might know, though, and she was the healer.

Olav pulled Snorre to his feet and dragged him from the chapel, tipping over a stand of candles on their way out.

Seeing what had happened to Snorre, the raiding party fled with them, a few more torches thrown into the burning chapel for good measure.

Back at camp, Olav took Snorre straight to Vigdis’s tent. Seeing them, Vigdis snapped an order to her daughter Gudrun, who started frantically throwing herbs into a wooden bowl.

“What caused this?” Vigdis asked.

“Christian magic,” Olav said.

Vigdis looked into Snorre’s eyes and frowned.

“There is no such thing as Christian magic,” Vigdis said. “All those years in Francia, I never once saw one of their priests do a spell that was the least bit effective.”

“Their magic might not be effective,” Olav said, “But they’re learning ours.”

“Nonsense,” Vigdis said.

Olav pulled the page with the bind rune on it out of his belt to show her, but Vigdis was distracted teaching Gudrun. Why she was doing this now was beyond him. Their mother always said the first hour is the most critical time in an illness, and it had taken them nearly twice that long to drag Snorre back to camp. When Vigdis was satisfied with the herbs she and Gudrun had chosen, she added a few drops of water and started grinding the leaves into a green paste.

This part would take time, so Olav judged it safe to show her his find.

“Look,” he said, holding out the page with the bind rune on it. “These are ancient runes.”

“Wunjo and Gebo,” Vigdis said. Olav’s eyes widened in surprise to hear his sister say the names of these ancient runes. “What? You didn’t think I was paying attention when our father taught you? Those aren’t runes, though. That is the sigil of Constantine the Christian emperor.”

“I thought all emperors were Christians,” Olav said.

“In Francia, yes,” Vigdis said, “But Constantine was emperor in Rome, years and years ago, back before the Romans pledged fealty to the Christian god. That one, Constantine, pledged fealty first.”

“How do you know that?” Olav asked.

“I stayed in a monastery in Francia,” Vigdis said. “One of the brothers there was writing a book of history and wasn’t quite as interested in his vows of celibacy as he was in Roman emperors.”

“Even if what you say is true,” Olav said, “I’m telling you. I know a bind rune when I see one.”

“I’m telling you,” Vigdis said. “It’s Constantine’s sigil. The Christian god gave it to him before a battle and told him to have his men paint it on their shields. They did and they won the battle, and Constantine promised to convert.”

“The Christian god gave battle runes?” Olav asked. “The Christian god isn’t a god of war. That sounds more like something Odin would do.”

Vigdis shrugged and applied the paste to Snorre’s eyes.

“The Christians have only one god. I guess he has to be a battle god and bless the crops and everything. It sounds like an awful lot of work for one god to me, but why wouldn’t he know a little battle magic?”

“If you believe the Christian god knows battle magic, why won’t you believe it was one of his follower’s charms that did this to Snorre?”

“Why? Did you find a rune stave?”

“No,” Olav said, “But there were runes carved on their altar. Isa, Hagalaz, Sowilo. It looked to me like it could have been a spell to cause snow blindness.”

Vigdis looked at him for a long time and laughed.

“Those aren’t runes,” she said. “They’re one of the names of their god. You’ve seen them on all their altars, haven’t you?”

“No,” he said.

“Then you need to pay more attention. If you had, then, maybe you’d be able to tell me what got in Snorre’s eyes.”

“I got nothing in my eyes,” Snorre said.

“Nonsense,” Vigdis said.

“If they aren’t runes, then why do they look exactly the same as runes?” Olav asked. “Do you think the Christian god stole them from Odin like Odin stole the mead of poetry?”

“I don’t know,” Vigdis said. “I don’t care about who stole what from what god. What I care about now is that this ointment is going to itch if Gudrun doesn’t go out there and get me some balm. Go with her and watch out for her, will you, brother? When you come back you can galdr for Snorre.”

“The hill over there looks more promising, uncle,” Gudrun said.

The hill she pointed at was in the north, but Olav wanted to go back to the village, which was in the west. He was determined to go back and find evidence that he was right, that the rune spell on the altar had caused Snorre’s blindness, and night was coming on soon.

“I saw some along the path to the village,” Olav lied, and Gudrun scampered after him.

They saw the smoke from the village from far off, and Gudrun made a great show of being brave while reaching for Olav’s hand.

“Was the balm very close to the village?” she asked.

“Just outside it,” he said.

She said nothing but held his hand a little tighter.

When they reached the village, there was no balm. He lied and said he’d mistaken a patch of mint for balm in his haste. Gudrun urged him to go back with her to the promising hill, but he said there was something he wanted to get in the village, and it would wouldn’t take very long.

Normally, he would have instructed her to stay outside the village. There were no survivors. He was certain of it, and those who had survived and were capable of harming her were unlikely to still be around. After what had happened to Snorre, though, Olav was feeling more cautious and instructed Gudrun to stay close to him.

She had seen death before. The previous winter, a fever had burned through their village and killed many of the elders and babies, but that death had been clean. It had done nothing to prepare her for so many villagers in various states of dismemberment scattered around on the dirt paths around the houses.

“You can close your eyes if you wish,” Olav said, “But it’s well you see before you get much older what keeps your lord in gold rings.”

She stubbornly kept her eyes open and looked, brave like her mother.

It had been only a few hours since they left, but the chapel was already a smoldering ruin. The torches and candles must have sparked an inferno. Here and there load-bearing pillars stood holding bits of roof, but most of the roof was gone, reduced to ash and charcoal with the walls and bodies and wooden statues.

“What was this place?” Gudrun asked.

“This is where they worship their god,” Olav said. “Where they used to worship, anyway. I don’t think they’ll be worshipping much anymore.”

Here and there small fires still burned, and he and Gudrun threaded between them.

“Will they go to Valhalla?” Gudrun asked.

Olav gave her surprised and questioning look and then saw behind her that he was in luck. The covers and pages he collected had just happened to fall on a bare patch of floor, and the fire hadn’t caught them. He stepped over the rubble to collect them.

“Why do you ask that?” Olav asked.

“They died in battle,” Gudrun said.

“It wasn’t much of a battle,” Olav said, “And even if the War Father would take them, I don’t think they’d want to go. They’d want to go to their god.”

“Does the Christian god have a mead hall and battles every day?” Gudrun asked.

“I don’t know,” Olav said, glancing through the pages again, stopping on an image of a woman holding a small child. The child’s face was haunting. It looked too old to be the face of a child. “He might have mead halls and battles. I don’t think these folk were much for battles, though.”

“What are you looking for?” Gudrun asked. “Maybe I can help you find it like you’re going to help me find balm.”

“I’m not quite sure,” Olav said. “This is where your brother was injured, and I want to know what caused it. If we’re going to find it, it’s going to be that way.” He pointed to where the altar had been. “Don’t touch anything.”

She jumped deftly over the rubble and up the steps to the remains of the altar. There she walked in tight circles with her hands behind her back, bending over gracefully to examine the floor.

“I think I found the runes you were talking about, uncle,” she said.

He joined her and looked. The altar had been smashed by a falling beam, but the IHS had stayed together on a single piece of wood. Olav took out his knife and carved warding runes into the backs of his hands with the tip of his knife, cutting deep enough to draw blood. Thus protected, he wiped the blood off his knife with his shirt and picked up the piece of wood with IHS on it.

If his sister was wrong, and these were runes, and they had caused his nephew’s blindness, he knew how to fix it. This he did, scraping the letters off of the wood in a few quick gestures with his knife and threw what remained of the broken piece of wood into a nearby fire.

When Gudrun and Olav arrived back at camp, the whole place was full of excitement.

“Your sister is a great healer,” the blacksmith called to Olav from his makeshift travel forge. “Less than a day, and her boy’s already cured.”

“He’s wrong, isn’t he, uncle?” Gudrun asked. “I saw you carve those runes into your hands.”

Olav said nothing. The blacksmith was inclined to exaggerate, and he would see for himself.

Inside his sister’s tent, though, Snorre was as healthy as the blacksmith said he was. He looked up as soon as they entered the tent and called out to him, “Uncle!”

His sister sat next to him by the fire, grinning proudly. Then she saw Olav’s bloody hands and sighed.

“If you told me you were going to be doing that,” she said, gesturing at his hands with her pestle, “I would have saved some of Snorre’s ointment for you.”

She grabbed a handful of leaves from Gudrun’s basket and began grinding them.

“It was uncle,” Gudrun said. “Uncle did a spell and healed Snorre."

"Nonsense," Vigdis said. "Those on your uncle's hands are just protective runes."

Mara Colleen Banks thinks that author bios are usually pretentious and off-putting, but her student loans compel her to mention that she has an MFA in fiction whenever possible.

When she isn’t writing stories about naive vampires and Viking detectives, her current obsessions are: Growing the world’s most delicious sleepy-time herbal tea blend, asking her Tarot cards when the sun will come out in Portland, Oregon, and visiting every river in the Pacific Northwest.

#awakening world #vikings #fiction #free fiction

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New Post has been published on http://www.injectionmouldchina.com/nice-china-two-shot-plastic-parts-factory-photos/

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A Ticket to Ride the TranSiberian

Image by Viewminder Cut off from the sea by the suspicious port authorities in Shanghai it seemed that the only way I was going to get out of China was overland. This was my ticket.

In Shanghai I had inquired of every traveler I met about the path ahead of me. I had heard tales of this magnificent and exotic railway adventure before… they called it the greatest railway journey on earth. The longest stretch of steel rail ever layed.

An Australian traveller named Mark told me that he had heard that there was a guy in Beijing who could get me a ticket.

I asked Mark how I could find this guy in Beijing. He said just go there and ask for ‘The Crocodile.’ Just go to a city of some ten million souls and ask for ‘The Crocodile’? It sounded almost insane to me.

Ditching Mark after he made moves on my Chinese girlfriend and ditching my Chinese girlfriend after she got all worked up when a soldier who was following me took a picture of us together on the riverfront… I understood her fear in that time of Tienenmen Square and I knew it was time once again to get moving. It was time to move north to Beijing… the city they once called Peking.

Tsu Tsu Mei was a nice girl. She had told me to call her Eleanor… because that was what she called her ‘American name.’ I couldn’t do it because she just didn’t look like an Eleanor to me… I always called her Tsu Tsu Mei. And I think that she really liked that I did… it would have been easier to call her Eleanor I’m sure… but each time I called her ‘Tsu Tsu Mei’ she gave me this look… it started with a big warm vulnerable smile that made it seem to me that she was melting inside with warm thoughts and shaking knees.

That look always made me want to scoop her up in my arms and give her the same feelings right back. Whenever I said her name and got that look… it just kind of summed everything up right there in that moment. I really liked that. Sometimes I wished that it had gone farther but the way it ended is why I have the memories I do… and I hope she does too… we never hurt each other… never not once… it was the hard and cold government of an opressive authoritarian regime that broke both of our hearts there in Shanghai. It wasn’t either of us… it wasn’t our fault.

I was with Mark the Australian when I met Tsu Tsu Mei… we were tooling around Shanghai and we had just gotten on the bus after a tour of the Shanghai Waterpipe Factory Number Seven where I had just purchased a fine example of a brass opium waterpipe. We had seen the place while riding the bus and jumped off… the factory was really happy to have foreigners tour the place. I couldn’t believe that there were at least six other water bong factories in Shanghai. Somehow we had found the seventh.

As foreigners we were pretty much used to talking in english right in front of people knowing full well that they couldn’t follow our conversation… especially the slang riddled prose we frequently used. When Tsu Tsu Mei got on the bus and stood next to me I turned to Mark and said "man she is the most beautiful Chinese woman I have ever seen."

Before Mark could agree… Tsu Tsu Mei let me know that she appreciated the compliment… she smiled and said "thank you" in perfect english.

Shocked that my subterfuge was exposed at first I was a little embarassed… until Mark took that half of a second to start in on her. No way I thought… I was the one who paid the compliment… I was going to be putting the moves on Tsu Tsu Mei. I’m not sure Australian guys understand the concept of a good ‘wing man’ but Mark sure had some learnin’ to do. He needed to watch the movie ‘Top Gun’ and take some notes.

Tsu Tsu Mei and I arranged to meet later that night in downtown Shanghai and proceeded to become great friends. She even took me to meet her parents… Norman Tsu… the first deaf technical drafting instructor in all of China and his ‘deaf wife Janie.’

Tsu Tsu Mei’s father Norman was sent to the United States to study technical drafting in the fifties. He went to Gaudellet University and he confided in me that he really liked it… that he didn’t want to come back to China… he stopped writing home and corresponding with the government… he wanted to drift away… but they corralled his mother who was a widow by this time… and they made her write Norman a letter that made it really clear that it was in her best interests that Norman return to China. That’s how China got its first deaf technical drafting instructor. Or how they got him back.

Norman always referred to his wife as ‘My deaf wife.’ Both of them were deaf and we passed notes to each other over a marvellous dinner… while Tsu tsu Mei just kept smiling at me and at her parents… unbelievable food Normans deaf wife cooked. It was a feast… and not the Chinese food I was used to… this was exotic and unknown to me. The Tsu’s really went out and they’ve been in my thoughts many times since then.

The Tsu family was really good to me and things were moving right along with Tsu Tsu Mei too until that soldier decided that he’d turn our little hand holding session on the Shanghai riverfrint into a Kodak moment. I had seen that guy following me before… he was the tallest Chinaman I’d ever seen… a full head above the rest of the general population. I found great amusement in shagging him… going into a store and going out the back door. It was really like a game. Still… he always found me… he was on me for days there in Shanghai. And after he took that picture I realized that my company with Tsu Tsu Mei wasn’t looked upon favorably by the authorities. She was terrified of the repurcussions. I knew that was it… I wasn’t going to get her or her family inot any trouble. I was going to get out of Shanghai.

I purchased a train ticket on a sleeper train for the seventeen hour ride from Shanghai to Beijing. How was it that I could go to a city the size of Beijing almost a thousand miles to the north and find this man called ‘The Crocodile’ simply by asking? It seemed completely insane… but such was the world I found myself in this year… for me, 1990 was the year of living insanely.

After seventeen hours of watching China slide by through the window accompanied by the soundtrack of nonstop kung fu videos on the train’s television sets, I stepped off the carriage in Beijing, China’s capital city. Which was a godsend because I could not have taken one more of those videos. The Chinese truly love them… they must be a part of their national identity… the way that the Japanese love Godzilla. Godzilla was a mechanism that helped the Japanese to cope with their loss of World War Two and the painful shock of getting Nuked twice. Even though Godzilla always stomps their cities to pieces they always triumph. It’s like a morality tale with them.

When I was living in Osaka someone who worked in the studio that made the Godzilla movies decided to borrow the costume and wear it to a party where he caused it to be damaged to the tune of a hundred and seventy five thousand dollars. I wish I was at that party. Hanging out with the Nigerians. That would have been epic.

The first european looking guy I saw in Beijing… I stopped him as was my custom in the orient and inquired of the conditions and opportunities there in this new city. Blonde hair in China or Japan had always meant ‘help desk’ to me. We vagabonds and adventurers always stuck together and usually became instant friends as long as there wasn’t a woman involved.

Then I asked him if he had ever heard of ‘The Crocodile.’

He said that he would take me to see him right now. Right then. Right there. Unbelievable. I’m not kidding. No shit. I couldn’t believe it either.

I had found ‘The Crocodile.’

The man walked me to a hotel a few blocks away from the railroad station. It was an old building that looked straight out of the 1920’s, like just about every other building in Beijing. You could see that it was really beautiful at one time… maybe even opulent or exclusive… but it, like anything else that was once beautiful or opulent, it seemed to fall into despair and decay under the custodianship of the communists. That was the way pretty much all of Beijing looked. With brown air and trees and bushes that were different from all those I had even known. I always notice the trees and bushes in a new city. Here on the other side of the world the plant life and the vegetation was odd to me… just unusual enough to stick out in my mind.

The man knocked on the door and we were answered by a nice looking blonde woman on her early twenties. She looked kind of pissed off but invited us in still. My guide just turned around and left with little more than a gesture to the woman. I followed her into the room.

It had become a bit of a self entertainment for me to wonder why the man I was seeking should be called "The Crocodile." It intrigued me from the moment I had heard it and in my mind I came up with all sorts of reasons for the nickname. None of them pleasant.

The room was an illustration in contrasts… inside "The Crocodile" had rented two rooms… he knocked down the wall that had seperated them and completely remolded it. This guy was livin’ cush. He sat on the edge of his bed playing with the tv remote control as if it had befuddled him… I could tell from body language that his girlfriend and he had just been fighting.

"The Crocodile" stood up and turned around to face me… the guy must have been six and a half feet tall… and immediately I could see why they called him "The Crocodile."

He wore these braces on his teeth… the largest mass of metal I’ve ever seen in a persons mouth. Communist braces aren’t very pretty… but these… "The Crocodiles" mouth looked like it had been installed by a blacksmith… an angry, drunken blacksmith. Like hammered bars of hot metal hand forged around each of his teeth.

I had to make myself stop staring as he got right down to business. Croc asked me when I wanted to leave… he said he had one ticket and he wanted a hundred and ten bucks American for it. There’d be no negotiating I could tell that right away. I had a feeling that if I tried that he’d have just relieved me of all my dough right there. Probably my gear too.

We were in a bit of a funny situation for a couple of reasons… I thought the ticket looked fake… it looked worse than some of the permits and passes I’d forged in school. I didn’t have a visa to enter Russia… and I didn’t carry that kind of currency in US dollars. I wasn’t too sure that the Russians would actually be too excited about me coming to their country either. When I expressed this to "The Crocodile" he laughed a powerful and boisterous laugh and told me not to worry about it… he’d just gimme the ticket on good faith… so I could try and get a visa and cash a travellers check or something to come up with the Dollars he wanted. Besides he said "I know where your seat is and when you’ll be leaving and if you fuck me I’ll kill you" after which he laughed another deep laugh and gave me a half hug. "I want my money by next week he said." and walked me to the door where he said goodbye and his girlfriend gave me another dirty look.

That was it. Absolutely fucking unbelievable. I’m in Beijing less than two hours and I found my guy and I got my ticket. Now I just needed a visa from the Soviet Consulate. He’d also tell me there if the ticket was real I figured.

But right now I needed a place to stay. That would have to be my first order of business. The Croc’s hotel seemed a little too luxurious for my budget… I needed something ‘dumpier.’ Something where my kind’d fit in you know?

I walked out of the hotel and on to the street… pausing for a moment to take a breath of the sulfery yellow tinged air and feel the pulse of the street there…a moment to let the vibe of it all sink in. I could have gone left or I could have gone right but it really didn’t matter because I had no idea where I was going anyway. It’s like a rule with me… like walking on the upwind side of the street because that’s where all the paper money blows. Go left.

My friend Joel… the guy who’d saved my ass from the knife weilding Yakuza that pressed certain death into my throat in that bar in Osaka… he told me that he went insane and that he would hear these voices in his head that always said the same thing… "look to the left Joel." If he wasn’t crazy already he said that those voices would do it… he never understood the meaning of it. Stupid voices in your head… they never tell you anything good… like "stay away from that one… she’s trouble." They’re always all cryptic. You gotta try to figure them out and break the code. Joel said the lithium they gave him pretty much shut the voices down. I never had heard voices though. It would probably be fun for a day or two… just to see what they would say. I think if I had voices they would sound like Vincent Price on LSD.

So I went left after I walked out of the Crocodile’s hotel. I usually always go left when I got no idea but this time I was especially glad I did.

I get about a block and right there smack dab… badda bing… I run into this guy I lived with in Osaka Japan… Mike Levine… a Jewish guy from Jersey. He had let me borrow a pair of his shoes because I could find any in my size in Japan. Mike’s got this big smile on his face as he sees me… we hug and slap each others backs and talk about the fight that got me thrown out of the university in Japan that we both went to.

Mike gave me directions to a suitably dumpy hotel and we parted ways.

Walking down the street I saw a couple of American girls… who turned out to be two really granola looking lesbian backpackers from Nebraska.

I stopped them there and asked them where they were staying… they said they had no idea… I invited them to share a hotel room with me if we could find one… plus the thought of girl on girl action sounded like really good fun to me. I felt like I was really going to like Beijing. It seemed like an easy city. Things were looking good.

Was this my lucky day or what?

Shit, I been here for like two hours… I already met the guy I came to meet, had a ticket for the Trans Siberian, hooked up with two lesbians and there we found a three dollar a night hotel. Six yuan a night for each of us. What more greatness could god bestow on me? Another lesbian? A blind supermodel? That would just be asking too much I thought. Lady Luck, I’ve always said, she was indeed a friend of mine.

Never look a gift horse in the mouth they say… so I unpacked my gear in the hotel room… every bit of it… and spread it all around. I always unpack fully so if I get robbed they can’t just take one bag and split… they gotta work for it… then I unscrew all the lightbulbs in the room so they gotta have a flashlight to do it well… and then I make some loud noise making booby trap… like a pyramid of empty beer cans behind the door… then they gotta have nerves of steel to finish the job. Never got robbed once. Never. I have come home more than a few times affected by some intoxicant or another and fallen vicim to my own booby traps though. It always scared the beejesus out of me.

The Nebraska lesbians unpacked too.

Time to get out of here… It was time to go have a look at Beijing.

I left the hotel in a hurry and jumped on the first bus I saw… it didn’t matter where the bus was going…I didn’t care… I was sure that I hadn’t been there anyway. That’s the great thing about exploring like that. A new city… just go anywhere. It’s all new.

Sitting on the bus I was of course the only westerner riding it. The Chinese weren’t as polite as the Japanese and they would just stare at you forever… sometimes with mouth agape even… and I found myself very much the center of attention… the center of attention was something I really didn’t want to be. I kinda wanted to blend in really. That was going to be tough.

I started having what could only be described as auditory hallucinations on that bus… that happened alot to me in China… but right there it was bad… the cacaphony of Chinese voices started to filter itself out in my hyperactive mind and become english… I could understand things sometimes… I was certain that people were commenting on how intoxicated I was… they all knew it… they were all talking about me… looking at me… ‘Is that American guy drunk out of his gourd or what?’ I had to get off that bus. The sweat was pouring from my pores. It was getting to be more than uncomfortable… it was unbearable.

The next stop was my stop no matter where it might be… soon as it stopped I jumped off that bus so fast… I didn’t even have a clue as to where I was… and I didn’t care. Away from that hash house hotel and off of that bus…I just wanted my own little piece of contraband free real estate where I could sit and watch China go by and make amusing comments in my head to entertain myself.

This was my stop.

Before me was layed an enormous plaza… I had never seen such a large paved public space. It was gigantic enough it looked like you could lay down and land a 747 in it if you went from one corner to the next. It was so big and vast that the smog of Beijing obscured the other side of it from me. I didn’t know what this place was, but it made me feel realy small… insignificant actually… which was precisely how I wanted to feel.

I stood at Tienenmen Square.

This was the old Beijing… the one that used to be before the extremely systematic exploitation of cheap labor turned the place into a giant pachinko parlor… this was the dirty, dusty and gritty beijing where products were pulled around on wagons by teams of horses who shit big piles in the streets that you’d go straight over the handlebars of your bicycle if you didn’t look where you were going. I’d seen it.

This was the Beijing where the streets seemed impossibly large considering no one really owned a car… the Beijing where the old people all wore those navy blue or black or gray kung fu outfits and walked around stooping with their hands clasped behind their backs as if some ultimate power had ordered them to for all time.

This was the square in Beijing where less than a year had passed since thousands of students took a chance to try and change their world… this was the Beijing where tanks had rolled over them without mercy and their bodies were torn apart by the callousness of lead flying around at ballisticly high speeds and cruel random trajectories. This was the Beijing where their blood ran like rivers down the curbs and into the sewers where like the extinguishing of their tender lives for naught all was soon forgotten by a world more infatuated with its demand for cheap consumer electronics in attractive clamshell packaging.

The one year anniversary of the slaughter was approaching and here as if by accident I find myself in the place where history was made and so conveniently forgotten.

Here and there I could still see bullet scars, burns and other marks that told the tale of a failed movement killed in a single night of murderous debauchery.

It was eerie in Beijing. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Was it just the intoxicant’s influence? I couldn’t place it until I found a nice grassy place to sit down and let everything stabilize. Let my altered mind stop spinning.

The young people were all gone.

The government had sent what looked like the entire youth of the capitol city to ‘summer camp,’ where they’d sing patriotic songs and watch lots of motivational films and learn the error of their ways. It was re-education for the entire young population… there was almost no one walking around that city bettween the age of fourteen and twenty one. It was spooky… strange mojo in a strange land. Like some kind of Twilight Zone episode.

Everybody’s seen the picture of ‘Tank Man,’ that guy whose name the world doesn’t know… the one who was walking home from the grocery store with a couple of plastic bags in his hands… the guy who became a lonely human roadblock for a column of tanks… I know I could never forget that guy… he had balls the size of watermelons that one. I woudda love to have bought that guy a drink or eight.

I was walking down that street and a momentary sense of deja vu made me stop… It felt like I’d been there before… it didn’t take too long for the reality to hit me… I was standing in that spot. In the Tank Man’s spot. The premonition came from looking at that photograph.

There was a pay phone there… on the side of the street… you can see it in the Tank Man picture… I thought my parents might like to know where in the world I was so I tried to call them from it without luck. Maybe they’d think it was cool that I was calling them from there I thought.

I wanted to feel the scene out… I wanted to let it all sink in a little bit so I sat down and I had a look around. It all began to unfold in my mind… the direction the tanks came from… the sounds they’d make… their squeaking tracks rolling on the asphalt echoing in the canyon of concrete buildings… I could see the crosswalk he was walking across when it happened.

I stood up, still painting the scene on the canvas of my mind with the brushes of my imagination and I walked towards the crosswalk… just as he did that remarkable day.

Man… sometimes even I have a hard time putting things into words… sometimes feelings, emotions and perceptions are just too powerful and swift to get a grasp on.

Surveying the scene where this historic collision happened from the street… it was so much different than the picture we all know… that was shot from high above… it’s got a whole different tone than the lonliness and isolation that the street level offered. Just like in the square where I had felt so small… even the street there was massive in width… one of those subcompact cars flying through the smog could have crushed me like a bug. The thought of standing my ground in front of a column of many ton armored tanks with their diesel engines shaking and belching thick black smoke and rumbling in anger… I’ll tell you this… with the greatest respect that I can muster… that guy… at that moment… he took on the entire world. He was a bad ass motherfucker who said ‘hey… I don’t like what’s going down here.’ and he backed it up with his hundred and fifty pound body alone in the streets. He never even put those grocery bags down. But for a moment, that man stopped the world. He stood his ground. He stood our ground. He stood for everyman that day.

I didn’t.

I didn’t even chance stopping where he did. I didn’t want to stop a bus.

When I got across the street I walked back towards Tienenmen Square wondering what happened to the guy.

These thoughts were crisply punctuated when I found the remains of a completely flattened bicycle. It had been run over by something pretty heavy because it was as flat as a bicycle could conceivably become. It even had a curve to it… a lot of parts were gone but the frame, the handlebars, even the rims were crushed flat. I picked it up, still thinking about Tank Man and I realized what it meant.

Something inside me wanted to take it home… to show my people… people born and raised with a freedom fought for by others… I wanted to show them what we pretty much let happen here… the great crime that we ignored. It was a strong symbol to me at least of an oppresive government that lost it’s temper on it’s own people.

I’d never get that flattened bicycle home, but I carried stashed inside the tubes of my backpack messages that people had asked me to carry out of the country to a place where mistakenly so they thought good and decent people might give two shits about the treachery bestowed upon them in their quest for what we have but could really care less about. A freedom so strong… a freedom so deep that it was a part of me wether I was conscious about it or not… a freedom that formed the person I was and carried me on a long and mostly accidental journey to a place where youth was cut short for having the audacity and lack of patience to demand a more tolerant society where people would count for just a little more than cheap labor.

I promised myself I’d remember what happened to them. I promised myself that on June 4th, 1990 that I’d say a prayer there in Tienenmen Square. I’d recognize their martyrdom to the cause of freedom and I’d pay my respects on the anniversary of the barbarism of their all powerful and vicious central authority.

When that morning came with its sultry brownish orange sunrise, three hundred and sixty five days after the blood letting, when the flag of a nation was raised over it’s most proud square… I was the only person that wasn’t Chinese standing there as a witness to at least offer the the quiet contempt of my heart and the objection of my soul as a counterbalance to the disgrace of the murder of these children.

There were no television cameras or satellite trucks… no journalists fixing their hair or taking notes on those long pads that they carry. Nothing.

I carried no sign or banner… I spoke no message of objection. I sought to instigate nothing.

I stood there in Tienenmen Square as a witness.

A witness to what the rest of the free world was so selfishly quick to forget.

Two days later I’d board a train that I’d get off of in another world… where a wall that represented hate and anger and mistrust would be falling, hacked to pieces bit by bit by a people celebrating a new freedom and unity.

#China #Factory #Nice #parts #photos #Plastic #Shot #Injection Mould

[thebackroadtourist]

My Week in Bosnia: Belgians, Yoga, and a Homophobe.

The tequila bottle steadily made its’ way around us as the European fir trees towered over our petite wooden shack. 90’s hits blared from my iPhone as the mosquitos danced to the rhythm of ‘Here Comes The Hotstepper”. Outside our hut the Tara river flowed gracefully as the cold night breeze kept us huddled inside. The rafting boats sat still in the night as the stars reflected their light off the Balkan cliffs that surrounded us. It was midnight. Early the next morning we would journey on a 5 hour rafting trip through Bosnia and Montenegro. Around the tequila went, each mouth taking turns cupping the lip of the bottle until we reached the bottom. Instinctual dancing ensued, creating a ripple of energy in the calm setting of the remote village we were in. We didn’t care, because who were we in that moment? Just a trio of humans randomly selected by the universe and placed in virtually the middle of nowhere. No wifi signals could distract us, no job could stress us, no school could dread us, and nothing in our environment could cease our human nature to laugh, dance and be free in that moment. Little did I know these young and adventurous tequila companions of mine would become like family for me in the following days.

I had met the Belgians 3 days ago as I stumbled off the 14 hour night train From Serbia to Montenegro. We shared a taxi together to the bus station in Bar, where they had planned to stay as I caught a bus to Budva. They had mentioned they were headed to Budva the next day, but I never saw them there and had not been expecting to see them. 

If there is one thing I’ve learned throughout my travels, it’s that the backpacking community is small - very small. An Indian guy I met in Spain was on the bus with me from Slovenia to Croatia. A Portuguese Girl I briefly lived with in Costa Rica bumped into me in Colombia. Two Dutch guys I befriended in Belgrade were at my hostel in Sarajevo. A girl I rode a ferry with in Albania ran into me in Tirana and traveled with me to Macedonia. The list goes on and on. It’s easy to bump into each other by random because the destinations are quite similar and paths often cross.

We awoke early the next morning, geared up and prepped to set out on the Tara river. We had an hour to kill and one of the girls requested we do yoga. I had mentioned the night before that I was a certified yoga instructor. We lay our wetsuits on the wooden staircase attached to our hut and found a flat surface on the campground to practice. They had never done yoga before. I guided them through the basics and was impressed at how quickly they picked my cues despite the slight language barrier. They even understood “Down-dog” “Warrior” and “Pigeon”, raising my skepticism that it was indeed their first time, along with their flawless technique. Halfway through our flow I heard “My grandma wants me to teach her what you teach us.” I paused, those unexpected words riddled my mind for a minute. And for that moment I felt kind of cool. Cool because somewhere in the world there will be a Belgian granny busting out Mike Ryan yoga moves. I laughed at the image of a grandma doing headstands with her granny-friends and leaving a Mike Ryan yoga trail amongst grandmas in the country of Belgian. We ended the session with a child’s pose before we threw on our life vests and hit the waters. 

That night we took a bus to Sarajevo, the muslim dense capital of Bosnia where thousands of civilians lost their lives in a devastating 44 month war just 20 years ago. You could feel the energy of the town - damaged yet on the rise. Bosnia is relatively safe, yet known to be the sketchiest of all former Yugoslavian countries; the one country in the Balkans where a few backpackers have shared stories with me of hearing a gun shot, getting pick-pocketed or experiencing a conflict of some kind let alone a mean stare. The bus arrived at dusk, 15 kilometers outside the city center so we scanned for a taxi. After several attempts, I flagged one down and negotiated a semi-decent price to our hostel. The cabby had an attitude and was not the most welcoming guy, maybe in part that I fought to get his price lowered. With myself in the front seat  and the Belgians in the back, we made our way out of the Sarajevo boondocks, the lights of the city center upon us in the distance. We were half way to our hostel when one of the Belgian’s realized she had left her iPhone on the bus. Shit. Despite the odds of never seeing her phone again, they kept calm - like yogis. We called her phone and a Bosnian guy answered without a lick of English was spoken. We put him on the phone with our cabby as I gestured to our driver to speak with him. He looked extremely annoyed at this point, with not a lick of English spoken from his mouth either. He said a few words with the man from the other end and passed the phone back to the Belgian girl before whipping the car around in a U-turn and as he muttered the words “bus garage”. We accelerated towards the way we came, towards the apparent “bus garage” to retrieve the phone, so we assumed. We had no choice but to trust the universe on this one. It was dark now and the cabby sped with authority through the poverty-ridden residential neighborhoods and other unfamiliar sights as we passed many dead-end street signs along the way. At this point I think the three of us were experiencing horrific ransom-like images in our minds as the bald-headed broad-chested stoned-faced cabby winded through the shadows of the night, the mountains in front of us now, the lights of the city behind us. A few more disconcerting turns later and we arrived to our destination: A group of Bosnian men standing there, waiting for us in front of what appeared to be a house. My heart hastened as the men creeped towards us in unison like a pack of gorillas. The lead man knocked on my passenger side window. I rolled it down just a quarter way to be safe. My eyes darted from man to man, and then - the iPhone! I spotted it! It glistened off the moonlight in the hands of one of the men. The man with the phone then reached toward the opening of my window with a smile and in a soft tone said “Here is your phone” as he handed it to me. I thanked him profusely as he smiled and waved as we drove off, back towards the center of town. I thanked God, or Allah, or whoever was in charge that day for letting us keep our possessions, and kidneys for that matter. Supposedly organ hunting is a thing in this part of the world, though extremely rare - it can happen. 

Alas, the night wasn’t over yet. We approached the hostel, worn out from our long day of rafting, traveling and timid cab rides. As we entered inside the first people we saw were my dutch friends from Belgrade, completely out of nowhere! How random. What had intended to be a night of sleep escalated into a rejoice with the Dutchies, enthused with our spontaneous reunion. Chevapi, beers and bars with live music proceeded until the Dutchie’s went back to catch an early morning bus to Split. And finally, after nearly 24 hours of an action packed day, we laid our heads down to slumber. 

The town of Sarajevo was beautiful, Sarajevo meaning “Palace in the Valley” a name given by the Ottoman Empire just 500 years ago when the town was discovered. An “new” town, for European standards. Despite a stifling 40% unemployment rate the town was quite welcoming, with the beauty of over 200 mosques and unique architecture which stretched long down the river that split the town into two. Turkish food, markets, and Muslims occupied most of the town, but one small vegetarian restaurant stood out so we decided to try it. With so much meat in the past few days, weeks even, we were all craving some veggies.

The ambience was calm and inviting, decorative painting of colorful fruits and vegetables covered the walls of the cafe, a little tacky looking but light-hearted.   Our waiter seemed nice at first, poking fun with us and being the charming guy that he came off to be. Then half way through our entree he walked up to our table, turned towards me and said “You man, you are SO handsome!” I laughed and thanked him, unsure of where he was going with this. “Are you heterosexual? You’re with all these beautiful women!” He continued to ask more questions, some quite personal, until I humorously interjected “Bro are you hitting on me?” The Belgian girls giggled as his face turned red. 

“No man, I just wanted to make sure that you weren’t gay. Because that would be such a waste. I can’t understand how some handsome guys are GAY! It’s sad,” he pointed to his head and shook it in disgust. The laughter at the table ceased as our smiles came to to a halt. I cleared my throat. “You know man, maybe you should be gay - you would get laid a lot more. Gay guys really know how to have a good time. In fact, they are the funnest people in the world to be around.” With an astonished look on his face he frowned, realized that we weren’t a force to reckon with and he walked away. Moments later he dropped our check on our table without stopping and not a word came out of him. It was a shock to hear this guy openly admit his homophobia to a group of foreigners. Nonetheless, it was an experience that illustrated where some countries and their people are on the progression scale.

We arrived back to our hostel that night and the 3 of us hugged and bid our farewells. It was 5 days of adventure through Bosnia together, and that night I would take a 9 hour bus ride to Ulcinj. I knew I would miss these girls. I wanted to take them with me but as with all travel relationships, abrupt endings are inevitable. The Belgian girls left an impression on me, and inspired a future pit stop to Belgium for my next Euro-trip. I just hope they hold on to their phones.

#travel #travelmore #travel adventures #solobackpacking #Adventure #explore #exploretheworld #wander #wanderingsoul #nomadiclife #gyspysoul #globetrotter #europe #eurotrip #Yugoslavia #balkans #backpack #travelinglife