#and i thought of ones on highways or set by gravestones

[themerriweathermage]

Wrath and Ruin: Chapter Four

Chapter Four: Silvanus

Morning came too early, and Lydia was up before I ever stirred. “I thought it best to let you sleep.” I shook out the kinks from sleeping on the ground. As much as I hated to say it, sleeping in the dragon form was almost preferable to sleeping in this wolf form, phasing up to stretch out protesting muscles. “Breakfast?” I shook my head. At this point, with what loomed in front of me, I wasn’t particularly hungry. I would need to eat again before I took my dragon form, but that could wait a little bit longer. My path to what I was looking for would have to be made on foot.

“I’m going to head out.” I murmured. “No sense in waiting any longer.” She didn’t press me not eating, even though for a moment I could sense the concern. Instead she followed me out. This unfortunately wasn’t the time for small talk. I needed to concentrate and we needed to make fast tracks across unknown terrain. The countryside was overgrown. The highway that had once been here was still visible in splotches here and there beneath moss and dirt. Even the solar farm across the road had been swallowed by nature, although that was something to consider. I might see if anything could be harvested and taken back to the Badlands.

Another brick walled church marked the path I turned down. From here it was just a matter of time. I couldn’t say that I was really prepared for what awaited me, if there was anything left. And if I had to look, look and see what had happened, I wasn’t sure that I could take it. My pace slowed the more we came into view of the graveyard. I remembered the last time I was here. It wasn’t a good memory or a bad memory; it was just a memory. I had gone to say goodbye.

I don’t know if Lydia sensed it, but something told my senses that the air here was off. As if to prove our conversation last night about other magic users existing in this world right, I realized that the graveyard was warded. The magic was... stale, as if someone had set it a long time ago and it had simply never been pressed against. I wondered... who would have cared so deeply enough to respect this final resting place? Was it someone’s act of compassion or did they have loved ones who were buried here?

“It’s untouched.” Lydia murmured quietly, walking the rows of gravestones. Time stood still here, unaware of the world that had continued to spin on without it.

“It’s magic.” I replied. “A ward.”

“Yours?”

“No.” She glanced at me sharply. “But it is old.”

“I thought you said wards would unmake themselves on the death of the person who made it.”

“My wards will.” I murmured. “But this isn’t my vein of magic. This is not druidcraft.” I searched the names, pausing down a row. Pausing because my family name was written on the headstone. No one in the Badlands knew me by that name; few people even knew or called me by my full first name either. I let my eyes wander down one, down two, and in the third spot was my dad. I studied the marker. The year of death wouldn’t have been terribly long after I had disappeared. And it came as no surprise that my mother’s grave was beside his. Even in sickness, she never wanted to leave his side. Truly a ‘til death do us part’ couple.

And then my eyes fell down to the plaque between the two gravestones, a memorial marker no less. The one thing that I’d been hoping wouldn’t be there was there, with a name that no longer reflected who I was carved into the ornate stone. I knelt, my fingers tracing over the letters.

Here lies the memory of a beloved daughter and sister, who disappeared without trace. May the angels guide her path back home.

I scoffed then. My touch against the stone had revealed all. The arguments that followed their choice to put this here. The words that had been said and the way they had hurt the one person who loved me most. They knew. They had known, and yet they buried the memory of me in a religious rite. 

In a split second, I saw red, letting the rage take over, lifting the stone from the ground without effort and hurling it against a tree. “I wasn’t your daughter!” Lydia started out of the corner of my eye. “You buried a false memory of me! You had a son! A son to carry on your family name! But you buried a daughter; well, let me tell you that that person died a long time ago!” I seethed, feeling the change come over me, taking the stone and breaking it in half with my bare hands, not that they were particularly hands anymore. “He told you the truth! And you spat in his face. You couldn’t accept me for who I was.” My shoulders slumped, tears brimming in my eyes.

“You were my mother. My mother! How could you not?!” The tears came then. “How could you not love me for who I was?!” I folded myself in, sinking to my knees. “How could you hurt the one person who loved me most?” I whispered. I didn’t even want to think about how much he had been hurt by their words, or how much anguish it must have been to see my memory so willingly be tarnished.

“I didn’t mean to go.” I started. “I didn’t have a choice. I did not leave; I was taken.” I didn’t know if they could hear me. Some part of me hoped they could. Some part of me hoped that they could see me broken, to see what their words had done. “If only you could see the man I turned out to be, but even if you could, would you call me your son? Would you call me who I am? Would you call me by the name that fits me most? Would you call me Brenior, the enduring one?” I asked, wanting to fight and run and just... My chest heaved and my stomach was turning and I couldn’t bear the anguish that felt like it was tearing me apart inside.

Everything that had happened since we’d been thrown here all came pouring out in one agonized yell, like a bottle with too much pressure that had finally exploded, and I couldn’t even begin to describe the feeling. It was almost as if there was a power within me, bursting at the seams to be let out. A power begging to be released that wasn’t my Wrath, that didn’t belong to my anger or my temper, and I couldn’t carry it anymore.

Within the span of a minute, it felt-- and looked-- like a hurricane had ravaged the area, as power exploded out of me. I didn’t even know that I had that kind of power inside of me, but it had taken with it some of the aches and pains. Breathing came a little easier as I laid back in the wet grass, sapped of my strength. The only consolation I had was that Lydia had been protected during the affair. Even in the midst of everything, she remained shielded, protected by a thin ward that was quickly fading in the aftermath.

“Well.” A new voice sounded and my head immediately snapped up, eyes on alert. “That was quite the show.” The man stepped out from beneath the branches of the oak tree that had sprawled across the yard, undisturbed in these last years, and my mind immediately recognized that there was a part to him that wasn’t entirely human. My first instinct was to tuck Lydia behind me, and this action didn’t go unnoticed. “Is she your mother?” He asked. It took everything I had not to bare my teeth and raise my hackles at this intruder, the animal instinct in me ready to fight. “Your bonds burn so brightly.” I narrowed my eyes. There was something familiar about that statement and only I would know why. So who was this stranger who would recite my own words back to me? “You would die for her. You would kill for her.”

“Who are you?” I asked. He tilted his head to the side slightly. “Who are you to recite my own words back to me?” 

“I wondered if you would notice.” He stepped more into the light, taking the form, almost as if he were shapeshifting, of a man but a man adorned in twisting vines and stag antlers, life seeming to swarm around him in an aura. “But seeing how you two are like, I don’t find it surprising. Kin calls to kin.” When he took a step forward, life sprang forward to meet him, flowers and clover sprouting underfoot. It probably would have been in my best interest to step back at his approach but I held my ground regardless. “Tenacity. Most wouldn’t stand to greet me.”

“Who. Are. You?” I asked again. 

“In the common tongue, I am known as Silvanus.”

“The Oak Father. The god of druids.” I realized. That would certainly explain the phenomenon happening around him.

“Yes.” He replied. 

“Did you ward this place?” 

“Perhaps.”

“Why?”

“You were called to it, were you not?” Silvanus asked. “Not a place warded with a different magic than your own, but a place warded with a much more powerful magic, strong enough that not even you would recognize it on first glance.”

“You... wanted me to come here.”

“I wanted you to come to me a long time ago.” Silvanus started. “But it seems your duty as baron has outweighed that call.” He didn’t come any closer and yet I could feel as if he was right next to me. “And you’ve paid a high price for it.” I knew he was watching me, trying to gauge me, trying to gauge my reactions. My eyes flicked to the side, because I knew he had to be talking about the bruises, but I hadn’t entirely told Lydia the truth about why we had been leaving the Badlands.

“I think I’ve spent enough time chasing after things that aren’t important to my barony.” Silvanus offered me a wry smile, and I wondered if he knew, but he seemed to know things about me that only I would ever know, so my questions were probably answered already.

“But this is, is it not?” Silvanus asked. “As important if not more.” His eyes flicked over my shoulder to Lydia behind me and then back down. “I assume you feel a little bit better after your outburst, now that the power inside of you isn’t trying to eat its way out of you?” He asked.

“A fluke.” I replied. “A gift that’s cost me double its worth.” Silvanus let out an incredulous laugh, shaking his head at me.

“This isn’t the magic of the mountains that brought you and your sister those gifts. This is the magic of nature and all her glory, of Gaia and the nymphs, of thicketed forests and those who would wander in them, of rushing rivers and rhythmic tides. You kept it in, when it was begging to be let out. And it damn near killed you.” I blinked. Sure, Nix had reminded me that often magic came at a price, that overusing my gift could be causing my own pain, that it didn’t come without sacrifice. But what Silvanus was telling me... was the complete opposite.

“You weave it in ways only you know how, but even experienced druids would have a hard time containing the magic you have. You warded a man’s entire crop, did you not?”

“And it cost me.”

“Not in the manner you think it did.” Silvanus replied. “You were betrayed. Your magic knows you were betrayed. Your ward was built from hope. It’s hard to protect something when you’re being pulled in two opposite directions.”

“But...”

“You have a gift, Brenior Ithilion. Don’t you think it’s about time you started using it?” Silvanus steamrolled my protests.

“A gift. A directionless gift. That comes with no instructions.” He chuckled.

“Get lost in the wilds of your barony. A place will find you where you can learn more.”

“A grove.” I realized. He was telling me to find a grove. For us to meet? I had so many questions.

“If that is what you wish to call it.” And just as he seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, he disappeared into the mists that still remained after my outburst. I let out a soft sigh, sinking back into the grass with a million thoughts running through my head.

“Bren.” Lydia’s voice sounded so far away to me. “Brenior.” I glanced to the side to see her standing there, her hand reached for my shoulder but not touching, uncertain. The look in her eyes read what she wasn’t saying. She coaxed me to the tree, offering herself for a hug and it took everything I had not to launch myself at her. I didn’t want to hurt her, not like this especially, but the need for comfort overpowered that. I all but threw myself to her lap, burying my face against her and just crying until there was nothing left but dry sobs and shuddering hiccups.

Her touch seemed hesitant but considering the form I was in, I didn’t blame her. Careful fingers traced across the matte metallic scales, across my head and down my back in soothing motions. I knew the half shift was tied to strong emotions, anger, fear, sadness, pain. She didn’t say anything; she didn’t need to. The fact that she was there was enough. The fact that she had stayed was enough. Long after the tears had stopped, she stayed, she kept her hands on me, as if to make sure that I was okay.

“Are you alright?” She finally asked, her voice low and measured. I had turned into hellfire and wrath personified and destroyed what had been left of a life I no longer had. Now the only memories were the memories that rested with the dead. I leaned back against her, staring off into the distance, eyes unseeing.

“I... I want to hurt myself.” I admitted lowly. Her sharp intake of breath told me she was concerned. “I don’t want to kill myself; I just want to hurt myself. I want to make the pain I feel on the inside show on the outside. Not for sympathy or for pity, but to know that it’s real, to see it be real, to see the blood as if someone’s twisted a knife in my heart because it certainly feels that way.” I replied.

“Is... that why you’ve stayed like...” Like this? With an armor that’s impenetrable by normal human standards? 

“It’s tied to strong emotion. Most shifts I can do without thinking; they come almost second nature. But this one? But wrath? Wrath has a short fuse and a long cool down.” I admitted. “I’ll come out of it eventually, when the feeling passes.” When I don’t have the urge to destroy everything I’ve worked so hard to keep. Even in a half dragon form, I could still see the scars. And I knew it was the subconscious reason that I kept myself so mostly modest to my barony, even though I didn’t have to be anymore.

I couldn’t put the hurt into words. It was strangely reminiscent of loving someone so much it hurts only to have that love be dashed against the rocks, which was also strangely reminiscent of what had happened with Quinn, but worse. Worse because they had been my family and because they hadn’t seen me for who I was or wouldn’t see me for who I was, even after I had been lost. Worse because I would have brought down the moon and stars for my mother and yet still I’d been laid to rest with rites I didn’t believe in, blessed even, in rites I didn’t believe in.

“When I realized that it probably wasn’t safe to come out to my folks, I... tested out a last name. Something that didn’t tie me to anyone in this world. Ithilion, I called myself, in the same language that Brenior comes from.”

“What does it mean?”

“Son of the moon.” I sighed softly. “I was born in the morning hours. Too small and too weak for this world.”

“And yet you endured.” A small smile edged to my lips, the shift beginning to fade. And yet, I endured. She got it.

“Through hell and high water.” I murmured. Silence fell over the area, even more than normal it felt like.

“Bren?” I made a low sound. “I know it’s not my place, but... if you want me to call you my son...”

“I couldn’t impede.” I murmured. “I... Ryder...”

“Was an adult who made his own decisions. I do not hold you responsible for his death. Nor would you be replacing him. But if you want me to call you my son...”

“I’d like that.” I whispered. “Mom.”

#Wrath and Ruin #Welcome to the Badlands #Welcome to the Badlands Series

[kulsumsdigitaldiary]

Objects in Space Lyrics

Yesterday alone I laid everything out on the carpet Books, kitchen things, objects with specific purpose or none Arranged them sideways in a grid on the floor there unmoored Out of context and then considered it First the whole picture, then everything individually Humming along at the deadest pace imaginable One object then another and then the next And I wondered what they meant there If they meant anything still

Found notes Camping supplies A book you bought in the desert “Identifying Wildflowers” Pictures from vacations From parties Kitschy gifts we bought from rest stops On that road trip out West Objects Everything itself And then memory

All of it laid out there From the dining room The living room The hallway and the basement and the kitchen From that room we called the office But never used Even the bathroom Everything laid out there on the floor on the carpet out of context

And I sat there for hours

Today I moved everything from the floor to the table in the dining room Placed each thing carefully without reason or at least without one I understood or could describe There on the table together and when I was done and stepped back I realized what I had made Keepsakes Pictures Letters Ordinary objects all collected there

A memorial

And I thought of ones on highways or set by gravestones All the things you see there but don’t understand but still bring a remembered thing back vividly Invoke someone’s reality when there together in that place in that way out of context And I knew I had to take it down before anybody else saw Tomorrow I plan to put them all somewhere Those things In boxes Side of the road Attic maybe All these things that push and pull me through history To places I once was, places I might’ve gone, places I ended up going

Postcards Ticket stubs from one thing or another A personalized coffee mug neither your name nor mine Phone cards and old phones A page from an old calendar I bought once at a thrift store and insisted on hanging That cycles of the moon print Photos Old boots of mine

Put them in boxes

And I sat there for hours In the living room first Then in the dining room Moving things around Picking things up and seeing where they took me To what place in history What moment on our timeline Where we were, where I was, where I thought we’d end up In this house or on the highway Driving somewhere near Christmas In the desert or anywhere else And I put them in boxes

A super relevant song for my practice. A friend shared this song with me and I have been listening and analysing it non-stop.

La Dispute. (2014). Objects In Space [11]. On Rooms of the House. Resist Records https://genius.com/La-dispute-objects-in-space-lyrics

#context

[bardapologist]

nothing and i mean NOTHING makes me want to lay on the floor as acutely as the album rooms of the house by la dispute

#i think history is a system of roads and theres nowhere it doesnt go #i want to leave here for where nobody goes #i knew what you meant you want to go where it glows all those places where your watch doesnt work #did you ever think youd end up here #all the language you make out of looks and names #all the motions of ordinary love #let me in give me holy privileges #we say nothing then out loud and thats what feels the most profound #a sadness hanging over her like some pentecostal flame drifting on and off #but she never said it once out loud #on the way back home from where you thought they meant when they said where sister went #and i thought of ones on highways or set by gravestones #all the things you see there but dont understand but still bring a remembered thing back vividly #invoke someone elses reality when together in that way in that place out of context #and i knew i had to take it down before somebody else saw #picking things up and seeing where they took me #to what place in history what moment on our timeline where we were where i was where i thought we would end up #(these are just lyrics from like 4 songs on this album i could copy and paste the whole album but this has already gotten ridiculous) #anyway this album is one of my favorite pieces of contemporary poetry please listen to it

[findingjoynweirdstuff]

Dream SMP Recap (April 12/2021) - 72 Hours

Quackity takes a trip down memory lane, recounting the events that led up to his visit to the prison.

---

VOD LINKS:

Ponk

Tommy

HBomb94

Foolish

Quackity

Badboyhalo

Karl Jacobs

Ranboo

Eret

Captain Puffy

---

- Ponk’s room in Niki’s city is decorated with posters of anime, his favorite people, pictures of Ponk and Sam next to each other, and his Enderman named Speed Wagon

- He wants to get a poster from both Foolish and HBomb

- Ponk waits at the Community House and Foolish boats in.

- Foolish notices Ponk’s stump, not knowing what it is at first. Ponk tells him that “Sam happened,” and Foolish replies that Ponk needs to get Sam out of his head. Ponk then tells him that he’s been taken into a communist cult, and that he’s missing an arm, and it oozes red stuff. Foolish freaks out.

- Ponk remarks that Foolish has a good sense of style, and he would like to commission something. He leads Foolish to the city. Foolish asks about his arm again, and Ponk says he’ll tell Foolish about it in time.

- Foolish says at least Ponk seems to be in good spirits. Ponk says that it’s because of the medication that Niki gave him. The salmon in his roof produces a drug that makes him happy.

- They mess around with the posters in Ponk’s room some. Ponk mentions that Sam took his arm, and Foolish is shocked. Ponk’s said too much. He wishes Foolish luck and says he’ll pay him well later before leaving Foolish to the room.

- Foolish says he knew Ponk and Sam were on rocky terms, but it’s a bit much of Sam to take Ponk’s arm...

- He puts a picture of himself in the shark outfit on Ponk’s wall and leaves to continue working.

---

LAS NEVADAS: EPISODE TWO

---

Two shadowy hooded figures ride on horseback across the wilderness. 

There’s a third who rides a skeleton horse. 

They approach Eret’s castle from the direction of Antfrost’s animal sanctuary. As they ride down the Prime Path, sirens can be heard in the background.

---

There is a montage of Quackity going to the prison each day, rain or shine. The waivers are shown, and Quackity’s name is signed.

On screen, the day numbers are shown as Dream runs around the cell, punching the air.

It starts from 2. At day 16, Dream is in the respawn pool as Quackity approaches. The numbers go up to 29.

-

72 Hours before The Visit

-

- Quackity rows to a remote island, where he meets Awesamdude. Sam is confused at how Quackity knew about this place.

- Sam has been busy farming in a small patch of land to get away from things. He started not long ago.

- There’s a gravestone with a disc and a jukebox dedicated to Tommy.

- Quackity tells Sam that Tommy’s death wasn’t his fault. Sam disagrees, saying it was his responsibility.

- Sam shows Quackity his beach full of turtles and his horse

- Quackity tells Sam that he’s a very caring person. Sam shows Quackity his house. 

- Quackity then tells Sam that he’s not the only one who thinks Tommy’s death wasn’t his fault, but Dream’s. To accept that is the only way to move on.

Sam: “I could’ve done something, Quackity. I could’ve...I don’t know. I could’ve done something.”

Quackity: “No, you know what you could’ve done? You could’ve gone back into that jail cell and put a sword right through his neck. That’s what you could’ve done, Sam. That’s what you could’ve done to Dream. Because guess what, Sam? this isn’t the first time he does it, and this isn’t the last time either. Sam, look at me...the only way he’s gonna stop this is if you get rid of him, Sam. That is the only way.”

- Quackity says they should do it right now. They go back into the house and Sam activates a secret door with a potato, leading down into a basement full of weapons and armor. They head out in boats as Quackity encourages Sam to do it.

Quackity: “Feel that fury in your fucking heart, Sam, and know that’s all because of Dream. Let’s go. Let’s go, Sam. It’s all because of Dream.”

Sam: “You’re right! I couldn’t do anything! Dream would’ve killed him anyways if I had gone in there, there’s nothing I could’ve done!”

Sam: “I can just kill him! I can just murder him! He can’t get away, he’s stuck in there, he has nothing! He’s so weak! This is the perfect chance! I can just murder -- no one would even need to know that he died! I can just say he was still locked up there, I could -- yes -- you’re right, and if I kill him no one will die! I don’t want any visitors already!” 

Quackity: “Exactly! No visitors! No visitors, Sam! No visitors, no one’s allowed to see Dream ever again, it’s a secret between you and me, Sam...we’re not gonna tell anyone. As far as we’re aware, Dream is in that prison, and no one’s allowed to visit him ever again because he committed that crime against Tommy. Guess what? no one’s even gonna wanna see him, Sam, nobody! Because he killed Tommy, and everyone’s scared of him. But guess what? You and me, we’re not gonna be scared, Sam, because we know Dream is going to be fucking gone.”

Sam: “‘Cause he’s stuck in that cell anyway! There’s nothing he can do! We could kill him, and when he’s a ghost, I could go in and kill him again! And kill him again! And kill him again! And kill him again! And I can kill him a thousand times for the one death he gave Tommy!”

“Do you wanna come with me? You wanna help me do it? You can hold him down, and I'll chop his head off! We can kill him just like that, and there’s nothing he can do! Yes! He can just cry, and scream, and he’ll die -- I wonder if he’ll laugh now!”

- They reach the prison entrance and enter the portal. Quackity tells Sam that this is all for Tommy, and it’ll make him feel better.

- Before they can go through the defenses, though, Sam hesitates and starts having doubts.

Sam: “Quackity, we can’t kill him! That’s the whole reason we put him in here to begin with! Tommy trusted me to keep Dream in here! And now Tommy’s -- Tommy’s dead, I can’t do this to Tommy! Tommy trusted me, and he might’ve died, but that doesn’t mean we can let this happen! No, no! Tommy would want us to keep him locked up! The whole reason we locked him up was -- if someone else dies, Dream’s the only one who can do anything about it!”

“I can’t ruin what I promised to Tommy more than once.”

- Quackity says this is his chance at redemption, but Sam insists they can’t kill him. Quackity stops and then says he’s sorry he got ahead of himself. Quackity goes to leave, but then hesitates and goes back to Sam one last time.

- One way or another, someone will have to do it. If not Sam, Quackity. He reminds Sam that Tommy’s death wasn’t his fault.

Quackity: “Sam, before I leave...you gotta get it together. Las Nevadas will have no place for emotions, or for any personal ideas that you may have, or feelings, Sam. If you’re gonna be my business partner, you gotta do more than this. Understand?”

“I’ll talk to you soon, Sam.”

- Quackity leaves.

-

48 hours before The Visit.

-

- Quackity is speaking with someone. He thanks someone for giving him the spot, telling them that they can’t tell anyone about it. 

- Quackity is near Fundy’s house. He digs straight down into the ground, landing in an underground area made of nether brick. It’s an extensive series of hallways. Quackity has a bunch of TNT.

- He finds the Egg Room and starts putting TNT around the Egg.

- He notices Bad and Punz approach and backs into the area behind, brandishing a redstone torch. Bad warns him not to do it.

- Quackity tells Bad that he doesn’t need the Egg, he knows that there’s still a part of Bad that isn’t doing this, and that they can work together.

- Bad replies that if Quackity gets in the way of his mission, he won’t have anything. 

- Rat starts barking. Quackity says he’s doing this for Bad.

Punz: “Bad, don’t let this guy manipulate you.”

- Quackity shouts that he’s going to light it up and places more.

Quackity: “We’re all gonna go. I’m doing this for your own, Bad! I’m doing this for your own good!”

Bad: “You’re doing this for yourself, Quackity! I need this! I need the Egg!”

- Quackity gets Bad to order Punz away and keeps negotiating with Bad. He tells Bad that before the Egg, Bad was one of his closest friends, and in order for them to do great things together, Bad has to let go of the Egg.

Quackity sets off the TNT. The explosions go off, and the Egg turns to obsidian.

---

On one heart, someone slowly makes their way through the burning remains of the nether brick area, holding a single redstone torch as the Egg whispers. 

HOW DARE YOU TRY AND TAKE THIS ONE FROM ME.

YOU WILL SUFFER FOR THIS.

HOW DARE YOU TRY AND TAKE THIS ONE FROM ME.

They stumble down the hall and the screen goes black.

-

24 hours before The Visit.

-

Quackity rides Boner down the Pogtopia highway.

He pauses at Tommy’s summer home, looking at the prison, and rides down.

- He notices George standing at the entrance, looking towards the portal. The two have a happy reunion. Quackity asks him why he’s here -- George says he’s just chilling.

- Quackity hasn’t seen George in ages. George is surprised by the scar on Quackity’s eye.

- He shows George Boner, who he has renamed to Ossium.

- He asks what George has been up to. It’s been ages since he’s seen George, Karl or Sapnap.

- Quackity tells George that he’s taken a break from El Rapids and has been working on a new project called Las Nevadas, a country full of casinos. An entertainment haven. He wants to set up a meeting with George, Karl and Sapnap about getting them all casinos.

- George asks, what about Kinoko Kingdom? Quackity doesn’t know what that is. George tells him, and says that Karl said he told Quackity about it.

- Quackity wasn’t told anything about this. He asks how long ago. It’s been a while.

- Quackity thought they had El Rapids going. It’s been hard to get in contact with them. George says he can still join.

Quackity: “I was working on this project, and I wanted to p-- no, no no, you’re...that makes sense. That explains so many things.”

- George tells him the direction that Kinoko is in. Quackity asks if they aren’t a part of El Rapids anymore. George says he supposes they can’t be in two countries at once.

- Quackity asks George not to tell anything to anybody about Las Nevadas. It will open soon, but he wants all the details to remain between them. As far as George knows, it’s just a country with entertainment.

- He says goodbye and leaves, telling George to say hi to Karl and Sapnap for him.

---

There’s a shot of Eret’s tower.

The Socializing Club and Purpled’s Walmart.

The old remodeled Community House.

The cobblestone version of Tommy’s house with the spruce trees around his land.

Skeppy’s original blackstone house with the three-door entrance.

Ze Haus.

The Spawn trap.

The camera pans up to a view of L’manburg, with blackstone walls, and the rebuilt Camarvan made of dirt.

The Elton John House and Space Program within the walls.

King’s Court.

It’s the Election Debate, Quackity and George arguing with Wilbur and Tommy.

---

- Quackity is out on a walk with Wilbur. He wants to know more about Wilbur. He asks why Wilbur has done the things he does.

- Wilbur tells him he wants protection for his people. Quackity asks to talk to Wilbur off the books. He wants to talk to Wilbur not as politicians, but people.

Wilbur: “Um, I mean I appreciate it -- No. The election’s in twelve days.”

- Quackity insists, and Wilbur says he’ll try.

- Quackity says he appreciates the Wilbur is trying to protect his people, and he doesn’t aim to overthrow him. 

Quackity: “None of this is about fighting to me. I think there’s just a big difference between you and me, and I like to see the good side on people. I like to think that there’s a side of everyone that is willing to work for wanting to see a better future for everyone, and I think that’s where you and I are very, very different.”

“See, when I got here, when I got to these lands, and I wanted to join L’manburg, I was told I couldn’t. I was told to walk away because I wasn’t allowed to join L’manburg. And to me, that was a lack of belonging. And if I have to become President and tear down some walls in order for no one to ever feel unwelcome again, then so be it. I do believe that everyone has a good side to them, and I do believe that everyone has something to contribute to the nation.”

Wilbur: “Your aspirations of optimism are not going to be subject to my nation’s security, I’m afraid. I -- I completely disagree with everything you said...”

“You say everyone has a good side, Quackity -- and you’re right. You’re right. Everyone has a good side. But that good side is only there to help themselves. If you’re really gonna help people, you’re gonna need power, Quackity. You can make a movement, you can make a resistance, right, you can go out and you can come back, and they’ll give you a ticket-tape parade. They’ll cheer for you in the streets, but you will change nothing. If you have a revolution, everyone will hate you. You will sacrifice everything, and you will lose everything you ever had, but you will come back and everything will be changed. And Quackity, if you wanna change things, you’re gonna need power. That’s what you really want, isn’t it. Look at me..”

“And power isn’t gained from diplomacy, and bureaucracy, and giant courthouses suspended in the sky, blah blah blah -- it’s gained from swords, Quackity. It’s gained from blades. It’s gained from steel. Iron. Even if everyone has this good side that you’re talking about, then anyone who wants to prove it has to show their dark side first. You’re going to have to kill. You’re going to have to torture. You’re going to have to maim. When I look at you, as a fellow outsider...you’re not ready for that.”

“I’m leaving.”

 - There’s a montage: 

Quackity watching as Schlatt destroys the White House the day he left to join Pogtopia.

The Mexican L’manburg Revolution, Quackity facing Dream outside Church Prime.

Dream destroying Mexican L’manburg.

Quackity facing Technoblade in the Final Control Room.

Dream and Quackity outside of Church Prime again.

“I understand that you -- that you wish to cause problems on the SMP, and that’s your number one goal. You are, by far -- you are the biggest enemy on the SMP right now.”

---

Present Day.

---

He’s at Wilbur’s resurrection shrine. There is a chest marked “For Wilbur.”

- Quackity writes in a book.

“My dearest friend, Wilbur...

You were right all along...

And I won’t make the same mistakes twice.”

- He signs the book “PROJECT NEVADAS” and puts it in the chest.

- Quackity rides off on Ossium and dons the black hood as the sirens sound.

---

- Bad sees the sign about concrete that Ranboo left at his house and assumes that it must be some sort of cryptic scavenger hunt. He and Skeppy go to try and figure it out by reading out the other signs throughout the server

- Skeppy eats part of Jonald

- Karl builds a Party Island in Kinoko Kingdom with Pokimane

- Ranboo gets a wither named Logan to mine for him

- Eret works on their fortress

- Captain Puffy does a late night stream and does some mining

---

Upcoming Events:

- The Red Banquet

- The Las Nevadas business opening

- Dream’s lore video

- Ranboo’s lore (April 23)

- Tales From the SMP: “Space Race”

- Dream SMP’s one-year anniversary

#dream smp #dream smp recaps #long posts

[lilacandladybugs]

Winnie the Pooh Rendition: Tommy and Tubbo Harness the Power of the Prime Path and then Get Lunch

When the Dream SMP was still a young SMP, before L’Manburg had become Manburg, or there were nation states or wars or politics, back when the SMP seemed a lot more like Minecraft than a Political Soap Opera, Dream decided that it would be a good idea to create a very important path. This path would make it so that very successful people could get important places very quickly. Tommy had asked him if the path made it any easier to get places, and Dream had said yes, so it must be true. Dream was never wrong about anything ever except when it was inconvenient for him to be right.

So one crisp autumn morning, as he walked down Dream’s original path, TommyInnit found himself in the mood to cause Problems. The problem would be finding a way of unleashing the power of paths.

“Hallo, Tommy!” said Tubbo.

“Hallo, Tubbo,” Tommy said, “walk with me.”

Tubbo considered saying that he had important spy affairs he was up to, which would have been a lie, but he decided that he was more interested in doing nothing with Tommy than doing nothing alone, so he followed along.

“Look where we are right now, Tubbo,” Tommy gestured to the path, riddled with creeper holes and mismatched wood, “this server has changed but you know where we’ve been from day one?”

“Where?”

“This Path.”

Tubbo looked around at the path and raised his eyebrows a little which Tommy decided meant that he was convinced, so he continued, “Dream told me he made this path so that it would be easier for people to get important places quickly.”

“Ah,” said Tubbo, “I see.” He did not, in fact, see.

“Not having a path in Pogtopia, Tubbo, is the only reason that we have been unable to instantly retake L’Manburg. We’ve been missing it, we’ve been missing out on our Success and our Primes. You see, Dream is simply a man of very little brain—”

“I don’t think he is,” Tubbo interjected.

“—so he has yet to figure this out,” Tommy continued unfazed, “but I think we haven’t quite harnessed the true potential of this path.” Tommy continued to walk down the wooden slabs as he said this, knowing they were taking him somewhere Important and Successful.

“Since the path only goes successful places, we’ve gotta make a path in Pogtopia for going faster toward overthrowing Manburg and also getting more Primes.” 

“I don’t think that’s what Dream meant, but I don’t think I know much really.”

“No, I suppose so either. You weren’t there. He said the path always goes somewhere Important and Successful, which is exactly what our path in Pogtopia will do.”

Tubbo nodded thoughtfully and considered the path around them. 

“Tubbo, we need to go and get us some oak wood because what I think we need to do is we need to get the Prime Path and make it connect to a path in Pogtopia. What do you think? Is that a Responsible thing to do?”

“No, definitely not.”

“Good. Then that will be our Problem for the day.”

“Well what type of wood are we going to use, or are we going to leave it all spotty like this?” Tubbo guestered to the patchwork of wood varieties that the Dream SMP path contained. “I really like the purple nether planks, I think that they’re much more Successful looking than the oak planks Dream SMP has.”

“No, no, I think that oak planks would be much better. Remember, we gotta channel Dream’s Successful and Important path so we should make it as close to his as possible.”

Tubbo didn't think so; and they were just going to argue about it, when Tubbo remembered that if they used nether plans, he would likely have to go get them from his own base, but if they used oak, then Tommy would have to give up some of his own oak planks, so he said, “All right, oak then,” just as Tommy remembered it too, and was going to say, “All right, nether planks.” 

“Oak,” said Tubbo to himself in a thoughtful way, as if it were now settled. “I will clear out the path to Pogtopia while you go back to your base and mine some trees for the path.”

Tommy sighed heavily at this proclamation but said, “All right then, oak,” and went back toward the railroad to his Vacation Home.

Upon arriving at his vacation home he took a moment to pay respects to Henry’s gravestone and went inside. He opened his chest, which had a total of five oak planks. This was Unsurprising. TommyInnit was Never Wrong and could always do Everything for himself at all times, except when it was inconvenient. It was really usually better for Tubbo to do things for him anyway, whether they were important or not, as Tubbo had none of the Important Responsibilities that Tommy had.

He looked at the durability on his axe and wasn’t quite sure that it would be able to make it through chopping down multiple trees, much less enough to get multiple stacks of wood. Using it to do something such as make a Prime Path would be a worthy purpose, but an even more worthy purpose would be stealing all the necessary supplies from Eret’s castle instead.

Eret’s castle was large and intimidating and colorful, which was nearly enough to persuade Tommy to not rob Eret. The colorful window panes gave Tommy an idea for another Problem, but future Problems, however exciting, must remain in the future. He required Eret’s assistance, hopefully without Eret ever knowing that his assistance had been given.

As he approached the ladder to the castle’s storage room, ignoring any signs on his way, he heard a sound and looked up to see Eret’s head, with his glowing netherite helmet, peering down at him.

“Well hello Tommy,” Eret said, “Is there something I can help you with?”

Tommy decided that robbery was no longer a practical course of action without Eret’s cooperation. He would likely die, which was not very high on his priority list. 

“I’ve come to rob you Bitch!” Tommy smiled and nodded to himself. That seemed like a good way of starting the conversation.

Fortunately for Tommy, Eret just laughed, “What do you need? Is it for the revolution?”

“It is for Top Secret Pogtopia Business now hand over all your oak wood.” 

“Well you see Tommy,” Eret said opening his chest, “Customarily people only relinquish their belongings when other people respectfully request it of them.”

“What does custard and relish mean? Eret I do not like long words they Bother me.”

Eret closed his chest with two arms full of oak, “It means you didn’t ask me very nicely.” “Ah, I see. I’m robbing you Bitch , please,” Tommy amended.

Eret threw a few stacks of oak planks down at him, “Alright that sounds good. Let me know how the rebellion plans go.” Eret saluted at him, which tommy ignored, and hurried off to bring the wood back to Tubbo.

With wood in hand Tommy and Tubbo succeeded in connecting the main highway on Dream SMP back to their secret ravine Pogtopia. Now that they had finished, they agreed it would be the best course of action to walk up and down the Prime Path that lead toward Success for thirty minutes in order to test it out.

They paced up and down from Pogtopia to Dream SMP and back again talking about how you can Sub to a Twitch Channel of your Choice for Free Once a Month and occasionally sticking their heads up above ground to see if JSchlatt had magically un-become a dictator yet or if Wilbur had showed up to see them.

After a while of pacing Tubbo stopped Tommy, “I have gotten some Primes Tommy but I think Schlatt may still be president.” 

“Oh,” said Tommy, “Maybe Dream wasn’t telling the truth after all.”

He sat down and thought, in the most thoughtful way he could think. Then set his hand down on the wooden path ...and then he scratched his nose twice, and stood up.

“Yes,” said TommyInnit. 

“I see now,” said TommyInnit. 

“I have been Foolish and Deluded,” said he, “and I have no Brain at All.”

“No, you’re all right,” said Tubbo.

“Really?” said Tommy. He stood up suddenly.

“Anyhow,” he said, “it is nearly Luncheon Time.”

So they went back to Pogtopia for it.

#tommyinnit #tubbo #eret #dream smp #Me and my Winnie the Pooh au I've got going #fanfiction #eslyea #this is an awful time to be posting but i Do Not Care i will simply reblog later

[ossifyings]

Today I moved everything from the floor to the table in the dining room / Placed each thing carefully without reason / Or at least without one I understood or could describe / There on the table together and when I was done / And stepped back I realized what I had made / Keepsakes Pictures Letters Ordinary objects all collected there 

A memorial

And I thought of ones on highways or set by gravestones / All the things you see there / But don't understand but still bring a remembered thing back vividly / Invoke someone's reality / When there together in that place in that way out of context / And I knew I had to take it down before anybody else saw

#music #about me #feelz

[theliterateape]

History is a Puzzle Box of Rashomon

by Don Hall

I’ve often said that the scariest thing to ever come out of my mother’s mouth was the declaration “Let’s go on an adventure!”

For my mother an adventure must include a lack of preparation, potential for danger, and a sense of I can’t believe we just survived that! She once decided she wanted to do a charcoal sketching of a gravestone from the grave of one of our Appalachian Baptist fire-and-brimstone preacher ancestors. My dad drove her up into the mountains and they started seeing patches of purple paint on trees and rocks.

Turned out that was the locals’ way of telling outsiders they'd get shot if they trespassed. My dad clutched his pistol the rest of the way.

Mom got her charcoal sketch. I can’t believe we just survived that!

When I was a kid and we lived in Arizona, mom decided we were going on adventure. My little sister, mom, and I loaded up in her brown Gremlin, a bag of sandwiches, some sodas, and all of our swimming gear and headed out for an afternoon at Lake Pleasant.

All was copacetic until she thought she saw a shortcut to he lake. It was not a shortcut. It was simply desert. It started out as a bit of a dirt path that sort of petered out about an hour into the drive. We were driving in the open desert in the vehicle equivalent to a Pinto.

Of course we blew a tire. Of course we didn't have a spare.

Being a melodramatic kid, I went into a full-blown faux-survivalist panic. After a few minutes of wailing about our imminent demise I set out to figure how to get water out of cactus, the thorny testaments to the heartiness of desert foliage fending off my un-callused hands and delivering exactly no water.

This being decades before smartphones, we were stuck. We had no clue where we were in terms of the comforts of civilization and while mom put on a brave face (and occasionally got the giggles at my histrionics) our fate was sealed. Unless someone miraculously drove into the middle of the desert to save us, we were doomed.

And then the miracle occurred. A beat-up red Ford pickup truck coming from the other direction popped up on the horizon. I shrieked in relief; mom flagged the truck down.

We were about a mile from a highway but we couldn't know that. The driver of the pickup was taking a shortcut from the highway.

Here's where the story gets odd. To this day, my mother's version of this adventure and mine are identical. Word for word the same until we get to the driver of the Ford. On my life, I swear it was an older Native American man who stopped, hitched up the Gremlin to his vehicle, and towed us the mile to the highway and on to a gas station. 

My mother will go to her grave insisting it was a family of four Mormons.

What?!

We’ve had family arguments about this story. Both my mother and I are intractable in our insistence of our specific endings of either Native American man or family of Mormons. We both were there. We both can see ourselves in the tale. The endings are as different as could be.

There is conclusive scientific research that demonstrates how the memory of an event subtly changes the actual memory as it is retold. The more you tell the story, the more it transforms into something similar but wholly different in the margins.

If my mother and I can have such divergent differences within a memory of an event we both shared, how many splinters are there in a collective re-telling of a larger event encompassing many more tellers? How many completely incompatible versions of the attacks on New York on September 11, 2001 are there? How many versions that don’t quite line up with one another are there of the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941?

Moving forward and backward in history, if we are to accept (and I do) that our memories are more Silly Putty than Lego Bricks, how much does film, television, books, and social media come into play in the constant morphing of objective truth to the collection of subjective memories and finally commonly accepted reality?

There is conclusive scientific research that demonstrates how the memory of an event subtly changes the actual memory as it is retold.

Back in the olden days when one could watch something horribly incorrect in the political sense without it becoming a ringing endorsement of your personal "brand" or a scathing indictment on who you are as a fellow human, I went to a screening of Griffith's The Birth of a Nation. It was at an esoteric video shop/screening theater on Fullerton Avenue in Chicago called Facets Multimedia and there were six or seven others in attendance. I was the only white person in the room.

Historically, Griffith's opus is significant in several ways. 

First, it was among the earliest epic uses of film. Released in 1915, it was the first blockbuster Hollywood hit. It was the longest and most-profitable film then produced and the most artistically advanced film of its day. It secured both the future of feature-length films and the reception of film as a serious medium.

Second, it was the first modern popular culture example of an artistic achievement attempting to force a certain perspective on the larger culture (the idea that the KKK were the heroes of the Civil War) it was initially released with the title "The Clansmen" and reframed the war, Reconstruction, and white hooded sheets in tandem with lynchings as the preferred story of American history.

Third, while propaganda has been around since men could talk and write, it was the most pervasive use of a medium that communicated on a newfound mass level to promote a horrifying ideology and was embraced by President Woodrow Wilson as a personal favorite.

Following the three-hour screening, there was a sense of discomfort as the lights came back up. My guess at the time it was the other viewers in the room wondering if I, the sole white person in the room, was as offended by the revised perspective the film espoused as the rest in the small cadre. I suppose I wasn't as offended because I wasn't black and I knew what I was getting into when buying my ticket. I can imagine seeing the film without some context would be like a slap in the face.

One of the things I learned doing stage combat around the same time was that a slap in the face never hurt as much as you'd think. It wasn't the pain of the blow but the surprise of it that gave it impact. Going in cold to see the KKK presented as the true patriots wouldn't hurt but the surprise might be a shock.

In a very different way but in the same vein, I remember being the only white face in a crowded theater in Fayetteville, Arkansas at the opening night of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. The looks of inquisition for my reaction to the film from the predominantly black faces followed me out into the lobby and into the parking lot.

I read recently that one of the reasons the scars of that Civil War in America have never fully healed is that we’ve never, as a nation, agreed on a single narrative of why we fought the goddamned thing. The subjectivity of truth in the re-telling of that dark period is confounding and subsequent attempts to force one perspective or the other or multiple angles on the causes of the War of the States has only confused the issue. Thus the recent beheadings of statues glorifying Southern generals and the re-naming parties of public schools to eliminate anyone associated with slavery.

I understand and empathize with this impulse to reverse the whitewash of history from our streets and schools. So much of our literature and symbols in real life have been created with, maybe not a D. W. Griffith subjectivity, a revisionist historical perspective that paints over the ugliest parts of our history to re-tell the narrative and erase those most subjugated by it. I expect over-correction (like the New York Times 1619 Project which casts our history as steeped in nothing but racism and slavery without acknowledging the contributions set apart from those stains) and, after reading that San Francisco schools are eliminating Abraham Lincoln's name, I decided to re-watch Spielberg's Lincoln.

I don't know if it was actually Lincoln or screenwriter Tony Kushner who came up with the following analogy but I found it instructive in the push to reframe the story today.

A compass, I learnt when I was surveying, it'll... it'll point you True North from where you're standing, but it's got no advice about the swamps and deserts and chasms that you'll encounter along the way.

If in pursuit of your destination, you plunge ahead, heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp... What's the use of knowing True North?

The film paints the fight for the 13th Amendment as a dark political game, cajoling and persuading the legislators of the day to codify in the Constitution a formal revocation and rebuke to the forced enslavement of other human beings. It also portrays Lincoln as a deeply pragmatic leader. The speech is one he gives to Thaddeus Stevens, a zealous abolitionist, who rightly sees true north but, up to that point, would rather be righteous than successful in abolishing slavery.

Both men are long dead so the question of whether both men would tell the same story, in their re-telling of those pivotal moments leading up to the vote, or if their stories would radically diverge, is wholly academic. That’s where the trappings of art collide with authenticity. This is the version Spielberg and Kushner decided upon and it will be the version millions who watch the film and decide to simply accept it as the one true version.

This is not to say there is no objective truth. It is to suggest that our inability to separate fact from our subjective fictions makes us pretty fucking lousy arbiters of that fact.

On the other hand, we have celebrated author Mark Manson, whose book Everything is F•cked: A Book About Hope is being banned in Russia by Putin because it speaks directly to atrocities committed by Stalin. Putin is looking to re-write Stalin's history. 

There is a big difference between revising a history shown to diminish the effects of overt racists in one country and purging a country’s history of established monstrosities but the mechanism remains the same: reframe the story and tell it enough times that the meaning changes over time. Keep pushing the new narrative (right or wrong) until the soft memory of an entire nation bends to the will of the teller.

That’s all history is, after all. A slew of stories we tell over and over to indoctrinate a sense of national pride. It grows more perilous when those revising the stories weren’t present. The source of the tales becomes less reliable and the reframe more suspect. When the source is a film or video of an event, we feel as though we’ve experienced it but our perspective is entirely subverted by what the camera shows us and the narrative promoted when we watch it.

One of the techniques that Griffith practically invented was the camera’s use to tell the story from his view. Frame things in a certain way, in a certain order, and our very eyes are deceived, our minds accept the deception, and we believe.

In 1950, Akira Kurosawa gave the world the reigning example of individualized subjective point of view. Rashomon shows us three different perspectives on one specific event. The film makes the point so clearly that the term used popularly to label the he said/she said/they said dilemma is a rashomon.

This is not to say there is no objective truth. It is to suggest that our inability to separate fact from our subjective fictions makes us pretty fucking lousy arbiters of that fact. Show me someone absolutely 100% certain of the sort of events they've only seen on an iPhone video moderated by Faceborg and spun by both the media and some random stranger and I'll show you someone deluded and quite probably dead wrong.

Even when we're there to witness events in person we get it wrong so the concept of getting it right through the mediation and manipulation of amateur videographers and activist pushing a narrative is nothing short of lunatic fringe.

Bizarrely, we all know this to be true.

We know that social media is almost entirely unreliable. We know that film is a highly manipulative art form. We know that Robert Downey, Jr. never flew in a suit of armor, that Keanu Reeves is not Neo, that as much as he embodies who I hope Abraham Lincoln was like, Daniel Day Lewis is an actor and couldn't possibly know what the man was actually like in person.

We know this to be true but we need to be right. We need to believe and so we take that leap of faith, that gut level adherence to what makes some sort of sense in the story and run with it. More so, if the fiction supports things we already have chosen to believe in, we are adding it to the arsenal of defenses against any other sort of view of our story.

We know there's more to the story of the Antifa takeover of Seattle. We know there's more to the January 6th breach of the Capitol. We know there are more sides to the story of Michael Brown. We know that with everyone filmed in a Walmart screaming about her right to forego a mask there is something else before and after that moment that may demonize her just a bit less.

We know but we don't care. Context and considering the framing takes too much work. Too much time. In an existence flooded with too much information, too many stories, too much video, too many opinions, it's just fucking easier to settle on the story that suits you and roll with that.

That's why—no matter what my mother says—it was definitely not a family of Mormons and I'll go to my grave with that.

[sablelab]

Covert Operations - Chapter 11

DISCLAIMER: This is a modern AU crossover story with Outlander and La Femme Nikita. LFN and its characters do not belong to me nor do those from Outlander. This is a complete work of fiction and as such is an entirely fabricated tale created in my imagination. There may be some suggestive chapters (S) and scenes of a violent (V) and or sexual nature (NC-17) through the course of this story.

*Manip - @sassylover-stuff

CHAPTER SYNOPSIS: The two Section One operatives make their way to the fishing village of Aberdeen in search of a particular member of the Rising Dragons’ triad in the hope that he can lead them to the Dragon Head Sun Ye Lok.

  CHAPTER 11

  Jamie surreptitiously studied the alluring woman standing next to him in the elevator who had cheekily waved to a stoic Superintendent Zheng as they’d left his office.  He quietly applauded Claire’s bravado in winning him over this morning as her handling of the hardnosed policeman had been effortless.  Zheng had fallen under her charm since Claire had arrived at police headquarters, while her naturalness had endeared her to her colleagues. She never failed to spread her charisma everywhere it would seem, managing to captivate all kinds of people spontaneously with her compassion. However, it was this very compassion that Section One wanted to crush, but Jamie knew it was such an integral part of who Claire was and why she did the things she did.

 ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Ever since she had been recruited to Section One and because he was her trainer, Jamie had been well aware that Claire Beauchamp was different to the other recruits.  She was a young street person falsely accused of murdering a police officer and sentenced to life in prison when recruited. These were the people that Section would give a second chance to if they were willing to live by Section One’s rule.  Claire was one such person and was selected by Section as "material" with potential and given the opportunity to serve society as a warrior against terrorism. The alternative was death.

For two years he had been her trainer and mentor for Section One ... a covert secret government organization that resorted to measures that would be unacceptable for most government organizations ... and they owned her now. Jamie remembered well the first time he had laid eyes on Section’s new recruit Claire Beauchamp.  She was a wilful and stubborn, raw, frightened and beautiful street smart woman who was assigned to him to train. Claire was wary of him and she was terrified of where she was and why she was there in a locked white room.

“Good morning.  I'm not going to hurt you.”

“What is this?” She cast a sideway glance his way obviously not knowing who she was dealing with ... the best of the best at Section One.

“You're not in prison anymore. The world thinks you're dead. Suicide. This is your funeral. Row 8, plot 30,” he replied showing her a picture of a gravestone at the cemetery.

“We've decided to give you another chance. This is where you'll train. This is where you'll learn. After two years, if everything goes well, you'll work for us.”

Her eyes were wide with questions she wanted to know the answer to. “Why me?”

“A woman with your looks, who can kill in cold blood…”

Claire cut off what else he was going to say. She was adamant that her crime was false and that she was innocent. Her words were guttural, pleading and emphasised with vehemence.  “I didn't, I didn't, I didn't kill anyone!”

She lashed out at James Fraser in self defence but was immobilised by his swift action to foil her assault.

“When you attack someone from behind, go for the kidneys. It disables them and they can't fight back.”

“I don't want ... I don't want lessons!”

Claire had been recalcitrant from the get go, but he knew a challenge when he saw one. "Training starts tomorrow at five a.m.”

His voice had been soft ... but threateningly authoritative. Her eyes had searched his face with a bravado he knew she was probably not feeling. “And if I don't want to?”

“Row 8, plot 30,” was his succinct answer which really left her with no options but to do as he said.

James Fraser had soon sized her up and noted that underneath her rebellious facade was a woman with great potential and courage if only she could learn to behave and accept her fate.  Her jaw was set tight, her eyes had blazed with defiance but she didn’t reply but merely nodded ever so slightly. She had chosen to fight.  

For two years she had been his material, he was responsible for her every move in her intensive training to be a Section One operative. Claire Beauchamp had been given a new identity and a codename ... Josephine.  He had groomed her to be a cold-blooded killer, but her humanity always seemed to get in the way. Madeline saw her potential due to her looks and had given her the ultimatum that Section One owned her and if she wanted to live it would be on their terms. She could learn to shoot and fight, but it was her beauty that was her means of gaining an advantage and defending herself in a conflict.  There was no weapon as powerful as her femininity and Madeline had seen to it that Claire’s womanly charms had been honed until she was set a test. Nearing the end of her training Operations had said he’s been monitoring her and found that Claire lacked discipline.  He’d replied stating that she just needed a little more time but his superior had been pragmatic.

“It's been two years Jamie. That's our policy. We start making exceptions, we're no better than the CIA. Cancel her.”

“I think that would be a mistake. I think she could be a good operative.”

“If she fails, you fail.”

Claire Beauchamp had not failed in her first mission and she had saved his life by killing the terrorist but despite her first kill she never did quite fit in.  Her rebellious attitude, however, was tolerated because she got the job done and their leaders were well aware that her methods were many times against all Section One rules.  He knew that Madeline's Mona Lisa smile made her fume and that the steel look in Operation's eyes made her want to disobey every order thrown at her and his face had angered her most of all. When she first came into Section One, he knew that Claire couldn't read him. His face was blank although emotions swam beneath it but out of reach. He scared her and Claire liked to be in control of her destiny. With him though, she already knew she'd have none. Something told her that she wouldn't have control anymore.

She’d rebelled against everyone and everything in Section One and it was hoped that he could rein in her propensity for bucking the system because of who he was ... Section’s leading operative. No one disobeyed him, but that didn’t mean he didn’t disobey his superiors. Claire Beauchamp had changed him in ways he was still coming to terms with.

Oh how things had changed over the two years that they had been partners. Jamie knew that Claire was in love with him but it had taken him a while to get used to how she had wormed her way into his heart. Now he would do anything for her to keep her safe and out of the hands of their manipulative leaders. He could ill afford for her to become his weakness but that is just what Claire Beauchamp had become and Dougal Mackenzie’s words resounded in his head.

“It would be a mistake to become emotionally attached to the material.”

But it was too late for that.  He was already emotionally attached.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The lift eventually came to a stop and once outside the building, they made their way to the parking lot where a car was waiting for them.  Angus Mhor directed them to a gleaming, black, Mercedes coupe compliments of the Hong Kong police department parked in the shade of a tree.  “Nothing but the best it would seem,” Angus stated as he guided them to the impressive car.

“Very nice Angus,” Claire replied as she examined the car.

He looked at Jamie warily, as he handed him the keys to the vehicle. “We have the highest number of Mercedes Benz's per capita in the world … you’ll just look like any other young millionaire in Hong Kong in that little beauty.”

James Fraser just gave him a penetrating look, took the keys and made his way to the driver’s side of the car.

Turning back towards Claire to help her into the vehicle, Angus mumbled quietly under his breath. “Sheesh … doesn’t he ever lighten up?  That guy’s wound up as tight as a spring.”

“What did you say Angus?”

“Ahh!  Nothing important,” he said holding Claire’s door open for her to enter the Mercedes.

“Thank you,” she responded smiling, as she hopped into the passenger seat.

He closed the door after her with a firm hand. “See you when you get back,” Angus replied, then looking at Claire hopefully while leaning on the window frame he added, “You sure you don’t want me to be your driver?”

Impatient to leave, Jamie cast another blank look Angus’s way as his leather-gloved hand turned on the ignition and the car idled.

“Driving in Hong Kong is a nightmare … you saw that on the way here from the airport”.

“We’ll be fine.”

Unremittingly he continued, “The highway system is complex, with clogged roads and devilish parking.”

“Stop it Angus!  You’re incorrigible!”  Claire laughed indulgently.

“Can’t blame a guy for trying?  Can you?”  He winked cheekily.  “Good luck.”

Revving the engine with some irritation to be on their way, Jamie skilfully manoeuvred the car past Angus Mhor when he finally stepped away from Claire’s open window.

“What’s the matter Jamie?”  Claire asked as she glanced at him.

James Fraser merely gripped the steering wheel a little tighter, returning her look with his patent blank stare and concentrated on manoeuvring the Mercedes from the police station car park into the busy morning traffic. His failure to answer her question verbally had itself been her answer.

“Hmm ...  Patented Jamie answer ... the blank stare. I’d swear you were a little jealous… ” she thought happily.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Leaving the police station behind them, Jamie and Claire’s destination was the floating city of Aberdeen, the largest satellite town on the southwest side of Hong Kong Island, where the junk obviously originated looking for a proverbial needle in a haystack.

Jamie’s driving expertise was surely tested in the congested traffic on the road leading to their entry point.  A bewildering plethora of buses, narrow double-decker trams and cars clogged the streets as the bustle of people living and working here went about their business. Hong Kong Island, the glitzy big brother of Kowloon was tightly packed with overcrowded housing area and financial centres towering into the skyline … a paean to market capitalism.  Opulence and poverty existed side by side in a country where Chinese culture was assimilated with Colonialism extending back to the Opium War and British sovereignty.

They drove along Causeway Bay heading toward Aberdeen, on the southern side of the island, where six thousand people lived or worked on junks anchored in the harbour.  The day was typical of Hong Kong's temperate climate warm and barmy, and Claire opened her window to let in the breeze as they sped along the motorway.  The air whipped her tresses around her face but Claire didn’t care.  She felt free although at the back of her mind the mission was still paramount in her head.

Travelling in relative silence along the motorway, each was lost in thoughts of the other.

The atmosphere in the car was relaxed for Section One’s two operatives. Driving along it was so simple for Jamie and Claire to feel that they were two people on an adventurous holiday seeking out exotic locations, just like any other normal couple.  Claire casually glanced over at Jamie wishing that last night had ended differently, but knowing that they would have other opportunities to be together.  She smiled as if the cat had just swallowed the canary.  Yes, she was sure there would be another time and another place and … besides she still had to show Jamie the view from her apartment.  Pensively, Claire looked out of the window lost in thought.

James Fraser cast a look Claire’s way with similar thoughts running through his mind also. He saw her self-satisfied smile, as nothing about her moods escaped him. Last night had been so similar to other times when they had been interrupted. They had only just begun to get started when … wham!  Jamie could see the funny side of it however, and a small wry smile crossed his lips at the thought that Fergus Claudel was not  the only one who could dampen the mood.    

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Turning his eyes back to the road, Jamie manoeuvred the Mercedes through the busy, Hong Kong Island traffic.  Eventually he entered Hardcourt Road and headed toward the entrance to Aberdeen Tunnel on the Wan Chai Side.  Angus had said that the traffic was a nightmare and how true were his words. Cars and vehicles of all shapes and sizes clogged the roads.  The motorway was packed but Jamie placed the car in auto drive and settled in for the long haul to Aberdeen.  Along the way they passed through many residential and business districts but the steady stream of traffic seemed to follow them with no sight of it petering out.

After some time Claire saw the exit for Aberdeen and Jamie veered the car to the Wang Chuk Hang Side of the Aberdeen Tunnel, knowing that soon as they arrived in Aberdeen they would be looking for a package that would lead them to  Sun Yee Lok and thus bring down the Rising Dragons’ triad.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Jamie steered the Mercedes along the winding coastal road closer to Aberdeen, known as Little Fragrant Harbour, in the south west of Hong Kong Island. Following the stretch of water as far as the eye could see was invigorating for them and the sea breeze wafted through the open windows of the Mercedes. As they neared Aberdeen Harbour, the sight before them was certainly an eye opener for hundreds of junks and sampans, the floating homes for thousands of people, bobbed into sight in the distance. They were crowded into the narrow harbour dramatically juxtaposed against the modern high-rise buildings that spread up in the nearby hillsides. It was amazing to see these unique junks floating against the backdrop of skyscrapers … a blend of the old with the new.

Aberdeen Harbour was breathtaking especially in the early morning sun. Once a pirates den nearly two centuries ago Aberdeen had turned into a simple fishing village port nestled in its typhoon shelter of the calm waters of the harbour. Despite modernization traditional fishing life still prevailed, and the unique fishing vessels served as boat workplaces and home to many Chinese, just as the junks and sampans had been used as homes for thousands of years before.

It was easy for Jamie and Claire to see how Triads like the Rising Dragons reigned in such a setting. The uncomplicated lifestyle of the people coupled with the dominance and intimidation of such groups would be rampant amongst these simple fishing folk whose traditional way of life was still an integral characteristic of harbour life and activity. Consequently they had no means to thwart the criminal undertakings of such a powerful organisation. The boats would leave port for weeks at a time fishing the South China Sea and then return to Aberdeen for safe harbour from the weather, only to experience turbulence in form of intimidation by extortion racketeers.

Finding the origin of the fated junk that held the secrets of Annalise de Marillac and Chen Wu’s death and the connection to the Rising Dragons may prove to be more difficult than they first thought for Aberdeen was the location of a plethora of floating junks in a sea of vessels … and where would they start to look?

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

As they neared their destination, the mood in the car changed noticeably as each realised that the mission was now in play. Jamie and Claire also knew their brief taste of an ordinary life had just changed. Although they were away from the visual surveillance of Section One, they were not a normal couple on holiday and they were never far enough away for total freedom. At any given time they could and would be reminded that they were two people doing a job, nothing more, nothing less with set parameters and objectives.

The lively sound of Fergus’ voice echoing in their comm. units soon brought them back to their reality with a thud.

“Jamie?”

Where they were and their prime objective … the mission target … was all they were here for. Both looked at the other with a tinge of regret. Reluctantly returning his eyes to the road Jamie replied, “Yes Fergus?”

“There was an explosion on the south wharf yesterday morning. A fishing vessel was blown out of the water.”

“And …?”

“It’s unlikely that it was a boating accident. Whoever was responsible was making a point to one of his customers.”

“Was it the target?”

“It’s highly likely that it was Tony Wong.”

“His target?”

“A man called Charlie Yin. He could be a point of reference.”

“Do you have a location?”

“His boat is situated near the entrance of the wharf … but he will be moving out again within the hour.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll keep you posted.”

“Okay.”

Claire looked over to Jamie with a questioning look on her face at what the techie had just told them, “I'm a little confused.”

“About what?”

“This Charlie Yin. Is he going to lead us to Wong?”

“Yes.”

“But … can we trust this guy?

“We need to trust him enough.”

“Enough to relay Intel about Tony Wong?”

“Yes.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

They proceeded a few kilometres further until they saw the entrance to the Aberdeen wharf. Jamie parked the car and got out ever watchful for any anomaly. Claire did the same, then both of them perused the perimeter of the wharf looking for anything suspicious. Reflected in the sunglasses covering their eyes was the awesome setting before them. They could see what appeared to be thousands of dilapidated boats carpeted in Aberdeen Harbour … and they all looked alike. Not only were there junks but the imposing Floating Restaurants came into view as well. It was abuzz with traffic coming and going as the ubiquitous boat people that lived on the vessels made their way toward the dock in a variety of watercrafts. In a hurry scurry of jostling vessels each craft vied to find any remaining best advantage points along the wharf to off load their morning’s catch.

“Fergus we’re here.”

“Good. … Proceed.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~to be continued

Thank you for reading, the likes and or posting a comment on my crossover story.  I very much appreciate your feedback. xox

Should you wish to access the other chapters of this story … https://sablelab.tumblr.com/covertoperations

#jamieandclaire #fanfic #outlander #crossove #covertoperations #jamie x claire #the lallybroch library

[aloha-cowgirl]

Chapter 2: New Orleans

Enjoy Chapter 2 of my still nameless Destiel fic! 😉 @narraukoiel

Read it on AO3  or on Tumblr: Chapter 1

Chapter 2: New Orleans

From the elevated highway that led into New Orleans, Dean could see the hundreds of gravestones and mausoleums that lined the city’s cemeteries. Most were faded, chipped and cracked white concrete tombs of various sizes with crosses and bronze plaques, while others were smooth granite, flanked by ornate statues of angels and vases with colorful flowers. The cemeteries reflected the city itself, a mixture of very old architecture dotted with sleek new buildings in the gaps between. A large hospital lay abandoned to one side of the highway while a brand-new hospital bustled at the other side.

Dean cast a glance to Cas who seemed as absorbed in the view of the city as Dean had been. The hunter allowed himself a brief smile as he turned onto the ramp that would lead them down into the old city. Sam and Eileen had already made hotel arrangements for Dean and Cas, prepaying for a week-long stay. Dean didn’t really feel the need for a full week, but down time was a part of the new hunting regime and, as Sam had repeated time and time again, a little recovery time was never a bad thing and sticking around for a few extra days to follow up ensured the job was done completely.

The Impala pulled into the parking lot of the Riverhouse Inn, a neat brick building that looked like it may have once been a warehouse or factory of some sort. The industrial interior was nicer than the motels that the hunters usually frequented, and Dean decided that Eileen must have been in charge of the accommodations this time. While Sam always focused on practicality, Eileen usually factored in a little comfort as well, and Dean was quite grateful for that as he and Cas collected their keycards from the front desk.

“Nice!” Dean approved, exiting the glass elevator that had carried them to the third floor. Framed vinyl records hung in the spaces between the doors in the brick walls. The hallway was clearly old, with wooden floors that creaked just a little as they made their way to room 310. The room was simple, but clean and comfortable – a definite upgrade from the moth-eaten blankets at the last place they’d stayed. Two beds sat side by side against a brick wall to the left of the room with matching blue comforters and fluffy white pillows. To the right of the room was an alcove with a small kitchenette and a sleek glass-topped table. In the back of the room were two plush blue armchairs. The wall was lined with large paneled glass windows, partially covered with heavy curtains.

Cas stood at the window, taking in the scenery. Just past the hotel’s manicured courtyard walls, there were a few rows of steel tracks for the street car trolleys. Beyond the tracks was a large concrete wall that separated the city from the edge of the Mississippi River. The area behind the wall was paved with red bricks. Black wrought iron benches were spaced evenly between raised flower beds and landscaped gardens with colorful modern sculptures, and in the river itself Dean could see a large paddlewheel boat being docked.

“This city is beautiful,” Cas said, finally tearing those blue eyes away from the window to look at Dean. “I’m glad we’ll have some extra time here.”

“Yeah, well there’s gonna be good food too. I know you don’t always eat, but, dude, you’re gonna indulge in some world-class molecules with me while we’re here.”

Cas let out a laugh. Dean always considered Cas’s laughter a victory. He didn’t laugh enough, Dean though, and the hunter prided himself on making it happen.

“Matter o’fact,” Dean continued, “let’s go find some of those molecules now. I’m hungry.”

Soon the two were strolling along the Riverwalk. It was getting later in the evening and the small crowds had already dwindled down to a few pedestrians and patrons of the restaurants and bars set back along the concrete wall, facing the expansive riverfront. Dean led Cas toward a small restaurant where they were seated at a tall table in a fenced outdoor dining area lit by dim strands of bulbs that crisscrossed over their heads.

“Can I getcha started?,” the waitress asked, not bothering to hide the way her eyes drifted over both men with a flirty smile. She was a cute brunette, wearing her tank top and jeans well, however Dean paid little attention to her as he ordered for himself and Cas. He was on a mission, not to be distracted from his goal of sampling everything the restaurant had to offer with Cas. When the food was delivered to the table, Dean grinned excitedly.

“C’mon, man, dig in!’ He said, pushing a bowl of gumbo in front of the angel, watching again for his reaction as he had done on the hood of the Impala. At Dean’s enthusiasm, Cas could only smile into those green eyes and do as he was told, hoping not to disappoint since tastes were usually lost on him.

But this was not one of those times. Castiel’s eyes closed indulgently with his first bite. He could taste the rice. He could taste the chicken and sausage. He could taste the seasonings. He could taste it all, and it was amazing.

“Good, yeah?” Dean asked through a mouthful of food. “ See? Even molecules are better in New Orleans.”

Castiel shook his head slightly with surprise. “Dean, it’s amazing. I can— I can taste it.”

Dean stopped with a forkful of crawfish etouffee halfway to his own mouth to stare at Cas, absorbing the angel’s confusion and furrowing his brow. “Wait. Like, taste it-taste it? Like, not just molecules?”

Cas nodded, plucking a few fried shrimp from one of the many plates on the table. He looked up at Dean with a sigh, acknowledging that this was not good news. “I’m not sure why. I do realize I’m quite hungry, though. We should eat and we can call Sam when we get back to the hotel to see if he’s heard word of anything unusual. I have some suspicions, but there isn’t much that can be done about them at the moment.”

Concern for the angel nested in Dean’s chest. Cas hadn’t been able to truly taste food since he was human. The two continued to eat until they’d cleared all the plates on the table. When the plates had been cleared, they discussed the details of tomorrow’s hunt at the old Beauregard Courthouse. It was currently being used as a public library which was an obstacle in its own right. There had been reports of several ghost sightings and some possible poltergeist activity, and the building had a long history of violence, dating back over 100 years. When they finally began their walk back to the hotel, Castiel grabbed Dean’s hand to catch his attention.

“Thank you, Dean.”

They stopped near the barrier at the water’s edge, Dean taking in Castiel’s somewhat anxious expression. The angel seemed different, but Dean couldn’t put his finger on why. Cas’s eyes darted around nervously, as though he were pulling the words out of himself before he could talk himself out of it.

“Thank you— thank you for letting me hunt with you. These weeks have been… been the best weeks of my existence. It’s just… I mean—”

Dean nodded and reached out to squeeze the angel’s arm, signaling his understanding and allowing Cas to fall silent, and perhaps allowing his hand to linger for a moment too long. He could sense Cas’s struggle to give words to the thoughts, but Dean didn’t need to hear them. He already knew exactly what Cas meant, because he felt the same way. The pair had an undeniable chemistry that Dean affiliated to their “profound bond.” They moved fluidly around one another, each adapting naturally to reciprocate the other. Dean had definitely enjoyed their time together over the last six weeks, fighting vampires and ghouls, taking the time to stare at the stars, experiencing the world together, or just sitting in silence as they traveled down the highway.

“Yeah, Cas. I know what you mean. It’s been nice, y’know? We make a good team. It’s— I dunno. It’s easy with you. With us, I guess. I know you’ve got my back. And I’ll always have yours, too, ‘kay? Promise.”

Cas nodded and flashed a quick smile, satisfied that Dean understood. They took their time walking back along the river toward their hotel, their hands brushing between them as they walked in silence.

**

When the pair finally made it back to the hotel, Dean set up his laptop to call Sam and Eileen. He sat the laptop on the glass-topped table and pulled two chairs in front of the screen. Soon after, he and Cas sat facing Sam and Eileen in a video call.

“Hi, Dean. Hi, Cas.” Eileen signed as she spoke, more out of habit than necessity. Dean had learned some basic sign language, but couldn’t quite hold an entire conversation yet. Cas, of course, could sign fluently.

“Good evening, Eileen. Sam. How are things going?” Cas signed as he spoke and Dean lamely waved a greeting, distracted by the way Cas’s hands moved as he signed his words.

“Business as usual,” Sam said, not missing the way Dean was currently gazing at the angel. “How, uh… how about there? Checked out the courthouse yet?”

“Not yet, Sammy, we just got here,” Dean responded with a hint of annoyance, returning his eyes to the screen. “Dropped our bags, grabbed some dinner, and called you guys.” He hesitated a moment before continuing more seriously. “Sammy, is there anything happening out there with the angels right now? Cas— Cas has been feeling a little…”

“Hungry,” Cas finished for him with a grimace and a shrug. His voice dropped a bit as he continued, signing again as he spoke. “And actually, a little tired now, I think. I’m afraid my grace isn’t at full strength. I knew it had been replenishing slower, but it seems to be actively fading now. I should have noticed sooner.”

Dean scanned the downtrodden look on the angel’s face, realizing now what he hadn’t been able to place earlier. Emotion. Stoic-as-a-statue Cas was feeling more emotions that he was used to. That explains their conversation after dinner. Dean decided to put a pin in that to think about later.

“We haven’t heard much about angels lately. Didn’t you say there weren’t many left, Cas?” Sam asked.

Cas nodded sadly. “Yes, our numbers have been greatly depleted. Only a few remain in Heaven. What I’m feeling could be an effect of that.”

“I’ll ask around,” Sam offered. “I’ll call Garth and see if he’s heard anything. He’s got some connections he can tap into for information.”

“Thanks, Sammy. Send us what you got on the courthouse. We’re gonna head there in the morning.”

Dean reached up and closed the lid of the laptop, eyes on Cas again, studying his face amd the slight slump of his shoulders. “You okay, Cas?”

“Mm. I’ll be fine. I think I just need to rest.”

Dean squeezed Cas’s shoulder as he stood to collect a pair of grey sweatpants from his duffel and head into the bathroom to shower.

As Dean showered, Cas shed his coat and suit jacket, toed off his shoes, and sat against the headboard of his bed. He turned on the television and flipped through the few channels available, not paying much attention to anything on. This was how Dean found him as he emerged from the bathroom.

Without a word, Dean gently took the remote control from Cas’s hand, walked around the bed and sat beside the angel. “Talk to me, Cas. What can we do?”

The corner of Cas’s mouth twitched up for a moment, followed by a sigh and a slight shake of his head.

“I’m not sure there’s anything.”

Dean considered this for a moment, then decided that he needed to take baby steps. He turned the TV off, then stood to gather his laptop and an extra pillow from his bed and dropped them on the foot of Cas’s bed. Cas watched with slightly narrowed eyes as the hunter diligently moved around the room, now pulling a pair of dark red sweatpants and a black t-shirt out of his bag and tossing them to Cas. He turned off the light before falling back onto Cas’s bed.

“Go change into those, then we’re gonna lay here and watch a movie, and not think about the angels or Heaven or ghosts or anything. Not tonight, anyway.” He tucked the extra pillow behind his head, slid the laptop into his lap and clicked his way into Netflix.

Cas stood beside the bed and loosened his tie, slipping it off over his head and looping it over the bedpost. Dean had to hold his breath to push out the thoughts that blazed through his mind about that tie. Adding to Dean’s surprise, Cas pulled his belt free and proceeded to take his pants off there rather than moving into the bathroom to change. Dean fixed his eyes on the screen, attempting to focus on choosing a movie for the two to watch, but in reality he was scowling as his body betrayed him beneath the laptop at the sight of Cas undressing and the thought of that fucking tie looped over the bedpost.

Cas slipped into the borrowed sweatpants and carefully unbuttoned his shirt, lay it neatly along with his slacks on one of the plush armchairs by the window. The glow of the laptop was enough that when Dean dared another glance, he saw the tanned skin and firm muscles that Cas had been hiding under that suit and trench coat. The hunter silently decided that the angel wore far too many clothes. Cas slipped the t-shirt over his head as he maneuvered back onto the bed beside Dean.

Taking a deep breath, Dean settled more comfortably on the bed, as the opening credits to Guardians of the Galaxy flashed on-screen. They watched in comfortable silence, interrupted only by Cas’s occasional question or comment. Dean was happy to answer, knowing that the angel’s mind wasn’t dwelling on all the questions that were still winding through Dean’s own mind. Halfway through the movie, they had managed to move close enough that the laptop was perched on one leg of each man. Ultimately, the weight of the evening lay heavily on both, and they fell asleep side by side, leaning against one another for the second night in a row.

#destiel #fanfiction #wip #fanfic #chapter 2 #my fic #heaven is wherever you are

[charlie-bee]

Elliot [Self Para.]

Setting: February 9th, from  3:00 a.m. to about 5:00 or 6:00 a.m.  Triggers: Alcoholism mentions Note: Charlie decides to take an impromptu road trip. 

Mentions of: @backtothemack, @trixie-windsor, @benjaminroy, @masonbellamy, @yourmomsamilf, @kiarabellamy, @beautyguru-audreyz

“Where are you off to?”

The man at the gas station stared at Charlie, a soft, friendly smile gracing his features as she pumped her gas into her car.

“That’s a nice car. 1990 Ford Mustang, ey? That ain’t no city car. You’re from up here, huh?” He pressed on, trying to get her attention but Charlie, while friendly, was too scared about talking to a strange in empty gas station on an empty highway. Nothing but the man behind the register who activated her machine and hasn’t looked up since.

“It was my father’s.” She whispered and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’ve kept it in good condition, changed the engine a few times, the anti-freeze, you name it.”

“A girl that knows about cars? After my own heart here.”

She cleared her throat. Her father had taught her plenty when she was younger and Mack taught her more. He knew the importance of her keeping the car even though buying something completely new would be better for her pocket. “I had a little help.”

“Well, you’ve done a nice job. Your father is proud I’m sure.” He pointed to the car with his cane and let out a laugh only for his cough to intervene. He held a bottle close to him and Charlie finally turned to face him, a frown replacing her previous expression.

“My father passed away.”

“Oh. I’m sorry, girl.”

“Charlie”

“Pardon?”

“The name is Charlie.”

“Charlie. Pretty. Like yourself.” He raised his cane again and almost fell over so Charlie reached out to pick him up and sit him down.

“Are you alright? Are you cold? I know a shelter a few miles from here in Syracuse. I can get a cab to take you.” She whispered, crouching down. Maybe this was a gamble. She could hear her friends chastising her now but she couldn’t help.

“Eh, I’m fine, Charlie.” The smell of Bourbon felled the wintery air and Charlie sighed.

“A shelter will help you. Let me help you?” She wouldn’t give him money. That would only make things worse.

“You gon’ up to Syracuse to visit a boyfriend or something? Let me guess, long distance relationship?”

And suddenly he reminded her of Trixie. Dodging the subject, changing it even though there was something clearly wrong so Charlie moved to sit beside the man on the bench.  “Yes as a matter of fact.”

“Oh! I love romance!” He replied giddily and left the bottle to the side and it made Charlie feel good that for that one moment, he wasn’t paying attention to the alcohol. “Is he as good looking as you.”

Charlie smiled and nodded. “Very much so. He’s not as funny though. I have the good humor.”

“Typical. Men, right?” He scoffed and patted the back of the bench. “You’re not going to break up with him are you? You’ve got sad eyes.”

She shook her head. “No. But it feels like it. We break up almost every week.” She laughed.

“Fire. Fire is important.  He probably doesn’t see how great you are. I saw break up with him and run away with another! I’m single you know.” He winked and they both laughed, Charlie stuffed her hands into her coat.

“I’m sure he’ll break up with me anyway. Sorry my romance isn’t what you expected.”

“What’s he do? Your boy?”

She wanted to continue the story, wanted to make it feel real for the old man’s sake and all she could come up with was “He’s a teacher.”

“Typical.” He snorted again and Charlie laughed.

“What’s your name?”

“Elliot.”

She pulled her phone out and turned to face Elliot. “Please take my advice. I’ll call the cab now. It’s too cold out here.”

Elliot nodded and Charlie dialed the number. She sat back on the bench once more. “I’ll wait with you.”

“But your boyfriend will be waiting.”

“It’s alright. He’ll be okay.” She whispered. “How long have you lived upstate?”

“All my life. Got fired from my last job and went down this downward spiral. Next thing I know here I am years later talking to a pretty girl at an empty gas station. Could be worse.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Whatcha sorry for? You didn’t do anything! You certainly didn’t buy me this bottle here!” He frowned and looked over to the Bourbon sitting beside him. “It’s happy hour somewhere.” He murmured.

Charlie looked at the time on her phone. She had been driving for hours. It was almost 2 a.m. “I hope you get to sleep at the shelter. And attend a meeting while you’re there.”

“Like AA?”

“Like AA.”

“Well, I’ll be damned. You some angel or something?”

“I just think it would help. Please try, Elliot.” She stood up when the cab pulled in and Charlie instructed the driver where to take him, gave him the money and took the bottle from the floor.

Elliot stood up and opened the door. He never thought he’d find someone so kind at a service stop. “That boyfriend of yours...what an idiot.” He laughed and Charlie smiled.

“He can be.  But we’ll be okay.”

“What’s his name?”

At Elliot’s question, Charlie’s eyes turned wide and she went through her list of guy friends or people she could just make up. Harrison was a good name of Richard or Steve. Mack would make sense or Mason or Marcus. “Benjamin.” She laughed and walked towards her own car.

“Tell Benjamin he’s an idiot!”

“I will.” She climbed her car and drove the next hour trying to keep herself awake by screaming the entire Spice Girl’s greatest hits playlist on Spotify.  When she finally stopped at St. John’s Cemetery, she looked over to her passenger seat, the unopened government letter sitting there. She thought she had no reason to open up. She already knew who’s name she’d find. Charlie sighed and turned it over before getting out of the car and walking to her parent’s grave.

“Hey mom. Hey dad.” She crouched down, fingertips grazing the headstone. “I miss you.” Charlie then sat down beside the site and leaned against the gravestone. “I got my letter. I’m not sure how you two would feel about this whole thing. Mason got married. To such a great girl. My God. You would love her. You would love Mason…” She bit her bottom lip realizing just how frequent these visits happened. It almost felt like they were still here. Still around. “And it turns out that Marcus looks really good with red hair.” She fiddled with the buttons on her pea coat. “Mack is married too. Crazy, right? To a girl named Audrey. She’s...really great and I hope he sees that soon but he’s so stubborn sometimes. You know?” She laughed softly and brought her knees to her chest. “Trixie is...she’s losing her light.” She frowned. “It’s like a dimming little light and I don’t know how to help. It’s all I think about. Seeing her the way I did last week was awful. I can’t lose her, you know? You guys get that, right?” Charlie paused. “It’s almost four a.m. and I came all the way out here to see you guys. Work is great. I signed on a very important contract and I’m thinking about going back to school for my PhD. Maybe not until next year because now I’ve got this letter to worry about.” She sighed and stood up, opened up the passenger seat and retrieved the letter. She opened it carefully and read the content. “You have been matched with Benjamin Roy.” Charlie placed the letter beside her. “Ben’s Liv’s brother. I umm...well, I’ve told you guys about him too so yeah. Surprise!” She chuckled and shook her head. “He’s good though. He’s helping me with Trixie and he’s a good soul. He’s got that light about him. The kind that flickers in a dark attic.  He just doesn’t see it.” She yawned and closed her eyes a bit, stuffing her hands into her coat. “You know...I’m pretty glad this is a 24 hour site.”

She pulled out a ziplock bag of cookies and when she did a few things fell out. A receipt from the state fair from 2015, ticket stubs to a movie she caught with Mason once and a crumbled up Star Wars temporary tattoo she had gotten Ben. “You guys have missed a lot.” She frowned and let her tears fall, leaning against the stone once more, waiting for the sun to rise.

#mlawpara #paras #para: Elliot

[justbarely-there]

“Today I moved everything from the floor to the table in the dining room

Placed each thing carefully without reason or at least without one I understood or could describe

There on the table together and when I was done and stepped back I realized what I had made

Keepsakes, pictures, letters

Ordinary objects all collected there

A memorial

And I thought of ones on highways or set by gravestones

All the things you see there but don’t understand but still bring a remembered thing back vividly

Invoke someone’s reality

when they’re together in that place in that way out of context

And I knew I had to take it down before anybody else saw

Tomorrow I plan to put them all somewhere

Those things

In boxes

Side of the road

Attic maybe

All these things that push and pull me through history

To places I once was, places I might’ve gone, places I ended up going

Postcards

Ticket stubs from one thing or another

A personalized coffee mug with neither your name nor mine

Phone cards and old phones

A page from an old calendar I bought once at a thrift store and insisted on hanging

That cycles of the moon print

Photos

Old boots of mine

And I sat there for hours

In the living room first

Then in the dining room

Moving things around

Picking things up and seeing where they took me

To what place in history

What moment on our timeline

Where we were, where I was, where I thought we’d end up

In this house or on the highway

Driving somewhere near Christmas

In the desert or anywhere else

And I put them in boxes”

La Dispute

[tishfarrell]

Okay. Hands up those of you who know about sin eaters. I certainly had not registered their existence despite having read Mary Webb’s Shropshire novel Precious Bane (1924) which includes a sin-eating scene. It was coming across an article by  environmental scientist, Harriet Carty, (also Shropshire based) that alerted me. She was describing the work of the non-religious charity Caring For God’s Acre which has set itself the task of recording Britain’s churchyard flora. I read it back in March when we were in Pembrokeshire and it prompted me to do a post featuring the fine show of lichen in St. Bride’s graveyard. Helen Carty’s article also mentioned the grave of the last sin eater, one Richard Munslow, who died in 1906 and is buried in St. Margaret’s churchyard, Ratlinghope (pronounced Ratchup), up in the Shropshire hills between the Long Mynd and the Stiperstones.

What could be more curious and curiosity-inducing than the grave of a sin eater. Clearly an expedition was called for. Ratlinghope is only twenty miles or so from Wenlock, and so last Thursday, after doing the shopping in Church Stretton and with the weather set fair, we headed for the hills.

That Ratlinghope is an out-of-the-way place is an understatement. The lane from the busy Shrewsbury-Ludlow highway at Leebotwood is mostly single track, and wends up and over the northerly spur of the Long Mynd. If you stop and look behind you, all of the Shropshire and Cheshire Plains spread out below you. On Thursday, though, it was rather hazy, but you’ll get the general idea.

Now for sin eaters. The first thing to know is that the sin-eating custom that once featured at funerals appears to be both ancient and confined mostly to the Shropshire, Hereford and Welsh Marches region. In the extract below, Mary Webb, suggests the sin eaters could be wise men, exorcists, or poor people somehow outcast by misfortune. At a burial, the last meal of the corpse – usually bread and ale – would be passed over the coffin for the sin eater to eat. Through this act, he took on the sins of the deceased thereby ensuring that the departing spirit went in peace. In latter times, it is said, the poor took on the role willingly in order to have a decent meal.

But this was not the case for Richard Munslow of Ratlinghope. He came from generations of respectable farming folk and had his own farm at nearby Upper Darnford where he employed at least two labourers. He also enjoyed the sheep grazing rights on the Long Mynd. The style of his memorial certainly indicates a man of substance.  He in fact revived the sin eating custom of his own volition. It is thought that he was inspired to do this through personal loss and an elevated sense of compassion. The gravestone also provides the clue. In 1862 Richard and Ann Munslow lost their first child George aged 11 weeks. Then in the first week of May 1870 they lost all three of their children to scarlet fever. Later, though, there were two daughters who did outlive them. Richard died in 1906 aged 73. Ann lived on until 1913.

The little church itself has its origins some time before 1209 when an Augustinian cell for a prior and seven brethren was established at Ratlinghope. It was an outpost of Wigmore Abbey in north Herefordshire. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries it continued life as the parish church. There are few signs of the original building beyond the foundations, and the church you see to day is the product of successive rounds of renovation. The oak front door, though, has the date 1625 carved on it – a gift of the then church wardens. It is a peaceful place for the last sin eater to take his rest, even if there was no one to perform like offices on his behalf.

Next: sin-eating as described in Precious Bane.

Mary Webb was born at Leighton, near Much Wenlock in 1881, and spent her teen years in the town. She also knew the communities of the South Shropshire Hills and was well versed in their folklore and local vernaculars. It is probable she was familiar with the sin eating of Richard Munslow, hence the passage in Precious Bane, though she gives the performing of the rite her own narrative twist.

I’m posting the whole extract here, not only because it paints a picture of past Shropshire life, but because it includes some fine writing by this often under-valued author. The novel is set in the early 1800s and the narrator is young Prue Sarn, a sensitive and good-hearted farmer’s daughter, who believes no one will ever marry her because of her hare lip. Her older brother, Gideon, is a hard-nosed go-getter who thinks only of making money. At this point in the story Prue’s father has just died.

***

It was a still, dewy summer night when we buried Father. In our time there was still a custom round about Sarn to bury people at night. In our family it had been done for hundreds of years. I was busy all day decking the waggon with yew and the white flowering laurel, that has such a heavy, sweet smell. I pulled all the white roses and a tuthree pinks that were in blow, and made up with daisies out of the hay grass. While I pulled them, I thought how angered Father would have been to see me there, trampling it, and I could scarcely help looking round now and again to see if he was coming.

After we’d milked, Gideon went for the beasts, and I put black streamers round their necks, and tied yew boughs to their horns. It had to be done carefully, for they were the Longhorn breed, and if you angered them, they’d hike you to death in a minute. The miller was one bearer, and Mister Callard, of Callard’s Dingle, who farmed all the land between Sarn and Plash, was another. Then there were our two uncles from beyond the mountains. Gideon, being chief mourner, had a tall hat with black streamers and black gloves and a twisted black stick with streamers on it.

They took a long while getting the coffin out, for the doors were very narrow and it was a big, heavy coffin. It had always been the same at all the Sarn funerals, yet nobody ever seemed to think of making the doors bigger. Sexton went first with his hat off and a great torch in his hand. Then came the cart, with Miller’s lad and another to lead the beasts. The waggon was mounded up with leaves and branches, and they all said it was a credit to me. But I could only mind how poor Father was used to tell me to take away all those nasty weeds out of the house. And now we were taking him away, jolting over the stones, from the place where he was maister.

I was all of a puzzle with it. It did seem so unkind, and disrespectful as well, leaving the poor soul all by his lonesome at the other end of the mere. I was glad it was sweet June weather, and not dark. We were bound to go the long way round, the other being only a foot road. When we were come out of the fold-yard, past the mixen, and were in the road, we took our places—Gideon behind the coffin by him- self, then Mother and me in our black poke bonnets and shawls, with Prayer Books and branches of rosemary in our hands. Uncles and Miller and Mister Callard came next, all with torches and boughs of rosemary.

It was a good road, and smoother than most—the road to Lullingford. Parson used to say it was made by folk who lived in the days when the Redeemer lived. Romans, the name was. They could make roads right well, whatever their name was. It went along above the water, close by the lake; and as we walked solemnly onwards, I looked into the water and saw us there. It was a dim picture, for the only light there was came from the waning, clouded moon, and from the torches. But you could see, in the dark water, something stirring, and gleams and flashes, and when the moon came clear we had our shapes, like the shadows of fish gliding in the deep. There was a great heap of black, that was the waggon, and the oxen were like clouds moving far down, and the torches were flung into the water as if we wanted to dout them.

All the time, as we went, we could hear the bells ringing the corpse home. They sounded very strange over the water in the waste of night, and the echoes sounded yet stranger. Once a white owl came by, like a blown feather for lightness and softness. Mother said it was Father’s spirit looking for its body. There was no sound but the bells and the creaking of the wheels, till Parson’s pony, grazing in the glebe, saw the dim shapes of the oxen a long way off, and whinnied, not knowing, I suppose, but what they were ponies too, and being glad to think, in the lonesome- ness of the night, of others like herself nearby.

At last the creaking stopped at the lych-gate. They took out the coffin, resting it on trestles, and in the midst of the heavy breathing of the bearers came the promising words— “I am the resurrection and the life.” They were like quiet rain after drought. Only I began to wonder, how should we come again in the resurrection? Should we come clear, or dim, like in the water? Would Father come in a fit of anger, as he’d died, or as a little boy running to Grandma with a bunch of primmyroses? Would Mother smile the same smile, or would she have found a light in the dark passage? Should I still be fast in a body I’d no mind for, or would they give us leave to weave ourselves bodies to our own liking out of the spinnings of our souls?

The coffin was moved to another trestle, by the graveside, and a white cloth put over it. Our best tablecloth, it was. On the cloth stood the big pewter tankard full of elderberry wine. It was the only thing Mother could provide, and it was by good fortune that she had plenty of it, enough for the funeral feast and all, since there had been such a power of elderberries the year afore. It looked strange in the doubtful moonlight, standing there on the coffin, when we were used to see it on the table, with the colour of the Christmas Brand reflected in it.

Parson came forrard and took it up, saying— “I drink to the peace of him that’s gone.” Then everybody came in turn, and drank good health to Father’s spirit. At the coffin foot was our little pewter measure full of wine, and a crust of bread with it, but nobody touched them. Then Sexton stepped forrard and said— “Be there a Sin Eater?” And Mother cried out— “Alas no! Woe’s me! There is no Sin Eater for poor Sarn. Gideon gainsayed it.”

Now it was still the custom at that time, in our part of the country, to give a fee to some poor man after a death, and then he would take bread and wine handed to him across the coffin, and eat and drink, saying—I give easement and rest now to thee, dear man, that ye walk not over the fields nor down the byways. And for thy peace I pawn my own soul. And with a calm and grievous look he would go to his own place.

Mostly, my Grandad used to say, Sin Eaters were such as had been Wise Men or layers of spirits, and had fallen on evil days. Or they were poor folk that had come, through some dark deed, out of the kindly life of men, and with whom none would trade, whose only food might oftentimes be the bread and wine that had crossed the coffin. In our time there were none left around Sarn. They had nearly died out, and they had to be sent for to the mountains. It was a long way to send, and they asked a big price, instead of doing it for nothing as in the old days.

So Gideon said— “We’ll save the money. What good would the man do?” But Mother cried and moaned all night after. And when the Sexton said “Be there a Sin Eater?” she cried again very pitifully, because Father had died in his wrath, with all his sins upon him, and besides, he had died in his boots, which is a very unket thing and bodes no good. So she thought he had great need of a Sin Eater, and she would not be comforted. Then a strange, heart-shaking thing came to pass. Gideon stepped up to the coffin and said— “There is a Sin Eater.”

“Who then? I see none,” said Sexton.

“I ool be the Sin Eater.” He took up the little pewter measure full of darkness, and he looked at Mother.

“Oot turn over the farm and all to me if I be the Sin Eater, Mother?” he said.

“No, no! Sin Eaters be accurst!”

“What harm, to drink a sup of your own wine and chumble a crust of your own bread? But if you dunna care, let be. He can go with the sin on him.”

“No, no! Leave un go free, Gideon! Let un rest, poor soul! You be in life and young, but he’m cold and helpless, in the power of Satan. He went with all his sins upon him, in his boots, poor soul! If there’s none else to help, let his own lad take pity.”

“And you’ll give me the farm, Mother?” “

Yes, yes, my dear! What be the farm to me? You can take all, and welcome.” Then Gideon drank the wine all of a gulp, and swallowed the crust. There was no sound in all the place but the sound of his teeth biting it up. Then he put his hand on the coffin, standing up tall in the high black hat, with a gleaming pale face, and he said—

“I give easement and rest now to thee, dear man. Come not down the lanes nor in our meadows. And for thy peace I pawn my own soul. Amen.”

There was a sigh from everybody then, like the wind in dry bents. Even the oxen by the gate, it seemed to me, sighed as they chewed the cud. But when Gideon said, “Come not down the lanes nor in our meadows,” I thought he said it like somebody warning off a trespasser. Now it was time to throw the rosemary into the grave. Then they lowered the coffin in, and all threw their burning torches down upon it, and douted them.

The full Hathi Trust novel text is HERE

    In Which The Farrells Go To Ratlinghope To Visit Shropshire’s Last Sin Eater Okay. Hands up those of you who know about sin eaters. I certainly had not registered their existence despite having read Mary Webb’s Shropshire novel…

#Mary Webb #Precious Bane #Ratlinghope #Richard Munslow #Sin Eater #Tish Farrell Writer #wplongform

[silverplumespectre]

Halloween requires a degree of open-mindedness and psychic vulnerability not common to your less-introspective holidays. Christmas? String some lights, throw a ham in the oven and let the postman do all the heavy lifting. A round of green beer on St. Patrick's Day makes every Schultz, Dubois and Bukowski feel like a True Son of Ireland, and every mook with a backyard grill and a "Kiss the Cook" apron is King of the Fourth of July. Halloween is different. It's darker, primitive, elemental. All Hallow's Eve meets a fundamental human need that can't be satisfied by colored eggs or a heart-shaped box of chocolates. It's a public celebration of everything we personally don't want to know, a time to deliberately indulge concepts we pointedly ignore on every other night of the year. It's a chance to put a tolerable face on our nightmares, and then dismiss them for being so tolerable. Fact is, if Halloween doesn't make you feel at least a little anxious and uncomfortable, you're not doing it right. And for folks like me who strive to keep Halloween well, it's getting harder every year to do it right. Times were, I could just dress up like Batman and stalk the darkened streets in search of ghostly thrills and free candy, but the neighbors stopped opening their doors to me every Oct. 31 about the same time my beard filled in, effectively ending my trick-or-treating career. After that, I sought Halloween fulfillment at parties and clubs, only to become disillusioned because, no matter how carefully I prepared my costume — astronaut, pharoah, Dracula, Hugh Hefner — everybody invariably thought I'd come as a hobo. Plus, it's a scientific fact that $2 well drinks tend to dampen one's extra-natural sensitivities. It was a crisis of faith. Each October I grew despondent, restive, which was a good start, but I needed more. I needed to reconnect with the irrational dreads and unseen terrors of my youth. I needed to pierce the veil between the bright world of the living and the darkly spirit realm. Turns out, all I really needed was an autumn afternoon in Silver Plume. Wedged between towering mountainsides at the western terminus of the Georgetown Loop railroad, Silver Plume is a living ghost town. Living, because a shade over 150 hardy souls still dwell along its few dusty avenues and occupy its ancient Victorian houses, and because, in summer, its quarter-mile length hums with life. In season, a small but steady stream of tourists hikes among the century-old ruins of the great mines that once made the narrow valley a bustling center of industry. They stroll beneath the town's sun-bright aspens and whispering cottonwoods, unearth treasures in its quaint antique shops and pause to refresh themselves at its humbly excellent diners. I was looking for the other Silver Plume — the one that emerges when the last of the summer people retire for the winter, the aspens have lapsed into barren silence and long shadows drape across the ancient storefronts like a shroud. Surely, I thought, a place so generously equipped with physical reminders of people long since dust must be irresistible to the ghostly set. Eager to get my fright on, I turned off Interstate 70 at Exit 226, crossed back under the highway and parked at the now-dormant railroad depot. A stroll of maybe 200 yards brought me to a rusty, half-open gate apparently leading nowhere. It took several paces into the dense, still woods beyond to realize I was treading hallowed ground. The Silver Plume Cemetery occupies a thickly forested hilltop opposite the town, and once your eyes adjust to the ever-twilit gloom, you discover yourself surrounded by solid ranks of gravestones. While many of the ancient markers are of monumental design and majestic proportions — an indication, I suppose, of Silver Plume's bygone affluence — it's impossible to see more than two or three from any one vantage, making every step an eerie voyage of discovery. Shafts of afternoon sunlight falling upon grasping, snow-covered limbs produced a steady, stealthy commotion of creaks, thuds and snaps — furtive sounds that seemed to sneak up behind me and brush the nape of my neck like cobwebs. It suddenly dawned on me that I'd have better luck somewhere else. I power-walked back down to my car and locked the doors for the quarter-mile drive to Main Street. Parking near Silver Plume's 130-year-old post office near the corner of Main and Woodward, I walked past locked doors and vacant windows until I arrived at the town's only open concern, the Sopp & Truscott Bakery. Mayor Lee Berenato leaned against the trunk of his car, enjoying the sun and the quiet. "Is Silver Plume haunted?" I asked, certain that Berenato spent the bulk of his official energies dealing with supernatural shenanigans. "Naw, I've never seen anything like that," he yawned. "Mostly I do snow removal, trash collection and keeping the dog (chips) out of the street. This is a small town." Berenato was harshing my Halloween buzz, and I said so. Silver Plume is the True Spirit of Halloween rendered in plank and stone, and I refuse to believe its flesh-and-bone residents would let such a scary-good resource go to waste. "Well, we do a haunted house in the Rowe Museum every now and then. Grumpy used to do one at his garage every year, but he died a couple years ago. He'd spend months getting it ready. Grumpy loved Halloween." That's good, but I'll bet you can do better. "A few years ago we did the 'Haunted Town.' I put up tiki torches to make a 'Wall of Fire,' and we even had a troll under the footbridge. That was a lot of fun." I was instantly in love with the Haunted Town concept, and demanded to see one at once. "I don't know when we'll do that again," said Berenato, unhelpfully. "It was a pretty big production. You've got to get people fired up for that kind of thing." So what are you sitting here talking to me for? I recommended he start rallying his constituents immediately and stepped into the bakery. Though less than 50 years old, Sopp & Truscott looks like a place that might appeal to the disembodied. Shane Meredith was busy turning out the sweet treats that have made the bakery a regular stop for skiers smart enough — or lucky enough — to know about it. "Is this place haunted?" I asked, getting right down to business. "I've heard it is, but I haven't seen anything myself," Meredith said. "But I just bought this place from the Buckleys. You should ask them. They've got a million ghost stories." As neither Buckley was expected for some hours, I decided to conduct my researches elsewhere. Now, I'm no more superstitious than, say, your average 8-year-old Druid, but I've always considered it just plain bad policy to leave a bakery empty handed. "What do you have for pies?" I asked. "Two cherry pies just came out of the oven." "I'll take one." It was round and crisp and perfect, and I was in serious danger of losing focus. I hurled a wad of bills onto the counter, grabbed the box and fled into the street — and froze in my tracks. A demonic face grimaced at me from behind the dirty pane of a window directly across the street. I pledged in my palpitating heart that if only the horrid apparition would turn out to be nothing more than a stubborn figment of a five-meat pizza dream, I'd swear off Italian food for life. Tragically, I was wide awake. Anybody who knows me will attest that I'm generally pretty real, but my soulful expedition suddenly felt too real by half. I retreated, trembling, down the street in a fog of fright and confusion, which is how Chris Thome, owner of the town's single bar and grill, The Plume, found me. Relieved to see that he was unquestionably corporeal, I thought to quiet my jangled nerves with light and uplifting conversation. "Is this place haunted?" "This place is totally haunted," Thome deadpanned. "I didn't know it when I bought it four years ago, but the locals filled me in pretty quick." The Plume, it turns out, is pleased to offer poker every Tuesday night, 25-cent wings on Wednesdays, jerked chicken and pork ribs on the weekends, and a resident ghost every night of the year. "The way it was told to me, it's a woman named Frieda who died in one of the back rooms," Chris explained, with no particular drama. "Everybody suspected her husband murdered her, but nobody was ever charged for it. Now she lives here and messes with everybody's head. Things disappear, get moved around, fall off shelves … it can be pretty weird, sometimes. I've had bartenders who wouldn't even go in the back." Well, geez, I'd be a little difficult, too, if my sweet Babu did me the big-time dirt and remained free to pawn my mother's brooch and dance on my early grave. Heck, depending on whom you talk to, I'm difficult right now. But that doesn't make Frieda's unquiet spirit a threat to living souls, does it? "I personally got hit with a commercial coffee maker that she pushed off the top of the walk-in," Thome continued. For what it's worth, the offending coffee maker is only slightly smaller than a Chevy Aveo and has better head room. "We had reservations for a party of 30, and I went in the back to get something. It just flew off and hit me in the head. I was bleeding all over the place. The bartender got all freaked out when he saw me. But I just stuffed towels into my hat to soak up the blood and kept right on working. What else are you going to do?" I know what I would have done, but there was no point in telling Chris. Ironically, having just officially passed beyond the seasonal-goods aisle at Wal-Mart and into the spectral plane, I wasn't necessarily happy with the accommodations. "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" is one thing. A bloodthirsty phantom is quite another. Recoiling in horror, I stammered my apologies and made for the door. "You should come back on a Thursday night," Thome said with unaffected good nature. "It's steak night — a buck an ounce." For buck-an-ounce steak, I probably will, in a month or two, maybe, when I've recovered something of my wits. I wandered blindly back up Main Street, panicked and desperate and wondering whether Sopp & Truscott sells whole garlic bulbs. A woman's face suddenly appeared before me, smiling, and I nearly collapsed in the street. Thankfully, it wasn't Frieda after all, but former bakery owner Gail Buckley. I was in no condition to hear another ghost story, and resolved to direct conversation into shallower waters. "So, is the bakery haunted?" "It's definitely haunted," Buckley said, inexplicably pleased at her misfortune. "One day we were just standing there, and a three-tiered cake rack went flying off the shelf. I think this whole town is haunted. You know about the guy who plays the violin, right?" In fact, I did. On a great rock shoulder high above Silver Plume stands a lonely granite obelisk dedicated to the memory of Clifford Griffin. The son of an English noble house, Griffin may or may not have taken his own life in 1887 after getting dumped or not dumped by the fickle object of his romantic desire. Local legend says that on still nights you can still hear the plaintive strains of his violin drifting down the canyon. "Even my house is haunted, and it wasn't even built until 1982," Buckley continued. "One time I had a party for a girlfriend, and we put all of the helium balloons in the guest room. All of a sudden, one of the balloons — just one — floated out all by itself and floated right through the living room. It was pretty weird." "Yes, weird," I gasped, rapidly losing peripheral vision. "Also, our ghost seems to have a thing about instruction manuals," she went on, cruelly ignoring my distress. "They're always disappearing, sometimes for months, then they turn up in the strangest places." It was too much. Pausing just long enough to purchase one of Meredith's hat-size cinnamon rolls, I reeled back up the street to my car and fled down the canyon. With each mile, the crushing weight of horror lifted a bit, and my mind gradually calmed. By the time I got home, I'd begun to apprehend the magnitude of my folly. I'd been wrong to disturb the reclusive phantoms of Silver Plume; wrong to seek my ghostly muse among its mysterious relics; wrong to undertake the ill-considered quest without bringing a change of underwear. From now on, I vowed, I'll roast my pumpkin seeds, watch “Young Frankenstein” for the umpteenth time and keep Halloween in my heart, where it belongs. I dug out an old cassette tape of “Monster Mash,” slid it into my stereo, and immediately forgot how to make the machine play cassettes. Now where in the world is that instruction manual?

"THE GHOSTS OF SILVER PLUME: HALLOWEEN QUEST NETS A TREASURE TROVE OF TERROR" By Stephen Knapp

Canyon Courier www.canyoncourier.com 10-27-2009

#silver plume colorado #2009 #canyon courier #history preservation conservation #western mining life culture heritage industry #historic newspaper publication #rocky mountains high country rockies front range #co historical society #spectre #living ghost town #stephen knapp #cemetery #mine district #halloween #all hallows eve #main street #sopp truscott #georgetown loop railroad #victorian architecture #mayor lee berenato #aspens #i70 exit 226 #haunted #george rowe musueum #buckley #grumpy #chris thome #shane meredith #freida #gail

[jennywillsaveus]

18.10.2017

Lonely day

Tough day

Yesterday alone I laid everything out on the carpet Books, kitchen things, objects with specific purpose or none Arranged them sideways in a grid on the floor there unmoored Out of context and then considered it First the whole picture, then everything individually Humming along at the deadest pace imaginable One object then another and then the next And I wondered what they meant there If they meant anything still Found notes Camping supplies A book you bought in the desert “Identifying Wildflowers” Pictures from vacations From parties Kitschy gifts we bought from rest stops On that road trip out West Objects Everything itself And then memory All of it laid out there From the dining room The living room The hallway and the basement and the kitchen From that room we called the office But never used Even the bathroom Everything laid out there on the floor on the carpet out of context And I sat there for hours Today I moved everything from the floor to the table in the dining room Placed each thing carefully without reason or at least without one I understood or could describe There on the table together and when I was done and stepped back I realized what I had made Keepsakes Pictures Letters Ordinary objects all collected there A memorial And I thought of ones on highways or set by gravestones All the things you see there but don’t understand but still bring a remembered thing back vividly Invoke someone’s reality when there together in that place in that way out of context And I knew I had to take it down before anybody else saw Tomorrow I plan to put them all somewhere Those things In boxes Side of the road Attic maybe All these things that push and pull me through history To places I once was, places I might’ve gone, places I ended up going Postcards Ticket stubs from one thing or another A personalized coffee mug neither your name nor mine Phone cards and old phones A page from an old calendar I bought once at a thrift store and insisted on hanging That cycles of the moon print Photos Old boots of mine Put them in boxes And I sat there for hours In the living room first Then in the dining room Moving things around Picking things up and seeing where they took me To what place in history What moment on our timeline Where we were, where I was, where I thought we’d end up In this house or on the highway Driving somewhere near Christmas In the desert or anywhere else And I put them in boxes

[youdontknoqbabyd-blog]

This.

Yesterday alone I laid everything out on the carpet Books, kitchen things, objects with specific purpose or none Arranged them sideways in a grid on the floor there unmoored Out of context and then considered it First the whole picture, then everything individually Humming along at the deadest pace imaginable One object then another and then the next And I wondered what they meant there If they meant anything still Found notes Camping supplies A book you bought in the desert “Identifying Wildflowers” Pictures from vacations From parties Kitschy gifts we bought from rest stops On that road trip out West Objects Everything itself And then memory All of it laid out there From the dining room The living room The hallway and the basement and the kitchen From that room we called the office But never used Even the bathroom Everything laid out there on the floor on the carpet out of context And I sat there for hours Today I moved everything from the floor to the table in the dining room Placed each thing carefully without reason or at least without one I understood or could describe There on the table together and when I was done and stepped back I realized what I had made Keepsakes Pictures Letters Ordinary objects all collected there A memorial And I thought of ones on highways or set by gravestones All the things you see there but don’t understand but still bring a remembered thing back vividly Invoke someone’s reality when there together in that place in that way out of context And I knew I had to take it down before anybody else saw Tomorrow I plan to put them all somewhere Those things In boxes Side of the road Attic maybe All these things that push and pull me through history To places I once was, places I might’ve gone, places I ended up going Postcards Ticket stubs from one thing or another A personalized coffee mug neither your name nor mine Phone cards and old phones A page from an old calendar I bought once at a thrift store and insisted on hanging That cycles of the moon print Photos Old boots of mine Put them in boxes And I sat there for hours In the living room first Then in the dining room Moving things around Picking things up and seeing where they took me To what place in history What moment on our timeline Where we were, where I was, where I thought we’d end up In this house or on the highway Driving somewhere near Christmas In the desert or anywhere else And I put them in boxes

[nofomoartworld]

Yarn-Bombing Artist Sets Out to Crochet Across The USA

After years of yarn-bombing countless objects on the street, like bikes, shopping carts, and even the Wall Street Bull, renowned fiber artist Olek made an overtly political statement when she covered a billboard overlooking a New Jersey state highway with a crocheted mural of Hillary Clinton with text that read, "#ImWithHer." Then, on election night, with a crowd of Clinton supporters at New York's Bowery Hotel, Olek watched in dismay as the results came in. "As I began to realize that Hillary would not win, the first thing I thought to myself was that I should have created more billboards across the USA and done more to support her campaign," Olek tells Creators.

Now, the Polish-born artist is making good on that resolution with Love Across the USA, an ambitious project in which Olek will travel from state to state, working with local communities to crochet billboard-sized murals of inspirational figures like Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, and Hillary Clinton.

Olek installing Slavery is the Next Thing to Hell, Auburn, NY, 2017, by Christopher Molloy

As a New York City resident, New York State seems like a natural place for Olek to begin the project, but there was more to her decision to start the project in Rochester than just proximity. Olek says a picture she saw on election day of Susan B. Anthony's gravestone covered in "I Voted" stickers struck her. "The stickers on Susan B. Anthony's grave was a really strong image for me and inspired me to start with her. Because she had spent so much of her life in Rochester, it was a logical first stop." But even in the first state of the project, Olek says she couldn't limit herself to just one crocheted mural. "While learning more about the area, I also discovered that Harriet Tubman had lived in nearby Auburn, and it was impossible to choose only one piece!"

Love Across the USA isn't Olek's first project involving the cooperation of volunteers in various communities. For several of her recent projects she has traveled to different places and given free crochet workshops to local volunteers who then help to create her public artworks. Just last year Olek traveled to Sweden and Finland to create Our Pink House, in which a house was completely covered in pink crocheted fabric. Olek says she has a lot of reverence for these processes. "A while back, while working on community-based pieces, I understood that, as an artist working in public spaces, the power of these projects is beyond the physical existence of the piece. It's everything leading up to the installation and the reaction once it's revealed to the public," she explains.

#I'mWithHer, New Jersey, USA, 2016, by Penn Eastburn

The potential for community oriented projects to provide a cathartic outlet for those involved seems to be the ultimate motivation for Love Across the USA. And, according to Olek, the project has already been a success. "After the Harriet Tubman installation, we met one woman's daughter who told us how the project had given her mom a renewed motivation following the recent death of her husband of many years. The stories of how this work can help to empower women are moving and give me motivation to continue," she says.

Although she has only just completed the first state in a nationwide effort, Olek has already worked with hundreds of volunteers to create millions of stitches. And she and her team are planning to make the project even more ambitious and whimsical in the future. "My girls and I are dreaming of a van that runs on a vegetable oil, is wrapped in pink, and is our new home in between states. I would also like to find a filmmaker who would jump on the road with us, as it is looking like a fascinating journey around this country during these challenging times."

Independence is Happiness, Rochester, NY 2017, by Olek

But it could be that a combination of ambition and whimsy that will active communities throughout the country to become more caring toward one another. "It's really inspiring to see how strangers can join forces and work toward one goal. People who have different beliefs, who might not normally be friends, can come together to work. I know that each place will be different and it might bring various challenges, and I will do my best to treat each with a new fresh energy and be open to what it might bring."

For now, Olek says that the next Love Across the USA destination is still a secret, but in the meantime she will be exhibiting at the Urban Nation Museum in Berlin and the Avesta Museum in Sweden.

Love Across the USA Participants crocheting, Rochester, NY, 2017 by Jason Wilder

Love Across the USA Participants, Rochester, NY, 2017, by Jason Wilder

Installing Independence is Happiness, Rochester, NY, 2017, by Michael Owens

Olek installing Slavery is the Next Thing to Hell, Auburn, NY, 2017, by Christopher Molloy

Olek and Installation Team, Auburn, NY, 2017, by Christopher Molloy

Harriet Tubman's great grand-niece, Pauline Copes, seeing the Slavery is the Next Thing to Hell mural for the first time, Auburn, NY, by Christopher Molloy, 2017

Our Pink House, Kerava, Finland, 2016, by Olek

See more of Olek's work on her website and follow her progress on Love Across the USA project on Instagram.

Related:

Watch an Entirely Crocheted House Get Blown to Shreds

YARN Documentary Weaves a History of Art, Wool, and Activism

These Art Activists Held 152 Events Over Trump's First 100 Days

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