#at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if he brought Greg along to that dinner with shiv

[mushroomheadgirl]

Okay but real quick - mattson asking who tf Greg is and saying he wasn’t on the list tells me that Tom just brought Greg along with him and everyone else on that trip just sort of … accepted it?

#succession #tomgreg #greg hirsch #tom wambsgans #the codependency is !!! #delicious #the greglets weren’t enough he learned his lesson #also something something dog motif #at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if he brought Greg along to that dinner with shiv

[hopelikethemoon]

Weed (Javier x Reader) {MTMF}

Title: Weed Rating: PG-13 Length: 4600 Warnings: Potential triggers if you have toxic family members and/or triggers difficult child hoods. Also recreational marijuana use and fluff!  Notes: You can find everything about Maybe Today, Maybe Forever here. Set November 2nd 1998.  Summary: Reader goes to therapy and Javier tries something new.

@grapemama @seawhisperer @huliabitch @pedropascalito @rogrsnbarnes @thewallpapergoesorido @twomoonstwosuns @gooddaykate @livasaurasrex @ham4arrow @plexflexico​ @readsalot73 @hdlynn​ @lokiaddicted​ @randomness501 @fioccodineveautunnale​  @roxypeanut​ @snivellusim​ @lukesrighthand​ @historynerd04 @mrsparknuts​ @synystersilenceinblacknwhite​ @behindmyeyes-insidemyhead​ @exrebelshocktrooper​ @awesomefandomsunited​ @ah-callie​ @swhiskeys​ @lady-tano​ @beskar-droids​ @space-floozy​ @cable-kenobi​ @cool-ultra-nerd @himbopoes​ @findhimfives​ @pedrosdoll​ @frietiemeloen​ @arrowswithwifi​ @random066​ @uncomicalhumour​ @heather-lynn​ @domino-oh-damn​ @cyarikaaa @ahopelessromanticwritersworld​ @im-still-a-pieceofgarbage @ksgeekgirl  @yabby-girl @xqueenofthecraziesx​ @punkass-potato @coredrive @pascalesque @theduchessofkirkcaldy @queenquazar @sabinemorans @buckstaposition @holkaskrosnou @yespolkadotkitty @fleetwoodmactshirt @seeking-a-great–perhaps

“I was quite surprised to hear from you again.” Nancy remarked as she shuffled papers in her notebook, peering up at you from the rim of her eyeglasses. “When last we met, you seemed to be well on your way.” She took her glasses off and sat them on her desk, “Have we had a setback?”

You chewed on your bottom lip as you stared across the room at her, “I wouldn’t necessarily call it a setback.” 

“What would you call it?”

“I was doing really well. After everything with the articles, Javier and I went on vacation together and things felt…” You sighed. “I felt like I had finally hit my stride. You know?”

“Perhaps you should elaborate.”

You and Javier had already decided that Nancy was a safe space to discuss your elopement. It wasn’t like she could tell anyone about your sessions. Not to mention the fact that you had discussed your aversion to the whole concept at length in previous sessions.

But it still felt wrong to tell her. 

“Well,” You drew in a deep breath before exhaling slowly. “Javier and I got married.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you.” You smiled, picking a piece of fuzz off your leg. “It was perfect. I finally realized I had reached this point in my life where I wanted that. I wanted this thing that was just ours.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“I mean, you know that Javier and I are private people. Having our lives splashed across newspapers was daunting. Which… that’s actually why I’m here.”

“Your marriage?”

“No. My mother.”

Nancy’s brows rose upwards and for the first time she seemed shocked by something you had to say. “Your mother?”

You rubbed your lips together and nodded a little. “She showed up this weekend. Halloween.” You laughed quietly, staring at a spot on the floor. “Seeing her again… it brought up. A lot.”

“Would you like to discuss what it brought up?”

“That’s why I’m here,” You retorted, before you sank back against the sofa, raking your fingers through your hair. “For a few fleeting seconds I let myself actually believe that maybe she had changed. That maybe rehab had cured her. Finally. But… then I was thirteen again. I felt so small and… scared.”

“Scared?”

“I’ve worked very hard to make sure my girls have a safe, loving, harmonious life. I even came here. I recognized I had a problem after Sofía and I… handled it. That’s what I do. I handle things.” You swallowed thickly, feeling a knot form in the pit of your stomach. “This isn’t new. We’ve talked about her before.”

Nancy flipped through the pages of her notebook, “Yes. I recall our lengthy conversation about her addiction. You made a lot of progress, grappling with those difficult emotions that grew from a difficult situation. How did this encounter make you feel?”

“I don’t think I’ve slept since Friday night.” You shrugged a shoulder, “Javier’s been great. He’s… always been understanding.”

“But you’ve never fully discussed the details with him, have you?”

You bit down on your bottom lip and shook your head. 

“Why do you think that is?”

“Because it’s a lot. We used to talk about it… before we were together. It’s come up before.”

“You once referred to her as a shadow on your life. Does it feel like that shadow returned?”

“Yes.” You rubbed your hands together, leaning forward on the edge of the sofa. “That’s exactly how it feels. She’s gone — I hope she’s gone — but I still feel…”

“Small?”

“She pulled all the same tricks. She tried to make Javi think I was crazy. She pulled the tears and the blaming and… I genuinely don’t think she realizes how traumatized I was as a child.”

“What stands out?”

You laughed, pinching the bridge of your nose. “God, I don’t even know. There was so much.” 

“I would like to try something, if you’re open.” Nancy suggested, “Would you be comfortable laying down?”

“Sure.” You kicked off your shoes and stretched out lengthwise on the sofa. “Is this the whole… introspective breathing exercise?”

“Yes.”

You dragged your hands over your face, trying to will yourself to relax. “Alright. I’m ready.” 

“Focus on your breath. In and out. As you feel the air rushing into your lungs, I want you to think back to your childhood.” Nancy advised you. “Pinpoint a moment. Just one.”

You closed your eyes, focusing on your breathing just as she had told you to. You pictured your lungs filling with air and deflating as you exhaled. How many times had you used breathing exercises to manage anxiety?

You let your mind wander back — at first you thought of Javier. Those were easy memories to reflect on. Safe memories. The way he’d held you this morning, the way he tried to chase away all of the bad memories that had returned with your mother. But you weren’t sitting on Nancy’s sofa to think about Javi.

“What do you see?”

“The house I grew up in,” You answered, digging your teeth into your bottom lip as you settled into that memory. “We lived in one of those one-level post-War houses. It was identical to the one next to us, except… we had a blue front door. She painted it when she was high, it was… It was poorly painted.”

“Who painted it?”

“My mother.”

“How does that blue door make you feel?”

“I used to dread it. Every time my dad would bring me back after a weekend with him…” You sighed heavily. “It wasn’t a welcome sight.”

“And what was beyond that door?”

“The place I lived. It was never home. It was just the place I lived.” You weren’t sure if you’d ever really had a home before Javier and the girls. They felt like what home had always looked like in books and movies. 

“If I was coming back from dad’s house, I knew I was going to be met with hostility. She treated me like a traitor every time I came back to the house. If she had gotten high while I was gone, she was usually passed out on the sofa — that was the best time to come back.”

“Tell me about your room.”

“There was a mural on one of the walls. A butterfly.” You shook your head slowly as you pictured the poorly drawn butterfly. “I used to pretend I was the butterfly, that I could just fly out the window and never look back.”

“Did you feel trapped?”

“Always.” You shifted on the sofa, trying to find a more comfortable position. “I never felt safe.”

“Why?”

“There were always people in our house. Strangers — a lot of strange men.” 

“Were you ever harmed?”

“No. I’m certain I’m lucky in that regard. I slept with a chair in front of my door. My dad told me to do that. Even though he wasn’t there, he tried to protect me.”

“Do you think these experiences have played a part in how you approach your life?”

You laughed bitterly, “Every day. Not even consciously. These things are so hard wired into who I am.”

“How so?”

“Before Javier and I were together, I was terrified that my daughter would be brought up into a life like my own. Torn between two people who couldn’t get along. I knew Javier was a good man, but I still feared that. It makes life very confusing for a child.” 

“Let’s touch on those fears. It’s very common in adults who have suffered from upbringings like your own — they fear repeating the cycle. Is that something you find yourself faced with?”

“All the time. Everything that happened with Sofía’s birth brought up a lot of those emotions. I was afraid it would be the trigger. I had never felt that way before. I felt like a stranger in my own body.” You focused on your breathing again, trying to push aside the panic you felt. “Seeing her again this weekend, definitely brought those emotions back to the surface. Javier tried to reassure me. He was great — so great.”

“What emotions?”

“She got under my skin.” You admitted. “I have worked so hard to provide everything for my family. We have a home, we love each other, the girls are safe and loved.”

“How did your interaction with your mother go?”

“She showed up Saturday night. We had plans for Josie — a school Halloween party. I let Javier handle it because I just didn’t have the emotional bandwidth. I guess she said some shitty things to him, I’m not surprised. She skirted around it with me on Sunday.”

“Why did you speak to her on Sunday?”

“Javier had to reason with her. To get her to leave, you know?” You swallowed thickly. “So she came back on Sunday and we talked. She made excuses, she blamed me, she lashed out. I was thirteen again.”

“Why thirteen?”

You opened your eyes, turning to look at Nancy. “What?”

“You mentioned thirteen twice. What happened when you were twelve?”

“Oh,” You rubbed at the spot between your brows. “My mother and her boyfriend — I think it was Greg… there were a few at the time — but, they had this party…” You closed your eyes again. “Drugs everywhere. My mother was drunk, on top of whatever she’d snorted… she hadn’t even bothered to make dinner for me. So I was in the kitchen, it was in the back of the house, and I was trying to make something to eat. There was this woman who was there and I guess she had wandered away from the rest of the party—” 

“Take your time.”

You covered your face, “She was nice. Obviously very high, but she liked my shirt. It had a butterfly on it.” You pressed the heels of your palms against your eyes. “She sat down at the kitchen table and she… nodded out and then she made this sound.” You sat up slowly then, pushing your fingers through your hair. “It was like a death rattle.”

“Did she die?”

You nodded, “Right in front of me. I tried to call 911, but…” You looked at a point somewhere beyond Nancy. “My mother threatened me. She said if I told anyone what happened, she’d make sure I never saw my father again. I couldn’t sleep for weeks.”

“You have gone through a considerable amount of trauma at a very young age,” Nancy surmised, closing her notebook as she leaned against her desk. “Yet you have overcome it. You have a healthy relationship with your partner, you put tremendous consideration into your relationship with your daughters. But I do think there is more work to be done. You are not an island. You are no longer isolated.”

You pressed your lips together and nodded slowly as you weighed her words. “I know I’m not. And I do talk about these things with Javier. I always have.” 

“It is okay to let go of the past. You don’t have to carry that baggage with you.” Nancy smiled at you kindly, “This is a minor setback, that you cannot let affect the progress you’ve made.”

You chewed on your thumbnail nervously, “I know. And I am aware that I’m a work in progress. We all are.”

Nancy nodded, “Exactly. Focus on today, on the here and now. Don’t let yourself get trapped in this moment. Your mother has no control over your future.”

“I tell everyone that it’s okay to cut toxic people out of their lives, but when it came to my own mother I hesitated.” 

“We all want to believe the best in someone. But some people aren’t wired to be their best. There’s no shame in disconnecting. Focus on your own family.”

You smiled back at her, “Thank you. I do think I’m going to start having sessions again. I want to get through this—“ You gestured to your chest. “I have a lot of pain that I’m still carrying. I would like to work through it with you.”

“I’m here for you. And, of course, Javier if he decides he’d like to join us.”

“I’m sure he will,” You laughed softly. “He was willing to come today if I needed support.”

“Our regular appointment time is still open. Feel free to call and get yourself back on my books.”

“Thank you.”

 ——

 Talking about your past hadn’t necessarily managed to cure your mild malaise, but it has helped to an extent. You felt lighter. You didn’t feel afraid that you’d see Rebecca standing outside of your house when you got home. 

Maybe a few more weeks of talking with Nancy — before you packed up the car to head to Laredo for Thanksgiving — would do you good. 

You peeled off your coat as you walked through the front door, hanging it on the hook. “Should I be afraid? It’s awfully quiet.” You called out, glancing around the empty family room. 

“In the kitchen!” Javier called out and you followed his voice. “You got home sooner than I expected.”

Your brows rose upwards as you looked at the bags of chips sitting on the counter. “Are we having a party I was unaware of?”

“No,” Javier grinned at you, shaking his head. “Connie’s keeping the girls another night. She’s off today.”

“Oh?” You tilted your head to the side. “Bags of chips, no kids…” 

He sat a familiar box down on the counter between the two of you, “I’m finally ready to bite the bullet, baby.”

You couldn’t help but cover your mouth and laugh, “Javier!” You moved around the counter, wrapping your arms around him as you continued to laugh. “You really don’t have to try weed, just because I’m having a shitty couple of days.”

“But I want to,” Javier ran his hand down your back. “You said before that it helps with stress and… I think we’re both pretty stressed right now.”

“I agree with that, but you really don’t have to try something you don’t want to. I know how you feel about it.”

“I had a really long conversation with Nadia about it at the party Saturday night. She laid it all out pretty clearly,” He rocked his jaw as you pulled back to look at him. “I can see the merits of smoking occasionally.”

You smiled up at him adoringly, “And here I thought I couldn’t love you anymore than I already do.” You rose up and pressed a kiss to his lips. “Better watch out,” You teased, cupping his jaw. “I might have to marry you.”

“Did you tell her?”

“I’ve never seen her so surprised.” You told him as you ran your thumb over his bottom lip. “It was a good session. I think I’m going to start going again.”

“Good.”

You ran your hands over his shoulders as you leaned against him, “I can’t believe you’re willing to smoke. Finally. God, I hope you love it.” 

“I like the prospect of being pain free for an evening.” Javier leaned down and rested his forehead against yours. “How are you doing?”

“I’m here.” You curled a hand around the back of his neck, playing with the hair there. “A lot of bad memories got dredged up.”

“I know you didn’t sleep last night.” He pressed a quick kiss to your lips, giving your hip a squeeze. “You gonna fall asleep on me if we smoke?”

You snorted, “Probably.” You watched him as he moved back to the grab the box off the counter. “Don’t you have class tomorrow?”

“I’ve assigned it a research day. They’ll be working on the proposals.” He answered smoothly. “They need the time to work anyways.”

“I’m touched that you did all of this, Javi.” 

He shrugged, “I wanted to do something that would cheer you up, baby. You were pretty out of it last night.”

“Last night was rough,” You admitted as you took the box from him, “Grab the chips.” 

Javier followed you into the bedroom, sitting the chips down on the foot of the bed as he watched you open the windows to let some fresh air in. 

“What should I expect?”

You paused, hands on your hips as you turned back towards him. “It’s different for everyone, but for the most part… You’ll feel like you’re drunk, without feeling drunk. Warm and fuzzy.” You shrugged. “I just know it makes me feel really calm.”

He pressed his tongue to the inside of his cheek as he nodded, “This can never get out. They won’t let either of us teach.”

“Marriage, pegging, and weed. Our three dirty secrets.” You wiggled your brows at him as you moved to join him at the foot of the bed. 

You sat the box on your legs, opening it and pulling out the neatly rolled joint from the last time you’d taken a hit. “It’s a lot like smoking. Same in and out.” You explained, sitting the box aside and holding the lighter out to him. “The key is that you have to let go and enjoy it.”

Javier dragged his teeth over his bottom lip and nodded, “I think after the year we’ve had, I can let go and have fun.”

“And that’s growth.” You laughed, before tucking the joint between your lips. He flicked the lighter on, bringing it to the end of the joint and lighting it for you. 

You pinched it between your fingers, drawing in a deep breath before exhaling slowly. This was exactly what you needed. You could already feel the first tingles as it settled. 

“Ready?” You questioned, holding the joint out between you. “You don’t have to, Javi. I don’t mind smoking if you just want to lay here with me.”

He shook his head, taking the joint from you. “I’m willing to try it, baby. I wanna see what all the fuss is about.” 

You rolled your eyes. “Of course you do.”

Javier brought it to his lips, tagging a drag off of it before passing it back to you. “What am I supposed to feel?”

You snatched it from him and took another breath, “Just let it happen. Don’t overthink it.” You held the joint up, smirking as he leaned forward and wrapped his lips around it. 

He had really nice lips. 

Javier rubbed his lips together thoughtfully, “I feel a little tingle.” He admitted, taking it back from you after you took another hit. 

“Just sink into it,” You advised him as you took the little ashtray out of the box, leaving it on the bed as you rose to your feet. 

“Where are you going?”

“Nowhere.” You gave him a look as you sat the box down on your nightstand, before returning to him to take another drag off it. “I’m just making more room.”

Javier laughed as he exhaled. “More room for what?”

You shrugged, “I was thinking a pillow fight.”

“Oh really?” He laughed again, watching you as you picked up the bag of sour cream and onion chips and sat them on the nightstand too. “Why a pillow fight?”

“Because it sounds fun.” You plopped back down beside him, taking the joint from him and take another hit off it, “Javier Peña is smoking weed.”

He rolled his eyes, “I’ve been corrupted.”

“Corruption looks good on you,” You told him, brushing your knuckles against his cheek. “I miss the hair.

Javier grinned around the joint tucked between his lips, “I didn’t let it go until you got your wish.”

You leaned over and kissed his cheek, ruffling your fingers through his hair. “You look good when you’re getting fucked.”

“So I’ve been told,” He said as he exhaled a puff of smoke between you, before passing it back to you. “I haven’t got a bad word to say about it.”

“Good.” You scrunched up your nose and laughed. “You’re so good to me.”

Javier beamed, “Have you met you?”

“I don’t know if I have.” You tucked your leg beneath you as you angled yourself towards him. “Tell me more.”

“Well,” He offered you the joint again. “I do feel tingly!” Javier snorted, “Is this what it feels like?”

“I don’t know. How do you feel?” You questioned, toying with the third button of his shirt. “I feel warm.”

“I feel warm too!” He clasped his hands together, looking towards the open windows. “I feel good.”

“That’s all I want,” You admitted to him, sitting the smoldering joint in the ashtray. “You know what?”

“What?”

“You’re hot.”

He laughed loudly, sinking back against the bed, his legs still draped over the edge. “Yeah?”

You nodded emphatically. “I remember… my first day.” You swept your hands through the air dramatically. “I walked into the office and saw you and just thought — hot!”

“Oh, was that your first thought?” 

You laid back in the bed, settling into the crook of his arm, “Mhm.” You sighed happily. “And then I quickly realized what a dick you were.” You pressed close to him, nuzzling at his neck. “That’s how I knew I was screwed.”

Javier laughed, rubbing his hand down your arm, “We were both screwed.” He hummed, his lips still drawn into a smile as he stared up at the ceiling. “Do you remember New Years?”

“Like eleven months ago?”

He shook his head, “Before Josie was born.”

Your brows furrowed as you tried to focus on the specific moment he was referencing, “I broke my wine glass.”

“Yeah!” He nodded, tilting his head to look at you. “Steve’s a funny guy.”

You shoved him playfully, “Are you going to rhapsodize about Steve now?”

“No! No.” Javier made a sound that very nearly sounded like a giggle. “He swears he didn’t know that we were orbiting each other.”

“Orbiting each other.” You mocked, sitting up to grab the joint, taking another hit as you laid back on the bed. 

“He swears he didn’t really know just how bad we had it for each other—“

“Bullshit!” You called out dramatically and you both started laughing. 

“He knew. Of course he knew. That jackass.” He took the joint from you and took two puffs off it. “But that night — son of a bitch — he told me I was holding you back. That as long as I acted like I had feelings for you, you weren’t going to ever look for someone.”

You frowned, “He wasn’t wrong.”

“Made me feel like an asshole, baby.” He rubbed his hand over his chest, like he’d been injured. “It's why, I…”

“Was that’s why you wanted to drive me home?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged, “He made it sound like I needed to set you free and…”

You dropped the joint back into the ashtray and cut him off before he could finish. You planted your hand over his mouth and scrambled to straddle him. “No. We’re not doing sad.” You warned him. “Wanna know a secret?”

He licked the palm of your hand. 

“Javier.”

He nodded. 

“I wanted to go home with you.” You confessed, leaning forward so your nose brushed against his. “I got myself off thinking of you.” You slowly pulled your hand away, “I was so certain 1992 was going to be a shit year. They were thinking about leaving and everything was falling apart but, I thought — I didn’t fuck it up with Javier, I’ve still got him.”

His hands went to your hips, “And you do. I could never up and leave you, baby.”

You leaned in and kissed him, “If we weren’t married, I’d marry you all over again.”

“Yeah?” Javier grabbed at your hips and you shivered, you loved how much more every little touch felt like. “I can’t wait to tell pops.”

You grinned as you laughed, “He’s gonna be so fucking excited.” You nipped at his bottom lip. “I hope we run into Lorraine at the toy store again.”

“Jesus Christ.” Javier groaned, “Why bring up her? I’m feeling good baby.”

You bumped your nose against his, “Because I’m vindictive.” You grinned down at him. “And I love proving people wrong.” You traced your finger down his nose. “But I know the Javier that no one can see.”

“You do.” He parted his lips as you ran your finger over his lips. “We both know the real us.”

“I really like us.” You mused, “I think we’ve done really well for ourselves.”

Javier nodded his head, “I do too.” He played with the hem of your sweater, “Didn’t you say you were warm, baby?”

“Trying to get me undressed?” You questioned, giggling as you let him peel the sweater off your body.

“Maybe.”

“Turnabout, babe.” You quipped as you wrestled with the buttons of his shirt until it fell open. 

“You know… my knees aren’t hurting.” He pointed out, running his hand over your bare arms as he looked up at you. “But I can’t tell if I want to fuck your or just hold you.” Javier laughed and you couldn’t help but join in on the pure joy that was in his laughter. 

“It’s funny isn’t it?” You questioned, playing with the hair that fell against his forehead. “Am I horny? Or do I just want to be held?”

“What do you want?” Javier questioned, running his hands over your skin anywhere he could reach. Which you definitely enjoyed. 

“As tempted as I am to take advantage of your very exuberant self,” You leaned down to kiss him, playing your tongue over his bottom lip. “I just want to be held. Right now, at least.”

“Whatever you want, baby.” Javier promised you, leaning up to meet your lips again. 

Somehow he managed to maneuver both of you up the bed with you still on his lap, while you clutched at the ashtray so you could stick on the nightstand. 

You rolled onto the bed beside him, staring up at the ceiling as you sank into the warmth of the high buzzing through you. Your eyes felt heavy, but you ignored it — you really did need to sleep tonight. But it wasn’t tonight yet. 

“Do you like it?”

“It’s different.” He held his hands up in front of his face. “I feel like there’s this… space in between me and me.”

“Weird, right?”

“And my pops does this?”

You nodded, “Your body gets used to it after awhile. You’re still high just not quite as… tingly.”

“It’s nice though.”

You rolled onto your side and draped your arm over his chest. “I want you to feel good.”

“I do.” He brushed his fingers over your hair. “I love you, baby.”

“I love you too.” You grinned, meeting his gaze before you both descended into laughter. “You’re so dorky.”

“Who me?”

“Yes. You’ve got this dorky face thing going on.” You gestured to his face. “You’ve taken five years off. At least.”

“Mmm, that could work in our favor.”

You swatted his chest and snorted, “Please. No. I can’t believe she even insinuated that! What a bitch.”

“You were incredible yesterday.” He told you warmly, stroking his fingers through your hair. “I’m so proud of you.”

“Thank you.” You sank into his side. “I’m just… if I rest my eyes for five minutes will you still hold me?”

“I’ll hold you until the end of time, baby.”

“That sounds like a long time.”

“Yeah? Well, it’s forever.” He kissed your temple. “Relax, baby. Just sleep. And then we can… I’m a little tired too. Hungry and tired.”

“That’s nice.” You mumbled, pressing your face into the crook of his neck, before two sleepless nights got the better of you. 

#javier pena #javier pena x reader #pedro pascal x reader

[pinkykitten]

Roses

The Good Doctor

Neil Melendez x female! reader

Warning: abusive ex, talking about abuse, violence 

Specifics: angst, romance, fluff, comedy, race neutral reader, one-shot

People: neil melendez, shaun murphy, greg (oc)

Words: 2,344

Requested: By anon Okay hi I'm thirsty for a fluffy protection type fiction. Like maybe Niel Melendez brings his girlfriend out for a nice dinner and shopping day and they end up seeing their abusive ex that decides to confront them so he gets protective (he's got them big muscules so 😂) and idk take it fron there i guess? Please and thank you! 💙💙

Authors Note: ok first off this is a very touchy subject and if u r in a abusive relationship or know some one who is in one pls get help, u dont deserve this treatment and ask someone for help, call someone, call the hotline for ur area this is a very serious subject. i hope i did justice in that area for survivors. i also chose this gif because i luv seeing my bby kissing and like hes just soooo handsome, us good folks all deserve a melendez in our life! also i read that flower in japanese is hana if its not im srry i found it on google.

“So you’re gonna join me at 7 tonight right?” Your boyfriend Neil asked as he stepped behind you, kissing your head. 

“Babe we’re at work,” you chuckled, turning around and greeting his precious, handsome face. His lips curled into a smile, “you think I care, I’m showing my girl some love.”

You wrapped your arms around his neck and kissed his lips lightly, “of course I’m gonna be there. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” You pecked his cheek and then whispered your parting into his ear, “I can’t wait for you to see how tight my dress is on me.”

“If you keep talking like that I might just want to skip dinner and eat something else instead.”

You rolled your eyes, hitting his shoulder playfully, “forward aren't we today Neil!” As Neil was about to proceed in his flirtatious attitude Shaun showed up and gave his innocent face to the two of you. “What are you two discussing?”

You found that it was your time to leave so you gave a little wave and let Neil take that embarrassing question for the team, “I know babe you’ll come up with a good answer to Shaun.”

You were very excited to meet up with Neil for dinner. He was taking you somewhere that you always wanted to go, according to him. See, the dinner or more like where it is taken at is a surprise. You have not a clue where Neil is taking you. It made you bubbly on the inside towards the day. 

Taking the day into your hands you got out of work early so you could have time to doll yourself up. 

When you arrived home you took a shower, put makeup on, and then slipped on your dress. As you took a look in the mirror at your self you were unsure. “I don’t know, is this too much?” You questioned a loud, peering at yourself from side to side. Thats when you heard a knock at your door. “Oh well too late now.”

You touched up on your lips real quick with your makeup and ran to the door in your heels. Taking a couple of breaths you opened to find Neil.

“Hi babe, wow you look,” your words were stuck in your throat. You eyed him up and down and swallowed harshly. “Wow, you look so, so, so-”

“Look at you,” he whispered, almost like to himself. He was looking at you up and down as well but he looked at you as if you were the most beautiful star in the galaxy. His eyes shone with love, having a little twinkle in them. He was head over heels for you, he was in love. “You look gorgeous baby.”

You smiled away, bashful, “You look amazing as well.”

Neil brought his hand out for you to take hold. He guided you to his car, opening the door for you like a gentleman, “oh you didn’t need to do that.”

Neil bent down to capture your lips in a kiss, “I wanted to though.”

On your way to the surprise restaurant you couldn’t help but try to guess where he was taking you. He would sternly give you a look and then you would pout making him give in and give you hints. 

“Okay we’re here.” Your head shot up to the restaurant. E/c eyes opening wide and bright you squeal in shock. “No way babe, you got a reservation for this restaurant? I’ve wanted to come here for so long, how did you know?”

Neil took a hold of your hand and was giggling at how adorable you were acting, “y/n you talk about this place all the time. Let me tell you it wasn’t easy getting reservations but I kinda had to pull a few strings.”

You embraced Neil and kissed him repeatedly all over the face, “I. LOVE. YOU. SO. MUCH!”

“I love you too, now c’mon.”

You two walked to the restaurant and it was as if you stepped into a fairy tale book. There were chandeliers gleaming and sparkling like diamonds, hanging delicately from the roof. There was gold embroidery on almost everything. A live band playing jazz music was there. All the guests look so sophisticated and glamorous with their outfits on. You were astonished. “Oh my god this is so classy, I can’t believe I’m here.”

Neil places his hand on your lower back to escort you to the table that the waiter had for you two. You both sat by a window, overseeing the city. The lights were bright and small making it seem like fireflies. As you looked down below you could see people walking, minding their own business. 

“Thank you for taking me here. I’m so happy to be here with you. This is the best surprises.”

Neil grabbed your hand and kissed it, “well get used to it. There’s gonna be more surprises along the road. You chuckled and lightly touched his leg with yours, “who knows maybe I have a surprise up my sleeve for you today.” You flirted to him as he raised his brow. 

You two dined fine that afternoon. Laughing, flirting, just having yourself a good time that is until you saw him. You look up into his eyes, your heart and world seem to stop. Its only him and you. It is your ex from your college days, only a couple of years ago did you break up with him. He was a monster. He would abuse you verbally but also physically. Your eyes widen and you are brought back in the present with Neil’s voice. “You okay sweetheart?”

You almost choke on your food but nod not wanting him to worry, “yes I’m fine.” The ex comes to your table with a new woman. She seems to have a bad attitude. “Why if it isn’t y/n l/n. How are you?”

As he gets closer to the table you see clearly his face again. That dam* face, still to this day gives you nightmares. Neil never knew about him because you felt that it was not necessary to tell him of this information. You were quiet with your answer, looking down and not at him, “fine.”

Neil took note of this and knew something was up, he was worried. “How do you two know each other?”

“Oh he’s just an old-”

“We used to date, I’m Greg.”

Neil was about to give his name when Greg stopped him, he shook his hand and said, “no need Mr. Melendez. I know all about you. You’re that doctor in that hospital with that autistic kid. Must have a hel* of a lot stories with him.”

“Actually he’s very good with his job, he’s one of the best.” Neil answered back. 

“Now what do you do again y/n?”

“I’m a doctor at the same hospital. We work together.” Your hands found themselves twisting and clutching the table cloth. You did not act like yourself. 

“Oh how nice, are you two together?”

Neil nodded and grabbed your hand, reassuring you and showing that you two are together to your old ex, feeling a bit jealous. “Yes we are actually. She’s the best thing thats ever happened to me.”

“Thats funny I remember when I used to say that. Man, it seems like a million years ago.”

You could tell Neil was getting over protective of you the way his jaw clenched whenever that wrenched man ever talked about your past relationship with him. 

“I always told y/n though, when she told me she wanted to be a doctor, to reach for something more...possible. Now look! She’s done the thing she wanted to do, maybe I some what some way encouraged her.” He laughed evilly at the end of his statement.

“Well I’ve always told y/n that she can do anything she puts her mind to. She’s very hard working and that is one of the many things that I love about her,” Neil was almost about to break the knife he was holding. His eyes were burning with anger. He was boiling on the inside. His jaw was clenching and he was almost shaking at how rude this man was to you. 

The man took notice of it and wanted to play with fire. He placed his tough hands that were rough looking on your shoulder, close to your neck. “Its a shame, as I recall me and y/n had some wonderful times together. Didn’t we sweetheart?”

Your breathing was coming out in short breaths, your nostrils flaring. Tears almost about to spill. You were frightened. If Neil wasn’t here you would of gotten up and ran away, but you didn’t want to form a show. You nodded to his question. His hand lingered too long on you for Neil’s liking. Greg’s fingers stroking where he used to strangle you when you two were together and then as you were about to pass out he would let you take a breath. He liked to be the leader, the man capable of deciding whether you lived or died. You started to shake with fear and Neil had enough. He abruptly stood up, his muscles showing full well through his tight suit. He looked as if he wanted to punch Greg straight in the jaw. Neil walked so close to Greg you were worried they were about to fight. 

“Don’t touch her.” Neil ordered, his voice rough almost a bark. 

“Excuse me?”

Neil pointed a finger at him, “I said don’t touch her. Get your ungrateful hands off her.”

Greg looked like he was the victim and placed his hands by his side. “You can have the whore, she wasn’t good any ways.”

Neil almost lunged himself at the man but you blocked Neil and stopped him. You placed a hand on his cheek to get him to only pay attention to you. “Hey babe its okay look at me, please don’t worry about him.” Neil tried to focus on his breathing and his temper, leaning his forehead against yours. As he sat down, almost calm, you saw that he bent the knife all the way so that it looked like a c. As things were settled you felt the heat of it all on you at that moment and needed fresh air. 

“I think I’m done here,” you wiped your mouth with the napkin and ran to the exit. Tears streaming down your face. 

Neil tried to stop you, calling out your name. He was very worried about you. 

You sprinted outside and sat on a nearby bench away from everyone. There you sobbed, all of the monstrous things that Greg did coming back to you and haunting you. 

“Baby,” you heard Neil’s voice as he came up to you. “Baby whats wrong?”

He sat beside you and looked at your face. Your cheeks stained with tears. Neil’s arm found themselves around your shoulder. “Please y/n tell me whats wrong?”

“That man inside the restaurant. Its true what he says that we were together, but when I was with him he, he beat me. Neil he used to beat me so many times a day, he hurt me so bad.” You sobbed uncontrollably in Neil’s chest. Neil embraced you tighter, kissing your forehead. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“He scared me Neil, I was so scared!”

Neil was shaking with anger. “I’ll kill that man! I’m gonna kill him.” He was being very over protective over you. You were his life. 

“No please babe, please don’t. I don’t want you to get into trouble, please.” Your eyes said it all when he looked into them. They were begging.

Neil closed his eyes, they were watery. “Okay.” Was all he could say.

You clutched onto Neil as hard as you could. Just wanting him to be with you and to just have his presence. He made you feel safe and calm. 

“I promise nobody will ever hurt you again,” he whispered into your ear. Kissing your face then your lips, showing you how much he truly loves you. 

Neil was there for you. He comforted you by patting your back and whispering how much he loves you. 

“How are you feeling?”

You sniffled and looked up at Neil. Neil wiped your tears away and kissed your cheek. You smiled and basked in his love, “I’m doing better thanks.”

“Why don’t we do something that’ll cheer you up. I mean you look so beautiful I don’t want this beauty to go to waste.”

“What did you have in mind?”

Neil grabbed your hand and brought you to an unknown store named, “Hana.”

“Hmm what is he up to?”

After a few minutes Neil came out of the store. He hid something behind his back, his dimples showing on his handsome face as he grins at you. 

“Another surprise?” You asked as you tried to see behind him. 

“Here its for you, to make you feel better.” Neil pulled the gift from behind. It was a bouquet of roses. 

You felt like crying...again! This man treated you so spectacularly. He treated you like a princess, always wanting you to feel happy. It was silence, you looked at the roses and started to tear up, “they are so beautiful babe.”

“I thought you needed some cheering up. A gift to show you how much you mean to me.”

You smelled the roses but then placed them delicately in the bag. You placed both your hands on Neil’s face and inched closer to him, “I love you so much.”

Your lips joined in unison. You opened your mouth wider to kiss more fiercely. You moaned in the kiss, “I love you so much. I love you so much.”

You two separated and Neil brought you protectively close to him. His arms feeling like a comforting cage around you, they were thick and strong. “I love you too baby.”

You two walked together, enjoying the rest of the night and not caring about any body else except you two’s love.

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[themoonandotherslikeit]

The Hand That Reaches for God -Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen

“And in the end, we were all just humans… drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

-20 Months Before-

After one glass of Jack Daniels, neat, Dean Winchester felt the familiar warmth. He felt the fog rolling off the water first thing in the morning. It was a comfort, an old friend.

After two glasses of Jack Daniels, neat, he felt tingling in his arms down to his fingers. It was the way his body felt during a concert when he stood too close to the speaker. He could feel the base booming through his veins.

After three glasses of Jack Daniels, neat, he almost forgot about the jagged scar down his knee and Tiny Tim’s walking stick that leaned against the bar. Almost.

“I should cut you off.” The pretty brunette bartender said after serving him the fourth glass of Jack Daniels, neat.

“But you never do.” He slurred just enough, and shot her the best smile he could do when he was feeling so down. It wasn’t impressive, but he was handsome and weathered, and that was exactly her type.

“I’m Lisa.” She said, leaning in.

“I know.” He pointed at her name tag above her left breast. “I can read.”

“It would be appropriate to tell me your name.”

“You don’t want to know me, Lis.”

Lisa rolled her eyes. “Why not? Because you’ve had a bad time of it? We get a lot of Vets in here. I know the drill.”

Dean narrowed his eyes. “You get a lot of Veterans, but yet you still don’t know to leave us the fuck alone? You’d should move along, sweetheart, you don’t know shit about war.”

“I had two older brothers die while in service. I know a little about it.” She said, flatly as she wiped down the bar top.

“Shit.” Dean ran his fingers through his hair. He was an asshole. He was a crippled asshole.

“You all think that you own your pain, I’m just telling you that there are people who get it. There are people who could help you.”

“What? People like you?”

Lisa laughed and shook her head. “Me? Fuck no. You’re attractive, but you’re an ass.” She said, handing him his tab. “I’ll take that whenever you’re ready.”

After his accident everyone walked on eggshells with him. They did worse than that most of the time. Most of the time they avoided him all together. It was nice to be called out, because she was right. He was an ass, and he was wallowing. He pulled out some cash from his wallet and laid it down, deciding right then and there that he would be good enough for her one day. He had to be, because the alternative meant that he would be his father, and he would be damned if he ended up anything like John Winchester.

-19 Months Before-

“Lisa, the guy is here again.” One of the wait staff from the bar said.

She rolled her eyes and ate the last bite of her peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He was like clockwork, every day. “Dean.” She said when she reached the bar.

“Shit, am I late?”

“Late for what?”

“Your break. You usually take it at this time and well…” He held up a paper bag. “I brought you dinner.”

She eyed him. “What’d you bring?”

“Bacon cheeseburger. It’s my favorite.” He shrugged, handing her the paper bag. “You can have it, anyway.” He stood up from the stool.

“Where are you going?” Lisa asked, eyeing him, the bag in her hand.

His green eyes met her brown ones. “I was just here to drop that off.”

“You’re not going to stay?”

Dean shook his head. “I’m not ready, Lis. I’m only going to ask you out when I’m good enough for you.” He leaned on his cane to take the pressure off of his bad knee. “So for now… take the burger as a peace offering.”

He walked to the door and opened it. “Dean?” She called after him.

“Yeah?” He turned toward her.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He nodded and pushed into the night.

-18 Months Before-

Dean brought Lisa dinner every night that she worked. He brought her doughnuts and coffee when she worked the day shift at the bar, and quickly learned her food preferences. The more he went to see her, the less he felt the self-loathing that plagued him.

He brought in her turkey bacon club with extra guacamole and spicy french-fries from the local place on the corner. He pushed into the bar. “Hey, Lance, where’s Lis?”

“She told me to have you meet her out back.”

Dean raised an eyebrow. He expected at some point that she would be sick of him, and he sighed, gripping the bag. He pushed too hard. He walked through the back door to find Lisa sitting alone at a single table with two plates, and a glass of water in front of her and the other empty seat. “Lis?”

“Hey, Dean.” She stood up with a smile. “Are you ready yet?”

“What?”

“You said you had to wait until you were ready to ask me out and well… I decided that I’m ready. I got you a bacon cheeseburger, and I was wondering if you’d want to have dinner with me… for real this time.”

Dean smiled a bit and nodded. “Yeah, I think I’d like that.”

-16 Months Before-

“Dean, babe, wake up.” Lisa said quietly. He sat up, sweat covering his chest, back, and face. Lisa’s hand was over his heart. “Your pulse is racing.”

“Sorry.” He exhaled, trying to catch his breath and slow his heart. He clamped his eyes shut. You’re okay. You’re okay.

“You don’t have to be sorry. Do you want to talk about it?”

He shook his head. “No... I…”

“It’s okay.” She assured him, wrapping her arms around his middle. She placed a kiss on his jaw. “I’m here to talk when you’re ready.”

But he would never be ready. He still saw the look on Charlie’s face. How wide her eyes got. How she was laughing right before.

“You’re seriously telling me you have no one at home? Even I left some ass behind.”

“You’re vulgar.” He laughed, shaking his head.

“And you’re a prude, Winchester.”

Dean shrugged with a laugh. “I’m not, actually. I just don’t have anyone at home.”

Charlie narrowed her eyes. “Maybe it isn’t a girl… oh my god, Dean are you gay?”

He rolled his eyes. “Christ, no. I am not gay.”

“It’s okay if you are, you know. I am.”

“I’m aware.” He grinned.

“I’m just surprised, I guess. You look like a fucking supermodel. Your face is perfectly symmetrical. It’s kind of creepy. You really don’t have any girls coming after you?”

“Hey, my face is not creepy.”

She laughed. “Deflection. Nice, but yeah it is kind of creepy.” She poked his cheek. “You don’t even look real.”

Dean always expected that being buried alive would be the thing that would haunt him forever, but life was funny like that. Life was real fucking hilarious, and he was the butt of the joke. It wasn’t the child size coffin, or dirt in his lungs that haunted him. It was something else altogether.

The smell of burning flesh. The sight of Charlie’s arm off her fucking body. His knee completely twisted so his foot was facing the wrong direction. The sight of her empty expression looking up at him from his lap.

“It’s okay, I’ve got you. It’s not that bad. It’s not that bad, you’ll be okay.” He pressed his hands to the space where her arm used to be. They always teased her about being pale, but fuck she was so pale. “I’ve got you.” He kept whispering. They were alone. There wasn’t a medic. There was no one. Just Dean Winchester holding Charlie Bradbury as she died in his arms, bloody and alone.

“I’m here, Dean. I’ll always be here.” Lisa promised, hugging him tightly. Dean wished that people wouldn’t make promises, because there was no way they could be kept. Charlie died, Lisa left, and he was broken. He probably always would be.

-18 Days After-

“Lisa.”

“Oh my god.” She murmured, her eyes immediately spilling over. “I thought… This whole time I’ve been so terrified. I thought you were dead.”

“Not dead.” He said blankly. It was like he was shot back into time, back into her bed, into her arms.

“I’m so glad.” She exhaled quickly, running around the coffee cart. She wrapped her arms around his neck before he could stop her. “You have no idea how good it is to see you.”

He instinctively wrapped his arms around her waist and hugged her back. As bad as things ended between them, he was glad that she was okay, too. “Where’s uh…”

“Greg is gone.” She said quickly.

“Gone?”

“He left after Ben was born.”

“Ben.” Dean said slowly, trying out the name on his lips. He felt sick to his stomach.

“That’s my son. He’s beautiful.”

Everything crashed and burned. My son. Dean let go of the hug. “I’m glad you’re okay, Lis.” He said before turning on his heels and walking right back to Sam, leaving her standing alone next to the coffee cart.

“Where’s the coffee?” Sam asked. He was sitting with his back against a tree with his legs stretched out in front of him.

“The what?”

“You good?” Sam asked, eyeing him.

“Lisa is here.”

“Wait, like your Lisa?”

Dean nodded quickly. “Yeah, she was running the fucking coffee.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.” Dean sighed. “What are the fucking chances?”

“Did she say anything to you?”  

“She hugged me.”

“And?”

“And her boyfriend dumped her after she had the baby. Ben.” Dean said quietly. “Fuck, I never thought I’d see her again.”

“But you don’t want to be with her, right? You’re with Emerson.”

“Right.” Dean said with a nod. “I want to be with Em. Shit, this just surprised me.”

“I’ll say. Relax, dude, just tell her you’re not available, and don’t drink her cool aid. It’ll be okay.”  

“Right.” Dean said again, his heart rate finally slowing back down. “Just brought back some shitty memories.”

“Maybe you should sit down?”

“Yeah.” He lowered himself to a seated position. “Have you seen Em?”

“She’s still with Phel getting settled. I hope they’re getting some rest.” Sam said, elbowing his brother. “We should get some rest, too. This is the safest we’ve been in day’s. We should take advantage of it while it lasts.” Then Sam closed his eyes and crossed his arms.

Dean was exhausted, but sleep was reserved for the guys that weren’t juggling an ex-fiancée and a childhood love in the same fucking camp.

****

“My hair looks fine.” Emerson swatted her sister’s hand away. “Quit Trying to braid it.”

“Please! You haven’t washed it in days.”

“Neither have you!”

“Yeah, but you can’t tell because of the braids! Just let me do the front. Dean will love it.”

“You don’t know what he’d love.” Emerson complained.

“You’re right.” Pheli put her hands on her sisters knees. “What does he love?”

“It’s all so new, Phel. Am I crazy to try to start this during all of this? During the fucking end of the world?”

“If not now, then when?

“The next life?” Em offered weakly.

“Come on, what do you have to lose?”

“Everything. I could lose everything.”

“You’ll only lose everything if you let him see your nasty hair.” Ophelia teased. “Now let me braid the front!”

“You are terrible at pep talks.”

“Or am I really good at them?”

“Whatever just braid it before I change my mind.”

****

Benny sat by the fire as it licked up toward the moon. His acoustic guitar sat on his knee. “Say you’re leavin on a seven thirty train and you’re headin out to Hollywood. Girl, you been givin me that line so many times it kinda gets like feelin bad looks good.”

Dean laughed and Benny nodded at him.

“That kinda lovin turns a man to a slave. That kinda lovin sends a man right to his grave.” Garth joined in, singing off key, just like old times.

“I go crazy, crazy, baby I go crazy. You turn it on, then you’re gone. Yeah you drive me crazy, crazy, crazy for you baby. What can I do, honey? I feel like the color blue.” Benny and Garth sang together. They sounded like a pair of coyotes howling at the moon, but it reminded Dean of when things were good.

“Is this what is was like?” Sam asked him, leaning against the tree.

“Was what like?”

“Your deployment.”

“Kind of.” Dean said with a smile. “Sometimes.”

Castiel joined in, strumming on his knee completely off beat. He waved Dean over, and Dean finally rolled his eyes and walked right up to the group. “You’re packin’ up your stuff and talkin like it’s tough, and tryin to tell me that it’s time to go. But I know you ain’t wearin nothin underneath that coat.” Dean sang with his gravely voice, his boot on the stump next to Benny.

“Crazy, crazy, baby I go crazy...”

Dean’s eyes locked with Emerson across the camp as she exited Castiel’s tent. Pheli had braided her hair out of her face, but the rest spilled down her back. Her flannel was tied around her waist, and his breath hitched in his throat when she reached up to stretch and the space between her shorts and her tank top met the firelight.

“I need your love, honey, yeah. I need your love.” The men harmonized, without Dean. His mouth was completely dry. She did that to him, caused his head to spin, like nothing else in the world mattered at all.

Garth handed Dean a beer. “They’re far and few between.” He winked. “But we’re celebrating, right?”

“Right.” Dean exhaled, his eyes still on Emerson as she walked toward the fire.

“Dean!” Lisa said, as she jogged over to him. She had an infant in her arms.

He swallowed hard at the sight. Holy shit. “Lis.” He breathed, her name barely a whisper.

“I wanted you to meet Ben.” Her eyes flickered up to Sam’s. “Oh, hi Sam.”

Sam narrowed his eyes. “Lisa.”

“It’s nice to see you, Sam.”

“Likewise.” He said through gritted teeth.

“Look at him.” Dean said, distracted by the child’s chubby cheeks. He had Lisa’s dark hair and her lips. His tiny thumb was in his mouth as he sucked away. He didn’t notice Lisa snake an arm around his waist to bring Ben closer. “Wow.”

“He’s incredible.” She agreed.

Little Ben gave a sleepy sigh and a few baby babbles, causing Dean’s heart to squeeze. He never let himself admit how much he wanted that. Not until he almost had it. He loved Lisa, and he loved her pregnant. When he left he knew it would be better. He wasn’t made to be a father, but that didn’t mean he didn’t secretly wish for it in the deepest parts of his soul. “Hi, Ben. I’m...”

“Dean.”

His eyes flickered up. “Em, hey.”

The Maklen twins stared at him. When they were young he used to think they were creepy. There was always something creepy about twin girls, especially when they stared at him. He stopped thinking that, the older he got, but in that moment Ophelia had a murder look in her eyes and Emerson’s jaw looked tight. “Uh, Em this is Lisa...”

“Lisa.” Emerson repeated.

“Yeah, uh Lis this is Em my...”

“Friend.” Emerson said, smoothly. “Our sibling’s are dating.” She added quickly. “This is Ophelia.” She tapped her sisters arm.

“Nice to meet you.” Pheli said with equal parts aggression and sugar. She was good at that.

“I was just helping her over to Sam since she hurt her ankle. I’ll see you guys later.” Emerson said before turning away.

Dean stared at her and didn’t stop her as she walked away and sat on a log right next to another guy who was sharping a blade. He pressed his lips together and just watched.

“Dean you fucking idiot.” Phel hissed. “Go after her.”

He watched her lean in to him, asking questions about the knife, he assumed. Friend. Our siblings are dating.

“I think I need to lay down.” He said, offering Lisa a weak smile. “See ya later, Lis. He’s a cute kid, really.”

“Thanks.” She said, looking confused as he made his way back to the tree that he and Sam were using for camp.

He looked at the full beer in his hand that Garth gave him. He stared down the neck of the bottle before pressing it to his lips, and welcoming the warmth. It wasn’t Jack, but he’d be happy if it helped him sleep. Anything to quiet the noise in his head, and blank out the image of some other guy’s baby in Lisa’s arm, that guy’s hand on Emerson’s thigh, and the life draining from Charlie’s eyes.

—————

Chapter Fourteen

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[imaginedilestrade]

Soul before sovereign. (11/?)

Summary: While studying history at university, an unlikely encounter between a mysterious, handsome man in glasses makes your last year at the uni a memorable one.

Warnings: swearing, angst.

A/N: A little short but it packs a punch!😅😭 I hope you enjoy and have a great weekend! ❤️

Missed the last part? Catch up here

——————————

Chapter 11

——————

"Tell me something, Y/N..."

You slowly moved your eyes across the living room to look at Mary sitting in the corner with the biggest cup of coffee you had ever seen being held between both of her hands. "Yes..?" You asked resting a textbook on your lap.

"It's the first day back after the winter break and you are already throwing yourself into uni work, even the afternoon we met up you were studying." She lightly laughed as she shook her head "Don't you ever stop?"

"I would but I've got so much to do, I got through most of it during the holidays." You returned to reading your book. You had arrived back at the flat a few hours ago, Mary arrived an hour later and Molly was still on the train.

"I thought you would have been busy..." you could hear the playful teasing tone in her voice. It made you raise a brow.

You placed down your book again on your thigh "Please elaborate..."

"Well I thought you would have seen your fancy man during the holidays." You rolled your eyes and got back to reading "Judging from the picture he drew you, he seems to be good with his hands-"

"Mary!" You gasped and tossed a pillow at her, you both couldn't stop giggling. "You can take anything and make it vulgar and for your information, I wouldn't know how good he is with his hands."

Her brow crinkled slightly "Wasn't he going to stay the night?"

"He was but a pipe had burst in his flat and had to head home, I didn't want to tell you that over lunch because I knew you would have announced to the whole restaurant something along the lines of: 'I bet you would have wanted him to burst your pipes.'"

She burst out laughing and frantically nodded "Oh you're so right! I think you've lived with me for too long!" You hummed a response and had a small smile on your face. Mary noticed you space out for a second, eventually moving over to sit beside you "You really like him, don't you?"

"I think I'm a little passed that..." Mary raised a brow at you "I think I'm really falling for him. Whenever I think about him I can't stop smiling." She noticed the bright smile take up half of you face. She hugged you from the side and pulled back seconds before the door opened. Molly waltzed in with her suitcase trailing behind.

After a few hours of catching up with the two of them, you phone buzzed. A text from Greg asking to meet at Sherrinfords. You stood up and headed towards the door, picking your jacket up in the way.

"Where are you going?" Molly asked as she sipped on her tea.

You nervously pointed between your phone and the door "Um...I'm...I'm going to the coffee shop!"

Mary scoffed "Yeah, well, make sure 'the coffee shop' uses a condom."

Molly giggled at her remark while you groaned "I'm honestly going to Sherrinfords!"

"Bring us back a double chocolate muffin each as proof!" Mary called out as you opened the door and stepped out of the flat, quickly shutting it behind you.

---

"Hey!" You ecstatically squealed seeing Greg standing waiting for you outside Sherrinfords. He moved his glasses up the bridge of his nose as he spun on his heel to greet you.

"Hi!" You both wrapped your arms around each other, Greg spun you on the spot before sweetly kissing you "I missed you."

"I missed you too! Come on," you dragged him inside "This is on me!" Greg protested but you weren't having any of it and shooed him to the usual table you both sat it. You approached Mike at the bar and placed your usual order, asking him to reserve two muffins for Molly and Mary. You pulled out your purse but before you could pay, Mike held his hand up to stop you.

"Already taken care of!"

You gritted your teeth together and your eye twitched. You turned to Greg who winked with a boyish smirk on his face. "I swear Mike, I'll get him back one day!" Mike laughed as you walked away with your drinks "You love getting one up on me..."

"Like you said- passively aggressively buying each other coffee is our thing." He took the coffee off you and slowly sipped away at it "What did you get up to over the holidays then?"

"Not much, I got up quite late one day actually and I went to make some coffee but I was half asleep so when my mum asked me if I'd pour her a cup of tea I put the tea bag and coffee in the one cup and poured the water in it. I took one sip of it and almost spat it out over the carpet!" You both shared a laugh before letting Greg know about Sherlock "Oh I actually met one of your roommates too!"

Greg almost brought his coffee back up and went as white as a sheet "Y-you wh-what?!"

"Yeah!" You hummed, not noticing his nervousness "I bumped into him by accident, he said he recognised me from your drawing you did."

"Oh I bet he recognised you..." Greg uttered under his breath, you never heard him. He knew this was all down to his guards, there was no way that you met Sherlock by chance. "What did you do?"

"Went for a coffee, wasn't as good as here. We just had a general chat, he seems nice!" You smiled and took a gulp of your now lukewarm flat white. You felt a hand hold onto yours, your eyes followed the length of Greg's arm before eventually connecting with his burning gaze.

"Y/N, there's something I need to say..." the seriousness in his voice made your stomach sink and your whole body paralyse with worry. You waited for him to continue, he struggled to get his words out.

"Greg, what's the matter?" You placed a hand on top of his and gently stroked it, it eased his nerves. He knew he had to tell you about who he really was.

"I...I uh...I'm..." he couldn't do it "I think I'm...falling for you." But he could tell you the truth about how he felt.

Your eyes widened slightly and you could feel your cheeks burn ever so slightly. But worry quickly washed away and you squeezed his hand "You don't have to be so nervous," you assured with a soft smile "I feel the same way." You could see Greg exhale the breath he was holding. He leaned across the table to give you a short peck. Your eyes flickered up to the clock on the wall and you let out a sigh "I need to be getting back, Molly is making dinner. Do you want to join?"

"Sorry, John, my other roommate is cooking tonight." Greg politely declined, he was going to tear though his guards when he got home. You understood that he had plans and invited him to yours anything for dinner. You knew Mary and Molly would eventually meet him one day. Being reminding of the pair led you to the coffee bar where you picked up their muffins before walking back home with Greg by your side.

"Thanks for walking me back, I'll see you tomorrow after class?" You asked with a hopeful smile.

"Sounds good with me," he kissed your cheek "See you then." He watched you disappear into the building, as soon as you were gone he rushed home to comfort his guards. When she stepped into the flat, they were all at the table playing poker.

"I asked you to keep an eye on Y/N not interrogate her!" He snapped and the three guards shared a glance.

"Greg, we just had to double check she wasn't a danger to you and to get a feel for her personality wise..." John tried to explain.

"Oh so you send Sherlock? I'm surprised you didn't scare her off!" He took off his glasses and threw them into the couch, running a hand though his hair "You know, I would give her the world if she wanted it, she deserves it. Please do not ruin this for me. Y/N is the only person who sees me as a regular person. That's all I ever wanted!"

"We know," the three of them said at the one time.

The young prince let out a drawn sigh before heading to his room. His classes started early the next morning and he wasn't in the mood to argue and debate with his guards all night.

---

Mary mindlessly walked through the small supermarket early the next morning, the milk supply was running low and she was the only one that was fully dressed, you and Molly were still in your pyjamas.

She hummed along to the song to the tune being quietly played through the speakers, there wasn't many people in the shop, just her, an older woman and two cashiers floating around. Mary picked up a pint of milk among other things but froze on the spot when she passed the newspaper racks.

The screamed so loud that the cashiers came rushing over to her and saw her gawking at the papers. She dropped her basket and picked one up, tossing coins at the the cashiers before running out the shop and back to the flat as fast as she could.

"Y/N! Y/N what the fuck?!" She burst though the door and tossed the paper at you just as you emerged fully dressed from your room.

"Mary what the-" you cut yourself seeing the words 'Prince Lestrade and his mystery lady!' In big bold writing with the words 'Exclusive photos inside!' Underneath.

There, clear as day, a photo of you and Greg in the front of the newspaper. "W-what is this...?" Your voice cracked "Is this a joke?!"

"Y/N there is a photo of you on the front page of every newspaper..." you looked up to her and then back to the photo of you and Greg.

"T-this is just a joke!" You forced a laugh "A joke!" You looked at Mary with pleading eyes "Right?"

"What is with all the yelling!" Molly came out of the bathroom "All this over milk?!"

Mary shook her head and didn't say a word, Molly slowly approached you and carefully took the paper from your hands. She instantly went wide eyed "Is this real?!"

"I need to get the others for you Y/N, there are different photos in each one..." Mary walked over to you and held your forearms.

"Fuck!" You sobbed out and felt the tears stream down your face.

"You must have known this was going to happen Y/N, it says you're snogging a prince for god sake!" Molly hollered as she read report.

"No," you whispered, Mary heard you. You looked up to her and sniffled "He never told me..." the tips of yours burned with anger "He never told me a thing." You escaped Mary's grip and grabbed your jacket, your knuckles turning white with force and rage. Your two roommates ran after you as you stormed out of the flat and headed towards the art department in the university.

————————————

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[o0o-chibaken-o0o]

Cake

Draco’s always had a multilayered meringue and berry cake on his birthday. 

It’s been a tradition since before he can remember, and at this point it seems unthinkable that he might ever exchange it for anything else. After all, his birthday falls right around the time when wild berries are available fresh from the manor’s many thriving bushes. And by now Mimmy, his mother’s favorite house elf, can bake the cake to perfection every time. The berries are always plump and tart, and the meringue never cracks.

Draco doesn’t like multi-layered meringue and berry cake. 

He doesn’t hate it or anything. Not really. But after years and years of eating it, he’s bored. Anyway, he’s never actively wanted to eat anything containing meringue. And berries are all fine and good, but why bother putting them in a birthday cake when you can eat them fresh whenever you want and not even feel guilty for it? Isn’t birthday cake’s purpose to be so delicious and unhealthy is inspires guilt? If anyone in the history of the earth has ever felt guilty about meringue and berries, Draco will snog...hell, he’ll snog Potter.

But Draco’s mother loves multilayered meringue and berry cake, and Draco was raised to be a Proper Young Gentleman with Manners, so he’s never revealed his lukewarm feelings regarding this only birthday tradition. And so here he sits now, preparing to cut a cake that he really doesn’t want to eat for the thirty-seventh time while Pansy, Blaise, Greg, his mother, and his Aunt Andromeda all smile indulgently at him. Nothing for it but to plaster on his own smile and keep on.

“Sorry I’m late!” Draco hears just as he’s about to pick up the knife, and of course.

Of course it’s Potter. Of course he’s stumbled in like a giant oaf an hour late to Draco’s party. And of course he’s brought—

Holy shit. Potter’s brought a cake. 

Draco stands up before he can stop himself to get a better look, and yes. There it is. There is a tell-tale candied lemon peel resting atop the generously-glazed yellow cake, which is at least as big as the one already sitting on the table. Draco suspects there are layers. Layers suddenly seem a whole lot more appealing than ever before.

“Er... Happy Birthday, Draco. I made you a cake?” Potter asks, and Draco doesn’t even blame him. The room has gone silent. Draco’s mother looks like she’s swallowed something sour, Andromeda appears to be making a valiant effort not to cringe, Blaise’s eyebrows are raised, Greg... well, Greg looks like he always does, and Pansy looks as if she’s about to very much enjoy ruining poor little cake-bearing Potter’s dreams.

“Sorry, Potter. Draco always had meringue and berry for his birthday. I suppose you didn’t get the memo?” she smirks, and sometimes Draco wishes his best friend wasn’t such an arsehole. 

“Er... no. I suppose I didn’t.” Of course he hadn’t. Draco tries to avoid thinking about meringue and berries at all times, and there’s no way he would have brought it up with Potter in their shared office at the Ministry. That is his place to relax, to forget about his Manners. To scoff and flat out reject the macaroon Potter had offered him once because he doesn’t care if Potter knows that–

“Hang on. Draco doesn’t even like meringue.”

Draco inhales sharply. Oh god. Oh no. His mother will know. She’ll know he’s been politely eating her favorite cake on his birthday for years out of nothing more than obligation. That he actually wants nothing more than to take that cake, reach into it, and just destroy it with his bare hands, Proper Young Gentleman and Manners be damned. She’ll know–

“I’m afraid you’re mistaken, Mister Potter. Draco loves meringue,” his mother responds simply. And perhaps she’ll refuse to question herself and just assume Potter’s an idiot, Draco realizes with relief.

“I... oh,” says Potter, deflating. “Then, I’ll just...” he trails off, looking uncharacteristically sheepish and backing slowly towards the door.

“Wait!” Draco doesn’t know why he says it. Only... he does. Because Potter had looked so disappointed, and he’d baked Draco a cake, and he’s done it himself, and because Draco had been suffering through meringue and berries for thirty-seven years and he wanted that lemon drizzle.

His mother would simply have to deal with it. It was time. 

“I don’t like meringue. I’ve never liked it.”

His announcement is met with gasps from both his mother and Pansy, and everyone else excepting Potter looks so confused, Draco might have just announced he was secretly a Hufflepuff. If the situation weren’t so absurdly serious, it would be funny.

“And you’re saying you like... lemon drizzle?” his mother asks softly, too somberly for this to be entirely about cakes. And Draco knows choosing Potter’s cake over his mother’s wouldn’t ever just be about flavor.

Draco thinks about his mother. About his mother who loves him and has given him the same cake every year out of respect for tradition. About birthdays past when he was forced to eat the cake in front of various groups of strangers his parents had invited to the manor to celebrate Draco’s birthday, but also for the purpose of expanding their influence. About asking his mother if they could pick berries together and her responding that Draco shouldn’t waste his precious time doing a task meant for house elves. About Pansy owling him and his mother a meringue and berry cake to share that awful year they had been trapped in the manor but banned from ordering their own house elves. About his mother shedding a tear the next year on Draco’s birthday, and saying how very glad she was that they had lived to eat this cake again. 

And then Draco thinks about Potter. About Potter, his former rival. About how Potter seems to guess all of Draco’s favorite things, and now is no exception. Draco’s sure he’s never mentioned his love for lemon drizzle, and yet he’s not even surprised because somehow Potter always just knows. He thinks about Potter deciding to bake Draco’s favorite cake tonight even knowing it would make him miss dinner. About the lemon squares Potter has brought him in the past. And the lemon chiffon. The candied lemon pieces. Even the damned lemon-flavored macaroons. He thinks about the way Potter always watches him eat whatever he’s brought that day, and the way Draco sighing in pleasure at the taste seems to be one of the few things that can make Potter relax. He thinks about the other day, when Potter had run his thumb along Draco’s bottom lip to remove a crumb and they had stayed like that, Potter touching his mouth for a full twenty seconds before they both rushed off to opposite corners of the room. And Draco thinks about what he’d really like for his birthday.

It’s not a multi-layer meringue and berry cake. 

“I like lemon drizzle,” he says, and that’s that.

His mother’s jaw clenches, but she’s always been good at dealing with a crisis and now is no exception. “Well then. I suppose you and your cake should sit next to Draco, Mister Potter. I’m sure at least Pansy and I will enjoy the cake Mimmy has prepared.”

Pansy still looks bewildered, but she doesn’t press for explanations either, and sometimes Draco loves her after all. “Of course. Although you’ll owe me, Draco. I hadn’t planned on eating more than a bite this year. I always feel terribly guilty about it in the morning.”

And then Draco can’t help it. His mother isn’t devastated, he doesn’t have to eat any more meringue for the rest of his life, Pansy feels guilty about meringue and berries, and it would be impossible to stop the laugh that bubbles out of him. He���s light-headed as he turns to face Potter, who has sat the cake in front of Draco and is now looking at him with a grin that is inappropriately mischievous, considering he has no idea what’s about to happen. 

“I like lemon drizzle,” Draco repeats joyfully, and then he barely takes in Potter’s dazzling smile before he’s reaching out, grabbing two handfuls of messy black hair, and pulling Potter in for a kiss. 

#happy birthday draco #i love you with all my heart #you deserve harry and good cake #birthday #birthday cake #lemon drizzle #meringue #i'm sorry if you like meringue #or hate lemon #drabble #drarry #draco malfoy #harry potter #narcissa malfoy #pansy parkinson #also pretty sure i ended up writing about cake due to the influence of the lovely @serpensthesia and her hp themed cupcakes <3 #i want one right now #please owl me one

[chloeandgregoztravels]

Living in Sydney for the last seven months has given us a chance to go on a few mini adventures, but since I haven’t updated the blog individually I’m going to back track!

Our first adventure was a day trip to Gledhill Falls and Palm Beach with our least favourite people Jo and Spencer, just kidding guys you’re the best haha. We found this waterfall on concreteplayground.com as one of the best waterfalls you can swim in near Sydney, after living there all through summer we realised our hot summer days were numbered. Greg made a makeshift handle to an existing rope swing that snapped mid jump and dunked him, definitely a fail. We chuckled at a small boy getting ready to leave with his family, he went through the whole process of drying his feet off, putting his socks on, then his shoes, before he realised that he was sitting on a rock surrounded by water in every direction haha, definitely something Greg would have done as a child! We jumped off rocks into the murky water but we couldn’t believe it when other people started leaping right off a 5 metre cliff of into the pool, it wasn’t that deep in places and was too dangerous for us!

After drying off and having some lunch we headed over to Palm Beach and wandered along the beach before heading up to the Barrenjoey Lighthouse for the impressive view (It’s the lighthouse in the intro credits to ‘Home and Away’ if anyone watches that) I would definitely recommend a visit as it is very photogenic but quite a climb and you have to get lucky with parking.

Our next trip was out to the blue mountains, about 3 hours west of Sydney, we visited there last year for a day so we wanted a chance to test out the car before our east coast trip and see more of the mountains.

We left straight after work and camped near the road side at Bulls Camp Reserve, thank God for the ‘wiki camps’ app as it was a great spot with toilets but was full of people! After a good nights rest we drove the rest of the way to the visitors centre in Blackheath and stopped at all of the stunning lookouts along the way. For our first walk we chose the Grand Canyon track (advised by the visitor centre) a path that took us down the steep sides of the hills, through a river valley and back up. We were super lucky with the weather, a little chilly but bright, blue skies painted with clouds made for epic photos, even though we had seen the range before it’s still amazing to see how the green trees change to blue in the distance. We learnt last year how the eucalyptus trees emanate the blue hue from evaporated oil droplets that mix with water and dust in the air, causing light to scatter leaving just the blue.

We cooked a quick lunch, where we were joined by a hopeful magpie who tried his luck, before setting off on our walk. We knew the walk was about 3-4 hours and as we often stop for photo’s we expected it to be nearer 4, taking lots of water and some snacks we were on our way. It’s crazy how the temperature alternates from boiling hot when you’re out in the sun to surprisingly cold when you are right down in the rainforest valley. I also hadn’t anticipated quite how many steps there were going down into the rainforest, we constantly thought that we must be the bottom only to turn another corner to more steps down, looking it up now there are over 1200 steps, they aren’t necessarily very steep it was just the sheer amount. (Greg thought back to childhood walks with his mum and her catchphrase of “It’s not far” came to mind, when really it was miles!) The walk was beautiful, from sheer cliff drops to cascading waterfalls and meandering rivers that carved our path. We were very proud of ourselves managing only 3 hours to complete the walk even with lots of photo and snack breaks.

We drove the car up to Sunset Rock, a place I’d found on ‘wiki camps’, but when we arrived at the signposted destination we couldn’t work out where to go. The route to the area feels a bit like walking through someones back garden as there are a few houses dotted around without any real borders, we found the spot just in time and cuddled up to watch the sunset over the mountains. With front row seats on the edge of the rock (not right on the edge mum don’t worry), we had just one other person joining us, a Canadian photographer who (much to Greg’s envy) had brought her drone, we sat and watched as she flew it through the valley. The sky begin to shift from bright blues to green, yellow and red, the photographer (Kaitlyn) approached us and asked if we would be happy for her to take a picture of us! (Because we’re just so cute together) We were of course willing subjects and afterwards learnt that she had just finished travelling New Zealand and had almost finished her travels through Oz, soon to return home. Here’s a link to her incredible work and the photo she kindly took of us, thanks again!

Second night at camp we stayed at Mount York Campground, a pretty long road with various areas to camp in either with tents or in your car. We were pretty jealous of others who had warm fires burning as once the sun had disappeared the cold had set in so we cooked a quick dinner and jumped into bed.

In the morning we headed off early to the Jenolan Caves, there is only one route there from the Blue Mountains, a very windy road that reminded me of the Great Ocean road in Victoria, but instead of the ocean it was rainforest surrounding us. It’s always frustrating trying to accurately capture a steep gradient in a photo because it is just impossible, but believe me when I say you wouldn’t want to crash along those roads. We had sensibly booked our tour because a lot were fully booked all day, we arrived quite early so took the opportunity to go on a short walk up to the Devil’s Coach House Lookout, sadly there had been a landslide from the bad weather and we could only go up a little way. This was when I realised that our rainforest walk had taken it’s toll on my lazy legs and my calves were aching like never before, suffice to say I haven’t been making the most of our gym facilities and ‘leg day’ was about a year ago. Nothing cheered me up like seeing the beautiful view of the Blue Lake and I knew it was going to be a good day.

Our tour to the River Cave was full, 25 people total, but this didn’t detract from the tour at all, we chose one of the hardest walks, of course, another 1298 steps including up two steep metal ladders, leg day again. There were beautiful limestone formations throughout but my favourite part was the stunning Pool of Reflections. It’s amazing to think how these were discovered by people bravely investigating dangerous places using just lamps and a pickaxe, and began to carve out the beginnings of the walkways that are now so spacious and easily accessible to the public.

To finish our day we visited the Blue Lake, the name is hardly imaginative but it really is the bluest lake I’ve ever seen, the natural colour and beauty of this lake comes from the limestone grains in the water that scatter the light giving it the unreal colour.

We couldn’t have been luckier with the weather as we jumped in our car to go on another walk it had started to spit and by the time we reached the road back to Blackheath the heavens had opened, at one point we watched a tree covered in autumnal leaves stripped clean by a gust of wind that I thought may blow the tree over! We called off our last walk and made our way home, luckily we did as the bank holiday traffic was horrendous.

Over the Easter weekend, we decided to make the most of the time off work and drive up to Coffs Harbour, 6 hours north of Sydney. We left on the Thursday night so we could make as much progress with the drive as possible and stopped overnight at a rest stop where it said no camping but nothing about sleeping in the car. I have found Australia to be very contradictory in this respect by telling you to stop if you’re tired, as well as every 2 hours but you can’t sleep in your car overnight.. Ridiculous, I understand if we set up camp for several nights that could be a problem but we never have any plans to do that. Anyway I’m glad we stopped here as when I went to the toilet, I was pleasantly surprised by a note offering me $5 because “God loves you”, there really are some good people in the world. Up bright and early we headed to Coff’s Harbour via a river town off the highway to cook breakfast, I was a little apprehensive of a huge flock of geese eying me up but it turned out they were waiting on an old mate to come and feed them, bless him. The main attraction in Coffs Harbour is the big banana, we hadn’t realised that it’s also an amusement park, it has a banana museum, go-karting, a toboggan, huge slides, an indoor ski slope and a water park! We took the standard tourist photos and treated ourselves to an extortionate frozen chocolate banana before wandering around the gift shop.

We headed over to Park Beach for lunch and a much deserved rest, I couldn’t believe the size of the beach it was awesome, although Sydney beaches are nice I honestly don’t think you can compare them to the stretches of open space like these. We finished our evening hiking over Muttonbird Island and watched the sunset over Coffs Harbour in complete peace as the waves crashed beneath us it couldn’t have been more perfect. We were very lucky to see some Muttonbird fledglings learning to fly, they were so cute and fluffy.

We drove inland into Dorrigo National Park for the night and set up at a camp spot where we took some beautiful photos of the stars, I love being able to stargaze, if the weather is warm enough then I’d like to sleep under them sometime!

With no alarms set, we still woke up reasonably early and drove out to the visitors centre which had a skywalk lookout that turned my legs to jelly, we took a hike for a two hour round trip to Crystal Falls and it was definitely worth going to. The trees along the way were enormous giving us shade under the canopies and the waterfall itself was stunning, nature never ceases to amaze me. Back at the Skywalk we were enticed into buying an ‘English cream tea’ oh dear Australia, you do need a lesson on the difference between a cake and a scone… Disappointed.

Leaving Coffs Harbour we stopped off at The Honey Place in Urunga where we tried a few samples but have yet to find the true delicacy that is chocolate honey (something we’ve had before). They also had a working bee hive between two bits of glass where you could hear them all busy at work.

We finished our day off at Shelly beach in Nambucca Heads watching the sunset and stupidly decided to have our first outdoor shower, it was absolutely freezing and in hindsight we should have done this in the day when it was still sunny!

After a good rest in our car, we arrived at Port Macquarie visitor centre and took the advice of one of the volunteers to take a short walk along the water front where people have been coming for years to paint the rocks. It was so cool to see the different artwork, some families or friends had been making the annual pilgrimage to put their mark upon their rock, and it was nice to see everyone respected them, no graffiti over anyone else’s work.

Port Macquarie is known for its koala hospital which I couldn’t wait to go to, although it was sad to read about their injuries or illnesses it’s always reassuring to know there are volunteers to help them. The main reasons for the koalas being in the hospital were car accidents and diseases like chlamydia but some of the most horrifying injuries were burns victims from the wildfires that so badly affect Australia. The hospital lets visitors see some of their long term residents who will never be able to return to the wild and has an educational room for everyone. One of the koalas was a repeat resident known for harassing the female koalas and kept catching chlamydia, much to his disgust at first he became a permanent resident but apparently is now settled with his routine.

For our last day we made the most of the beautiful beaches and relaxed knowing that we’d be back to the work grind the following day.

One of the crazy things about Australia is of course the wildlife, I still love seeing the huge Goannas that come from the bush when they hear the public BBQs turn on, sadly a lot of people are quite intimidated by them or will ignorantly feed them but to me they are magnificent creatures.

We took a short walk up to Harry’s Lookout where a kookaburra posed for us, it was the closest I’d been to a wild one, he was so cute with his big fluffy head and didn’t seem bothered by us at all. We also took a trip up to Tacking Point lighthouse for a few photos and spotted a para glider at another lookout getting ready to take off so we stayed to watch which was pretty awesome!

We have had a fantastic time in Sydney over the past 7 months and there are a lot of stories that will have to wait for another day. Stay tuned for photos and a video coming soon when I have access to better internet! If you made it this far.. Thank you for reading

Much Love

  Shades of Green and Blue, our adventures in New South Wales Living in Sydney for the last seven months has given us a chance to go on a few mini adventures, but since I haven't updated the blog individually I'm going to back track!

#adventure #animals #art #artwork #Australia #backpackers #backpacking #beaches #big banana #birds #blog #blue lake #blue mountains #caves #Coffs harbour #driving #flickr #friends #fun #funny #goanna #happy #history #honey #jenolan caves #koala #kookaburra #love #national park #nature

[andya-j]

Of the first six postcards from Natalie, I only have three. Mom was able to intercept the other three while I was at school or, after June, working a shift at the Tractor Supply Store. I wouldn’t even have known about them except that she made sure I knew, saved them until I got home before she ripped them into the smallest pieces her stiff-knuckled fingers could manage and set them on fire in her ashtray. She was angry at Nat but punishing me was the closest she could get now. I’d manage to get a few pieces out of the garbage just singed after she went to sleep, every time, but Nat’s handwriting was so big and loopy that I’d only get a few letters or a short word, an is or an I or a too. I wish now that I’d kept them and tried to piece them back together like a scientist on one of those cop shows, but at the time it didn’t seem like a good idea to defy Mom straight-up like that. So I stared at them until I had taken everything I could from the letters, and from the pictures on the front, and then tucked them back in the trash and washed my hands. The three I did get, when Mom was the one working late, I saved of course. I hid them inside of a copy of Little Women that someone had given me as a present and I’d never read. The first one was from not long after Nat left. It was from Ohio, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and it was all things are so good and so in love and talked about how Keith had gotten—stolen, since she didn’t say bought—her a silver ring with onyx chips that made a turtle. She drew a cartoon turtle at the bottom and signed it Love You Always Little Mandy, From Nat. The second one was from the Big Bend Family Campground in Michigan. They’d been there a while, I guess, because she complained about having to send the same card twice. She said there weren’t that many to choose from. Also I figured out that they’d picked up a puppy somewhere along the way because she was proud of having almost taught “Strider” not to hump on people even though Keith would laugh and egg it on. We’re a real family now! she said, and the bottom of my throat squeezed for a moment, but I couldn’t be sad that she was happy. That was what someone like Mom did. And she signed it Love You Always Little Mandy again and turned the a in Mandy into a heart, and I felt better. The third one was from Sleeping Bear Dunes in Wisconsin. I could see that something had happened even before I read the words, because Nat’s handwriting was still big and slanted but the letters looked thinner and shakier. I hid in the bathroom with the shower running to read it, in case Mom came home and I was too distracted to hear her. Keith left, it said without a greeting. He did it the worst way, Mandy. I passed out partying last night and when I woke up I was under an old down tree in the woods and the fire was dead and he was gone. He took the car and Strider and my bag—everything. I woke up colder than I’ve ever been. I don’t know what I’ll do now. I just feel sick and sad. She’d underlined ‘sick’ and ‘sad’ with wavery lines. She signed this one Love You Miss You Little Mandy. I left the bathroom and hid the card with the others, and then I went back to the bathroom to throw up. I couldn’t tell why. I just knew that when I thought of Keith leaving her all alone to wake up under a dead tree full of bugs and rot, everything on my body prickled and I felt as though the whole world was full of nothing but humiliation the color of pencil lead. Part of me wanted to find Keith and punch him in the face while I screamed at the top of my lungs, and the other part of me knew that no matter how hard I punched or how loud I screamed it would never make this not have happened, would never again change the balance of the universe into one where people treated my beautiful big sister the way she deserved. Those two parts went in opposite directions and made my lunch come up. The next thing I did, after I drank a glass of water to take away the taste, was call Tractor Supply and quit with no notice. I might have had some thought that Nat would come home now, and that Mom might not let her in—although of course Mom would let her in, how else would she get her back to punish? The real reason was that I knew that I couldn’t let Mom get her hands on any more of the cards. I made it through dinner as though everything was normal, and went to bed early. It was only when I was curled up on my side in the dark, trying not to think about Nat waking up all alone and confused, that I thought instead to wonder how she’d gotten a postcard and a stamp if Keith had taken all her stuff with him. She must be ok, I told myself, if she got a postcard and a stamp. I finally told Mom I’d quit a week or so later. She made a lot of remarks about how I was lazy and spoiled and worthless, but she was pleased to have me around all the time. I’d known she would be. She could offload all the cooking onto me now, and all the laundry and the yard work too. Plus I think when Nat left it gave her the fear that I might leave someday too, but I couldn’t do that without any money coming in. I couldn’t do much without any money coming in. Just wait for the mail. One day I went to the library and used the computer to look up pictures of Sleeping Bear Dunes, to see if I could stare hard enough and see where Na might be, but I was antsy about Mom coming home early so I didn’t stay long. Before I left, though, I printed out a bunch of pictures—the ones that looked most like the postcard—for a dime a page. I hung them in my room on the back of the door. I stared at them long enough that I could see them in the dark. I get used to any new normal quickly, that’s a talent that I’ve always had. In a few weeks my life had always been about waiting for postcards, and in a few weeks more those postcards had always never come—even though the first two postcards that Mom burned had come within a few days of each other and of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I cooked dinners for Mom and packed lunches too—she’d skip lunch if left to her own devices and she was skinny enough as it was—and checked the mail three times a day, even though I always knew when it actually came by the neighbors’ huskies. I looked at the classifieds in the Pennysaver every week, but everything that claimed MAKE MONEY FROM HOME seemed too good to be true. Twice Mark called, drunk and sorry that he’d dumped me before he went in the Marines, and once Nat’s best friend Katie called from college to ask if we’d heard from her. Mom said no and hung up before I could get to the extension. The leaves fell off the maples and I raked them up, but then I decided I didn’t want the colors to go away so instead of bagging them I left them in a pile and let the wind spread them back out across the lawn. I expected Mom to yell about that, but she didn’t. She sat on the porch and looked at the carpet of leaves and when I came out to smoke a cigarette with her, she said, “It’s pretty, isn’t it? Just as pretty as anything on those damn cards.” We’d both been not mentioning postcards to each other at all, except when she had one in her hands to tear up. I froze. In July I’d have silently disagreed, thought what Nat would have said out loud, that the pine woods and the lake shore and any place that wasn’t here was a thousand times prettier by definition. Even the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But I’d stared at Sleeping Bear Dunes and thought of being cold and lonely long enough that the leaves looked much more comfortable. “I wish there was a return address on one of those postcards,” Mom went on, after another drag. “We could send that girl a picture back. Remind her that she used to like it here.” I’d wished there were a return address on the postcards too, so now I didn’t know what to think. After that, Mom had burned out or thawed out or something and she was more like the Mom I thought I remembered from before Nat left, and from before she and Nat would butt heads every day over every little thing, and from before Dad took off before that. But at that point we’d be talking little kid memories, so I wasn’t quite sure. Definitely not sure enough that I showed her the next card from Nat when it finally showed up. She’d doubled back as far as Ohio; the card had bright red covered bridge on it and the caption “Greetings From Troy.” But if she’d thought about coming all the way home, she didn’t mention it. Instead she just said Hi Mandy! I met the neatest girl. She’s just like Laura from Little House, two long braids and a deerskin jacket that she made herself. Her boyfriend ditched her, too, so we’re going to travel around together for a while. She’s been on the road a lot and she knows how to get along. I guess we’ll head west. Love you miss you little Mandy. Your Nat. P.S. Her name is Beth. The loop was back in her letters and that made me happy, even if she was heading away again. A girl with a homemade buckskin jacket sounded exactly like the kind of person Nat would find, too, out of a crowd of a thousand people in regular t-shirts and cotton blouses. Maybe they’d get out west somewhere in California and like it there so much they’d invite me to come visit. Maybe they’d get another dog along the way. Mom managed to pick up a friend too, a guy who worked at Wende with her, not a guard but one of the guys who maintained the HVAC and electrical stuff. I kind of liked him, or at least I was glad he wasn’t a guard because I never liked the guards she dated. When she first brought him home he stuck out his hand and said “You must be Amanda” and he didn’t clutch too tight, like it was a contest, and he didn’t try to pull me in to get a feel. So that was alright. “I’m Greg.” You could tell that his sport jacket wasn’t something that he wore so often, in fact it reminded me of an old picture I had of Dad at one of my aunts’ weddings, looking awkward with his elbows sticking out. When Mom didn’t come home that night, I wasn’t surprised. Mom never had Greg spend the night at our place, but once a week or so he’d come for dinner. She’d cook those nights so it was nice for me, and maybe that helped me along, but anyway I got to like him more and more. Just like that first handshake, he always treated me like a grown-up person, which hardly anyone ever did. And he made Mom a lot more relaxed, easier to live with. She began, just a tiny bit, to treat me like a grown-up person too. Like for instance, one night after we’d all had lasagna, her favorite fancy thing to make, and brownies with cream cheese swirls on top, she opened up the bottle of wine Greg brought and she poured one for him and for herself and then she poured one for me too. I’d started clearing the plates but she gestured the wine bottle at me and said “Sit down. There’s no rush.” So I did, and I sipped the wine. It wasn’t like I’d never had a drink before—I’d teethed with Old Crow on my gums, and Nat had been giving me sips of her Genny Cream Ale since I was in middle school—but sitting there drinking out of the good glasses made everything shift sideways a little. I felt giddy right away, even though the wine was kind of sour. The wind kicked up, and the bird feeder rattled against the window. “Winter soon,” Greg said, and he looked over at Mom in a way that meant there had been some prior conversation. She nodded. “Well, she’s a grown-ass woman, or that’s what she yelled anyway.” “I’m sure she found someplace safe to lay up.” “I’m sure she did.” Mom nodded deeper than she needed to, and took a bigger sip of wine. “Really, Joanne, you have to let go the worry. I’m sure she’s a smart kid. Amanda’s got a good head on her shoulders already, and she’s two years younger.” Greg made eye contact with me and for a moment I was worried that Mom was going to flare up, but she knew she had no reason to be jealous, not with Greg. “Amanda’s always been the steady one.” Mom nudged me with an elbow. “I know I’m not supposed to compare you kids, but you know it’s true, Mandy. You were born responsible. Nat had a wild streak.” I didn’t like that she said ‘had’ but I didn’t say anything. “But you’re right, Greg. She’s smart. They’re both of them smart girls, they take after me that way, thank God. Both of them straight A’s in school, and both of them know how to take care of themselves. I made sure of that.” “She taught me how to split firewood when Dad first left,” I threw in, because I felt like I had to talk eventually. “Got me a little tiny hatchet and put me on kindling. She and Nat talked me up like I’d saved us all from freezing to death. It was years before I realized that it must have taken way longer to watch me do it than it would have to do it herself.” Mom chuckled, and poured more wine all around. “We made a go of it, didn’t we? I think he expected us to all fall apart without him, but we managed.” “That must have been hard,” Greg said. “Oh in those days, everyone thought it was the hardest thing. All on the news, the divorce rates and the single mothers. Old women looking at me in Ames with so much pity. As though men haven’t been running off since forever.” Mom set the bottle down a little hard. “No offense.” “None taken,” Greg said as though it were a line on TV. “Natalie’s going to be fine, Joanne.” “I’m sure she will be,” Mom said. And then, as though it had just come to her, “We’ll see her in the spring, I bet. She’ll be sick of it by then.” I thought of Nat sick and sad with underlines and was quiet again. I wasn’t going to say anything to Mom, but I knew we wouldn’t see her in the spring. Snow fell before the next postcard came, but near Buffalo that’s not saying much, is it? This girl named Tammy is travelling with us now, this one said. She says she’s spent a lot of time in WNY, she’s even been to Mumford! She was trying to get home to Florida but she changed her mind and decided to go west with us. Then we found a lost kid in the road, a little black boy maybe two years old with no clothes on but a pair of underpants. I wanted to help him but he wouldn’t talk to me and he ran away, way faster than I would have thought a toddler could. Beth says more parents lose their kids out here than you’d think, and there’s nothing I can do. She looked upset about it though. The words at the end were cramped, like she’d been trying to squeeze in as much as she could, and the Love you always Little Mandy ran into the address part of the card. I flipped it over and looked at the picture, a steamboat on the Mississippi River. No word if it was snowing where she was, but snow never fell on steamboats, did it? Just in case, I bought her a pair of purple knit gloves with bright green turtles on them for Christmas, and a giant Toblerone. I put three maple leaves I’d saved from the front yard in the package too; one red, one orange, and a yellow one that still had some green on it when it fell. I wrapped it up and I put it under my bed, just in case. Of course it turned out to be just Mom and I on Christmas morning. Greg was with his sister and brother-in-law and their kids, though he’d promised to come by for dinner later. He’d helped us set up a tree that was taller than either of us, but that just meant that presents for two looked even lonelier underneath. The gloves Mom got me were black leather, with purple trim and cashmere on the inside. When I put them on they were a little small, but they felt like they would stretch. She got me boots, too, which I could tell from the box were from the consignment shop but they were pretty much like new. And a purse with a bird worked on it in leather. “I love these,” I said, sliding my hands back into the gloves to feel the cashmere again. “Thank you.” “Thank you,” Mom said to me, too fiercely, and then hugged me. “I know I went a bit crazy there when Nat left.” “I’m sure Nat didn’t mean all the things she said either.” Mom shook her head. “I wasn’t fair to you either. You’ve been a rock, Mandy. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” She squeezed me tighter, just for a second, and then let go. “Even if you do leave someday, I know at least you’d keep writing.” I thought about telling her about the postcards I’d hidden, but I wasn’t sure it was safe, and then the moment was gone. I don’t think it would have made any difference in the end, anyway. The next postcard proved that I shouldn’t have worried about snow. Nat was smart, like Mom had said. She was in Texas now, down on the Gulf coast. The card had a sea turtle on it and I smiled when I thought how happy she must have been when she found that. Her letters were loopy again too, although smaller now since she seemed to have realized she could write more that way. Finally met a cute guy out here on the road, she wrote, and of course, my luck, he’s a major faggot. Sweet kid though. Named Alejandro. He said there were like 30 other kids travelling with him but they all upped and disappeared on him a while back. So he’ll probably stick with us for a while. I could picture Nat giggling and sighing, what a waste, probably trying to pet his hair—not being mean about it but just typical thoughtless Nat. I hoped she didn’t pester this kid to death, but at the same time, thinking of her giggling was the best, so too bad for Alejandro. Beth says people disappear on the road a lot, the main thing is that we all have to stick together and not talk to cops, or even let them see us if we can help it. But sometimes you can’t, of course. Mostly never tell them your name. Never Tell a Cop Your Name, Little Mandy! was her sign-off. “Like I would,” I said out loud, and put the card with the others. Spring came early that year, and Greg had his motorcycle on the road by the middle of March. Lots of people had their motorcycles out early and lots of other people weren’t looking out for them. The only thing that made Greg’s accident different was that it was a hit-and-run. There was a long hunt for a dented car, a guilty conscience, or something, but they never found anyone. The only comfort was that Mom and Greg both died pretty much instantly. I just put my head down, the way I did when Dad and Nat left, and at first I thought that maybe it wasn’t so different being alone with the postcards all the time than it had been to be alone with them most of the time. But it was. Now that I had nothing I had to do and no one to do it for, I read over all the postcards two, three times a day and they were starting to get bent and soft at the corners, and that wasn’t ok. Besides, the part of my brain that wasn’t numb knew that Mom’s insurance money wouldn’t last that long even if I never felt like eating again. My old manager at Tractor Supply had always liked me, and felt bad for me now. She argued up the chain that I’d always been reliable until the one day I hadn’t, and I think she put that on Mom, although I didn’t ask. Mom had been known pretty well around town for her temper. Anyway, whatever she said worked, and I had a job again, although back down on the first rung being managed by kids two and three years younger than me. It wasn’t so bad. I swept up spilled birdseed, I put the Carhart jackets back in order, I worked the register. And every day I had a single moment of turning into the driveway and opening up the mailbox, instead of listening for the huskies all afternoon. The next postcard arrived about a week after I started working again, although it felt like the years and years that it should have taken the whole world to change. She’d made it to California, the land of dreams where we always talked about going, the place that we’d seen on TV. The postcard showed a Navy ship in blue water and said San Diego. Weirdest thing, it said on the back. Not long after we got here I saw a woman who looked just like Mom along the road. Just like her, Mandy. I stared at her and she stared at me but she turned away without saying anything. That wouldn’t be like Mom, would it? Not if she had something to say. And she was with some guy I didn’t recognize. So it probably wasn’t Mom. But I hope everything is ok at home . . . I don’t miss it, but I do miss you. Nat hadn’t written a date, she never did. But the postmark was from the day after Mom’s funeral. And it had just gotten here now. I was starting to think that maybe time worked a whole different way on the road Nat was on. But that was a crazy way to think, and I did worry a little bit, now that I had regular everyday people to compare myself to, that I might be going crazy. People did, after grief, in empty houses. One might pile beer bottles to the ceiling and another one might fill the barn and shed and house with cats that reeked of piss and someone else might get Jesus in a hard and peculiar way, but it was all the same crazy underneath. I didn’t want to go there. I’d only read the postcards every other day, I told myself. Or once a week. They’d last a lot longer if I only read them once a week, and I would too. I took every hour they would give me at Tractor Supply. That’s why I was working the closing shift the night Keith came through at five minutes to eight. He was lugging a fifty-pound bag of dog food and I think by the time he realized whose register he was at it was too late to walk away without dropping it. I didn’t let on that I recognized him at first. It was almost sort of believable that I wouldn’t—he’d let his dyed black hair grow back out to a dirty blond, and he looked a lot older now that he had when he and Nat left. Not quite a year ago. I hadn’t thought of it in terms of an actual date. Time worked weird here too. Only after I’d rung up the Alpo and taken his money, while I was handing him his receipt, did I say, “That wasn’t cool what you did to Nat.” I said it as quiet and calm as I could. I didn’t want the girls at the other registers to think I was making a scene like Mom would have done. He dropped the receipt and ran out without the dog food. I spent the rest of the night worrying that Strider was hungry. Nat wouldn’t have wanted that. He came back for the dog food in the morning when I wasn’t there, and I didn’t expect to see him again. But he did turn up, the next week when I had the same closing shift again. He grabbed one of the caramel nut logs we sold near the register, obviously just as an excuse. I never knew anyone to actually eat those things. “I didn’t do it,” he said as he handed me a five-dollar bill. “It was the guy who sold us the pills, I didn’t know.” I knew words were coming out of his mouth and he was shaking his head, but I didn’t really listen. “But you left her. You shouldn’t have left her out there.” He shook his head harder, and his greasy hair swung against his cheeks. “There was nothing I could do, Mandy. What could I do? I’m as sorry about it as anybody, what could I do? I couldn’t do any good.” He kept saying variations on that same sentence until I pushed the nut log into his hand. Then he looked down at it like he’d never seen one before and walked out. When I went out to the parking lot at nine I found the red nut log wrapper torn into a rough heart shape and stuck underneath my windshield wiper. I pulled it out and dropped it in a garbage can. I got the idea that I was supposed to take it home and keep it forever, maybe tuck it into a book as well, and now I knew how Mom felt to not do that. The crazy part of me wondered if Nat would know, somehow, in her next postcard but it was nothing like that. It was San Francisco, two men in cowboy hats and sunglasses and no shirts, a rude slogan that if Mom had been around I would have pretended not to get. I got Alejandro a hat just like that, cause he’s from Texas. Got, so stole, not bought. Good old Nat. He told Beth she should let him wear her suede jacket too, but of course she won’t. I love San Francisco, Mandy. I wish we could stay. The only bad thing that’s happened here is that Tammy disappeared on us, a couple of days ago. Maybe she told a cop her name? Anyway, that upset Beth of course and she says we have to keep moving, head north. I’m not sure why. But going to Seattle would be neat I guess. I’m not sure why that jogged my memory, it wasn’t like I read the news or watched it. But it had been on the front page, so maybe I’d just seen it out of the corner of my eye, or heard on the radio of a car with an open window, or some ladies had gossiped about it in line at McDonald’s while I was getting coffee. Nice old ladies like the saddest, grossest, and most violent crime stories to talk over when they’re out shopping. I tried to tell myself that this was it, for sure I was crazy, but I went to the library anyway and got the Buffalo News from two weeks ago Monday. Tammy Jordan had been dug up from a field a bit outside Honeoye Falls before I was born, and been Honey Doe all my life, a vague presence who only mattered when a bored tv reporter would try to stir up new leads. Until two weeks ago, when she’d been identified, finally, by an old woman who got around to watching an old taped episode of Unsolved Mysteries and saw that Honey Doe’s computer-reconstructed image had the uneven teeth and favorite t-shirt of her runaway niece. We Know Her Name, the headline said. What was left of her body now would be exhumed and sent back to be buried in the proper place, the waiting slot where she belonged, under the proper label. I was angry that they weren’t even going to ask her if she wanted to go back, until I realized how stupid that sounded. I sat in the library, not wanting to be alone, until it closed. Then I went home and stared at the dull, now curled-up pictures of Sleeping Bear Dunes still pinned to the back of my door. He’d left Nat somewhere all alone in those dark pines. And she’d found a way to walk out, to keep writing to me anyway. She loved me and missed me. I didn’t even have to put my head down to go on this time. It was already down. I didn’t quit Tractor Supply or cry in the shower or forget to eat, since I’d done all those things already. The only real change in my habits was that I stopped turning the lights on when I was at home. I knew where everything was and there was no one else who needed to see. Besides, the days were getting longer now. I was a little bit afraid that figuring it out would mean she wouldn’t write to me any more. That seemed like what would happen in a fairy tale. But thinking like that was crazy. And another postcard came the very next week, from Klamath Falls. A lake with a mountain poking up above it, covered in snow. Something’s going on, Mandy. We came up on this whole group of women . . . mostly women and young girls, some kids, some guys. Some of them knew Beth, and acted like they’d been expecting her. She was introducing me and Alejandro to everyone. Everyone’s excited. It’s like we’re on our way to a festival or something. There’s a woman who seems to be in charge, an Indian woman named Anna, and she has everyone organized like you wouldn’t believe and heading north so fast I barely had time to mail this. I’m gonna find out what’s going on as soon as I can and write you again, I bet this is gonna be good! I miss you so much, Little Mandy. I kept going to work, but people asked if I’d been sleeping. They could tell. The phone rang and I didn’t answer it. I felt as though I didn’t need even coffee, although somehow I found myself drinking more of it than ever, because I needed to walk out of Tractor Supply and into the air as often as I could get away with. I started bumming cigarettes and going on smoke breaks too, but people on smoke break wanted to talk and that was hard when I was filled with something no one could talk to me about except Nat. Only one thing mattered and that was launching through the days until I got to the next postcard. It reached me just in time. It was from Seattle, weirdly old-timey, black and white with horses in the street and men with hats, some kind of official-looking building. All the light parts, the sky between the buildings and the paler grey of the sidewalks, were filled with upside-down letters, printing much tighter than anything I’d ever seen from Nat before, spillover from a back crammed margin to margin with tiny letters—well, tiny for Nat, maybe not that tiny—except for the outlined box with my address and the tiny square for the stamp. They’d put a sticker with a barcode over part of it but I was able to peel it off, carefully, without pulling up any of the ink beneath. We’re going up the mountain. There are so many of us that soon they won’t be able to ignore us any more, Nat. Just the Indian girls—just from Vancouver and British Columbia alone—would be an army, and then so many from California, so many from Ohio, so many from Michigan, we’re from everywhere, every single state. Each of us alone they ignore, it was one bad pill or one bad man, we got in one wrong car, whatever. But together, if you don’t pull us apart and look at us one by one but all together, you see it’s not that. It’s much bigger. I didn’t realize myself until just now, Little Mandy. I thought it was my fault. I’m glad I can tell you so you don’t have to go around thinking that. So like I said, here I had to turn the card over, we’re going up the mountain. When we Come down, it will be in a way They can’t ignore. And until then we’ll be safe. I wish there were a way you could get here, it said across the broadest part of the sky, without you having to come by this road. I Love You and Miss You, Little Mandy. I had just put it into my copy of Little Women with the others when the doorbell rang. If they’d waited even half an hour more I’d have been crying and they might have won. But when the police were standing outside, all I could think was Never Tell a Cop Your Name, Little Mandy! and I didn’t. I nodded, and I even turned on the lights so they wouldn’t think I was weird, but that’s not the same. And when they held out the ring with the onyx chips like a turtle and asked about Nat, I said, no, my sister is fine. I just got a postcard from her.

Of the first six postcards from Natalie, I only have three. Mom was able to intercept the other three while I was at school or, after June, working a shift at the Tractor Supply Store. I wouldn’t even have known about them except that she made sure I knew, saved them until I got home before she ripped them into the smallest pieces her stiff-knuckled fingers could manage and set them on fire in her ashtray. She was angry at Nat but punishing me was the closest she could get now. I’d manage to get a few pieces out of the garbage just singed after she went to sleep, every time, but Nat’s handwriting was so big and loopy that I’d only get a few letters or a short word, an is or an I or a too. I wish now that I’d kept them and tried to piece them back together like a scientist on one of those cop shows, but at the time it didn’t seem like a good idea to defy Mom straight-up like that. So I stared at them until I had taken everything I could from the letters, and from the pictures on the front, and then tucked them back in the trash and washed my hands. The three I did get, when Mom was the one working late, I saved of course. I hid them inside of a copy of Little Women that someone had given me as a present and I’d never read. The first one was from not long after Nat left. It was from Ohio, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and it was all things are so good and so in love and talked about how Keith had gotten—stolen, since she didn’t say bought—her a silver ring with onyx chips that made a turtle. She drew a cartoon turtle at the bottom and signed it Love You Always Little Mandy, From Nat. The second one was from the Big Bend Family Campground in Michigan. They’d been there a while, I guess, because she complained about having to send the same card twice. She said there weren’t that many to choose from. Also I figured out that they’d picked up a puppy somewhere along the way because she was proud of having almost taught “Strider” not to hump on people even though Keith would laugh and egg it on. We’re a real family now! she said, and the bottom of my throat squeezed for a moment, but I couldn’t be sad that she was happy. That was what someone like Mom did. And she signed it Love You Always Little Mandy again and turned the a in Mandy into a heart, and I felt better. The third one was from Sleeping Bear Dunes in Wisconsin. I could see that something had happened even before I read the words, because Nat’s handwriting was still big and slanted but the letters looked thinner and shakier. I hid in the bathroom with the shower running to read it, in case Mom came home and I was too distracted to hear her. Keith left, it said without a greeting. He did it the worst way, Mandy. I passed out partying last night and when I woke up I was under an old down tree in the woods and the fire was dead and he was gone. He took the car and Strider and my bag—everything. I woke up colder than I’ve ever been. I don’t know what I’ll do now. I just feel sick and sad. She’d underlined ‘sick’ and ‘sad’ with wavery lines. She signed this one Love You Miss You Little Mandy. I left the bathroom and hid the card with the others, and then I went back to the bathroom to throw up. I couldn’t tell why. I just knew that when I thought of Keith leaving her all alone to wake up under a dead tree full of bugs and rot, everything on my body prickled and I felt as though the whole world was full of nothing but humiliation the color of pencil lead. Part of me wanted to find Keith and punch him in the face while I screamed at the top of my lungs, and the other part of me knew that no matter how hard I punched or how loud I screamed it would never make this not have happened, would never again change the balance of the universe into one where people treated my beautiful big sister the way she deserved. Those two parts went in opposite directions and made my lunch come up. The next thing I did, after I drank a glass of water to take away the taste, was call Tractor Supply and quit with no notice. I might have had some thought that Nat would come home now, and that Mom might not let her in—although of course Mom would let her in, how else would she get her back to punish? The real reason was that I knew that I couldn’t let Mom get her hands on any more of the cards. I made it through dinner as though everything was normal, and went to bed early. It was only when I was curled up on my side in the dark, trying not to think about Nat waking up all alone and confused, that I thought instead to wonder how she’d gotten a postcard and a stamp if Keith had taken all her stuff with him. She must be ok, I told myself, if she got a postcard and a stamp. I finally told Mom I’d quit a week or so later. She made a lot of remarks about how I was lazy and spoiled and worthless, but she was pleased to have me around all the time. I’d known she would be. She could offload all the cooking onto me now, and all the laundry and the yard work too. Plus I think when Nat left it gave her the fear that I might leave someday too, but I couldn’t do that without any money coming in. I couldn’t do much without any money coming in. Just wait for the mail. One day I went to the library and used the computer to look up pictures of Sleeping Bear Dunes, to see if I could stare hard enough and see where Na might be, but I was antsy about Mom coming home early so I didn’t stay long. Before I left, though, I printed out a bunch of pictures—the ones that looked most like the postcard—for a dime a page. I hung them in my room on the back of the door. I stared at them long enough that I could see them in the dark. I get used to any new normal quickly, that’s a talent that I’ve always had. In a few weeks my life had always been about waiting for postcards, and in a few weeks more those postcards had always never come—even though the first two postcards that Mom burned had come within a few days of each other and of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I cooked dinners for Mom and packed lunches too—she’d skip lunch if left to her own devices and she was skinny enough as it was—and checked the mail three times a day, even though I always knew when it actually came by the neighbors’ huskies. I looked at the classifieds in the Pennysaver every week, but everything that claimed MAKE MONEY FROM HOME seemed too good to be true. Twice Mark called, drunk and sorry that he’d dumped me before he went in the Marines, and once Nat’s best friend Katie called from college to ask if we’d heard from her. Mom said no and hung up before I could get to the extension. The leaves fell off the maples and I raked them up, but then I decided I didn’t want the colors to go away so instead of bagging them I left them in a pile and let the wind spread them back out across the lawn. I expected Mom to yell about that, but she didn’t. She sat on the porch and looked at the carpet of leaves and when I came out to smoke a cigarette with her, she said, “It’s pretty, isn’t it? Just as pretty as anything on those damn cards.” We’d both been not mentioning postcards to each other at all, except when she had one in her hands to tear up. I froze. In July I’d have silently disagreed, thought what Nat would have said out loud, that the pine woods and the lake shore and any place that wasn’t here was a thousand times prettier by definition. Even the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But I’d stared at Sleeping Bear Dunes and thought of being cold and lonely long enough that the leaves looked much more comfortable. “I wish there was a return address on one of those postcards,” Mom went on, after another drag. “We could send that girl a picture back. Remind her that she used to like it here.” I’d wished there were a return address on the postcards too, so now I didn’t know what to think. After that, Mom had burned out or thawed out or something and she was more like the Mom I thought I remembered from before Nat left, and from before she and Nat would butt heads every day over every little thing, and from before Dad took off before that. But at that point we’d be talking little kid memories, so I wasn’t quite sure. Definitely not sure enough that I showed her the next card from Nat when it finally showed up. She’d doubled back as far as Ohio; the card had bright red covered bridge on it and the caption “Greetings From Troy.” But if she’d thought about coming all the way home, she didn’t mention it. Instead she just said Hi Mandy! I met the neatest girl. She’s just like Laura from Little House, two long braids and a deerskin jacket that she made herself. Her boyfriend ditched her, too, so we’re going to travel around together for a while. She’s been on the road a lot and she knows how to get along. I guess we’ll head west. Love you miss you little Mandy. Your Nat. P.S. Her name is Beth. The loop was back in her letters and that made me happy, even if she was heading away again. A girl with a homemade buckskin jacket sounded exactly like the kind of person Nat would find, too, out of a crowd of a thousand people in regular t-shirts and cotton blouses. Maybe they’d get out west somewhere in California and like it there so much they’d invite me to come visit. Maybe they’d get another dog along the way. Mom managed to pick up a friend too, a guy who worked at Wende with her, not a guard but one of the guys who maintained the HVAC and electrical stuff. I kind of liked him, or at least I was glad he wasn’t a guard because I never liked the guards she dated. When she first brought him home he stuck out his hand and said “You must be Amanda” and he didn’t clutch too tight, like it was a contest, and he didn’t try to pull me in to get a feel. So that was alright. “I’m Greg.” You could tell that his sport jacket wasn’t something that he wore so often, in fact it reminded me of an old picture I had of Dad at one of my aunts’ weddings, looking awkward with his elbows sticking out. When Mom didn’t come home that night, I wasn’t surprised. Mom never had Greg spend the night at our place, but once a week or so he’d come for dinner. She’d cook those nights so it was nice for me, and maybe that helped me along, but anyway I got to like him more and more. Just like that first handshake, he always treated me like a grown-up person, which hardly anyone ever did. And he made Mom a lot more relaxed, easier to live with. She began, just a tiny bit, to treat me like a grown-up person too. Like for instance, one night after we’d all had lasagna, her favorite fancy thing to make, and brownies with cream cheese swirls on top, she opened up the bottle of wine Greg brought and she poured one for him and for herself and then she poured one for me too. I’d started clearing the plates but she gestured the wine bottle at me and said “Sit down. There’s no rush.” So I did, and I sipped the wine. It wasn’t like I’d never had a drink before—I’d teethed with Old Crow on my gums, and Nat had been giving me sips of her Genny Cream Ale since I was in middle school—but sitting there drinking out of the good glasses made everything shift sideways a little. I felt giddy right away, even though the wine was kind of sour. The wind kicked up, and the bird feeder rattled against the window. “Winter soon,” Greg said, and he looked over at Mom in a way that meant there had been some prior conversation. She nodded. “Well, she’s a grown-ass woman, or that’s what she yelled anyway.” “I’m sure she found someplace safe to lay up.” “I’m sure she did.” Mom nodded deeper than she needed to, and took a bigger sip of wine. “Really, Joanne, you have to let go the worry. I’m sure she’s a smart kid. Amanda’s got a good head on her shoulders already, and she’s two years younger.” Greg made eye contact with me and for a moment I was worried that Mom was going to flare up, but she knew she had no reason to be jealous, not with Greg. “Amanda’s always been the steady one.” Mom nudged me with an elbow. “I know I’m not supposed to compare you kids, but you know it’s true, Mandy. You were born responsible. Nat had a wild streak.” I didn’t like that she said ‘had’ but I didn’t say anything. “But you’re right, Greg. She’s smart. They’re both of them smart girls, they take after me that way, thank God. Both of them straight A’s in school, and both of them know how to take care of themselves. I made sure of that.” “She taught me how to split firewood when Dad first left,” I threw in, because I felt like I had to talk eventually. “Got me a little tiny hatchet and put me on kindling. She and Nat talked me up like I’d saved us all from freezing to death. It was years before I realized that it must have taken way longer to watch me do it than it would have to do it herself.” Mom chuckled, and poured more wine all around. “We made a go of it, didn’t we? I think he expected us to all fall apart without him, but we managed.” “That must have been hard,” Greg said. “Oh in those days, everyone thought it was the hardest thing. All on the news, the divorce rates and the single mothers. Old women looking at me in Ames with so much pity. As though men haven’t been running off since forever.” Mom set the bottle down a little hard. “No offense.” “None taken,” Greg said as though it were a line on TV. “Natalie’s going to be fine, Joanne.” “I’m sure she will be,” Mom said. And then, as though it had just come to her, “We’ll see her in the spring, I bet. She’ll be sick of it by then.” I thought of Nat sick and sad with underlines and was quiet again. I wasn’t going to say anything to Mom, but I knew we wouldn’t see her in the spring. Snow fell before the next postcard came, but near Buffalo that’s not saying much, is it? This girl named Tammy is travelling with us now, this one said. She says she’s spent a lot of time in WNY, she’s even been to Mumford! She was trying to get home to Florida but she changed her mind and decided to go west with us. Then we found a lost kid in the road, a little black boy maybe two years old with no clothes on but a pair of underpants. I wanted to help him but he wouldn’t talk to me and he ran away, way faster than I would have thought a toddler could. Beth says more parents lose their kids out here than you’d think, and there’s nothing I can do. She looked upset about it though. The words at the end were cramped, like she’d been trying to squeeze in as much as she could, and the Love you always Little Mandy ran into the address part of the card. I flipped it over and looked at the picture, a steamboat on the Mississippi River. No word if it was snowing where she was, but snow never fell on steamboats, did it? Just in case, I bought her a pair of purple knit gloves with bright green turtles on them for Christmas, and a giant Toblerone. I put three maple leaves I’d saved from the front yard in the package too; one red, one orange, and a yellow one that still had some green on it when it fell. I wrapped it up and I put it under my bed, just in case. Of course it turned out to be just Mom and I on Christmas morning. Greg was with his sister and brother-in-law and their kids, though he’d promised to come by for dinner later. He’d helped us set up a tree that was taller than either of us, but that just meant that presents for two looked even lonelier underneath. The gloves Mom got me were black leather, with purple trim and cashmere on the inside. When I put them on they were a little small, but they felt like they would stretch. She got me boots, too, which I could tell from the box were from the consignment shop but they were pretty much like new. And a purse with a bird worked on it in leather. “I love these,” I said, sliding my hands back into the gloves to feel the cashmere again. “Thank you.” “Thank you,” Mom said to me, too fiercely, and then hugged me. “I know I went a bit crazy there when Nat left.” “I’m sure Nat didn’t mean all the things she said either.” Mom shook her head. “I wasn’t fair to you either. You’ve been a rock, Mandy. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” She squeezed me tighter, just for a second, and then let go. “Even if you do leave someday, I know at least you’d keep writing.” I thought about telling her about the postcards I’d hidden, but I wasn’t sure it was safe, and then the moment was gone. I don’t think it would have made any difference in the end, anyway. The next postcard proved that I shouldn’t have worried about snow. Nat was smart, like Mom had said. She was in Texas now, down on the Gulf coast. The card had a sea turtle on it and I smiled when I thought how happy she must have been when she found that. Her letters were loopy again too, although smaller now since she seemed to have realized she could write more that way. Finally met a cute guy out here on the road, she wrote, and of course, my luck, he’s a major faggot. Sweet kid though. Named Alejandro. He said there were like 30 other kids travelling with him but they all upped and disappeared on him a while back. So he’ll probably stick with us for a while. I could picture Nat giggling and sighing, what a waste, probably trying to pet his hair—not being mean about it but just typical thoughtless Nat. I hoped she didn’t pester this kid to death, but at the same time, thinking of her giggling was the best, so too bad for Alejandro. Beth says people disappear on the road a lot, the main thing is that we all have to stick together and not talk to cops, or even let them see us if we can help it. But sometimes you can’t, of course. Mostly never tell them your name. Never Tell a Cop Your Name, Little Mandy! was her sign-off. “Like I would,” I said out loud, and put the card with the others. Spring came early that year, and Greg had his motorcycle on the road by the middle of March. Lots of people had their motorcycles out early and lots of other people weren’t looking out for them. The only thing that made Greg’s accident different was that it was a hit-and-run. There was a long hunt for a dented car, a guilty conscience, or something, but they never found anyone. The only comfort was that Mom and Greg both died pretty much instantly. I just put my head down, the way I did when Dad and Nat left, and at first I thought that maybe it wasn’t so different being alone with the postcards all the time than it had been to be alone with them most of the time. But it was. Now that I had nothing I had to do and no one to do it for, I read over all the postcards two, three times a day and they were starting to get bent and soft at the corners, and that wasn’t ok. Besides, the part of my brain that wasn’t numb knew that Mom’s insurance money wouldn’t last that long even if I never felt like eating again. My old manager at Tractor Supply had always liked me, and felt bad for me now. She argued up the chain that I’d always been reliable until the one day I hadn’t, and I think she put that on Mom, although I didn’t ask. Mom had been known pretty well around town for her temper. Anyway, whatever she said worked, and I had a job again, although back down on the first rung being managed by kids two and three years younger than me. It wasn’t so bad. I swept up spilled birdseed, I put the Carhart jackets back in order, I worked the register. And every day I had a single moment of turning into the driveway and opening up the mailbox, instead of listening for the huskies all afternoon. The next postcard arrived about a week after I started working again, although it felt like the years and years that it should have taken the whole world to change. She’d made it to California, the land of dreams where we always talked about going, the place that we’d seen on TV. The postcard showed a Navy ship in blue water and said San Diego. Weirdest thing, it said on the back. Not long after we got here I saw a woman who looked just like Mom along the road. Just like her, Mandy. I stared at her and she stared at me but she turned away without saying anything. That wouldn’t be like Mom, would it? Not if she had something to say. And she was with some guy I didn’t recognize. So it probably wasn’t Mom. But I hope everything is ok at home . . . I don’t miss it, but I do miss you. Nat hadn’t written a date, she never did. But the postmark was from the day after Mom’s funeral. And it had just gotten here now. I was starting to think that maybe time worked a whole different way on the road Nat was on. But that was a crazy way to think, and I did worry a little bit, now that I had regular everyday people to compare myself to, that I might be going crazy. People did, after grief, in empty houses. One might pile beer bottles to the ceiling and another one might fill the barn and shed and house with cats that reeked of piss and someone else might get Jesus in a hard and peculiar way, but it was all the same crazy underneath. I didn’t want to go there. I’d only read the postcards every other day, I told myself. Or once a week. They’d last a lot longer if I only read them once a week, and I would too. I took every hour they would give me at Tractor Supply. That’s why I was working the closing shift the night Keith came through at five minutes to eight. He was lugging a fifty-pound bag of dog food and I think by the time he realized whose register he was at it was too late to walk away without dropping it. I didn’t let on that I recognized him at first. It was almost sort of believable that I wouldn’t—he’d let his dyed black hair grow back out to a dirty blond, and he looked a lot older now that he had when he and Nat left. Not quite a year ago. I hadn’t thought of it in terms of an actual date. Time worked weird here too. Only after I’d rung up the Alpo and taken his money, while I was handing him his receipt, did I say, “That wasn’t cool what you did to Nat.” I said it as quiet and calm as I could. I didn’t want the girls at the other registers to think I was making a scene like Mom would have done. He dropped the receipt and ran out without the dog food. I spent the rest of the night worrying that Strider was hungry. Nat wouldn’t have wanted that. He came back for the dog food in the morning when I wasn’t there, and I didn’t expect to see him again. But he did turn up, the next week when I had the same closing shift again. He grabbed one of the caramel nut logs we sold near the register, obviously just as an excuse. I never knew anyone to actually eat those things. “I didn’t do it,” he said as he handed me a five-dollar bill. “It was the guy who sold us the pills, I didn’t know.” I knew words were coming out of his mouth and he was shaking his head, but I didn’t really listen. “But you left her. You shouldn’t have left her out there.” He shook his head harder, and his greasy hair swung against his cheeks. “There was nothing I could do, Mandy. What could I do? I’m as sorry about it as anybody, what could I do? I couldn’t do any good.” He kept saying variations on that same sentence until I pushed the nut log into his hand. Then he looked down at it like he’d never seen one before and walked out. When I went out to the parking lot at nine I found the red nut log wrapper torn into a rough heart shape and stuck underneath my windshield wiper. I pulled it out and dropped it in a garbage can. I got the idea that I was supposed to take it home and keep it forever, maybe tuck it into a book as well, and now I knew how Mom felt to not do that. The crazy part of me wondered if Nat would know, somehow, in her next postcard but it was nothing like that. It was San Francisco, two men in cowboy hats and sunglasses and no shirts, a rude slogan that if Mom had been around I would have pretended not to get. I got Alejandro a hat just like that, cause he’s from Texas. Got, so stole, not bought. Good old Nat. He told Beth she should let him wear her suede jacket too, but of course she won’t. I love San Francisco, Mandy. I wish we could stay. The only bad thing that’s happened here is that Tammy disappeared on us, a couple of days ago. Maybe she told a cop her name? Anyway, that upset Beth of course and she says we have to keep moving, head north. I’m not sure why. But going to Seattle would be neat I guess. I’m not sure why that jogged my memory, it wasn’t like I read the news or watched it. But it had been on the front page, so maybe I’d just seen it out of the corner of my eye, or heard on the radio of a car with an open window, or some ladies had gossiped about it in line at McDonald’s while I was getting coffee. Nice old ladies like the saddest, grossest, and most violent crime stories to talk over when they’re out shopping. I tried to tell myself that this was it, for sure I was crazy, but I went to the library anyway and got the Buffalo News from two weeks ago Monday. Tammy Jordan had been dug up from a field a bit outside Honeoye Falls before I was born, and been Honey Doe all my life, a vague presence who only mattered when a bored tv reporter would try to stir up new leads. Until two weeks ago, when she’d been identified, finally, by an old woman who got around to watching an old taped episode of Unsolved Mysteries and saw that Honey Doe’s computer-reconstructed image had the uneven teeth and favorite t-shirt of her runaway niece. We Know Her Name, the headline said. What was left of her body now would be exhumed and sent back to be buried in the proper place, the waiting slot where she belonged, under the proper label. I was angry that they weren’t even going to ask her if she wanted to go back, until I realized how stupid that sounded. I sat in the library, not wanting to be alone, until it closed. Then I went home and stared at the dull, now curled-up pictures of Sleeping Bear Dunes still pinned to the back of my door. He’d left Nat somewhere all alone in those dark pines. And she’d found a way to walk out, to keep writing to me anyway. She loved me and missed me. I didn’t even have to put my head down to go on this time. It was already down. I didn’t quit Tractor Supply or cry in the shower or forget to eat, since I’d done all those things already. The only real change in my habits was that I stopped turning the lights on when I was at home. I knew where everything was and there was no one else who needed to see. Besides, the days were getting longer now. I was a little bit afraid that figuring it out would mean she wouldn’t write to me any more. That seemed like what would happen in a fairy tale. But thinking like that was crazy. And another postcard came the very next week, from Klamath Falls. A lake with a mountain poking up above it, covered in snow. Something’s going on, Mandy. We came up on this whole group of women . . . mostly women and young girls, some kids, some guys. Some of them knew Beth, and acted like they’d been expecting her. She was introducing me and Alejandro to everyone. Everyone’s excited. It’s like we’re on our way to a festival or something. There’s a woman who seems to be in charge, an Indian woman named Anna, and she has everyone organized like you wouldn’t believe and heading north so fast I barely had time to mail this. I’m gonna find out what’s going on as soon as I can and write you again, I bet this is gonna be good! I miss you so much, Little Mandy. I kept going to work, but people asked if I’d been sleeping. They could tell. The phone rang and I didn’t answer it. I felt as though I didn’t need even coffee, although somehow I found myself drinking more of it than ever, because I needed to walk out of Tractor Supply and into the air as often as I could get away with. I started bumming cigarettes and going on smoke breaks too, but people on smoke break wanted to talk and that was hard when I was filled with something no one could talk to me about except Nat. Only one thing mattered and that was launching through the days until I got to the next postcard. It reached me just in time. It was from Seattle, weirdly old-timey, black and white with horses in the street and men with hats, some kind of official-looking building. All the light parts, the sky between the buildings and the paler grey of the sidewalks, were filled with upside-down letters, printing much tighter than anything I’d ever seen from Nat before, spillover from a back crammed margin to margin with tiny letters—well, tiny for Nat, maybe not that tiny—except for the outlined box with my address and the tiny square for the stamp. They’d put a sticker with a barcode over part of it but I was able to peel it off, carefully, without pulling up any of the ink beneath. We’re going up the mountain. There are so many of us that soon they won’t be able to ignore us any more, Nat. Just the Indian girls—just from Vancouver and British Columbia alone—would be an army, and then so many from California, so many from Ohio, so many from Michigan, we’re from everywhere, every single state. Each of us alone they ignore, it was one bad pill or one bad man, we got in one wrong car, whatever. But together, if you don’t pull us apart and look at us one by one but all together, you see it’s not that. It’s much bigger. I didn’t realize myself until just now, Little Mandy. I thought it was my fault. I’m glad I can tell you so you don’t have to go around thinking that. So like I said, here I had to turn the card over, we’re going up the mountain. When we Come down, it will be in a way They can’t ignore. And until then we’ll be safe. I wish there were a way you could get here, it said across the broadest part of the sky, without you having to come by this road. I Love You and Miss You, Little Mandy. I had just put it into my copy of Little Women with the others when the doorbell rang. If they’d waited even half an hour more I’d have been crying and they might have won. But when the police were standing outside, all I could think was Never Tell a Cop Your Name, Little Mandy! and I didn’t. I nodded, and I even turned on the lights so they wouldn’t think I was weird, but that’s not the same. And when they held out the ring with the onyx chips like a turtle and asked about Nat, I said, no, my sister is fine. I just got a postcard from her.

From Horror photos & videos July 13, 2018 at 08:00PM

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Look Back at Wondercon 2007 -- Day 3 (Sunday)

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Look Back at Wondercon 2007 -- Day 3 (Sunday)

Mar. 10th, 2007 at 12:28 PM

Sunday, 5:30 am. A time I was supposed to wake up refreshed, have an early breakfast, and check out before my tour bus picked me up at 8am. Unfortunately, my throat issues began creeping up into becoming a nose issue. At this point, it still seemed like a minor cold, but the symptoms would get worse and worse throughout the day--I believe in large part because outside of the morning bus ride, rest wasn't on the agenda. You see, the plan had been to travel in a healthy state through several parts of San Fran. And I was far from healthy.

Given the horrid cost of breakfast at the hotel, I went across the street to Starbucks and brought orange juice and pastry back to my hotel room. After that, I checked out of my room, checked my bag, and got the concierge to check me in for my flight so I wouldn't have to worry about doing that later. Then the hotel pickup bus arrived to then get people from several hotels and take them to the main office that I had seen at the Wharf the day before.

I found myself on a nearly packed small shuttle bus with people headed up to Muir Woods and then over to Sausalito. The Sausalito portion really was just to take people to an area where they could then take ferries back to the Wharf, but as it was my last day I knew I didn't have the time to do Sausalito justice... not to mention, by the time we got there, I wouldn't have felt like it if I did. If you wanted to take the shuttle back you could, but it was clear they'd hoped to make more money with the additional ferry portion. It was clear many didn't understand that was what was assumed and were unhappy their stay was that short... but it was only a 3.5 hour tour after all. And I definitely got what I wanted, which was Muir Woods.

My family has been coming to Muir Woods for generations. Dad even told me of a time that he, his Dad, and his grandfather all came at the same time... which is interesting in that they are all named John Muir with different middle names. I didn't realize at first that the Woods would be driving distance away when I set this up, but once I realized it the trip became a must-do. Besides, nothing Sunday at Wondercon interested me. We also got a great side stop to take pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge on the way up. I'd become rather congested though by the time we reached the woods so I missed a key part of my tour guide's instructions. He repeated to go as high as Bridge 3 twice so I picked up on that, but apparently he'd told everyone to go counter-clockwise in following him. I'd missed that somehow, and after being one of the last on the restroom stop, proceeded to go CLOCKWISE around the loop. I didn't notice at first since some people were also going my same direction. It wasn't until I ran into my tour group on the way back (against the flow of most people) that I came to realize what had happened. In all honesty, I have no complaints about that. What I really needed was the private time more than the tour guide constantly rattling off stuff. I had a very peaceful time that way. In particular, I would have loved being there with my Grandpa Porter (we called him by his middle name), who was a lover of nature and an award winning wood carver. He passed away February 14, 2000, during a pacemaker operation when they found his heart just couldn't make it. I miss him a lot.

We were taken through parts of the huge Presidio where the missionaries tried to educate the Native Americans, both going up and coming back. George Lucas recently bought 5 acres of the Presidio and the buildings on that land for some of his facilities and those were pointed out to us on the way back. Not cheap!

At this point I made what would turn out to be probably the worst decision I could have made. I could have taken a shuttle back to the Argent (even though I had nothing to do), or I could stay at the offices and check out Ghiradelli Square, which I didn't expect to have much open at 9 am so I hadn't checked it out Saturday. I decided to check out Ghiradelli Square and then take the cable car back over the hills to downtown, as there must be lunch there somewhere and I needed to eat. What I did NOT know is that Ghiradelli Square is undergoing MAJOR renovation and MOST of it was closed. Which then put me in a position of needing to find lunch. Having had seafood on the main Wharf strip the day before, I took the next street down, which is the one the street car traveled on to head back to downtown, figuring with such a major line on that road there must be food all along it. I walked for some time before I found anything and by this point it was becoming evident I had an infection I was struggling with. Finally I wind up settling for an IHOP, which failed to impress... especially when the first glass of water I was given had dead flies in it! I'd have walked out if I could. The patrons probably wished I had as well, as my misery was loud and evident. But I had nowhere to go.

The buses across the street were not going in the direction I needed, so I kept walking until I found a street I recognized... Powell. I knew Powell was also downtown, and I had nothing else to go on, so I followed it for blocks. Many blocks. And then, after walking for some distance and tiring with every step it just stopped in this park. Turned out to be Washington Square. I really didn't know what I should do, except that looking to my left down the road I could see the Embarcedero some distance away and knew that if I walked toward it, at some point I should be able to find somewhere to then turn me back toward where I needed to go. Good strategy until I hit Chinatown, where much was still blocked off for New Year's cleanup. So here I am, this really sick person, being forced through huge crowds of Chinatown shoppers as I try to get back to downtown. Because of the street closures, buses were rerouted and those that did come by were packed with more people trying to get in than they had room. Reminded me of the limited buses and the LA bus strikes. I knew I was better off walking, even though I felt horrible. And somehow, from Fisherman's Wharf all the way to Market Street, I walked my way across town. Initally I plunked down in the Argent lobby but soon realized that was no place to attempt to rest. So I pulled out my badge and decided to do what I've seen many an exhausted Con attendee do in San Diego... went to Moscone Center and camped out under the esclalators outside the exhibit hall and took a series of catnaps after buying a bottle of water. I literally couldn't go another step at that point.

I woke up at one point to take another drink of water only to realize someone who I thought seemed familiar was coming towards me. It was Greg Weisman, on break from the SLG Publishing booth, who was surprised to find me there as I said I wasn't planning on it. But like I responded when he asked if I was checked out from my hotel room, I said if I still had it believe me that's where I would have been instead of sleeping on the convention floor! We talked a little and found we were headed back to LA at the same time from the same airport, but as I later learned and fortunately for him not the same flight. A little while later, knowing how tired I still was, I went back for my bag and slowly made my way to SFO vis BART. Felt so bad at this point I already emailed in sick to my boss who ok'd it before I'd even gotten to SFO. I figured I could get dinner and nap there in any case before my 8:40pm flight... which I found out when I got there would now be 9:25pm. Given my situation I didn't mind much, as long as I could still get home and eventually get to bed. I woke up from one of my early naps to find the time had changed to just after 10pm, due to baggage ramp service issues in Vancouver that delayed the flight. I slept on the flight too, and the worst part was awakening as we descended into LAX to find my left ear hadn't popped and was in extreme pain (which is why I walked in to my doctor on Monday, not only to evaluate the sinuses but to be sure the ear was all right!). This, BTW, is the same flight that Mark Evanier has written about in his own blog. He and I chatted a little as we waited for what seemed like forever in baggage claim.

Even though I was fortunate to get the last Supershuttle not requiring reservations (just before midnight), we still had six stops and I didn't make it home until 1:30am Monday morning.

I hope to go back to SFO someday, hopefully with a little less drama. But still, Friday and Saturday alone were worth it.