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littobin · 3 years

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sprung

genre: suggestive romantic stuff, with a tiny bit of angst

pairing: tattooist!moonbin x reader.

warnings: none ? just a minimal language, and kinda heavy making out... yeah

- summary: sanha, the well known skater, had an older brother. and maybe his best friend y/n was too in love to proper think.

a/n note: this is kinda long and emo, it's just my first time writing in this genre so hfjbfn sorry in advance. gender neutral, also for a special friend who encouraged me to post on her birthday. planning on do stuff for the other boys soon. :)

...

[1:02AM]

putting a bit of effort into it you open your eyes, tired after waking up from what felt like a long nap.

your head still was unsettled, confused, looking around the place you found yourself at. by some point then you manage to recognize the living room and the nice sofa on which you were lying, such things from nothing less nothing more than the comfy, simple house of your best friend, sanha.

honestly no matter how much you tried to recall it on your mind, nothing reminded you of what could have happened for you to wake up there. despite how it was already one habit of yours to often visit this house where the tall, half black half blonde haired boy used to greet you in with his bubbly smile several times, and of course with his extra peculiar style, ripped pants, bandaids and chaotic printed t-shirts you always thought to be funny.

to be friends with a professional skater since high school days wasn't so bad, after all sanha was indeed one of a kind, such a mature and high spirited boy. he was such a nice goofball, always ready to talk about any topic, share taste on music or learn new things, the actual opposite of what people say about someone like him. sanha has always been an amazing friend, making you feel comfortable and your days a lot lighter every time you went to see him after dealing with responsibilities.

whether your short visits were to spend some time for both of you to help each other with things about studies or just when you missed spending time with him, you were already a common guest. for textbooks and notes purposes or for when it'd all turn into laughs, popcorn and your best friend's favorite games, or even in skate competitions he used to bring you with him at the square down street.

or else, when you'd also come to secretly see the black haired handsome man always on his casual clothes living there with your friend, who at the time he was home would stay sometimes in the kitchen, sometimes doing his works outside at the small desk near the garden, sometimes practicing sketches in his own room.

sanha introduced him as his older brother bin, who unlike him was a lover of all kinds of arts. whom you shouldn't pay so much attention to, but before your mind could go against it all of your thoughts were just as they ended up. constantly filled with him, with the need to see him everyday.

however now instead of going on trying to figure out any other possibilities to what could've brought you there, or even letting your thoughts wander over sanha's brother again, you hear calm footsteps approaching and immediately close your eyes, burying yourself on the sofa's recline. there you pretend to be still asleep, yet not understanding why your first reaction was like this, if it could be just your best friend.

for a few minutes the atmosphere remains monotonous, but soon enough turns tense as you feel someone come too close. two strong muscular arms embrace you carefully, bringing a sweet smell of shampoo you instantly could recognize so well. since the time when, in a game match with your best friend and his brother, both you and sanha attacked him with tickles for being the loser, as a form of punishment. you'd never forget it, for how it was your very first time hearing bin's boyish giggles, and touching his so silky, smooth hair, like a thin fabric tinted by the late night hues.

all of this together sent your heart pounding madly, already knowing who was there with you, especially when his jaw's downy skin brushes against your face for the proximity. at first he made a kind of awkward attempt to put you into his arms, in a position you could be carried comfortably. after one more try he gets to pick you up, and just when he easily manages to hold you firmly in bridal style, taking you off the couch like a light plush on his arms, nervousness started taking over you in silence as you couldn't assimilate where he planned to carry you to.

albeit a bit sudden at times and without much control of his own strength, except when you saw him drawing extremely detailed lines with his tattoo needle for customers at the studio he worked in, to where once sanha took you to bring him lunch, albeit he was too broad and intimidating, and his own homemade food didn’t always come out good for that little rough way of his no matter how hard he tried to do something thinking of you and sanha, albeit it all bin was always too gentle, too loving. it was so much whenever he'd open his mouth to talk with such sweetness and even a tiny bit of timidity to express his thoughts, even though how excellent he is with words, all of his little 'eh?'s when he'd be confused or cute neck scratches, you'd never believe he'd be a professional tattooist for years. he could normally work for all kinds of people, from madams to rockers, and do any type of drawings, from small daises to pretty complicated dragons and skulls. you'd have no clue of it if sanha didn't tell you, also about the fact bin always wanted to be a dancer, but because it was just the two of them and life tends to adapt itself according to necessities, he never thought about doing tattoos, yet casually came to work on it with time.

outside his job bin always took good care of his younger brother, though the troubles sanha would occasionally cause or how mischievous he could be even with him, and bin had to hit his head sometimes. all of his gestures were always docile, humble, treating you as if he was also a friend, and always being a real gentleman. not mentioning the countless times he had his crescent moons smile on up his eyes, just utterly enchanting.

all of this inevitably got you even more lovestruck, and your heart weak, no matter how hard you tried to muffle down those feelings. bin remained as the only man whose your mind and its daydreams for hours never grew tired of, the only one who gave new colors to your days. the more you knew him the more you were sure you couldn't be in any other way than hopelessly in love with him, too affected whenever he'd be around.

before you'd notice it you were thinking about this, about all you kept hidden inside for him. so you just settled yourself to forget what would be going on and let him believe you were really asleep, although in fact tension ran down your nape feeling his body's warmth, heat uncontrollably up your face while you leaned against his large chest.

after a few minutes of more footsteps sounds on stairs and doors opening through he carried you, bin stops at a certain point, slowly placing you carefully over another soft material, which you deduced to be of a bed.

you held yourself static, thinking he'd soon leave you there to rest and go, as you figured out sanha's brother probably would do so by his cordiality. nevertheless almost all at once you were simply taken aback when the male leaned on the bed, and slowly on top of you. his elbows and one knee supported him over, in such a way that made you too weak under his figure covering yours up, as if he was like a huge brown bear in charge. shivers hardened your shoulders, as you feel a heavier breath against your face.

"i know you're awake." he says softly, yet his characteristic boyish voice sounding way huskier than normally. you instantly open your eyes in disbelief over what you've heard, and just so your cheeks turns crimson, realizing how both of you were just few centimeters apart. his stunning almond eyes sparkled brightly into the room, dark and hooded while staring deeply at you. every one of his features on his manly face were lined on a serious expression, seeming concentrated, but almost fatal.

"bin.." all you could do was just mutter his name sheepishly over embarrassment, only to get a sigh from him in response. "shh..." his index finger lightly touches your mouth, tracing its tip to the corner of your lips, your hands starting to sweat cold just by the small contact with his digits.

bin then suddenly towered over you, without removing his intense brown irises from yours and rests his arms around your face, so his long fingers would now caress your hair. solely in this move his body quickly cornered you on the bed by his height. butterfly swarms rush into your stomach, as for a few minutes both of you kept quiet, staring intently at each other.

you swallowed hard. any trivial action like breathing now seemed dull, with him there so close to you as never. bin was like the definition of being drop dead gorgeous, every detail, every fiber of him exuded beauty, to almost seem unreal. through these few seconds watching him you couldn't keep your eyes from wandering, over each one of them. his thin, dainty rosy lips, which looked a little swollen, begging for another one's touches. black hair strands resembling the universe's dark matter hovering messy on his slightly sweaty forehead, and over his expressive frowned eyebrows. soft, milky skin which became a little more flushed as he stared at you, thick neck exposed by his t-shirt colar, wide shoulders covered by his cardigan tucked on his elbows.

oh everything about him was, so breathtaking.

although you couldn't understand why he was doing this, for how in your head you wondered why such an attractive man like him, who anyone would want to have, was there looking this way at someone so simple, still you couldn't hold back such things he made you feel. too many things screaming for you to let them out. and it was just the same for him.

"you know what.. damn it.." you heard bin break down the silence with a shaky whisper, and before you'd realize or question anything he placed your noses together in a soft brush and collided your lips with his eagerly, both of you sighing in the contact.

fear still was the main emotion taking over you, even though you closed your eyes right away and gave in to him, millions of beautiful sensations coursing through your veins at once. you simply didn't have any idea on how to act, what you should do in the first place all because of the frozen state his attitude caused, something you'd hardly come up with in your dreams by how far out of your reach you thought it'd be. however now you just put everything aside, gradually melting away with your knees getting weaker, as you felt bin kissing you in an irresistibly slow, delicate way.

not even through any of your deductions with yourself you'd imagine these little things which had your heart to almost explode now, that his nose would be so soft, and his lips would taste so sweet, velvety in their texture extremely hot and moist, pressing and moving gently as if they were massaging yours. easily you were found anesthetized, like one who reaches the ninth cloud. when they started to move more, just a bit hungrier between small sucks created by him and nibblings on your lower lip, you began to gradually further correspond them into the kiss, wherein he lets out quiet sounds, his pulsations so out of control and his cheeks burning red just as, or perhaps even more than you.

bin was still trying to not lose his composure. still trying to keep the feelings he had hidden for you from being all poured out at once, like a waterfall.

since the first time when sanha introduced you to him as his best friend, after he came home from a rough day at work. since then when you smiled saying your name and he could sense flowers blooming all over his chest, stealing the air on top of his lungs. to every time you locked eyes for too long or your hands accidentally touched his when you'd volunteer to help him in the kitchen. every little conversation, every time you patted his shoulders to encourage him when his brother would as well, never looking intimidated, like most people he knew.

he didn't want to show each drop of his honesty so fast in case you wouldn't flinch, but it was too hard when he had you there kissing him back, only the two of you in this moment, feeling you not repress him but otherwise, just wanting his touches as much as he's been longing for yours. he couldn't help but lose his mind more and more into each of your small actions. your hands timidly plugged on his waist, almost embracing it while his warm, long fingers intertwined with your hair strands, that somes mixed a little in his bangs, or your leg unconsciously poking his. in a way that without noticing bin tightened his arms more around you as well as the pressure of his chest, looking for more and more closure to you.

it didn't take long until the male would part his lips like a bud's petals, and so you shudder with his hot tongue there rubbing your lower lip, asking for entrance. you just give in not even being able to think through all the flustering this new sensation sent on you, and bin slowly deepened the kiss, making it fulfilled by all the so suffocated attachment you had for each other.

little by little his tongue slides in intertwining with yours, as the first thing hitting you was the fresh flavor of his chocolate mint cereal bar, which you were used to always see on bin's hands or pockets, and it just added an even better feeling through you explored his mouth. plenty more touches come up between the two of you so that the male, after staying still in the same position for a little while, suddenly slides one of his arms down. his huge veiny hand grips firmly and gives light squeezes on your side what caused you to jump a few times, running it down in a path of pure shivers to your hips, until he catches your hand still on his waist and without any previous warning pulls it in, under his shirt.

air immediately hitched on your throat out of shock, but bin was immersed, focused on only feeling you more. in the intervals his tongue's tip traced your mouth tilting his head for access, and when he brought it back so he'd press and gently suck your lips with his, the male kept the pace guiding your hand on his large back. slowly he also brought it down to the point of his firm, built up abdomen, which caused chills on himself, and moved your palm to make contact with the warmth of his absurdly soft, fragile bare skin inside the fabric. uncontrollable pulsations took over you the moment you get access to this new touch, your head in a fog of only bin.

this one was indeed a little different from the docile person you knew, with his contagious smile behind gloves and a tattoo needle you were so used to see. instead bin showed to be such an intense man, and why not say sexy, full of alluring gestures you didn't know how to handle, solemnly irresistible. over an impulse you make up a little of courage and start moving your hands by yourself, caressing and feeling his muscles, that have always been apparent on his manly athletic body, as each of his proportions under the shirt.

"god.." he suddenly said under his breath in a way sounding too sensual from his gracious, still husky voice among the kiss, melting completely in sensitivity and a cardiac mess because of you. bin then pressed a few more pecks a few more times on your lips, not wanting to pull away but doing so already for running out of air, through both of you parted trying to catch it.

yet you fail miserably, as soon as you see your best friend's brother face, completely flushed and breathless. his coffee colored eyes dripped fondness and loads of tiny stars all together, eyebrows pressed in such a lovely, affectionate expression you swore you never saw anything so endearing in your life. if it wasn't for another beat skipping your chest when you noticed a small amount of saliva, that you could clearly define as traces of the wonderful kiss of a few seconds ago, in the corner of his mouth.

as soon as he notices your widened eyes, bin's face changes and he cleans it by licking his lips seductively, as if he knew how much it affected you. the cardigan he wore falls from over his shoulders and he removes the cloth piece, dropping it on the floor. a small smile sprouted on his captivating features when he looks over at you watching him, as he lowered himself to your neck, putting his lips near your ear.

"keep going.." bin closed his eyelids, feeling the characteristic and comforting smell of fabric softener on your clothes. this smell which he always had on his memories from that day he shyly hugged you on your birthday, that now made him ask sweetly into whispers for your hands on him again, pressing more of his fine body and chest against yours.

his hips suddenly rolled down in a slow move, stimulating waves of electricity and adrenaline onto your stomach, your state now broke into sighs. you squeezed his waist slightly and involuntarily, moved by your latent feelings as he nuzzled against your neck, like a fluffy cat purring. bin was panting still heavily, sending incessant shivers down your spine.

"bin... you.. you're too much.." losing any lasting control over yourself you buried your face deeply on his shoulder and grabbed his huge biceps, letting out any first thing that would come out of your mind.

he smiled against your skin with a muffled chuckle, light and content for how cute you sounded to him, what got you even weaker as well as over the moisturizer perfume on his exposed collarbones by his shirt, before you went to fulfill his request. soon enough your palms were all over his muscular back once more, massaging them in up and down movements. bin took time to appreciate the feeling of having you into his arms, touching your hair, your nape, your lower back, or your cheeks where he decided to put gentle, tender kisses, that got you forgetting even more about the destination of your fingers under his shirt.

they ran all over his torso, sides, down to his beautiful abdomen once again to trace trembling patterns with your fingers under his stomach, running them up to reach the area of his chest, where you accidentally touch one of his nipples. bin stopped when he felt the stimulus, letting what sounded like a frustrated moan resonate in response, and you move your hands right away. yet you didn't expect him to feel so flustered to the point of, having his weight against you, to this time start distributing wet kisses, full of desire onto your neck and jaw.

in the middle of them bin took pauses where he sucked some of your skin to mark it slightly, or moistened each sensitive spot he left with the way too warm texture of his tongue. his hands also return to be entirely over you, one putting stronger, breath taking grips and squeezes on one side of yours as the other entered under the hem of your sweatshirt, his thumb touching your belly's area. each thing he did left you helplessly more and more of a mess for him, while his hips gave another roll once again in an enticing motion, causing you to feel an inevitable friction you tried to ignore but his moves only made it harder and harder, between his thighs wrapped tight by his jeans and yours pressed in the middle of his from jumping so much with his touches.

"sanha, saw you fell asleep, and asked me to take you to a room.. i went to see you and heard, you mutter my name.. saying that you wanted to have me..." for a moment, your eyes widen in realize, and finally you get how you were there.

your mind gets back remembering how sleepy you were before you'd come to see sanha, something which was again the result of another pulled night thinking about life, studies, and about bin constantly, about how incredible would it be if you had the courage to confess to him. but before you could even die of embarrassment for letting your dreams go too high right at your bestfriend's house, right next to him, bin slowly brings another trail of his warm kisses up your neck, eliciting quiet whimpers from you this time, especially when he stroked your waist skin inside your sweatshirt and reached for your earlobe, instantly capturing it in his mouth to suck on the small cartilage.

"do it now.. do whatever you want." you heard him confess with a bit of difficulty on his tone, for the much any response from you for now would mean to him. therefore he stopped, pulling away as he looked at you with sad traces, insecure.

bin needed to know about you, to get a reassurance from you, one more time of you expressing fully whether you were in love with him as much as he was with you to let yourself stay with him more, or if not, as hard as it could be he'd stop there, despite how reciprocal everything was from your side. he didn't want just a make out with you.

uncertainties still bothered him inside, through several sleepless nights spent on his room's desk among all his draft drawings and work notes, but thinking of the stupid, probably one sided attachment he developed for you, growing everyday because of how regularly he could see you. way too quickly you stole a space on his heart, bigger than the passion for art and colorful designs his job gave him. even when his needle did its work putting on pigment, when he found himself alone before a customer would come, he often wondered about what you'd feel, if you saw him only as your best friend's brother, if it'd be too risky to try and tell you what he felt.

there wasn’t one moment in 24 hours all of this didn't cross bin’s mind for once as the days went by, but he was too afraid of being rejected, to the point of thinking his brother could have much more chances with you. though he left all these things aside when he finally heard you demonstrating something for him as simple as saying his name on your sleep was, losing it all while he held you on his arms.

and so you knew you had to get all that fuss of feelings off your chest at once before the chance slipped from your hands. before you had no option but to go back to your routine of sinking in sighs about what could have been, wanting to be in his arms for a day, when you wanted it to be always.

taking a second to comprehend his eyes you raised your arms around the middle of his back to caringly engulf him on them. it caused bin to unhesitatingly lower himself again, resting his chin on your shoulder and hold onto your lower back, his heart rushing loudly, unsure by your action.

"i want what you want, love.." you confessed as well, still feverish for his previous caresses. then you just rested your face on his shoulder, and with all the sincerity within your heart you tightened your arms in a hug, trying to show your intention of making him feel exactly this, your simple embrace.

love.

as he heard you clearly when you hugged him, the moment you loosened the grip bin pulled his body a little away to look at you again. his serene, loving eyes flickered until they were deeply on yours, oceans overflowing with hope and anticipation into them. "did you say.. love?"

"yes, i.. always wanted to call you like that. can i?" your knees flutter with your own question, just by the idea of being able to call him as something that in so long would describe him so well for you.

bin, however, sighed till the bottom of his lungs, both now filled as everything within into a magical warmth, through every inch of his longing feelings were complete over his exhale. he wondered if he was dreaming, if this was finally the pure and graceful joy of touching clouds, or the lightness of blowing dandelions to the wind, of knowing that you felt the same, despite how he still couldn't believe it at all.

"you're so cute, i adore you so much y/n. if you say it like that, i'll be addicted to you.." the male's palm comes back to find itself cupping your cheeks, as his fingertips against your ear. once again you watch his fascinating gaze and face too close to yours, his irises, his lips to his shoulders, as if it turned into a new habit which would give you life. his voice sounds honeyed, like a blanket on winter, yet intimate, breathy.

almost as an immediate response you blinked repeatedly at the main three words on his first sentence, as of it didn't take long until you blushed violently trying to proccess everything, surprising bin while you placed your wrists at your nose's level to hide your face. you were now too caught up on a mixture of inexplicable waves of euphoria and emotions hitting you, too overwhelmed at all of these extremely heartfluttering things he just said so naturally. god, indeed he was too much to handle, but he still was your favorite.

"don't do this, fool! i adore you too.. a lot.." with your wrists still there your embarrassed expression only increase as you let out, but soon you moved them aside when the sound of his soothing laugh echoed into your ears. "wow.. i guess i'm the happiest fool now."

bin was smiling widely, grinning, perhaps in the most angelic, genuine way among all the days you've seen him do through routine. the crescent moons forming his beaming eyes harmonized as his lashes half closed with the curves on his lips up, giving room for two light dimples, forehead aligned with yours, emotions all over that you still couldn't read, as of relief and affection at the same time on his details. to hear him laughing in a tender and so spontaneous tone, his body seeming relaxed, comfortable, and to be a part of it almost like watching stars at midnight, all of this also made you smile along with him.

without being able to express too many feelings at once or what you'd like to say to him now you simply place your fingers against his face, the small, gelid earring on his ear, touching his bangs between them dearly, as if he'd be made of crystalline glass. another silence raised as you both kept looking at each other, like the night stopped passing around you, until bin draws another small smile and breaks the short distance again.

you took a deep breath, grabbing a certain spot on his shirt when you feel all the coziness of his thin lips pressing more kisses on different points of your face all slowly. on the area next to your nose where he placed the most of them, or on your mouth as he initiated another sweet, luscious round of lips on lips, pulling you closer and closer by your lower back, which seemed to be his best choice for a comfort zone.

but it doesn't take long for his attention to turn back to your neck, stopping to scan and softly trace his thumb on the small crimson hickeys he left there.

"some of them, look like tattoos... sorry, i.." bin whispered, trying to explain himself somehow embarrassed, but gets interrupted by you taking the initiative to hold on his back and get closer.

there you bury your face on his neck and kiss him gently, under his jaw to the beginning of his collarbones, as of every inch of his velvety skin flushed hot and sensitive in goosebumps where you explored. still being a bit taken aback bin shut his lashes and rested his cheeks now tinted in shades of pinkish hues against yours, disarmed by your suddenness. the more he felt your timid lips going so intimate on him, the more unrestrained beats and pantings had the best of him at that moment, bin no longer being able to maintain the same calm. you always had that power to leave him like that, definitely. the only one who ever did.

"there's something i always wanted.. but first tell me, if you want me by your side." one of his thick arms hug your waist, a barely audible moan escaping through he said out without thinking at all, just letting himself upon your guidance, locked on your touches.

the moment you proccess bin's words and what they'd mean your fingers slip from curling the silky strands at his nape, also leaving the curve of his shoulder where you planted more confident kisses, as if by magic your heart was sent on another unbalanced marathon. did he really ask it?

"of course.. of course i do." you answered his doubt with your whole chest, and it was all he ever waited to have you saying.

bin didn't know what exactly made him feel so lost on everything about you, wishing to stick to your side more and more. but he knew it was such a thing way too heavenly for him to not want to dive deep in. one drink, or a way too pure cup of water on thirsty times he'd last there appreciating till the last drop, a room wherein he'd feel better than in any other, or even a necklace he'd carry on himself everyday, a permanent tattoo.

any way it all should be, he wouldn't care. as of the moment he heard you a smile flourished across the corners of his lips again, and in a matter of minutes he held your sides pulling you with him as he sat back among the sheets, placing you onto him all too fastly and strongly in a way you had to look for support by putting your trembling palms on his chest.

you were left once more in a loss of words, swallowing hard over another wave of butterflies when you found yourself held sitting on his lap and facing him, through he gave you such a dangerously charming, sexy smirk, gaze so intense it almost knocked you dizzy like you never thought to be. yet less even would you imagine he'd strip off his t-shirt right in front of your eyes, and reveal his toned, absolutely perfect torso, all of his muscles there totally exposed from collarbones to his lower abdomen, where a black butterfly spreading its wings showed up printed on his skin at his side. bin just let your shocked eyes hover on the sight of his whole sculptural half naked body, before he'd glue your foreheads and squeeze your sides excitedly, also giving attention to your right thigh caressing and gripping it with his other hand through he adjusted you on his lap.

"everything i want is us, y/n..."

he couldn't wait to throw aside his stupid composure with you.

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wardencommanderrodimiss · 4 years

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Witches, Chapter 29: something of an overdue talk, in a long overdue chapter.

Hey everyone! We’re back at it, hopefully, with a few orders of business.

First things first: I’d like to issue a small warning for a short discussion of past suicidal ideation that pops up during this chapter. Since this series is a retelling, generally most of you do know what’s coming up next and what we’ll run into and to brace ourselves for that. You know about the characters’ past traumas and future choices and know where that pops up, or if it becomes unexpectedly relevant or makes a new parallel, you did at least know in advance that it happened. Phoenix’s occasional oblique allusion to Edgeworth’s “choosing death”, for instance.

As this is not something quite like that and comes up more out of nowhere than usual, I just wanted to make sure that no one is uncomfortably caught off-guard. It felt like something different to me personally as I was writing - whether it’s going to strike any of you as different than other heavier material we’ve had in the past, I can’t say, but I’m erring on the side of caution today. If you’ve got any questions or concerns or anything you want done for content warnings in the future, please do come talk to me and let me know!

On two lighter notes: thank you all for bearing with me through the “oops all Fire Emblem only Fire Emblem” hiatus. It’s been a weird year, obviously. I’m hoping that I can carry on with room in my brain for both.

And finally: Happy UR-1 day! Today is, yes indeed, the exact day that Simon Blackquill is arrested for murder, and in honor of that, have a chapter where I mention him one (1) entire time.

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches of Los Angeles Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

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Golden Saturday-morning sunlight streams in through the blinds, lighting up the dust particles swirling through the air. The office is colder than Apollo expects for the end of October - colder than it was last year this time - and Phoenix is even wearing a sweater, the shining locket that Apollo hasn’t seen in a while hanging around the outside of the tall collar. “Morning,” Phoenix says, without raising his eyes from what appears to be a manila folder full of newspaper clippings he is perusing. “What’s up?”

Straight to business, then. Apollo is fine with that. He grabs the chair from his desk and drags it around, not directly in front of Phoenix’s desk, but near enough that it will be harder for Phoenix to ignore him.

“Is there any way to break a curse?” he asks, shoving his hands deep in the pocket of his hoodie. If it were this cold in a regular office on a Saturday, that would make sense; save money on heating bills when no clients are coming in. This is just - fae bullshit. The beginning of their seasonal tantrums. Winter only properly begins on the solstice, and Apollo really wishes that the fae of Kurain would respect the astronomical seasons. Stave off the snow until the end of December and end it in March. Don’t allow it to span from October to April.

Phoenix sweeps the scraps of paper all back within the folder and ducks down to set it inside a drawer. “If I knew a way,” he says, rising back up with the magatama in hand and setting it down on his desk with a hard clack, “do you think I would go around looking like I do? You don’t think I would’ve gotten this mess cleaned up a long time ago?”

He doesn’t offer Apollo the magatama for a refresher on what that mess looks like. Maybe he was just making a dramatic point with it. “Oh,” Apollo says, scratching the back of his head, faintly embarrassed by how obvious the answer is if he’d given it a modicum of thought from that perspective. “I guess not.”

“Right,” Phoenix says. “As my understanding goes, you can theoretically maybe mitigate a curse, if you layer another opposing blessing on. I am ‘lucky’” - he makes sarcastic quotation marks to ensure that the bitterness dripping from the word doesn’t go unnoticed, as if Apollo could possibly not notice - “to have known enough fae that I’m saddled with both Fortune and Misfortune, and Life and Death. But I’m also not certain that when you drop those on each other they don’t just each take their own separate niches. I’m not dead, but god knows when I try to go somewhere for a vacation or a day off, I still stumble across crime scenes like nothing else. Stunningly lucky in some aspects, and wildly unfortunate in others. You know me. I don’t need to elaborate too much, do I?”

Apollo nods.

“So that’s the theory, but I don’t think that helps anyway for your purposes, which - this is about Prosecutor Gavin?”

Apollo nods again. Phoenix sighs and rubs his eyes. “Shit,” he says, folding his hands together in front of his face and leaning his head against them. “I - believe me, Apollo, I wish I had some - I wish I had any way to help him.”

And Apollo does believe him. Apollo has to believe him, and believe that Phoenix means well, because he’d go crazier if he wasn’t reminding himself that Phoenix’s most frustrating decisions are born out of good intent. That Phoenix thinks he knows what’s best, but there’s still that old saying about good intentions.

“Why didn’t you tell him?” Apollo asks. “You knew before this. You knew before he asked you.”

Phoenix raises his head. “And what does telling him get him? Secure in the knowledge that his brother - who is already in jail by the way, don’t need any more proof of his crimes, he’s already never getting out to be able to hurt anyone ever again - hates him enough to have wished him dead?”

Basically the same reasoning that Klavier had, but Apollo has a counterargument now. “Gives him time to come to terms with it before someone dies!”

“You don’t!” Phoenix slams his palms on the desk. Apollo flinches. Of course everyone is volatile and heated over this topic, but that doesn’t make it easier in the moment that it first gets directed at him from people who are usually frustratingly calm and casual. But Phoenix winces, lifting one of his hands and dragging his fingers through his hair, and sighs. “I’m sorry,” he says, and repeats, much quieter, “You - you don’t. Or I never didn’t. I knew from right when it happened that I was cursed; I had three years between then and when Mia died - it - I could’ve had a decade, or two, and it - it wouldn’t have helped. I wouldn’t have felt any differently. Any more come to terms with it. With the thought that I - helped cause—”

His tongue heavy in his mouth, Apollo nods. “But - but wouldn’t it have been worse to find out right after she died?”

“Of course it would have,” Phoenix says blithely. “Of course that - this - is the worst possible alternative. Of course I would’ve said something if I’d known that this was what would happen instead.”

“But you have to have expected that someone would—”

“No, I didn’t,” Phoenix interrupts. “That’s not how this works. You know Klavier. You know how much he doesn’t say, don’t you? How much I don’t - you know what people like us are like. Who’s going to tell him? Sebastian forgets half the time that he even has the Sight. Kay only acts like she knows things. Prosecutor Blackquill spent until two days ago acting like magic isn’t real even when he knew we knew otherwise. Someone who means ill isn going to keep that information to use it, and not to just plainly say something.” He frowns. “Well, usually not. Unless they’re a clumsy interloper stumbling in somewhere they don’t belong and getting themselves fucked over for it too.”

“So other than Means just walking all over everything” - because he wasn’t immersed in this kind of fae etiquette, didn’t grow up in it, learned just enough to spot what he thought were opportunities and ruined himself by it - “you think every other random stranger is just going to respect all these - these weird little rules about what you don’t say?”

“Rules of engagement, basically,” Phoenix says. “Yeah, I do.”

“Prosecutor Gavin told me that you’re cursed,” Apollo says. “Don’t just tell me that’s - that’s the exception that proves the rule, or whatever.”

Phoenix’s expression, smug and trying to dampen that smugness back into something that respects the seriousness of the conversation, tells Apollo that yes, yes that is absolutely what his retort was going to be. Apollo considers screaming. “I’ve been tangled up in this for far too long,” Phoenix says. “I can promise you, I know the patterns. I know the way these things go.”

“And because you’re so much smarter than the rest of us, that makes it okay?” Apollo demands. “To take a gamble and just hope that it won’t go wildly wrong?”

And he wants to, really wants to add, I guess that’s what you do, just gamble with people’s fates, and he doesn’t, and Phoenix’s face still darkens like he knows, like he can read Apollo’s mind. Because every time Apollo ends up arguing with him, that’s always at the core. This playing card that haunts them both, burnt a bridge barely built, and they keep trying to balance on the ashen skeleton of it. “Just because Prosecutor Gavin is too fucked up about everything else to be mad at you for hiding this—”

“I did,” Phoenix says, voice low, eyes narrowed and dark as an evening’s storm clouds, “what I thought would be best, based on my prior experiences of both how curses don’t get talked about, and knowing exactly what it is like to personally live with knowing that I’m cursed. This is not something I want anyone to have to know how it feels.”

“So you think ignorance is bliss,” Apollo says. Klavier said that. Apollo wants to know how Phoenix takes that statement.

“I wouldn’t call it ignorance,” Phoenix says. “It’s not like he, or you, didn’t know what Kristoph was like until you found this out. You know the crime, the verdict, the sentencing - and everything else that Kristoph tried but failed to do. That Kristoph also wanted Klavier dead is only another small piece in the grand scheme of it all.”

Still the same argument that Klavier made; Apollo can’t imagine they discussed it. What brought them to the same conclusion? That they both have lived this strange specific kind of grief? This common ground that they share that is foreign to Apollo.

“Come to terms with - Klavier’s already got to come to terms with the rest of that,” Phoenix continues. “It was obvious during that trial how much Kristoph despised him. He knew that too. He knows that Kristoph ruined more lives than just the people he murdered - that he tried to kill more people than he actually succeeded at - cursed and tried to kill children because he couldn’t have - didn’t want anyone remaining who - who could - could… say…”

If Phoenix hadn’t faltered like that - fumbling and failing to continue, words petering out as he went back over what he just said, his eyes going wide and welling up with horror - then Apollo would have simply assumed that his thoughts were moving too fast for his mouth and he couldn’t keep them straight. It would have been easy to talk right through it, and Apollo wouldn’t think twice. If Phoenix hadn’t showed his own hand, gave the game away. Something too terrible for even seven years of professional poker to hide.

“Mr Wright?” Apollo asks, and Phoenix turns his head, glancing away away, no longer meeting his eyes when less than a minute ago he was staring him down with a cold confident glare. “What - what are you talking about? Vera, and - not someone else? Who else?”

Phoenix makes a tiny shake of his head, and even that little motion is a bright, distinct liar’s red. It lights up his eyes, too, when they dart down to the floor. “Mr Wright?” Apollo repeats. When would this have been? He casts his mind over everything he learned, just a little over a year ago, Phoenix sitting him down to explain seven years of information collected about Kristoph, what he’d done and how he’d tried to cover it up. He tried to kill Drew Misham to tie up that loose end; he cursed and poisoned Vera, two precautions because he wasn’t confident enough in the former, hoping that if she ever left the house she wouldn’t be able to speak to his identity and the forgery he requested. He killed Zak Gramarye seven years later to hide the same. He wanted to eliminate every link in the chain that connected the diary page to him. Its makers Vera and Drew, and Zak who knew he was the first attorney on the case, and then the page got to Phoenix via—

Via—

“Mr Wright,” Apollo says. His voice shakes. “He didn’t—”

“Promise me something, Apollo,” Phoenix says firmly. His mouth is drawn in a tight line but he doesn’t look stern. He looks more like he’s going to cry and is desperately trying to stop himself. “Promise me.”

“Wh - what? I can’t—”

“Promise me, Apollo.”

Not until you tell me what I’m promising, Apollo thinks, Apollo knows is what he should say. He’s been told this enough times; he’s aware of this on his own. Don’t agree to a deal before all the terms are set. Don’t sign the contract before it’s read thoroughly. Rules for lawyers and fae are the same. Just because Phoenix means well doesn’t mean that Apollo agrees with those decisions he makes; certainly not the one they have been discussing, and likely not whatever Phoenix is asking him to agree to.

“Please.”

The air in the office is so cold. Even the sunlight seems cold now. Apollo shivers, hunches himself up further. What does Mia think? Is this secret-keeping so natural to her, easy as breathing once was, because she’s fae and that’s what they are, liars by trick and by trade?

“Just promise me you won’t tell her until I do.”

His mouth dry, Apollo nods and croaks out, “All right. I won’t.”

He almost regrets pushing the issue,regrets ever asking Phoenix why he faltered. Phoenix sits slumped, his hands in his hair, and when he glances back up at Apollo, he looks so exhausted that it reminds him of Klavier last night. Burnt-out and broken, when it’s so rare for either of their masks to break. Rarer for Phoenix not to be positioning himself as the one with all the cards in hand; for him to fall apart, for Apollo to actually see him upset. “Yeah,” he whispers, soft enough that Apollo sits forward to make sure he can hear him. “Everyone involved in getting the diary page from him to me, Kristoph wanted dead, or to make sure he could silence them. Everyone who knew, even if she was - eleven years old, or eight. The girl who made it, and the girl who gave it to me. He fucking hated the Gramaryes. You think he didn’t jump at the opportunity to try and get rid of all of them that he could? That he wouldn’t cast a curse on each one who ever entered his sight?”

“And she” - Apollo’s voice cracks - “she doesn’t know? You didn’t tell her?”

“Shit, no,” Phoenix says. He sounds close to cracking, too, and when he drops his hands to his desk he starts shaking his head, his eyes scrunched closed. “Being a Gramarye has been goddamn enough of a curse for her. She lost all her family and then found out that her grandfather buried her mother’s soul in the woods because he was a monstrous son-of-a-bitch who deserved worse than getting to go out on his own terms by shooting himself in the fucking head—”

Apollo shudders. Phoenix had never before directly stated his opinion on Magnifi, but Apollo could definitely tell he held only disdain for the man. This, though, is more than disdain. This is positively venomous, and more than a bit frightening. Did he always feel like this, and hid it, or is this hatred something that has only come about since last year Trucy came back to the office with her mother’s soul in her hands?

“—so yeah, on top of that, I’m definitely going to tell her that the same man who killed her father cursed her just because of the accident of who her family is.”

“B-but—” Apollo doesn’t quite know what he’s arguing. He also doesn’t know where all of his prior conviction went. Of course Klavier should have been told - because he found out in the worst way possible - and Trucy - to take a gamble with her too - that’s got to be just as wrong— “Nine-Tails Vale,” he says suddenly. “We went there, and then there was a murder - that - that’s - is that like—”

“Like what happens to me?” Phoenix asks. “What happens with a curse? Yes. That’s how it goes.”

“And you - you’re not going to - to tell her? Ever? In case - in case something happens to her like with Klavier, or—” Too many thoughts are playing in his head, and the next one grabs hold of him and pivots him away from the point he was going to make about maybe why Trucy should know. “The concert,” he says. “When we went to the concert, Trucy and I, and Klavier was there too of course but that’s - Romaine LeTousse was murdered. They’re both cursed and they - wait, was Klavier cursed then? That was before…”

Did Klavier know when it happened? Did he tell Apollo? He’d said that Phoenix had seen him twice since the trial last October. Presume then that Kristoph cursed him then. The last time the brothers saw each other, and that doesn’t make one bit of sense.

“How could Kristoph have cursed him?” Apollo asks, and he doesn’t miss a momentary flash of panic that passes over Phoenix, his eyes popping wide for half a second and a loud, sharp intake of breath. “Klavier always has iron on him. He gave me—” He looks down at his hand, and then back up, to Phoenix’s lifted eyebrows. Apollo sticks his hand back in his pocket. “What’s the point in iron if it doesn’t actually save you from being cursed?”

Phoenix is obviously trying not to move. He knows Apollo is watching him, waiting for a twitch, anything to pounce on and draw an answer out of him. Staring steadily back at Apollo, he barely blinks; he rests his folded arms on his desk and his fingers curl just a little tighter into where he’s gripping his arm. Apollo is right to be asking these questions. He’s getting closer to something that Phoenix is hiding.

“Or it does,” Apollo says. The veins on the back of Phoenix’s hand flex from his grip. Apollo thinks about someone else with a tense hand and secrets. “And he couldn’t have been cursed then, at Vera’s trial, if it does. So then Mr Gavin hated him that much before then.” Phoenix blinks placidly, but he doesn’t adopt his lazy-eyed gaze. Too serious even for that. “And you lied,” Apollo adds. “You lied about when.”

Phoenix flinches. It’s just a tiny one, pulling his head back, the muscles in his jaw and neck tightening, but Apollo can’t miss the light show. Can’t miss that the lie is bleeding out of him.

He finds himself on his feet, not stepping any closer to Phoenix’s desk, just needing the height, just needing to move a little to stop the shaking in his hands and in his chest, a trembling that goes right down to his heart. “He knew already that he’s cursed! Why did you keep lying to him!”

“I didn’t lie to him,” Phoenix says evenly, but very quietly, and Apollo wants to go over and slam his fists on the desk and make him stop with these hollow justifications, make him face what he’s done couched in none of his winding words. “I just didn’t correct his assumption.”

“That’s lying!” Apollo shouts. “That’s still lying! That’s what happened in Mayor Tenma’s trial! Do you remember that? Do you care!”

“Don’t accuse me of not caring.” Phoenix’s voice is low, his eyes dark, staring up at Apollo. “I do care. I—”

“You don’t care about lying! But you do care about - what, about us? Doing this because you care, because you always know what’s best for everyone not to know!” Apollo throws his hands in the air. Phoenix’s brow furrows further, his jaw set tightly. “Never mind that Athena had a breakdown during the trial because Means hit her exactly where you were worried she would be! And you didn’t prepare her! Never mind that Klavier’s having a breakdown now because he found out at the worst possible time! When you could have told him! You know—”

“And if what he knows already hurt him this badly, then what do you think would be happening if he knew Kristoph cursed him years ago?” Phoenix slams his hands on his desk like he’s at the defense’s bench, pushing himself up out of the chair and onto his feet. “That his brother’s wanted him dead for that long? You think that’ll help anything, for him to find that out right now on top of all this? You want him to have that to come to terms with right now, too? I didn’t lie to him! He made an assumption that I didn’t correct because I’m not in the business of salting anyone’s wounds!”

He makes - a point. Apollo sees where he’s coming from. Why he’d do that. An additional piece of truth, yesterday the same as a salting of the wound. “But you don’t think he’s ever wondered if - if Mr Gavin resented him for that long? If he - if you would be setting something to rest, if you told him that. You can’t decide for someone else what they’re capable of handling.”

“Fair point,” Phoenix says. He sinks back down into his chair, and then motions to Apollo’s, suggesting he sit back down. “If he’d asked, I’d have told him. If he ever asks, I’ll tell him. I just wasn’t about to drop that on his head with him unprepared. Or if he asks you - I’m not asking you to swear silence to that. Shit, if you ever think that it’ll help him to know, then tell him - tell him you just found out from me, throw me under the bus and lie to make me look worse, that’s fine.”

Apollo returns to his chair, still not feeling any less like he wants to take a swing and see if he’s gotten any better at punching since last April. “You want me to lie now too?” he asks.

“I want you to use your best judgment about what he might want to know or be able to handle,” Phoenix says. “To not pile on more if he didn’t ask, if you don’t think he’s prepared. Like I said, when it comes to being cursed, I didn’t ever not know, and I know what the knowing is like. Yeah, I took a gamble that if I didn’t tell them then no one else ever would. That they’d never know, I hoped.”

He shakes his head and then leans it back against his chair, his eyes closing. “See, it’s not just grief, not at all. The woman who cursed me was someone I thought I knew. Though I’d known for a while. She had actually wanted me dead since we first met.” His eyes pop back open. “Eventually she tried to poison me, and when that didn’t work she tried to frame me for murder, and when that plan fell apart she just tried to kill me with a curse because she was pissed about it. She was a lot stronger than Kristoph, I’ll tell you that much. But Mia stepped in, and now I’m still alive and other people just drop dead all around me instead.”

He sounds almost like he is making a recitation, like he’s rehearsed it, scripted it. Apollo wonders if he’s ever told anyone else all these details, if anyone else lacking the Sight knows that Phoenix is cursed, and if he used this same script then too. He’s speaking about himself, something so personal, in a way so curt and crisp, so much more detached than he’s been speaking about Klavier, or Trucy.

Apollo nods numbly, unable to force his tongue to ask any of the questions he has.

“I could have come to grips with her hating me that long and that much - I could’ve come to terms with it and moved on. I was - well, I eventually became glad to know what she was. I could’ve been okay with all that. Eventually. If I hadn’t known about the curse. But I did and the - the knowing, the - Mia was murdered. Three years after she saved me. That long, thinking I could accept that I was cursed, and as soon as something really happened - I couldn’t.”

He presses his hands together and rests them against his chin. “And I couldn’t ever even just grieve her, because I had this guilt. That her death was my fault - I know, I know, some other man murdered her. He got to rot in jail for the rest of his life for his crimes, and he would’ve hated her whether or not I was cursed. For the things she did and because of what he was, and I had no part in any of that, but I was still - thinking, if maybe if she hadn’t ever taken me under her wing. If I hadn’t been around, maybe it would’ve been different somehow. Maybe she would have survived.”

The lights flicker gently and return dimmer and softer than they were before. Everything that gets talked about in this office, Mia hears; Apollo wonders if Phoenix doesn’t get sick of it sometimes, just want to say something without her offering input. Even if this is presumably well-meant, some attempt at comfort, the most a dead woman who can’t speak can give. Apollo exhales and can see his breath. He shivers again. “Why are you telling me this?” he finally asks.

“I want you to understand.” Phoenix rubs his hands together, a vacant look in his eyes, like he hasn’t quite realized why he’s so suddenly cold. “What it felt like, and what I’m worried about. If I’d told Klavier, or I tell Trucy - once I say something, I can’t take it back. That’s it, and they know, forever, just like I do. So I want to be sure that this won’t - I want—” He drops his hands and reaches over and picks up the magatama, idly spinning it around between his fingers. Apollo can’t remember ever seeing him this uneasy, this fidgety. “Klavier, especially, reminds me of myself when I was his age, and of a prosecutor I knew then, too. And that - recognition” - he gestures with the magatama clutched in his hand - “is not good, because we were not - okay.”

Apollo wishes he could remember with clarity all that Phoenix said to him about this time a year ago, about Klavier, about Phoenix being concerned for him. He does remember that Phoenix said something about some other prosecutor then, too, that Klavier reminded him of. Or that he was worried Klavier was going to end up like.

Phoenix inhales slowly, and says, “Six months after Mia was murdered - which was three, three and a half years after I was cursed, mind you - I lost someone else. I didn’t realize how badly he was doing - he did a good job at hiding it, and I didn’t know how to reach out. I was wrapped up in my own loneliness and depression, and then he was gone.”

He stops turning the magatama between his fingers, staring down at it for a few seconds, and then he resumes fidgeting with it. “I felt like I’d caused both of those. Couldn’t convince myself otherwise. Every other factor I knew there was, every single thing I couldn’t prevent or control, all these other things that other people did - I still thought that if I wasn’t cursed, then it could have been - just different enough that they would still be here.” He reaches up, brushing his fingertips across his temple. “Wouldn’t have been a fatal wound. Or wouldn’t have—”

He falters, staring past Apollo now, over at the window. This is the same thing he said about Mia earlier, about that sense of guilt, even knowing someone else murdered her. That he held some kind of responsibility, for a curse that seems to manifest itself as coincidence. Just coincidence, a little too often.

“They could’ve been okay, somehow, in the end, I thought,” he continues. “And instead, I was - I was there, I was still around, and they weren’t. And all I could think was that if I didn’t do something, then I would just lose the other few friends I still had - they would be around me, and they would die for it.”

“Didn’t you say that there’s no way you know to break a curse?” Apollo asks. From Phoenix’s solemn expression, he’s not going to suddenly say that there is a method, but Apollo has no idea what he is going to say. What that something he thought to do was.

“Right,” Phoenix says. “So I thought - only way to take the curse out of the equation is by taking myself out of the equation. I thought - as long as I’m not around - if I go and die, then anyone else who I love won’t. The curse will be gone, right, if death finally takes me. But the curse only seemed to hit other people, not me, so if dying was what I needed to do, then I…”

Klavier lying on the stage, wondering why it had to be Courte who died instead of himself. Phoenix’s dark, pained eyes, as he speaks again, finishes the thought in a voice barely above a murmur. “It made - made far too much sense to me, then. Was far too appealing a prospect.”

The question of what Phoenix won’t quite spell out catches sideways in Apollo’s throat, and when he tries to force it he just makes a soft croaking sound. Phoenix presses his lips together and glances away. “It’s a pain I wouldn’t wish on anyone,” he adds softly. “Klavier’s - he’s what, twenty-whatever? I was twenty-five when I—”

When Mia died, Apollo thinks, but that Phoenix doesn’t finish the thought, swallows hard and stares at his desk and says something else, makes Apollo think there was something even worse he could have said, with that implication he didn’t say. “And Trucy - she’s my daughter. I’m supposed to protect her. I took her in because I couldn’t live with the thought of anything else happening to her when I could bring her here, hope that Mia could somehow bless and protect her as much as she did me. But I can’t imagine just - I can’t let that happen to her. To suffer the way I did, to - to spend her life wondering if wherever she goes, someone’s going to die - the concert, Nine-Tails Vale, to ever - to think she can blame herself. Or that everyone she loves is better off without her. Or to—”

He blinks, fiercely, his eyes watering, and Apollo hopes he’ll never have to see Phoenix this close to tears again. Phoenix, cursed and trying - and in the case of Klavier, now failing - to shelter others from that same pain. Klavier, and Trucy, and—

“What about Vera?” he asks. “You explained to me, but did you ever tell her that she’s—” Phoenix stares at him, blinks slowly. Apollo squeezes his own eyes shut. “You didn’t tell her.” He’s unable to muster the same indignation he was before. He can’t really even bring himself to feel manipulated. Phoenix told him exactly that he was saying all this to make Apollo understand. Phoenix sought this reaction. But Phoenix’s chessmaster act has never superceded his desire to keep secrets before; there’s no way that Apollo can convince himself that this emotional vulnerability is all entirely a ploy to get Apollo to shut up. How many times has he refused to explain something and just left Apollo to stay angry about being in the dark? He has never been reluctant to do that. To just sit silent and lock Apollo out. To let Apollo hate him for his secrets.

He wanted Apollo to understand, intimately, whatever it took. So that Apollo would agree keep these secrets. So that Apollo would go along with him. And it might be concern that drives him - he cares, of course he does - but it’s still manifesting in the most infuriating ways possible. In well-meant silence.

“Would you want to know?” Phoenix asks, and that question at this time is an answer and confirmation in itself. “I know the truth is important to you, Apollo - I know it is to all of us.”

For once, Apollo believes he means it. He’d know it’s the truth because he can see when Phoenix is lying, but he’s actually convinced, this time.

“But,” Phoenix continues, “if you already know that the person who cast the curse hates you and is in jail for committing murder - already got to come to terms with that, or grieve that, or for someone else dead - you already know that truth. Would you really, honestly want to live with also knowing that you’re cursed?”

To possibly want to die because of it, like Phoenix did? Apollo opens his mouth. He wants to say yes, yes he would like to know, because that’s the truth of it and he wants to always know the truth, all of its facets no matter how ugly.

Doesn’t he?

He thinks about Nahyuta, about Dhurke, about trying to forget they ever were anyone, because that’s easier than facing the fact that Dhurke abandoned him, and they might both be dead by now. Easier than wondering whether they were human or fae or something else. He doesn’t want to know what they were. He wants to deny the dreams, to convince himself they’re nothing but the weird subconscious mash-up of memory and the fae horrors Clay has spent all these years warning him about. He doesn’t want the truth about his childhood. He doesn’t want to remember his childhood at all.

(Is it well-meant silence when he doesn’t tell Clay, or Trucy, or Klavier, about them? To not worry them about his life and his past? Or is it just cowardice on his part? Blissful ignorance.)

He closes his mouth. Thinks about the smile Trucy forced onto her face as she realized that Apollo was about to reveal to the court that her father Zak Gramarye was murdered six months before then. Thinks about how she couldn’t keep that smile forced when she found out that her dead grandfather took her mother’s soul for his own personal gain. Thinks about Klavier lying on the stage wishing that he had been the corpse there, not Courte. All the pains that truth has caused them. Is that better or worse than that alternative? Does it depend on what truth it is being hidden?

(He thinks about how long it’s been since he’s said Nahyuta’s name out loud. What color were his eyes in real life, and not Apollo’s haunted dreams? He doesn’t remember.)

“I - I don’t really know,” he admits.

The smug, victorious expression he expects never arrives on Phoenix’s face. There’s no satisfaction in winning this argument. “I’m sorry,” he says, closing his hand around the magatama. “I told you about Vera because it mattered directly for that case, but the rest of this - I wanted to shoulder it myself. So the rest of you don’t have to worry about it. I don’t want you to have to keep secrets from anyone. But I don’t know what else to do.” He forces a smile onto his face with visible effort that makes Apollo wince. Nothing masks the exhaustion written into the lines on his face. “Maybe we put our heads and together we figure out some better way to talk about it. If I ever figure that I should tell…”

He trails off, touching a finger to his locket. Tell Trucy. If he ever gains reason to think that he should tell Trucy. Would he actually run it by Apollo first, ask for his advice? The possibility of being in Phoenix’s confidence for something that isn’t a case doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.

“I still don’t think you should try and keep it secret forever,” Apollo says, “but I - I guess I see what you mean. And why you don’t just…”

Why he doesn’t just tell her. More reason that just because Phoenix doesn’t “just tell” anyone anything. For once, he’s not being a cryptic bastard.

“Believe me, Apollo,” Phoenix says darkly, “I’m always thinking ahead and trying to plan for the worst. I’m not naive enough to just hope that anything will stay one way ‘forever’. But I have to be sure I don’t make it worse, either.”

It isn’t the lack of a visual cue that makes Apollo believe him. It’s knowing him that makes Apollo believe him. Phoenix always has his eye on something down the line, playing out the plan a few steps ahead to find the complications. Even - especially - while he wasn’t a lawyer. A gambler’s steady hand holding the cards, chancing on an outcome, because the cost of doing nothing at all is even more unthinkable.

Apollo nods, more times than necessary, lacking anything else to say. Phoenix cocks his head. “Apollo, you all right?” he asks.

What the hell is he supposed to say - how the hell is he supposed to be? Fine? In what world is he possibly fine? At the end of this, he’s learned more than he ever dreamed he would from his sole initial question, but in it all, that first answer has never changed.

This is all there is. A rabbit hole of pain so unfathomably deep and winding, and in its darkest depths, the same as the answer given to him on the surface: there’s no way to break a curse. Their lives aren’t the kind of fairy tale where true love’s kiss can wake a sleeping beauty or transform a beast back to a prince - it’s grimmer than that, colder than that, crueler than that. Curses not so concretely visible but more like haunting coincidence, a ghost whispering at the shoulder with reminders of guilt. How could a man who wasn’t even there when the crime happened blame himself for his mentor’s murder? And yet, even after the killer’s confession, how could he not? How can even the curse’s caster be blamed when someone else wielded the murder weapon? And yet, how could they not share in it?

Apollo would rather someone have been turned into a frog, honestly. Wouldn’t that be easier to grapple with, a simple chain of cause and effect, and no ambiguity in who to blame.

“No,” Apollo finally says. “Not really, no.”

“I guess that was a bit of a stupid question, huh.”

Apollo nods. No kidding. What’s a better question at this point, anyway? Not what he says. “How - how can there really not be any way? For a curse to be broken, I mean.”

Phoenix spins his chair around, resting his head back against it, eyes turned up to the ceiling. Once he slows to a stop, facing the windows, he says, “I mean, maybe it’s possible there was, once, but it was forgotten. There’s a lot of magic that’s gone that way.”

He gives Apollo a moment to digest that, and then continues, “The Court’s heyday was thousands of years ago. They’re living ruins of what they used to be, and a fraction of what they used to know. Maya - you haven’t met her, she’s Pearl’s cousin - Maya’s helping me out with some matters by trying to dig up more about some kinds of magic they’ve forgotten the nuance of. But even that’s something we’ve got a hint that they knew, once. Not like—” He shrugs helplessly. “I’m sorry. Don’t hold your breath waiting for a way to break a curse.”

“Oh,” Apollo says, somewhat surprised, but pleasantly so, that Phoenix said that much. It would be typical of him just to reiterate that no, there just isn’t any way he knows, that’s all, and to skip the explanation for fear of giving Apollo false hope. But thinking about the prospect of false hope is still easier than really, truly considering the meaning of what Phoenix just said - that this, that everything they’ve ever had to deal with in regards to the fae, could have be so much worse. They could do so much worse than all this pain they’ve ever wrought - they were once so much more dangerous than this, and now their Court is only ruins. This is what they are when they are weak.

“If I do find anything out, I’ll—”

Phoenix breaks off, rising up slowly from his chair, staring at something past Apollo, over his shoulder. Apollo twists around to look, not sure what he expects to see, but it certainly isn’t Vongole standing in the doorway, her head held high, her body much more solid than it usually appears, and stiller. The wispy fur at the back of her legs and off of her tail does not stir as though she is made of mist and surrounded by a breeze that affects only her; she could almost, in this moment, be a normal dog, but for her glowing eyes and her ears so bright red as though they were dipped straight in paint.

All the color drains from Phoenix’s face. He snatches up the magatama and springs to his feet, hurrying past Vongole to peer into the other half of the office. Apollo rises to his feet; if Klavier was here - if he heard what Phoenix was hiding - how Apollo promised to keep it a secret—

Vongole stares at Apollo. She doesn’t move. Phoenix reappears in the doorway, curling a hand in his hair, but his face has fallen slack with obvious relief. The claws curled into Apollo’s heart unclenches. “So then what are you doing here?” Phoenix asks the hound, whose ears fold back flat against her head, though her snout does not turn to shift her attention to Phoenix. She stares Apollo down like she will pounce. “Does he send you places or did you just wander here yourself?”

“You don’t know?” Apollo asks.

“You think I’ve ever had the chance to ask either Kristoph or Klavier about the logistics of their spectral hellhound?” Phoenix asks. Apollo tries to remember when he first started seeing Vongole. Whose ownership she would have been under. How soon after Kristoph’s arrest did Klavier come back to Los Angeles?

Despite her weirdly lanky proportions, like a regular dog was put on a rack and stretched out, Vongole always moves with grace, a predator’s prowl and elegance. A monster, but a beautiful one. She circles Apollo like she intends to herd him somewhere, like she is a shark smelling blood waiting for the moment to strike. “What—” Apollo spins too, trying always to keep her in his sight. She moves just slowly enough that he can keep up, but just quickly enough that he becomes slightly dizzy in his efforts. “What do you want?”

She stops. Apollo steps forward, trying to escape her circle, but she swings suddenly to the side, throwing her body up against Apollo’s hip. He expects her to fade through him, as she does walls and doors, but when she hits him he staggers with the force of her weight. And the cold - her body is cold and it reaches straight through his clothes, cold enough to burn, ice on bare skin type of burning, and Apollo doesn’t understand. He’s touched Vongole before, without problem, hasn’t he? Surely he has. What’s wrong with her? Or is something wrong with Klavier?

She trots over to the door, standing on the threshold, staring back at Apollo with her head aloft. He can’t bring himself to move, can’t unfreeze his feet from where they are riveted into the ground. Vongole presses her ears back against her head, lowering it so that her neck is level with her shoulders, prowling again, and she makes another circle of Apollo before again stopping in the doorway.

“I think she wants you to go with her,” Phoenix says.

She wags her tail, much faster than the usual low, wide swishing path that it takes. Apollo wrenches his foot from the floor and takes one step forward. Vongole bounds through the front room of the office, weaving between magic props tossed carelessly on the floor as though she couldn’t pass through them. And she stops and waits at the door, glancing expectantly back at Apollo. He fumbles his phone free from his pocket, finding no messages waiting for him; why would Klavier do something as cryptic as sending his faery dog to collect Apollo, rather than just calling or texting him?

Unless it isn’t Klavier instructing Vongole. Unless she’s acting on her own. Or unless Klavier is in trouble.

“You’d better go,” Phoenix says. “I can lend you the—”

“It’s fine,” Apollo says. He’s pretty sure that Klavier hates the magatama, and he found him fine without it last night. And he didn’t have Vongole guiding him then.

“Let me know that everything’s all right,” Phoenix says quietly. Apollo opens his mouth to ask what Phoenix knows, why he’s so sure that this means something is wrong - remembers what Phoenix said about himself and how Klavier reminds him of himself, long ago. Closes his mouth. Knows why Phoenix worries.

Phoenix always worries. He means well. His road is paved in well-intended worry.

“Yeah,” Apollo says. “I’ll - I’ll let you know.”

Vongole waits for him only to reach the door, diving through it as his hand reaches for the doorknob. He next finds her waiting beside the bike rack, her smoky fur drifting independently of the chill breeze, and as soon as he mounts his bicycle she lopes off down the sidewalk. She never looks back at him but is obviously monitoring him in some way, her pace changing depending on obstacles and traffic so that she always remains in his sight. He follows her through the quieter (relatively, anyway) city of weekend mornings, through his usual stomping grounds, to end up on the stoop of an apartment building that is - quite frankly, not as grandiose as Apollo would expect. He presumes this is where Klavier lives.

(If it’s not, then he’s far too deep into something that it’s also far too late to back out of.)

Vongole noses one of the buttons on the buzzer at the entryway and disappears through the door. Only seconds later, too quickly for her to have physically covered the necessary amount of ground, the door clicks to unlock. Apollo enters the lobby and before he has time to take in his surroundings, she appears in front of him. Literally appears - not bounding up to him out of a wall, but materializing out of the air, white fog swirling in circles around her ankles. She directs him to the elevator, pressing her nose into the button for the fourth floor and then several times in quick succession slamming her nose into the close doors button. “So were you always like that, or did you pick up your impatience from him?” Apollo asks.

She sits down and fixes her eyes on him. He doesn’t know what that means. He’s not sure why he bothered talking to her. She can’t respond - can she understand? Does she have some way to communicate information she hears to Klavier? Surely not - hopefully not, depending how long she was in the office.

She does not move until the elevator halts at their destination, and she springs to her feet and slips through the doors before they have opened wide enough for a fully-corporeal dog of her size to pass through. But when he makes it through, she meets him right at the other side, her impatience not taking her any further down the hall until Apollo can follow right at her tail. The walls are not cracked and peeling as in Apollo’s building, but they are certainly plain - again, very much not the kind of place he would imagine Klavier to live.

Vongole throws herself through the door of Apartment 404, and Apollo waits in front of it. A moment passes, and then another. Right. Even a faery dog doesn’t have opposable thumbs to grip a doorknob. He fails to swallow his apprehension but knocks anyway. There has to be a reason Vongole brought him here. He can’t just run away from it.

The seconds crawl past. Apollo reaches up to knock again, but the door swings suddenly open, and he flinches back.

Klavier’s hair is barely held together in a ponytail, strands falling loose around his face, and he looks even more like he hasn’t slept, going by the shadows under his eyes. And Apollo never thought there would come the day that he sees Klavier in sweatpants, but - he’s still alive. He’s still intact in one mobile piece, and he’s lucid enough to look annoyed. Apollo fumbles for words, any at all, but none arrive on his tongue. He hadn’t thought this far ahead. He starts to raise his arm to point at Vongole, to blame her, and before he can, Klavier sighs, shaking his head, his apparent annoyance sliding into exhaustion, and he steps out of the doorway, pulling the door open wider, and gesturing for Apollo to come in.

[notes on the chapter]

#roddy fanfics #fic: the witches of los angeles

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jabbers-written-world · 4 years

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Character Creation

Okay, first things first. Most people seem to think that to create a character, you need a setting first, and perhaps you even need to know the plot. The truth is, you technically don’t. Not for the very basic character skeletons. All you need for that, is this basic profile.

Name:

Age:

Height:

Weight:

Gender:

Sexuality:

Personality:

Appearance:

Motive:

Flaws:

Backstory:

Looks pretty simple, doesn’t it. And it is. This is the most basic character profile skeleton, and I myself often use this, even for the most minor of background characters. Why? Because everyone is the protagonist of their own story. Even those characters that only get one line of dialogue, or maybe they don’t even get that much. But they are still there. They are still a character, and the more you know about them, the more real and believable your story will be.

Now, let’s get into this a little further, shall we?

Names

This can be literally anything you want it to be. You want to call your protagonist Mugwump Doozeldorff? Go for it. But, here’s the catch. You have to think about why. Why did you name them that? Why would they go by that name? Think about the reasoning, and the plausibility. You can name them absolutely anything, but you can’t pass it off as a simple joke, really. Are they named after a legendary hero? Do their parents just hate them? Is it a common name in their culture? Is it a respectable name where they live, while a name like Steve is considered strange?

These questions help to develop not only your character, but the world around them as well. It even helps add to your character’s backstory a little, because it lets you start thinking about their parents and their family as well. In addition to this, something I tend to enjoy doing, is I like to look into the meanings behind names and where they came from. The meaning of a name can also give insight to a character, whether it’s their role in the story, or a personality trait.

So yes, you can name your character whatever you want to name them, but name them with a purpose. Think of it like a parent naming their newborn baby. Parents choose the names of their children for a reason, and often spend time debating names before the child is born. Do the same for your characters.

Age

This is another choice that should be made with particular intent. Don’t just pick a random number and be done with it. With age, comes experience. Not necessarily wisdom or intelligence, but experience. And experience can come across as wisdom the other a character is. For example, say you create a character who is a human in their mid-70′s. They have experienced a lot in their life. They have seen decades go by, and watched the world change. And they can teach younger characters about these experience, and share what they know of the past, to help those younger characters move toward the future.

On the opposite end, the younger a character is, the less they’ve experienced, and the less they’ve been affected by the way the world has changed, if it has at all in their lifetime. A ten-year-old kid is less experienced than a 25-year-old adult. But even that 25-year-old is less experienced than that person in their mid-70′s. As well, as people age, we develop different speech patterns.

Very young children often tend to talk a lot, and at a quicker pace, and they mispronounce words, or sometimes repeat phrases they don’t know the meaning of. Older children and preteens are still often eager to share what they know, and still may talk quite openly, and may even mispronounce a few things, but they know better now. Teenagers no longer mispronounce things, and they’ve developed a more unique speech pattern specific to themselves. This may carry some heavy pauses, or a tendency to say certain words more frequently.

Adults between 20-50 are more settled into a consistent way of speaking. They speak with intention, and some are more charismatic and well-spoken than others, but there is a deliberate intent to what they say, even if they might be wrong in saying it. And adults and elders between 50-100 even have their own ways of speaking. Still with deliberate purpose, but they think more on their words, and do their best not to offend. At least, until they’re around 80-100.

At that point, any filters are thrown out the window, and elders say what they want. Doesn’t matter if anyone else shares their opinion. They have one, and that’s that. Yes, you can get those sweet and gentle elders that are still so polite and kind, but even they lose their filter and speak just as openly as a young child, just now they have more experience to go with it.

So yes, be purposeful with the age you give your characters, because you’ll have to stay consistent with it. Now, I used humans as a base reference for this, but there are of course all manner of other beings that you can play with, and they all age differently. Especially if you’re working in the realms of fantasy, or the different planets of sci-fi. Elves tend to age much slower than humans, but there may be an alien race somewhere that ages faster. Vampires don’t age at all except in particular circumstances, and there may be aliens that are effectively the same.

In the case of aliens, it’s a good idea to look at various animal species on Earth first. How do they age? Do they have longer or shorter lifespans than humans? These are all things to consider when creating aliens for a sci-fi novel, or even if you intend to create your own fantasy species. All in all, age is important. So choose carefully.

Height and Weight

Something to consider when creating a character, because the bigger they are, the more trouble they may have with doorways, or the smaller they are, the harder it may be to reach things on high shelves. And in addition, weight changes proportionally to height as well. A taller person may be heavier, while someone smaller would be lighter.

Of course, every person is an individual, and sometimes tall people are skinny or short people are chubby, and vice versa. Still, it’s a good idea to research healthy body weights, and use it as a basis for fantasy races or aliens as well. And you should always consider if their weight comes from fat or muscle. Muscle is of course denser than fat, and by all accounts weighs more. So pay attention to that as well. Even if someone is for example, 6′2″ and skinny with some nice, lean muscle, they may still weigh around 200 pounds. Why? Because they’re tall, and they have muscle.

In addition, weight certainly plays a part in whether or not a character can reasonably walk across something that may break if they’re too heavy. Like thin ice, for example, or a rickety old rope bridge. Make it believable. And I am by means telling you that your characters all have to be at healthy weights. Just think about why. If they are underweight, why is that? Do they just have a very fast metabolism, or are they malnourished? If they’re overweight, why? Is it genetic, or did something else cause them to gain weight?

Again, make it believable.

Gender

We all know this is not synonymous with a person’s physical sex. This is in regards to a gender identity, not what genitals they happen to have. And again, this should be chosen carefully. Honestly, this is one thing that should be chosen even more carefully than anything else, besides perhaps sexuality. Because having a different gender identity than your assigned sex does come with burdens and stresses.

Also, if you intend to write a character with a gender identity that differs from your own, it is always a good idea to do your research, but even that won’t give you everything you need to write that identity properly. Talk to people with that gender identity. Get to know them and understand them, but don’t just talk to one person and call it a day. Like I’ve said, every person is an individual. And individuals all have their unique views and experiences. Talk to as many people as you can.

Otherwise, you can go right ahead and write what you know! Want more good representation of your gender identity? Absolutely go ahead and write it. Drawing from your own experiences is a great way to really develop a character as a real person. Be careful making them too much like yourself, though. It can be a tough market for those sorts of stories. You can absolutely go for it if you like, just be aware that you may learn things about yourself that you realize you hate more than you thought, or ever even knew you would. Believe me, I’ve already faced that in my own writing.

And of course, if your character’s gender identity does differ from their assigned sex, you are of course free to make a note of that when creating their ‘file’, so to speak. Because that is what this is. You are creating a file detailing information about your character, like a detective with a case file, or a psychiatrist with a patient file. All their little ticks are important to make note of.

Sexuality

Yep. This is another big one. Sexuality, as in who your character’s romantic and/or sexual interests may be, definitely plays a part in your character’s opinions and actions, and their personality. It changes how they view themselves, and how they view others around them as well.

Is your character a young boy figuring out how to handle being homosexual in an environment where it’s not accepted? Or is your character a heterosexual young girl in such an environment? Is your character attracted to both males and females equally? How does this correspond to their culture and environment? Or perhaps your character doesn’t experience any sexual attraction or really have much interest in the whole thing. Or maybe they’re that type of character that.. well, is perfectly happy getting down and dirty with anyone, anywhere, any time. Doesn’t matter the species, or the gender, or the sex.

And again, like with gender identities, do your research if you’re writing something different from yourself. Talk to people, get to know them and their experiences to write something from the perspective of a character like them. As writers, we are only capable of writing from what we know and have taken the time to learn about.

Personality

This is one of the most key details of any character, regardless of gender, sex, appearance, or species. This is what decides how they act, how they think, and even how they move. Confidence can make a character walk tall with their head held high, but if your character is the shy, quiet type, they’re more likely to keep their head low, and do their best not to draw attention.

Personality traits also define how easily angered your character is, or if they’re the non-violent type. It decides if they like things clean or messy, if they cry easily or not at all. This can also be affected by your character’s backstory, because.. well, aren’t we all changed a little bit by the things we lived through? That being said, this again should be done with intention. Yes, sometimes it can be fun to put our characters through hell more than once, I know I’m guilty of being a bit of a torture master sometimes, but too much trauma, and you end up with a character who can never recover.

So it’s a good idea to choose your character’s personality with intent, and be sure that you can keep to it. Even if you need to refer back to your character’s file, try to keep things consistent. Now, I’m not saying your characters can’t grow and change like real people do, but it should be believable, just like everything else.

Appearance

Here’s where you get to have a little fun, but again, think about what you’re doing, and how your character’s appearance and physical features may affect how they get around or how people react to them. Still, extra features like wings or tails can actually be helpful tools for getting some emotion across too. These are very expressive body parts.

You are free to decide your character’s hair color, eye color, their skin tone, how their body looks, how their hands are shaped, do they have weird feet, or maybe they have an odd birthmark somewhere. And of course, height and weight play into this too. Just know that you should know how to have your character’s looks also affect their surroundings. Are they attractive? Are they not the best in the looks department? If they have a different skin tone than is common in the area, how do others react to that? Every detail plays a part.

If you’re planning to give your character wings, think about them. Do some research on different types of wings. If your character has large feathery wings like a bird, what kind of bird are they most similar to? Or are they more like bat wings, or perhaps dragonfly wings? Just remember that if your character has wings, they should be noticeable even in the small details, not just something that’s there for the sake of convenience. Wings are very expressive.

Watch a few birds for a while, make note of how they move and use their wings. Feathers can stand on end when a bird is upset, or cold, or even too hot. Your character can spread out their wings to make themselves bigger if they’re trying to be intimidating. Or if they’re happy, maybe their wings give a little flap or buzz (if they’re bug wings) in excitement. As well, how large wings are can affect how your character fits through doorways, so be mindful of that as well.

Tails too are very expressive. Dog tails wag, cat tails twitch and quirk and display all kinds of emotions, even a cow or horse’s tail will move and flick back and forth depending on their mood. When a cow or bull gets upset, they can start lashing their tail. Horses too. Even a bird’s tail fans out or gets ruffled whether they’re happy or upset.

And there is also a lot of expression to be had if your character has ears different from those of a human. Do your elves’ ears move like a cat’s with their feelings? Or maybe a half-dragon has ears that occasionally twitch and wiggle like those of a cow. Everything makes a difference, and even if your character is typically the stoic type who doesn’t express much on their face, if they have other features like wings or a tail, or even different ears, those things aren’t as easily controlled if they want to hide their feelings.

Motive

Another fun little bit here. This is your character’s goal in life, and this can change over the course of the story, especially if they achieve their goal. Motives can be as simple as a child wanting to catch a very particular bug, or as grand as a rebellion leader wanting to protect his people. Again, though, these have to have purpose, and often they may tie into your character’s personality as well.

Still, as ever, we have to ask the question of why. Why do they have that goal? Why are they struggling so hard for this? Or, why aren’t they trying harder? As well, we of course have to think about (especially for larger goals, like rebellion for the sake of the people or a world saving quest) what the character is willing to sacrifice for their goal.

That kid who wants so badly to catch that bug. What is he sacrificing? Snack time, and to a kid that can be a pretty big deal. That rebellion leader protecting his people? He’s willing to sacrifice his own life to keep them safe. Even someone who wants to be with their true love, they may have to sacrifice family ties for that.

Motives create sacrifices, and sacrifices can certainly affect your character’s experiences. Also, you have to think about, is the sacrifice worth it in the end? Say your character was trying to save their best friend from a horrible fate, and to do it, they lost their eye because it had to be used as collateral to seal the monster. Was that worth it, if they still didn’t manage to save their friend in time? Is the little kid’s sacrifice of snack time worth it if now he’s really hungry and he still hasn’t caught the bug yet? Always think about if the motive is worth the sacrifice.

Flaws

These are the great equalizers. So your character seems like the knight in shining armor type, and they’re so perfect and everything they do is for a good reason and- wait. What do you mean they’re rude and biased about another species. Should that be considered racist? Well, maybe not completely, but negative biases like that can be a problem. So you see what I did there, right?

The perfect good boy, practically a shining example, suddenly brought back down from his pedestal to be just like the rest of us humble peasants. Flaws humanize people. They balance the good traits with some bad ones. And no, I’m not saying you should make all your characters racist. Not all flaws need to be grand and life-changing.

Like the kid with the bug. Yeah, we’re back to him again. Okay, so he’s a kid. Who’s sacrificing snack time to catch the stupid bug. Let’s say this kid is a pretty polite kid, he says please and thank you like he was taught, and he’s pretty easy to handle most of the time. Except.. uh-oh. This kid drew on his mommy’s newly painted living room wall yesterday! Even though she told him not to draw on the walls! Does this suddenly make this kid a horrible little demon spawn who no one would ever like? No. He’s just doing what kids do.

People develop flaws, often based on what they were exposed to growing up. So what about that character with those ugly, negative biases toward another species? That’s the rebellion leader again. He wants to protect his people, would sacrifice his life to keep them safe, and yet.. he thinks things like that? Oh, boy, people are gonna hate this one, right? Well, maybe, but what if I told you, he has his biases because it was members of that same species that killed his parents when he was only seven? What if I told you that members of that same species were cruel overlords that took over his home city?

Flaws have reasoning, and it’s usually because of life experiences and what people are exposed to, especially from a young age. Some of them though, may just be flaws because of the character’s age. Like that kid with the bug that sacrificed snake time and drew on the wall. That’s a kid being a kid. He’ll grow out of that one.

Sometimes, flaws can be used as a jumping point for a character to change and improve. The rebellion leader with ugly biases? He’s recently met some other members of that same species, and didn’t even know it before he became good friends with one of them. He got upset when he learned what they were, but that friendship he made, it changed him. He has his biases, but they’ve been softened by a good friendship. He’s learning not to be biased towards the whole species, because it’s not all of them that are the problem. Just a few giving the rest a bad reputation.

So you see why flaws can be a good thing, even if they are something as dramatic as some.. pretty nasty biases.

Backstory

This. Decides. Everything. How your character acts, what their experiences are, where they came from, what their culture is, why they may be hiding their sexuality or not hiding it. Everything. Like I said with that rebellion leader, his flaws are because of his backstory.

He was seven years old and watched his mother and younger sister killed right in front of him. Pretty traumatic for a kid to witness. Not only that, but they dragged his father into the center of the city and killed him as an example to the rest. Yikes. And as if it couldn’t get worse, one of them nearly tore off his leg, so now he needs a brace to even walk right.

Yes, this is one of my.. tortured characters. Him, and his best friend, who was enslaved by the same people who killed the rebellion leader’s parents and sister. Captured when he was three years old and raised in that nightmare. Yeesh. You’re probably thinking I need to pull back on the depressing backstories for a while, huh. Yeah, I probably do. And by no means do you have to follow my example.

Maybe your character had a great life. A great childhood with loving parents, got to visit their cousins every summer at their grandma’s house, everything was great. But then maybe they had to move from their childhood home, and it felt like the end of their whole world. It wasn’t, because life goes on, but it sure felt like it. And they’ve moved several times since then for different reason, and maybe it’s making them worried that they’ll never have a permanent place to call home, so they don’t get attached to places.

See? Even a happy backstory with a couple small bumps can have big effects on the character’s outlook on life. Backstories don’t have to be wild and dramatic to be important, and your character certainly doesn’t have to be dragged through hell and back to be interesting. It all depends on how you work with it.

Species

Now’s where things get really interesting. Humans should never be ruled out as strong characters, especially if they live in a fantasy world, or even if they’re surrounded by big tough aliens. Humans are tough. We are resilient, and we compete for everything. Space, food, love, happiness. We toughen ourselves up and live on a planet that.. to be fair, is sort of trying to kill us. But we are survivors. The human race even in the real world has gone through a lot of pain, but we survived.

Still, if you don’t want your character to be human, that’s fine too. There are literally hundreds of species out there to choose from, and you can even create your own. Want an alien a furry lizard face, four arms and a tail with porcupine spikes? Okay, that’s cool. Want a fantasy creature that’s sort of like an elemental spirit but also like a genie? Sounds good to me.

But of course, like everything else, your character’s species comes with important questions to think about. You know where I’m going with this by now. Everyone, say it with me. WE MUST ASK WHY. Why is always going to be the most important question you ever ask as a writer. Why did you choose this species? Why is this species living where it is? If they’re the last of their kind, why? As well, you need to think about the limitations of the species, as well as what they may be able to do better than humans.

Can your character fly? That’s great! But that also means they probably have large wings that may be difficult to fit through a doorway. Do they have huge claws great for digging tunnels? Awesome, but now that may cause some trouble trying to pick up small objects. Does your character have more than two legs and run super fast? Super cool, but now they have more legs to worry about and coordinate when doing other things, like sitting or even climbing up stairs. Maybe your character is a super big and strong rock monster. Absolutely fantastic. But that sort of makes them less than comfortable to hug, and also they have trouble fitting through doors.

Every species has their strengths, and their limitations. So, like with everything, we have to be aware of the details, and think about the balance. As well, things should be fairly believable for your world to seem real enough. Well, unless realistic isn’t what you’re going for. If that’s the case, ignore me. Go nuts, my friends. But from a believability stand point, your species’ limitations should make sense. Like the big rock monster for example. He can’t fit through door too easy, but what else? You wanna make him horribly hurt by water? Eh.. That’s Pokemon logic and if you want to go with that, that’s fine. But there are other things that could work better. Metal won’t hurt him much, but acid does. He’s got a hard, impenetrable shell of stone? Oops, there’s a gap in the rocks making a weak spot.

What about a person with dragonfly wings, like a fae or something like that? Ooh, very nice. Good with magic, tend to be rather pretty, and- Oh. Oops. Their wings rip like wet paper. Ouch. Also, there is real mythology that elves and fae, and species like them, they are repelled by or even hurt by or can’t use their magic when in contact with iron. You wanna put your elf in an iron prison cell for the sake of storytelling? Great, but remember that they won’t be able to use any magic to escape, and that iron could even possibly burn them. Even if it isn’t hot.

So, keep in mind your species’ limitations, and have fun building your world now around these characters you’ve created. Creating them gave you a great starting point, so go on! Write something fantastic!

#;; a gem in the hoard (writing tips)#writing tips #writing #long post under the cut

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emmagreen1220-blog · 5 years

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New Post has been published on Science Terms

New Post has been published on https://scienceterms.net/psychology/post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc/

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

Definition of Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

Post hoc ergo propter hoc is the fallacy of thinking that an event which precedes another event must have caused the other event. It comes from the Latin for “after this, therefore because of this”.

Examples of the Fallacy

Suppose you have a minor illness, such as a cold. You take an experimental supplement, and the cold gets better. It would be a fallacy to think that the cold got better specifically because you took the supplement. The cold might have got better of its own accord whether you took the supplement or not.

Belief in superstition can be an example of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. If you break a mirror and then suffer bad luck, you might think the bad luck was caused by breaking the mirror. Similarly, if you find a four-leafed clover and then experience good luck, you might think the good luck was caused by finding the four-leafed clover.

Another example is that people in the Middle Ages used to think body lice were good for health. This was because they noticed that soon after lice left a person’s body, the person would usually become sick – so they assumed that the lice helped to prevent disease and that people would get ill in the absence of lice. In fact, lice are sensitive to small changes in body temperature, so people’s temperature would rise when they first caught an illness, before they began to show symptoms, and the higher temperature would drive the lice away.

Correlation and Causation

Correlation is when two things vary in a related way. For example, children’s height correlates with their weight, because, in general, taller children will be heavier and shorter children will be lighter. Of course there are exceptions (some short, heavy children and some tall, light children), but there is a general pattern that children’s weight and height correlate with each other. Similarly, children’s weight and height both correlate with their age. Other examples of correlations are between people’s education level and their income, or between the size of their hands and their feet.

There is an important principle in science that correlation does not imply causation. This means that, just because two things correlate, it doesn’t mean one causes the other. Perhaps some third factor causes both, or perhaps the apparent correlation comes from random noise or measurement error and doesn’t reflect any real relationship. Mistakenly thinking that correlation implies causation is another example of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

A memorable example is that ice cream sales correlate with deaths from drowning. It would clearly be fallacious to think that ice cream sales cause drowning, or that drowning causes ice cream sales. A much more likely explanation is that both are caused by a third factor: high temperatures, which drive ice cream sales, and which lead to more people swimming (particularly in seas, rivers and lakes), and hence more drownings.

As a subtler example, you might notice a correlation between children’s reading ability and the number of books in their home. If you assume correlation implies causation, you might conclude that having a lot of books causes children to be good at reading. But there are other potential explanations. It could be that parents who value reading help their children to become good at reading (either by passing on genes for being good at reading, or by regularly reading with their children, or both), and those parents also buy a lot of books for their children. In that case, the children’s reading ability and book ownership would both be caused by a third factor (having parents who value reading), rather than one causing the other. This matters because, if you committed the fallacy of thinking book ownership caused reading ability, you might try to improve reading abilities nationally by giving children books, and this might not make a difference if the important factor is parents regularly reading with their children. The parents who never read with their children might still never read with them even if they are given more books. A more effective intervention might be to work with parents to encourage them to read with their children more often.

Avoiding the Fallacy

If you notice a correlation between two variables, or two events that frequently occur together, there are ways you can tell whether there’s a causal relationship or not.

If it is practical and ethical to do so, you can conduct a controlled experiment, where you deliberately vary one of the events and see whether the other follows, rather than just passively observing that they tend to occur together.

For example, you may have noticed that you often suffer indigestion after eating dairy products. If you automatically assume you have a dairy intolerance, you are committing the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Instead, you could randomly assign in advance which days over the coming few weeks you’ll eat dairy and which days you’ll avoid it, and keep records of which days you suffer indigestion. You should also try to keep your diet the same in other respects between the dairy and non-dairy days. It may turn out that you sometimes suffer indigestion because of an entirely different factor, and you only noticed the times it follows eating dairy, and not the times it doesn’t.

There are some research questions where it is not practical or ethical to conduct a controlled experiment. For example, a researcher may have noticed that mothers who drink a lot of alcohol during pregnancy are more likely to have babies with developmental delays. It would be fallacious to conclude from this that drinking alcohol in pregnancy causes developmental delays (even if it actually does – it’s possible for fallacious reasoning to lead to a conclusion that happens to be true!) But it would be unethical to recruit a large group of pregnant women and randomly assign some of them to drink a lot of alcohol during pregnancy and some of them to abstain. The best you can do here is conduct more, larger and better-controlled observational studies. More and larger studies will help to rule out the relationship being coincidental, and controlling for more variables will help to rule out the possibility that drinking during pregnancy and developmental delays are both caused by a third factor.

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sarahonthemountain · 6 years

Text

Greatest Backpack For You

Best Backpack For You

mens laptop backpack Select which method you would rather choose, and live with that decision until the time the back pack survives. As With boots, good fit is the key using a backpack. The weight of a pack is secondary, since a well-designed, heavier backpack may give you a more comfortable ride than a much lighter pack carrying the identical load. Pick Your package dependent on the type of trips you imagine taking? Most beginners rightfully expect only to do a weekend at most, but it is a pity to have a get a bigger package later if you genuinely enjoy the activity and need to venture out farther. Believe Before You Purchase: Each Step is Vital Believe Concerning the amount of space you will need in the luggage, think of the number of compartments you will need, and the areas you will take this bag with you. Think about the amount of equipment you will have to store and the places which you are going to be taking it. A fantastic bag does little for you if you are not inclined to carry it along with you. Selecting the right Backpack is very important for any traveller or experience enthusiast. If you select a bag too large, you will be carrying more kilos than demanded, and a bit too little will mean insufficient space to carry all the vitals. Material plays an important part also, the incorrect substance will mean whether it rains, your stuff will be soaked and will get ruined and heavy to take. With all these options available it can grow to be really confusing for anyone to choose just the right backpack. Brand names Might Not Be Important for you in regards to clothes, but when it comes to picking a travel backpack they should be. Choosing a good brand means a couple of things in regards to traveling bags. For starters, it normally means a warranty. But in the event you choose a fantastic brand, not one of those things are very likely to occur because your bag will have been made of sturdy material and will have been built to last. mens laptop backpack The Backpack List: As Crucial As Your Breath|} You We are going to lay out all the qualities which you should seek in every backpack so you can count down to the selected one. This list is the result of hours of research and expertise of numerous excursions relating to trekking, camping. Backpacks Are often sized in terms of cubic inches or liters, speaking to the volume capability of their gear-holding compartments. Most models also come in different lengths (generally referenced so long, medium or short) to meet the different torso lengths of possible wearers. Quite a Few backpacks are available on the market, which range from small daypacks to full size backpacks made for six months on the Appalachian Trail. Fortunately (for your back), packs have been getting smaller over the past twenty decades. This is not because of pack technology as far as progress in camping equipment. Traditional camera bags are made to hold the Total weight of the equipment only on a single shoulder. This wasn't only cumbersome, but also caused a great deal of pain the shoulder that was taking in the weight. This is one issue with traveling totes, which a traveler with keen interest in photography needs to take into account. A Only"day hike" or even"overnighter" to approximately one week (including food from plants or fishing/hunting) or at places where you need tools or equipment would demand packs in the assortment of 1,800-2,500 cubic inch (30-40 liters) internal space. Adding external strapping for tools that are odd this demand could be half for brief trips. Which Kind of Backpack? Any Pack (regardless of type) that is corrected incorrectly will cause you pain and also be difficult to take for extended periods of journey. All Packs are made to place the vast majority of the weight in your belt! Both internal and external frame packs should have tight fitting, well padded, well designed hip belts! DO NOT depend on the shoulder straps to take the weight for long intervals. Ask The Right Questions: Get the Right Answers Selecting The right travel tote can be challenging, so to assist you out we have compiled a few guidelines to create your back pack shopping a tad bit easier. Are there any other actions that I plan to execute when I am shooting? Can I require carrying the backpack long distances when I'm out shooting? Could I combine it with my hiking gear? Could I stow in the overhead compartment (if you are flying everywhere ) Is it comfortable to take, especially if I will use it once I'm going for a hike or a trek Could it double up as an overnight bag just in case of a short trip? Points That Matter: Why The Guidelines to Purchase the Very Best Backpack Now That you have considered the questions, remember the next Points whenever you are zeroing in to get a back pack. These points Critical, and the main key point is The Best Backpacks are Those that last the longest - as if you are investing a good amount Of money it needs to serve you for a lifetime. Start Looking for characteristics That make certain that the backpack is durable, protective, and continues for a lifetime. Know Your Torso: A big, tall individual can Have a short torso (and long legs) thus requiring a smaller package. A Shorter, smaller person may get a longer torso (and shorter legs-like Me) and need a bigger package. All package manufacturers design their packs together with Your torso in your mind. So, measure your torso, preferably before Shopping, so you will have that knowledge in your pocket. This will, Sometimes make errors! Make Sure That It Is Customized For Your Trip: You will find bags at the Market that are designed in a customized style so as to appeal to Specific demands. They all have different USPs, in the likes for Overnight visits, hiking bags, camera backpacks, hiking backpacks, Traveling backpacks and many other utilities. When in doubt, ask. The backpack needs to be comfortable when loaded, so strap in on Your shoulder to inspect the comfort level. Testing the backpack before Buying is actually important as well as suggested. So strap it , and rather Attempt to get all of the information about the backpack from the group selling it. Your requirements. Hip Belt: When carrying heavy loads, the majority of the pack's Weight (as much as 80%) should be supported from the hip belt. All large Backpacks are equipped with loading service on the hip, and the belt must Be heavily cushioned, and have great durability. But It's always better to Check yourself cause you're likely to utilize the backpack. Climbers And skiers may opt for a minimum hip belt to boost their freedom of movement.

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hella-jjang · 6 years

Text

Greatest Backpack For You

anti theft travel bag Select which method you'd rather select, and live with that decision until the time the back pack survives. As With boots, proper fit is the key with a backpack. The weight of a pack is secondary, as a well-designed, heavier backpack may give you a more comfortable ride than a lighter pack carrying the same load. Select Your pack dependent on the type of trips you imagine taking? Most newcomers expect only to do a weekend in the slightest, but it's a pity to have for a larger pack later if you genuinely like the activity and want to venture out further. Believe Before You Buy: Each Measure Is Essential Think About the total amount of space you'll need in the luggage, think of the number of compartments you'll need, along with the areas you will take this bag with you. Consider the amount of equipment you will need to store and the locations which you'll be taking it. A fantastic bag does little for you if you are not inclined to take it along with you. Selecting the right Backpack is very important for any traveller or adventure enthusiast. If you choose a bag too large, you will be carrying more kilos than demanded, and a bit too small will mean insufficient space to carry all of the vitals. Substance plays an important role too, the wrong material will mean whether it rains, your stuff will be soaked and will get ruined and heavy to carry. With so many choices available it can grow to be really confusing for anyone to choose only the ideal backpack. Brand names may not be Important to you in regards to clothing, but when it comes to picking a traveling backpack they ought to be. Choosing a fantastic brand means a few things in regards to travel bags. For one, it usually means a guarantee. This will come in handy if something goes wrong with your bag, if it somehow rips, the straps snap, etc.. But in the event you choose a fantastic brand, not one of those things are likely to occur because your bag will have been made of sturdy material and will have been constructed to last. anti theft backpack The Backpack List: As Vital As Your Breath|} You Should undergo all the details, try, encounter numerous backpacks before placing your eyes on"The One." We are going to lay out all of the attributes which you ought to find in every backpack so you can count down into the chosen one. This list is the result of hours of research and experience of numerous trips relating to hiking, camping. Backpacks Are often sized in terms of cubic inches or liters, referring to the volume capacity of their gear-holding compartments. Most versions also come in various lengths (generally referenced as long, short or medium ) to fulfill the various torso lengths of possible wearers. Quite a Couple backpacks are on the current market, which range from little daypacks to full size backpacks designed for just six months on the Appalachian Trail. Luckily (for your back), packs are getting smaller over the past 20 decades. This isn't due to package technology as far as advancements in camping equipment. Traditional camera bags are designed to hold the Entire weight of the gear only on one shoulder. This wasn't only cumbersome, but also caused a great deal of pain the shoulder which was taking from the weight. This is one issue with traveling totes, and a traveler with keen interest in photography needs to take under account. A Single"day hike" or even"overnighter" to approximately one week (including food from plants or even fishing/hunting) or in areas where you need tools or equipment would require packs in the range of 1,800-2,500 cubic inch (30-40 liters) internal distance. Adding external strapping for tools that are odd this need could be less than half for short trips. What Kind of Backpack? Any Pack (regardless of type) that is corrected incorrectly will cause you pain and be hard to take for extended periods of journey. All Packs are designed to place a vast majority of their weight in your belt! Both internal and external frame packs must have tight fitting, well cushioned, well designed hip belts! Choosing The right travel tote can be tricky, so to help you out we have compiled a few tips to create your back pack shopping a tad bit easier. Are there any other actions that I plan to execute when I am shooting? Will I require carrying the back long distances when I'm out shooting? Could I combine it with my hiking equipment? Could I store in the overhead compartment (if you're flying everywhere ) Will it be comfortable to take, particularly if I will use it once I am going for a hike or a trek Can it double up as a overnight bag just in the event of a short trip? Factors That Matter: The Guidelines to Purchase the Very Best Backpack Now That you have considered the questions, remember the following Points whenever you are zeroing in to buy a backpack. The following points Critical, and the main key point is - The Best Backpacks are The ones who last the longest - as if you're investing a good amount Of money it ought to serve you for a lifetime. Look for characteristics That make certain the backpack is durable, protective, and continues for a lifetime. Know Your Torso: A large, tall person can Have a short torso (and long legs) thus requiring a smaller package. A Shorter, smaller individual can have a longer torso (and briefer legs-like Me) and need a larger pack. All package manufacturers design their packs with Your torso in mind. Thus, measure your torso, preferably before Shopping, so you'll have that understanding in your pocket. This will, Sometimes make errors! Make Sure That It Is Customized For The Trip: You will find bags at the Market which are designed in a customized fashion in order to appeal to Specific demands. They have distinct USPs, from the likes for Overnight visits, hiking bags, camera backpacks, hiking backpacks, Traveling backpacks and several other utilities. The backpack Has to Be comfortable when loaded, so strap on Your shoulder to inspect the comfortable level. Testing the back pack before Buying is really important as well as suggested. So strap it on, and rather Attempt to get all of the information concerning the backpack by the group selling it. Your needs. Hip Belt: When carrying heavy loads, the majority of the pack's Weight (as much as 80%) should be supported from the trendy belt. All large Backpacks are equipped with load support on the hip, along with the belt has to Be heavily cushioned, and have great durability. But It's always better to Check them yourself cause you are likely to utilize the backpack. Climbers And skiers may elect for a minimal hip belt to increase their freedom of movement.

0 notes

chandlersds · 6 years

Text

Best Backpack For You

Greatest Backpack For You

backpack with usb charging As With boots, proper fit is your key with a backpack. The weight of a bunch is secondary, as a well-designed, heavier backpack may give you a more comfortable ride compared to a lighter pack carrying the same load. Pick Your package dependent on the type of trips you envision taking? Overnight and weekenders; week-long experiences; or long expeditions. Most newcomers expect only to do a weekend at most, but it's a pity to have for a bigger pack later if you genuinely like the action and need to venture out farther. Think Before You Buy: Each Measure is Vital Think Concerning the amount of space you will need in the bag, think about the number of compartments you will need, along with the places you will carry this bag with you. Consider the amount of gear you will need to store and the places that you are going to be taking it. A good bag does little for you if you're not inclined to carry it with you. Selecting the right Backpack is vital for any traveler or experience enthusiast. If you choose a bag too big, you'll be carrying more kilos than demanded, and a tad too little will mean insufficient room to carry all the vitals. Substance plays an important role also, the wrong substance will imply whether it rains, your material is going to be soaked and will get ruined and heavy to carry. With all these options available it can become really confusing for anyone to choose just the right backpack. Brand names Might Not Be Important for you in regards to clothing, but when it comes to picking a travel backpack they should be. Deciding on a good brand usually means a few things in regards to travel bags. For one, it usually means a warranty. But if you choose a fantastic brand, none of these things are likely to occur because your bag is going to have been made of sturdy material and will have been constructed to last. backpack The Backpack List: As Crucial As Your Breath|} You Should go through all the details, try, experience numerous backpacks prior to placing your eyes on"The One." We will lay out all the attributes which you ought to seek in each backpack so that you can count down into the selected one. This listing is the result of hours of research and experience of numerous excursions relating to trekking, camping. Backpacks Are most often sized in terms of cubic inches or inches, speaking to the volume capability of the gear-holding compartments. Most versions also come in different lengths (usually referenced so long, medium or short) to fulfill the different torso lengths of possible wearers. Quite a Couple backpacks are on the market, ranging from small daypacks to full size backpacks made for just six months on the Appalachian Trail. Fortunately (for the back), packs are getting smaller over the past 20 years. This is not because of package technology as much as progress in camping equipment. Conventional camera bags are made to hold the Total weight of the equipment only on a single shoulder. This was not only awkward, but also caused a great deal of pain the shoulder which was carrying from the weight. That is 1 problem with traveling bags, and a traveler having keen interest in photography should take into consideration. A Only"day hike" or even"overnighter" to approximately one week (including food from plants or even fishing/hunting) or at areas where you need tools or equipment would require packs in the range of 1,800-2,500 cubic inch (30-40 liters) internal distance. Adding external strapping for odd tools this need could be less than half for brief trips. Which Type of Backpack? Any Pack (regardless of type) that is adjusted incorrectly will cause you pain and also be hard to take for long periods of traveling. All Packs are made to put a majority of their weight in your belt! Both internal and external frame packs should have tight fitting, well padded, well designed hip belts! Ask The Right Questions: Get the Right Answers Selecting The ideal travel bag can be challenging, so to assist you out we have compiled a few guidelines to create your backpack shopping a tad bit easier. Are there any other actions that I plan to carry out when I am shooting? Can I require carrying the back long distances when I'm out shooting? Could I combine it with my hiking equipment? Can I stow in the overhead compartment (if you are flying everywhere ) Will it be comfortable to carry, particularly if I will use it when I'm going for a hike or a trek Can it double up as a overnight bag just in the event of a brief trip? Points That Matter: The Guidelines to Buy the Best Backpack Now That you've considered the questions, remember the following Points whenever you're zeroing in to get a backpack. These points Critical, and the main key point is The Very Best Hostels are Those that last the longest - as if you are investing a fantastic amount Of money it ought to function you for a life. Start Looking for features That make sure the backpack is protective, durable, and continues for a lifetime. Know Your Torso: A big, tall person can Have a brief torso (and long legs) thus requiring a smaller pack. A Shorter, smaller individual may have a longer torso (and shorter legs-like Me) and need a larger package. All pack manufacturers design their packs with Your chest in your mind. Thus, measure your chest, preferably before Shopping, so you'll have this understanding in your pocket. This will, Hopefully, eliminate complete dependence on outdoor-shop salespeople--who Sometimes make errors! Be Sure That It Is Customized For Your Trip: There are bags in the Market that are intended in a customized fashion in order to appeal to Specific requirements. They all have distinct USPs, in the likes for Traveling backpacks and many other utilities. The backpack Has to Be comfy when loaded, so strap in on Your shoulder to inspect the comfort level. Testing the back pack before Purchasing is really important as well as suggested. So strap it , and rather Try and get all the information about the backpack from the group selling it. They'll guide you to what best suites you according to Your needs. Hip Belt: When taking heavy loads, the majority of the package's Weight (as much as 80 percent ) should be supported from the hip belt. All large Backpacks are designed with load service on the hip, along with the belt must Be heavily cushioned, and have good durability. But It's always better to Check yourself cause you are going to utilize the backpack. Climbers And skiers may elect for a minimal hip belt to boost their freedom of movement.

0 notes

jaredreitzin · 6 years

Text

Best Backpack For You

backpack with usb charging Select which method you'd rather choose, and live with that decision until the time the back pack survives. As With boots, good fit is your key with a backpack. The weight of a pack is secondary, as a well-designed, heavier backpack may provide you a more comfortable ride than a lighter package carrying the same load. Select Your package dependent on the form of trips you imagine taking? Most beginners expect only to do a weekend in the slightest, but it is a pity to have a get a larger pack later if you genuinely enjoy the activity and want to venture out farther. Think Before You Buy: Each Measure Is Essential Think Concerning the amount of space you'll need in the bag, think of the number of compartments you'll need, along with the areas you will carry this bag with you. Consider the amount of equipment you will need to store and the places which you'll be taking it. A good bag does little for you if you are not inclined to take it with you. Picking the right Backpack is vital for any traveller or experience enthusiast. If you select a bag too large, you'll be carrying more kilos than demanded, and a bit too little will mean not enough room to carry all the vitals. Substance has an important part also, the wrong substance will imply whether it rains, your material is going to be soaked and will get ruined and heavy to take. With so many choices available it can grow to be really confusing for anyone to choose only the right backpack. Brand names Might Not Be Important for you when it comes to clothing, but when it comes to picking out a traveling backpack they should be. Deciding on a good brand usually means a couple of things when it comes to traveling bags. For starters, it usually means a guarantee. This will come in handy if something goes wrong with your bag, if it rips, the straps snap, etc.. However in the event you choose a fantastic brand, not one of those things are very likely to occur because your bag will have been made of sturdy material and will have been built to last. waterproof backpack The Backpack List: As Vital As Your Breath|} You Should go through all the facts, attempt, encounter numerous backpacks prior to setting your eyes on"The One." We are going to lay out all the qualities that you should seek in each backpack so that you can count down into the chosen one. This listing is the result of hours of study and experience of numerous excursions relating to trekking, camping. Backpacks Are often sized in terms of cubic inches or inches, speaking to the volume capacity of the gear-holding compartments. Most models also come in different lengths (generally referenced so long, medium or short) to meet the different torso lengths of possible wearers. Quite a Couple backpacks are available on the market, ranging from little daypacks to full size backpacks designed for just six months on the Appalachian Trail. Luckily (for your back), packs have been getting smaller over the past 20 years. This isn't due to package technology as far as progress in camping gear. Tents are lighter, as are sleeping bags, stoves, etc.. Conventional camera bags are made to hold the Entire weight of the equipment only on a single shoulder. This was not only awkward, but also caused a lot of pain the shoulder which was taking from the weight. That is 1 issue with traveling totes, and a traveler having keen interest in photography should take under consideration. A Only"day hike" or"overnighter" to approximately one week (including food from plants or fishing/hunting) or at places where you need equipment or tools would demand packs in the range of 1,800-2,500 cubic inch (30-40 liters) internal space. Adding external strapping for odd tools this need might be less than half for short trips. What Type of Backpack? Any Pack (regardless of type) that is corrected incorrectly will cause you annoyance and also be hard to take for long periods of traveling. All Packs are designed to place the majority of their weight on your belt! Both internal and external frame packs must have tight fitting, well padded, well designed fashionable belts! Selecting The ideal travel tote can be tricky, so to assist you out we have compiled a few tips to make your back pack shopping a bit easier. Are there any other actions that I intend to carry out when I am shooting? Will I need carrying the backpack long distances when I am out shooting? Could I combine it with my hiking equipment? Could I store in the overhead compartment (if you are flying anywhere) Will it be comfortable to carry, especially if I am going to be using it once I am going for a hike or a trek Can it double up as an overnight bag just in case of a short trip? Points That Matter: Why The Guidelines to Buy the Best Backpack Now That you've considered the questions, keep in mind the next Points when you're zeroing in to buy a backpack. These points Crucial, and the main key point is - The Best Backpacks are Those that last the longest - as if you're investing a fantastic amount Of money it needs to function you for a lifetime. Start Looking for characteristics That make sure the backpack is durable, protective, and continues for a lifetime. Know Your Torso: A large, tall person can Have a short chest (and long legs) thus necessitating a smaller package. A Shorter, smaller person may get a longer torso (and shorter legs-like Me) and require a bigger package. All package manufacturers design their packs together with Your chest in your mind. Thus, measure your chest, rather before Shopping, so you will have that knowledge in your pocket. This will, Sometimes make errors! Be Sure It Is Customized For The Trip: There are bags in the Market that are designed in a customized fashion in order to appeal to Specific demands. They have different USPs, from the likes for Overnight visits, hiking bags, camera backpacks, trekking backpacks, Traveling backpacks and several other utilities. The backpack Has to Be comfy when loaded, so strap on Your shoulder to check the comfort level. Testing the backpack before Buying is really important and suggested. So strap it on, and rather Try and get all of the information about the backpack from the group selling it. Your needs. Hip Belt: When carrying heavy loads, Nearly All the package's Weight (as much as 80 percent ) ought to be supported from the hip belt. All big Backpacks are equipped with loading support on the fashionable, along with the belt must Be heavily cushioned, and have good durability. But it is always better to Check yourself cause you are going to use the backpack. Climbers And skiers may elect for a minimal hip belt to increase their freedom of movement.

0 notes

shadesmaclean · 7 years

Text

Tradewinds 20 CH 14

The three of them stumbled along the riverbank, all but sleepwalking anymore. After last night’s horrific experience, they were all afraid to stop, afraid to sleep, and Shades suspected by now that he was not the only one menaced by things only half-seen out of the corner of bleary eyes. Even still having the river failed to inspire any confidence in the face of all they’d learned of this terrible place. If they didn’t find a way out of the Woods today, none of them were sure if they could keep this up tomorrow. Shades wondered if this was what it was to fear sleep. Both the vulnerability of the act, as well as the nightmares. Even the fact that some of them revealed the shape of threats to come seemed poor compensation. After last night, he found himself haunted by visions of his old home, the Flathead Valley, ending up like this, an insidious voice from the back of his mind insisting that something like this was what was really happening the night of the Flathead Experiment, and he was no longer sure he had the strength or conviction to oppose it. At high noon, they finally stopped to take a late breakfast. Though in desperate need of the energy, this place had taken its toll on their appetite, and they munched mechanically, absently. All too aware there was next to nothing left, that today would see their last meal. It was only when they stopped to take stock of things that Shades realized, much to all of their dismay, that the map from Camp Stilton got soaked when they fell in the river last night, the folded paper now a soggy, pulpy mess that fell apart between his fingers when he tried to open it. Not that it had been doing them much good before, it was the principle of the thing. Shades tried not to look at Kelly’s skull as he put it back in his pack. Back then, there was barely room for it, but as their supplies dwindled, it now had room to shift around. A burden that somehow grew heavier even as his pack grew lighter. Among the last of their provisions, having sunk to the bottom of his bag, he found something he only vaguely remembered packing. Metal tins from Roger’s emergency stores, military rations Made In New Cali, according to the label. Though he could just as easily picture a different label on similar items from back on Earth. “MRE’s…” he mumbled. “Well I’ll be damned!” “What’s that?” Justin asked, staring at them. “Meals Ready to Eat,” Shades informed him. “Soldiers carry these back in my world.” “Like your father?” Max recalled. “Yes,” Shades replied. “Even before Master Al, Dad taught me most of what I know about wilderness survival. And this place has turned most of what I learned into a bad joke…” “Not all of it,” Max told him as they prepared to resume their tired trek. “Your instincts have saved us several times, and that’s gotta count for something. We’re all still alive, aren’t we?” “I guess.” “Let’s go,” Justin said, surprising both of them by being the first to rise. Their march continued into the afternoon, eyes sandbagged as their feet as they continued their troubled expedition. An hour so later, they wandered past another abandoned cabin, right on the river. The mostly useless length of dock and grounded rowboat a testament to how much fuller this river could be in different seasons, certainly more use to the lumber mill back there. The dirt path behind it presumably a tributary to that so-called Highway 13. Justin and Shades both spat in its general direction in almost perfect unison. “We’re not fallin’ for that shit anymore…” Though not quite as dilapidated as the cottage from the other night, even its proximity to the river felt more like temptation than hope. Max scarcely noticed, lost in his own brooding ruminations; this was by far the longest he and Bandit had ever been separated, and with every day— and every night— it became harder not to dwell on an ever growing list of grim possibilities. Justin struggled not to let the distance wear on his mind, more land than he had ever believed existed in any one place, and much like Max, the miles were starting to get to him almost as much as the Woods themselves. That, and recalling fragments of a nightmare from the other night, about all the knots in the trees’ bark opening up to reveal staring eyes… For his part, after five days out here, Shades was beginning to question whether they could even begin to convince anyone to come back with them, recalling the map and note, with all their dire warnings. As they came around another bend, Shades was positive he saw a spectral figure, a little girl, beckon them toward a tree standing out on an embankment. Passing between the narrow gap between the tree and the water before vanishing. Unlike some things he glimpsed, this one looked just substantial enough to actually be something. Upon closer inspection, he noted that the tree appeared to cast two shadows. As if straddling two different realities. Of course, most of the Woods proper were too shrouded in shadow for this knowledge to avail them much, now that he thought about it, thus it was really only useful here along the river. Walking up to the tree, he couldn’t help but wonder if there were any other signs for them to find. Leading to a grim thought. After the other day, they had been too spooked by the radio to bother much with it since then, but now he switched his on as he stood before the tree. Moving toward the landward side of the tree caused a sharp rise in static, while the river side remained faint and quiet. Explaining to his friends what he had seen, he led them through the narrow gap between the tree and the river, to a riverside forest that looked exactly like the one they saw ahead of them, but, most perplexing, that the tree now had only one shadow from this side. “Where the hell has that ghost-girl been lately anyway?” Justin muttered. “Don’t know.” Shades shrugged. “I think we lost her for a while back at the circle stones. Maybe she was in the swamp, but I wasn’t completely sure. I’m just glad to see she didn’t follow us into those deadlands. I don’t think even a ghost is safe in that world…” Even mentioning it, at high noon, in broad daylight, didn’t feel very safe, so he tried to put it out of his mind as they resumed. Armed with two pieces of intel they wished they had days ago, they continued, Shades tuned in to the radio with one earphone, while Max tried to keep a weary eye out for any anomalous shadows as they went. After another harrowing hour or so, they came upon more derelict millworks, this time a much more extensive complex, yet just as run-down as Rigby Millworks, so they didn’t linger. Simultaneously dismayed and heartened to find an old dirt road on the far side of the place, running right alongside the river. Though deservedly distrustful of roads out here, they decided to walk it only if its path kept in sight of the river. If nothing else, it did make a smooth path for numb legs and sore feet. A short walk around the bend, and the road turned left onto a bridge. Wider, longer, and of metal and concrete construction, unlike the covered bridge back at Stilton, clearly designed to bear heavier loads, as well. Despite being left to rot presumably as long as everything else out here, it seemed to have held up better, and they could cross it without a hitch. The thing that held their foremost attention, though, was an end to the Woods on the other side, and a glimpse of old, crumbling houses just beyond it. Anymore, it was hard to tell where to focus their eyes as they made their way across. Caution made a strong case for itself, but also the fear that if they took their eyes off that view for even a moment, it might vanish. Though none of them could quite articulate why, they still felt as if they just crossed some unseen border as they set foot on the other side of the river. Looking back in spite of their trepidation, they could see that in their tunnel vision, they had walked right past several red-lettered signs on and in front of the bridge, warning travelers to stay out of the Woods. Such delightful gems as No Return! and No Search Parties! that looked right at home in any horror movie. As well as several runic symbols painted on the bridge itself. “For all the good that did us…” Shades muttered. Shades also noted the road on this side of the bridge was actually paved, if long-neglected, the first thing they had encountered out here that even started to match with the trumped-up highway markers on that map. Trying not to imagine every horror they encountered back there rushing the bridge in one final last-minute attempt to claim them, they turned to face the moment of truth. Hoping the town ahead wasn’t just a mirage, some final, cruel joke on the Woods’ part. And no small dismay about their chances of finding help, as all of the houses they saw so far appeared as deserted as everyplace else they’d been to. Dirty outskirts, giving way to abandoned streets, vacant windows staring out at them like unwelcoming eyes. An eerie silence hung over the place, betraying not a hint of any observers. They could also see more of those runes painted on buildings, fences and old, weathered signs at regular intervals. As they moved in deeper, they began to notice more of the area surrounded by tall severe-looking fences that all seemed to be connected to each other. Forming a broad barrier between the outskirts and the town beyond. Farther in, giving way to stakewall palisades with sharpened points across the top, stockade style. The whole thing narrowing the street they walked into a walled corridor funneling them into the town proper. As if, over the years, the Woods had slowly encroached on their community, and people gradually, grudgingly, moved inward, closer to the coast. Leaving layers of derelict fortifications in their wake. And leaving no clue if any of the inner defenses still defended anything. “I knew I was bein’ followed…” a gruff voice proclaimed from their right. They turned to see a shabbily-dressed, thick-bearded man, of squat build and wide features, step out from behind an old, leaning stretch of pre-Woods fence. Pointing at them what appeared to Shades to be some manner of shotgun. Eyes wide, hands barely steady, looking for all the world like he no more wished to be out here than they. “You… you just came from the Woods, didn’t you?” Looking from one of them to another as if he half expected them to be some sort of phantom or hallucination. “Don’t you know there’s a great Evil out there?” “We noticed,” Shades assured him. The man made no secret of his suspicion as he demanded, “Who are you?” “Who are you?” Justin asked back, clearly not liking that this guy had the drop on them. “I live here, you don’t,” the man countered. “Now, who are you?” “My name is Max,” Max told him, hoping to defuse this confrontation. “Shades MacLean.” Just hoping this fellow might actually be a sign of hope, that there might still be someone here who could help them. “Justin Black…” Then, for the first time in his life, wondering if he just made a big mistake, blurting his real name like that. Now that they had found their way back to some semblance of civilization, he realized that, in the midst of surviving one crisis after another, he had managed to forget about Jesse Fletcher for three whole days. “If it’s any of your business.” “Jarvis Tully,” he said, lowering the gun, but still keeping it handy in the face of three visibly armed strangers. “Where’re you from?” “Around,” Shades replied, not wanting to go into the Black Angels, and their unknown implications. “More specifically, we ran aground near Camp Stilton about five days ago.” “And we had a bitch of time getting here,” Justin added. “I mean, what the hell happened to the road?” “We came here for help,” Max reminded him. “Let’s try to keep this diplomatic.” “We have a couple injured friends who are still stranded out there.” Shades could see they were pushing the limits of their credibility, most likely just by being here at all. “They’re probably long dead by now.” “We survived,” Max pointed out. “I’m not going to abandon my friends, even if we have to go back around the peninsula ourselves to get them.” “Then you’re bigger fools than I thought. Even the coast’s no safe place to travel.” “There must be a way,” Max insisted. “Please tell me the rest of the town’s not…” Justin moaned. “No, no it ain’t,” Jarvis informed them. “Pickford ain’t what she used to be, but we still stand. Ol’ Sister Clarice still maintains the wardings, but she’s not well, so I had to come out here all alone to check on ’em…” “Wardings…” Shades recalled the runes they kept finding all the way in. “And you came out here all by yourself?” “I’m the caretaker,” Jarvis answered, “it’s my job.” “Caretaker of what?” Shades wondered aloud. “None o’ your business,” he said, turning toward the way into Pickford. “If you promise not to cause any trouble, you can come with me. Even in broad daylight, folks’ve been known to go missin’ if they wander past the edge o’ town.” Seeing he was no more inclined to linger than they, they nodded and followed him around a bend in the corridor, with a tall gate barring the way about a hundred feet ahead. As they approached, a man popped up next to the gate, calling, “Who goes there?” “Jarvis,” he called back, “and some unexpected guests. They came all the way from Stilton, so don’t keep ’em waitin’.” A moment later, the gate ground open, sounding as if it was opened as seldom as possible. Inside, the man from before greeted them, and they could see he wore a uniform and badge that denoted him as law enforcement. Another man, wearing plain clothes, helped him close and bar the gate, both staring after them as if unsure any of that just happened as they walked away. “What now?” Max asked. “Now I take you to the inn,” Jarvis explained. “Sheriff Duhan will want to have a word with you later, but there’s other folks who’ll want to talk to you first. You’re the first to come back from those Woods in years, an’ about the only ones not driven mad with terror an’ exposure. Stilton’ll be keen to hear you, I’m sure, an’ I know a couple others, too…”

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