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sirspud · 3 years

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The Daring Ducks: Crypt of the Everflame

Part 1: The Ceremony

Our adventure begins in the sleepy coastal town of Silas, a hamlet notable for only for its fish. The town is named after its founder - Silas McDuck, who bravely defended the burgeoning town from a clan of enemy mercenaries almost two hundred years ago. Every year, when the bitter winter winds whirl into town, the elders of the town delve into Silas's crypt to retrieve a mystical artefact known as the Everflame - an everburning lantern said to bring protection to the town during times of strife.

Every few years, however, the town send a small team of youngsters to retrieve the Everflame, as a sort of coming-of-age tradition. The youngsters delve in, retrieve the flame while braving the crypt's perils, then come back to a splendid feast. It's a taste of adventure for the young men and women, a feeling of freedom and triumph before settling down for a life of fishing like everyone else.

It's early in the morning, three days before the retrieval is to take place, in the modest abode of Donald Duck. Bringing his three troublesome nephews inside, he tells him that they have selected for the trial (against Donald's better judgement), alongside a girl from the outskirts of town.

The reactions are mixed. Dewey is excited. He'd heard tales of people who'd survived the crypt, speaking of its incredible dangers, and he cannot wait to get going. Hell, he's jumping up and down demanding to know why he can't go now.

Huey has heard the same tales, and though he's also excited to do something with his life other than fishing, he's also reasonably concerned. He asks Donald more about the crypt, mentioning that it surely can't be as dangerous as everyone says it is (Diplomacy Check = natural 1). Oblivious to his worry, Donald reassures him that between the four of them - including the girl they've yet to meet - they'll be able to take the crypt easily. As long as they're prepared, of course.

Louie is also initially excited - but then he thinks about it. If the crypt was as dangerous as all the children of the town say it is, then surely there'd be at least one reported death, right? Yet, although there have certainly been injuries, there's never been anyone who's died on the expedition. Suspicious, Louie heads out and tries to gather some more information about the crypt, listening in on conversations and trying to get the information out of people (Perception Check = 9. Diplomacy Check = 14). Infuriatingly, the adults are tight-lipped, and he can't learn anything useful. Nevertheless, he remains sceptical.

The triplets prepare themselves, told to pack light and take only the things they need, since most of their supplies will be given to them by (discretely rolls a random name) Cole Gresham, the town's mayor. The triplets leave most of their things at home, with the exception of their weapons, armour, and a few miscellaneous supplies.

A few days pass, and the boys are standing in the town square, surrounded by a crowd of townsfolk in black attire, as if they were attending a funeral. Their eyes are downcast and mournful, which causes a bit of confusion for the boys. The crowd parts a bit, allowing the mayor to make his way to the front of the crowd, the obese old duck looking uncharacteristically sombre.

“Once again the winter winds blow through the Fangwood, marking the end of another harvest." He calls to the crowd. "There are wolves in the woods, howling at our walls, and serpents in our shadows, waiting to strike. Just as it was one hundred and seventy-four years ago, when Silas himself left these walls to protect us, so it is today. Where are the heroes? Where are the brave folk that will venture out to Silas’s tomb and retrieve the flame to keep this community safe for another winter?”

At this point, Louie is all but convinced that this whole "quest for the Everflame" business is an act (Sense Motive Check = 9). With a confident smirk, he and his brothers walk out in front of the crowd. He plays up the whole sombre mood, saying with some dramatic flair that it is his brothers who shall take up this accursed burden (Perform [Act] Check, taking 10 = 13). The crowd seem to eat it up, and he walks confidently over to the mayor... and right into Webby.

Now, remember that this takes place during the fantasy Middle Ages. When the boys were told that a girl would be accompanying them on their quest, they were imagining a fair farmer's daughter, coming along with them to cook campfire meals and perhaps develop a burgeoning romance with.

What they were not expecting was a 5-foot-10 mountain of a woman dressed in hides and furs, wielding a giant two-handed sword and introducing herself with a obliviously excited scream of, "Hi, I'm Webby!"

Louie leaps backwards with a panicked yelp, falling to the ground gracelessly. The boys are shocked to learn that she isn't a murderous barbarian here to slaughter them, and even more so when they learn that she's the one who'll be accompanying them. She helps Louie up, exclaiming that she's looking forward to retrieving the Everflame with them, and keeping the McDuck legacy alive.

The mayor hands each member of the newly formed party a backpack, within which contains five days of trail rations, a small, folded-up tent, a winter blanket, a full waterskin, and a piece of trail map, leading right to Silas's tomb.

To Dewey, he hands over a 50-foot coil of hemp rope, a tinderbox, and three alchemical tindertwigs.

To Huey, the mayor gives a vial of red liquid labelled as "Healing" and three torches.

Louie gets a bottle of local brandy, much to his delight.

And Webby is offered a grappling hook. She politely refuses, brightly explaining that she already has one.

The final object to be given is one of great importance - a tarnished silver lantern, within which the Everflame shall be contained to be brought back to Silas. He asks the party, "Which of you brave youngsters shall have the honour of carrying the esteemed lantern?"

"I will!" The triplets say in unison.

"...Are we really going to do this?" Louie asks as the brothers stare at each other in annoyance.

Huey immediately puts forward his case - as the eldest triplet, and therefore the most responsible, it should be his responsibility to hold the lantern, since he can be trusted not to pawn it off, glaring at Louie as he says it.

Louie objects, saying that he can be trusted to hold the lantern just as well as Huey can. After all, where could he possibly "pawn it off"? It's not as if he's in contact with a shady rogue from out of town who'll buy anything for any price! He's certainly a better option than Dewey, at any rate.

Dewey defends himself, saying that the 80-gold climber's pack was a "one-time mistake" and that he should carry the lantern because the prestige would instantly make him the coolest guy in town! That kind of fame would be wasted on someone like Huey.

After a good thirty seconds of bickering, the mayor takes initiative and just gives it to Webby, who holds the artefact with awe and to the undisguised anxiety, disappointment and resentment from Huey, Dewey and Louie.

And with that out the way, the mayor speaks to the crowd again, "I present to you the brave heroes who will follow in Silas’s footsteps to retrieve the Everflame! Some of them may not return, but I say to you that their sacrifice shall not be forgotten. Go, brave heroes, and do not return until you have the eternal fire.” He points to the north, where the crypt dwells, and the party are sent on their way, the towns folk waving goodbye with cold, solemn looks...

...With the exception of Uncle Donald, who sends the boys off with cries of "Be safe!", and "Good luck!", and "You can do it!", bringing down the whole mood and earning several dark looks from the nearby townsfolk.

And with that, the first adventure of the Daring Ducks begins!

Part 2

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bingobongobonko · 2 years

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my occultist fucking died (circa 2021)

Altrez falters completely, yet he is still inseparable from the conduit in his hands. The vessel of the Beast that it is, it begins thrashing against his grip. Blood flows freely from his busted lip, from the gashes across his face, from the many more lashes to come. The Beast bellows for him to rise, but in some subconscious fear of its own, it won't take control of his body. He can sense its fear, just as it can sense his. They've both sensed their untimely demise, it seems. Altrez can only wonder how the Beast has coped with its newly-found mortality for so long, because now, the thing has begun chanting and wailing for him to fight back. "RISE. RISE. RISE," it cries. The sound is haunting, like the screams of a thousand wailing children, the howls of dying wolves, the sickly, demented sound of his own voice croaking. It has begun speaking through him. "ALTRE'EZ NAFL'FHTAGN EHY... HAVE YOU NO SELF-PRESERVATION, MORTAL? YOU'VE FOUGHT DEVILS, BEASTS, HORRORS, YET YOU CHOOSE TO FALTER TO LOWLY SCUM?" It roars with a might strong enough to rip his throat in two. A deafening noise, but not enough to drown out the battle cries of brigand scum. They would come to realize the whole hamlet has been evacuated, including its dungeonseekers; it was only him among the rubble and limelight. And the Beast, if It's agonizing screams were to be considered. "YOU WISH TO DIE? JUST TO SAVE THE SKINS OF MEN WHO DO NOT SERVE YOU PURPOSE?" Altrez scoffs, forcefully pushing the Beast from control. His head aches as if it were to explode and his throat itches with the urge to keep screaming, but he knows better. "You and I both know these people have done more for me than anyone else has; I've merely returned the favor." He unsheathes his dagger from its satchel and raises it to the light by its hilt. The lime and fire reflect onto the blade to reveal the etches of a signature, Balt's signature, the only real hope in his hell. Balt fought well, even as his tendrils ripped the Bountyhunter away from battle and forced him to retreat. His yelling was so full of hate and rage, begging him not to be so foolish. It may have wounded Altrez's ego. But Dismas and Reynauld shouldn't die so soon, and neither should Balt. It was a simple and rather mindless choice. The only thing that made sense. "I've given my efforts to ensure this Hamlet will survive, and I will continue to do so." There is a madman shrieking ahead of them now, ripping through the piles of debris and fallen soldiers. He hears the lot of them all at once: The fatal thrashing of a whip. The clinking of their trinkets and baubles. The bellowing of their leader. With the last show of strength he can bare, he stands. His legs shake as if he were a newborn calf, but it is enough to keep upright. "Help me show these uncivilized men their place, old friend. Share this power with me." It growls like a threatened bloodhound, but his own mind is too sedated to find it terrifying. It speaks, but this time reverberating from within. It is not just It speaking, but several of them. "IF YOU DO THIS TO EXCUSE YOUR ACTIONS, YOU WILL HAVE ALREADY FAILED. THE KARMIC RETRIBUTION OF YOUR FAULTS WILL FOREVER HAUNT YOUR PATHETIC MIND. I AM PROOF OF THIS. YOUR APPRENTICES ARE PROOF OF THIS. YOU HAVE NOT CHANGED. NEITHER HAVE I." Suddenly, his body rejects his control. The dagger is whipped away, finding its place in the eyesocket of an unforeseen gunman. The man sputters, hitting the wall of men behind him before being trampled in their path. Stop! WE were supposed to do this together, Altrez yells from within. This is not what I want! We must fight in unison! There is no response. At all, not even a grunt or a laugh. His heart - his pounding heart - He cries in abject horror. His heartbeat is no longer pulsating through him or the Beast. He's died. A walking corpse controlled only by the forces. He can feel himself drift away from his body as the worldly connection severs. It can no longer hear him, but he hears it loud and clear, its foreign language far overpowering the sounds of the brigands. Wealding HIS powers, HIS body... He cannot stand to die so powerless. With his last remaining semblance of life, he wills himself into the Beast's mind. A complete reversal of their roles. In any other situation, Altrez would have laughed, but he's chanting and screaming feverishly as he forces himself into the limelight once again. The Beast screams, ripping the edges of his mind, burning and boiling his physical body, ripping his skin in two, but he continues. The pain is astounding. He croaks with what is left of his voice, whispering to the Beast. Perhaps as a show of power, perhaps in true sorrow, Altrez cannot decide. "I am sorry," he yells. The final thing he and the Beast feels is the involuntary buckle of his legs as a final strike of an ax is lodged into the back of his skull. He screams, it screams, and the world is finally black.

#my main occultist died!!!! hes fuckin dead!!!#been fucked up about it so i wrote about it #rip altrez..... i wasnt ready for the brigands man #darkest dungeon #occultist darkest dungeon #writing #tw violence #canon typical anyway #i was being too stupid with the heroes i used honestly. i should have brought vestal instead :(#i took a walk and came back to realize i didnt even title this #uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh #my occultist fucking dies #does that work

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lieslidoo · 3 years

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The beauty in the mundane Howl Jenkins X Painter!OC

Part 1: an uncharacteristically early start.

this is really not book or movie accurate I just like the characters so like, MAJOR cannon divergence, love y’all. Have mercy on my soul dear reader, for I have not proofread this fic.

Far beyond the bustling coasts of Porthaven and the lush greenery of the folding valley lay the small village of North Bexley. Surrounded by two mountains of admirable size, it stood snugly as if it had always been there, and as far as Agatha Havenglow was concerned, it had.

Miss Havenglow was perhaps one of the most well known inhabitants of this charming Hamlet. Had you gone to the village folks and asked about her, many of them would have told you that she was a strange young girl who would have been unbearably lonely if it wasn’t for her sister, Emily Havenglow.

Some of them, more knowledgeable, might show you around the town and point out the many things she had painted : various hanging signs, storefronts, advertisements and the occasional mural. And If you had asked Mr. Tailor, the town’s baker ( who funnily enough married the village tailor’s eldest daughter Ann) he’d tell you she was “too good for this small town” and that “She ought to leave us for South Bexley”, by which he’d mean that she should leave North Bexley for better, bigger towns and not, as it may seem, the actual town of South Bexley, which has, as of yet, not been located (and nor do I believe it ever will be). He might then point you in the direction of the Havenglow’s home, at the edge of Silverkeep lake more commonly known as North Bexley Orphanage, where our story begins.

On the first day of the month of may, Agatha was getting an uncharacteristically early start to her busy day. She put on the pair of woolen socks Mrs. Havenglow had gifted her for their last birthday and threw her shawl around her shoulders. The dark herringbone floor creaked as she moved to her nightstand and picked up her journal and her charcoal pencil. And, as she had done every morning before, Agatha drew back the green velvet curtains, opened her blinds, sat on the windowsill and started to draw. She drew the camellias and Irises that Her mother loved so much and the arrowwood her sister had cared for, the wrought iron swing that her and Emily bickered over and the wooden one that Mrs. Havenglow had put in next to it in a futile attempt to bring peace to her garden. The small pond that emptied into Silverkeep lake where the children would once go to capture frogs and feed ducks. Everything held a story, a memory and try as she might, she always felt she failed to adequately draw them.

She was hard at work sketching the small tree stump on which she had once twisted her ankle when her door opened and the familiar scent of Emily’s cinnamon basil tea filled her room. “You’re up early today.”

“You’re painfully observant today.”

The girl joined her sister on the windowsill and, with her tea tray in her lap, waited for her twin to finish her drawing. She had learned a long time ago that this was to Agatha what gardening and baking was to her, her way to make sense of the world around her and to safely interact with it, and there was nothing in the world she loved more than watching her draw. After a few minutes, the pencil stopped moving and the handkerchief stopped smudging and there was peace, both in Agatha’s room and mind.

“Are you done?” “Yes.” “Let me see.” She handed her the journal and took one of the warm cups of tea in exchange. “I don’t know how you do it. It’s so…” “So what?” “So alive.” The artist snorted at her sister’s praise and took back her journal, setting it on her dresser a bit harsher than she normally would have. “How was the may dew?” Agatha asked Emily, her voice still rough from sleep.

She was referring to a strange custom the girls of Bexley had been doing for centuries. On the first morning of may, all young maidens would run out to the nearest prairie and dutifully wash their faces with the morning dew. It was a sight to behold, pretty women, all in their white nightgowns laying on the green grass and waiting for the sun to shine on them away from the hungry gaze of men and the pressures of marriage.

“It was intimate, and invigorating.” “Did you go with the other girls?” “Of course! Praying is best experienced in the company of your peers.” “And by praying you mean rolling around in a prairie for half a sunrise?” Agatha mocked. Her sister sneered at her and dangled her legs out the window. The air was crisp and the sun was warm.

“Oh! The bannocks!!” Emily cried out “I thought you had forgotten” “I could never! its tradition.” Agatha laughed at her sister’s earnest response to what she clearly said in jest. Try as she might she could not recall one time where her sister had forgotten a celebration ; be it holiday or name days, she never faulted. The girl handed her a small bun and took hers, raising it towards the sky. “Merry May-Day Aggie” “Merry May-Day lily.” The bread was still warm and smelled of rosemary, lavender and honey. As the bannock touched her mouth, she thought of the village fête tonight and felt a strange sense of trepidation, something that was quite rare in a village where familiarity and predictability were king. “Are you going to say yes tonight?” She asked. “To what?” “To Lawrence, are you going to say yes?” “If he proposes, yes.” Emily stated, sadness burdening her normally sweet voice “There must be something we can do, have you asked Mr. Tailor? he’ll help us, I’m sure.” “He doesn’t have the money. Lawrence is our best solution, our only solution.” There was a moment of silence and Emily braced herself for what she knew her sister would offer. This room had heard this particular argument unfold a myriad of times and for a moment, Emily was saddened that this was probably the last. “We could run.” “Aggie, no.” “You could open an orphanage where you want, Agatha argued, you don’t need it to be in boring old Bexley” “Well I like boring old Bexley, and I love Havenglow cottage, and I won’t see it go to waste on some rich stuffy old man who will only use it in the summer.” “So you’ll marry a rich stuffy old man instead?” “Lawrence is not old.” He wasn't, not particularly

“No he’s just boring.” He was, most definitely “What a wicked thing to say!” Emily chastised. “A wickedly true thing to say. He’s not worthy of you goose.” “Agatha…” the girl softened at the old nickname, “don't start, please.” “If you just moved away to a city, even for a month,” Agatha started, “I’m sure you could see that Bexley cottage is not the be all, end all of your life, and even if you don’t, I'm sure you could find a better, handsomer, RICHER man to take Lawrence’s place.”

The girl was not wrong. Emily was certainly the most coveted maiden in North Bexley. A born homemaker, she could steal any man’s heart with her baking prowess and her angelic singing voice. Although her heart had, as of yet not been moved by anyone.

“We don’t have a month aggie, and who’ll take care of this place? Who will make sure no children are turned away?”

“We haven’t had a child in 5 years Emily.”

“Then it should happen any day now.”

“Oh for the love of god!” Agatha exclaimed, snatching her sister’s hand with her own “Promise me, if there’s a possibility, even a small sliver of a chance you could escape this wretched, pathetic excuse for a…”

“Aggie…” Emily warned

“Marriage, you’ll take it. You’ll try.”

“Aggie, its…”

“Please, for me.”

The girl mulled it over and sighed. Emily could never say no to her sister, being the second born, she always felt like Agatha knew best and she had been shown to be right many times before. The eldest Havenglow seemed to have a sharp sense of intuition and often knew something would happen before it did (be it a stranger entering town, an unknown illness falling upon a villager or an unpredicted visitor at the cottage door). When the girls were children, Emily used to swear that Agatha possessed magic powers, but the girl relayed it to having spent all her life in a predictable and boring small community. After all, she reminded herself, sorcerers were few and far between and she would most probably never meet one in her lifetime, so the idea of her being such a creature was absolutely preposterous.

“Fine, I promise. But if by the time of his proposal I don’t have a better, safer option I will say yes, and I will go through with it. And that’s final.”

Agatha considered arguing further but, feeling the time wasn’t quite right, laid her head on Emily’s shoulder and chipped away at her bannocks.

A heavy silence fell over the room as both of the Havenglow girls ate their breakfast, their linen nightgowns floating in the wind and their feet snuggly kept warm by the impeccable knitwork of the late Mrs. Havenglow.

Hello there, no Howl in this chapter, but lawd he coming. Had to set stuff up :)

#howl's moving castle #howl imagine #howl pendragon #howl jenkins pendragon #howl jenkins

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thepointoftheneedle · 3 years

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Paul Engle of the Writer’s Workshop

@sullypants was kind enough to point out that the Writer’s Workshop is the postgrad writing programme at the University of Iowa. It seemed like an excuse to share this essay about poetry by Paul Engle who ran the course for years. It is such a great piece about poetry and I thought some folks might like to read it. It appeared originally in the NYTimes in 1957.

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power

by PAUL ENGLE

POETRY is the only one of the arts which comes literally from inside the body a thing secreted as well as made. It is not so much written as it is breathed onto the page. It is possible because in our mortal oddness, we have a jointed jaw which waggles the sounds of love and rage and gloom in the daily air.

Of course all arts come naturally into our life. Painting is possible because our eyes find color and movement in the world, and our arms can swing through space in many motions. Music is possible because we have marvelous curled ears that listen every day to multitudes of sounds and we can order them into harmony. Theatre is simply an extension of our yammering, arguing, gossiping, conflicts and love.

But the materials of these other arts are artificial. Painting uses canvas, brushes, oils. Sculpture has its wood, stone, wires and welding helmet. Music has its manufactured strings, shaped wood and brass. But the materials of poetry are the same common words we use for buying food, complaining about the weather, talking on the telephone, asking our friends on the street, “have you heard this one?” These puffs of meaningful sound, warmed by our heart and lungs are shaped into moving utterances and we call it poetry. 300 years ago Michael Drayton said, “And innocence is closing up his eyes.” The recent English poet Wilfred Owen wrote of an innocent doomed soldier “for his teeth seem for laughing round an apple.” These words are the plain speech of men ordered into art.

The Frenchman in the play was astonished to find he had been speaking prose but he would've been more amazed to find that, like all of us, he had been speaking the materials of poetry. "It hit me like a ton of bricks,” says the startled boy using the manner of poetry. We all raise and lower our voices for emphasis and if that sound could be stained it would have a visible pattern in the air from which meter would come. In one of his energetic, pounding lines Marlowe wrote of Cassandra that the soldiers “Swung her howling through the empty air,” and Othello in his agony to express his hard life's lack of tears said that he was seldom in a “melting mood.”

This ordinariness of its medium is crucial to the nature and intent of poetry which always wants to make emotion orderly and to make ideas flame. Poetry is hyacinths and biscuits said Carl Sandberg. It is imaginary gardens with real toads said Marianne Moore. The glory and the grit of life join together make poetry, and only language can join them. Not the heart alone. Not the brain alone, for the heart is not deep enough, and the brain is not lively enough. As TS Eliot argued the poet is more civilised as well as more primitive than his contemporaries. It is language which allows him to combine intellectual subtlety with the sensuous touch in the fingertips. "A green thought in a green shade,” wrote Andrew Marvell. “Green I love you green,” cried the Spaniard Lorca. The great expression of the power that ordered language possesses to combine the extremes of human experience occurs in Wallace Stevens where he says of poetry that it is “an abstraction blooded.” Thought in poetry should beat like an artery a thumb feels in the neck. The poet has his original shock of experience but to tell another person about it he has only words tripping over a page. Yet those words must try to make the feet reader feel, by the intensity with which they are put together, the intensity of the living event. Hence the ruthless obscurity of some poetry, as the poet struggles to make poor words carry the weight of his lucid and complex meaning. Elliot has said that often poems will begin with no words at all but with an undefined rhythm in the mind to which gradually write words and true feelings come. The process is a tough one he writes for “words strain, crack and sometimes break under the burden. Under the tension, slip, slide, perish. Decay with imprecision, will not stay still.” Yet it is that feeble medium in which was written “Cover her face. Mine eyes dazzle. She died young.” So language becomes illumination, the deep dredged motive quivers in the hard air as if “a Magic Lantern threw the nerves in patterns on the screen.”

Shakespeare candidly said “While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.” He did not call her pretty or blonde or willing although she may well have been all of these but used rather the blunt expressive word. So Sandberg called a woman in love a pot rassler, a 20th century Joan. Lady Macbeth described the men she stupefied with drink “spongy officers.” Hamlet cried out “that skull had a tongue in it and could sing once; now the knave jowls it to the ground.”

Archibald MacLeish called the ocean “that endless silence edged with unending sound” and Hart Crane spoke of it as “this great whisk of eternity.” At the news of the death of Yeats, wrote Auden “the mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.” The Queen appealed to Hamlet “cast thy knighted colour off.” Of Cicero a character commented that he “Looks with such ferret and such fiery eyes" Thus language works its rugged way. Reading it one should feel as Dante did when he said to Virgil, “Hardly a drop of blood in my body does not shudder.” Here we are on the colourful Earth held in the rough arms of history jabbering under trees and roofs. Then we suddenly read what Bishop King wrote a long time ago “But heark! My pulse like a soft drum beats my approach tells thee I come,” and after that what e.e. cummings said a few years back “when skies are hanged and oceans drowned, the single secret will still be man.” So it is that words become not an escape from life although some ecstatic moments will always be that but a force and nourishment which return is more deeply to the middle of life more aware of that rough and noble human scene of which poetry is a part. “I have wiped away moonlight like mud,” said Wallace Stevens proving again that poetry is ordinary language raised to the nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate tough skin of words.

#poetry #the writers workshop

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shellku · 3 years

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Film Challenge

Okay guys. Finally did it. As requested.

Have you ever left a theater before the movie was over?

Yes. Only once.

If you ever left a theater what was playing: Savages

Craziest (Random) movie you’ve ever seen:

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

“And thanks for all the fish” -Dolphins

Most disturbing film you’ve ever watched:

Crimson Peak

A film you only watched because (Tom Hiddleston ) was in it: Crimson Peak

A minor role (or movie) with a major actor you greatly enjoyed: Sebastian Stan as Jefferson/The Mad Hatter in Once Upon A Time.

A minor role (or movie) with a major actress you greatly enjoyed: Emma Watson as Pauline Fossil in Ballet Shoes

A movie everyone should see at least once: The Princess Bride

A movie you thought everyone has seen but apparently not: Who framed Roger Rabbit?

A movie you’ve tried multiple times to watch but never get through it: Silence if the Lambs

A movie that legitimately surprised you:

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. While it came out in 1980 I didn’t see it until much later obviously. I wasn’t even ten when I watched it the first time, I and was genuinely shocked.

Movie that you enjoy, that surprises people you enjoy: Scream (1996)

A movie you associated with Religion and it turns out that tracks: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

A movie you watched a lot as a kid but your not sure why exactly you watched it so much:

Hook. (And) The Sandlot.

My first movie that made me question my sexualité: The Priâtes of the Caribbean.

Sections

Anime

First Anime: Fruits Basket. Vampire Knight.

Anime I watched with my (brother): Full Metal Alchemist

Anime I tried to get into and couldn’t: D Gray Man

Anime I was surprised I enjoyed: The Neverland Promise. (And) Soul Eater

Anime I always liked (even when it confused people): Black Butler

Anime that makes me cry: Your lie in April

Anime that I love but now makes me sad too: Sword Art Online

Anime I’m just not into: One Piece

One that was recommended that I enjoyed:

Blue Exorcist

One that was recommended that I was ehh on and did not finish: Attack on Titian

One I probably should watch: Pandora Hearts

One I watched Randomly : Castlevania

One that I did not watch until (college) that everyone seems to have watched: Sailor Moon

Cartoons

Cartoons Everyone should see:

- The Peanuts.

- Garfield.

- Scooby Doo.

- Tom and Jerry.

- Pink Panther.

Cartoon I never liked: Spongebob

Cartoon I hate now: Kiayu? Idk. The one with the bald kid that whines a lot. Ugh.

Cartoon I can make myself ‘watch’ with the (niece/nephews): Paw Patrol

Films you would Recommend:

80s: The Breakfast Club

Book Adaption 80s: The Outsiders

Murder Mystery:Murder on the Oriental Express

Jim Henson pick: Labyrinth

(Suicide) Satire:Heathers

Romance: Titanic

‘Horror’ Movie: The Lost boys

Horror Movie: The Nightmare on Elm Street

Spy Flick: Saint (1997)

Mind trips: The Sixth Sense.(1999) Donnie Darko.

Stephen King: The Dark Tower

Stephen King Miniseries: Rose Red

Studio Ghibli: Howls Moving Castle. Or. Kiki’s Delivery Service.

Action Comedy: Miss Congeniality

Adventure Comedy: Jumanji

‘Dark’ Comedy: The Addams Family

Romantic Comedy: Legally Blonde

Tim Burton

Tim Burton Animated: The Nightmare Before Christmas

Tim Burton Live Action: Edward Scissorhand

Tim Burton Musical: Sweeney Todd

Dreamworks

Favorite Dreamwork’s Film:

Rise of the Guardians (and) How to Train your Dragon

Disney:

Unpopular Recommendations:

The Black Cauldron (and) The Great Mouse Detective

One that is still rather disturbing: Pinocchio

Best Soundtrack (Golden Age): Fantasia

Best Soundtrack (Modern): IDk?!

Classics (Golden) everyone should see at least once: Snow White (and) Bambi.

Wartime Era Pic: The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr.Toad

Silver Age or Bronze Age: Both!!!

Disney Renaissance or Post Renaissance: Both! If I absolutely had to choose though, Renaissance.

Moana or Lilo and Stitch: Lilo and Stitch

Frozen or Tangled: Both

Soul or Monsters Inc: Monsters Inc

Toy Story I and 2/ or/ 3 and 4? Toy Story I and 2.

Underrated: Candleshoe

Disney Holiday:

Live Action Halloween - Hocus Pocus

Live Action Halloween Series- Halloweentown

Animated Halloween- Frakenweenie

Live Action Christmas- Miracle on 34th Street (and) Eloise

Animated Christmas- Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas, Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas, (and) Winnie the Pooh: A very merry Pooh year.

New: The Nutcracker and the Four Realms. (2018)

Disney Reimagined/Live Action:

First that made you rethink the story: Maleficent

Favorite ‘Princess’ Story: Beauty and the Beast

The Surprise: Cruella

The one you worried about but we’re happy with in the end: Lady and the Tramp

The one you worried about but ending up enjoying anyway: Aladdin

The one that was good but you could have done without: The Lion King (which really surprised me!!!I like it but I didn’t love it. Which for me was so strange since I’m a fan of the original and the play.)

The one you had high hopes for and had a mixed reaction too: Mulan. (Ended up really liking it, but I miss Mushu. )

‘Modern’ Shakespeare Adaption:

10 Thing I hate About You (The Taming of the Shrew)

Clueless (Emma)

and

The Lion King Series. (Kid appropriate)

The Lion King: Hamlet

The Lion King 1 1/2: Rosencrantz and Guildenstein

The Lion King 2: Romeo and Juliet

Vampire Pictures:

90s: Interview with a Vampire

2000+: Twilight Series

Tv Series: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Vampire Action Series: Underworld

Classic: Bram Stoker’s Dracula

Dracula with a Twist: Dracula Untold (2014)

Fun Supernatural Flicks :

Witches: The Craft

Male Witches: The Covenant

Fairytale: Red Riding Hood (2011)

Ghost Hunters: Ghostbusters

Multiple Supernatural: Van Helsing (2014)

Werewolf Romance: Blood and Chocolate

Kid Friendly Live Action: Casper

Kid Friendly Animated: Hotel Transylvania

Supernatural Series:

Multi: Supernatural

Animated: Sabrina The Teenage Witch. (And) Scooby Doo.

Witches: Charmed

Fairytale: Once Upon a Time

Darker Fairytale: Grimm

‘Superhero’ Movies:

90s: Batman. (And) The Crow.

Series: Marvel’s Cinematic Universe

Classic Animated: Batman the animated series

Modern Animated: Harley Quinn

Girl Power: Wonder Woman. (and) Birds of Prey.

Something Different: Deadpool

Younger Audiences/Nostalgia: Teen Titans (animated)

Harry Potter

Favorite Film: Idk. Can’t choose honestly.

Least favorite character portrayal: .. Ginny Weasley?

Someone you loved: (so many..) McGonagall

Someone you loved hating: Bellatrix LeStrange

Someone you just hate: Dolores Umbridge

First time you cried: I cried for Sirius and Remus in Prisoner of Azkaban.

First time you jumped: Snakes or Basilisk. Chamber of Secrets. (I think I was 12?)

Someone who was so spot in acting on you can’t see them as anyone else now: Luna Lovegood

Someone who was so good even if the look wasn’t perfect: Emma Granger as Hermione OR Alan Rickman as Severus Snape.

Someone who’s injury hit you harder than the books: Colin Creevy.

Someone who’s death hit you harder than in the books: None. They hit but not as much as the books.

A scene you found just breathtakingly pretty: Christmas at Hogwarts

A scene you found creepy (even when you knew it was coming): Nagini uses a corpse as a mask.

For any Potter heads. Some things that bothered you about the Harry Potter films:

- Where is Charlie Weasley?

- Where is Peeves?

- Where are Neville’s parents?

- The green/blue/brown eye thing. (This is not against Radcliffe. Some special effects could have fixed this easily)

- HarrY DiD YOu PuT YoUR NaMe IN tHe GoBlET of FIRE?! 🔥

- In Sorcerers Stone, Why did you change the snake at the zoos breed??

- “Voldemort” versus “Voldemor”. The silent t.

- Hermione’s. Yule. Ball. Dress. Color. Blue. Not pink. She specifically changed the color.

- Fluffy. Hagrid’s adorable Cerberus was originally bought from a Greek man. Why change it to Irish? I like Ireland but it was a Greek man due to where Cerberus’s initially came from right???

- Harry’s first Weasley sweater color

- Why does Harry only see his parents in the Mirror of Eirsed? Where’s the rest of the family?

- The Underage magic rules aren’t well explained in the movies making the 3rd year summons even more bonkers sounding

- The Patil Twins Yule Ball Outfits. They could have been soooo beautiful. Like this is the Yule Ball! The Twins would have (in my opinion) much more elaborate traditional Indian styled dress robes?? Idk.

- Love Movie Hermione! But some moments take away from Ron. Like when Ron defended her in the Chamber of Secrets. Hermione didn’t know what the slur “Mudblood” meant in the books. Ron had to explain it.

- Dobby needed more screen time. Some stuff Dobby did went to Neville because so many Neville scenes were cut.

- Where’s all the secrecy from the books when communicating with Sirius- “Snuffles”? Something Harry’s godfather insisted on to keep him safe.

- Snape’s title of “The half-blood Prince” is not explained. Neither is it made clear that Severus was also abused horribly at home throughout his childhood. Also that like Harry Dumbledore did nothing to help Severus when he was a student. (Or maybe Tom Riddle when he grew up in an orphanage. I’m sensing a pattern)

- Dumbledore should have still spelled Harry during Dumbledore death scene. No way would Harry just stand there if given the choice.

- Ron was not quite as ‘dumb’ in the books and a lot of his funny moments were cut from the movie. Which makes his jealousy moments all the more unbecoming. He also comes off a bit more arrogant in the movies. (This is not against R Grint. Who is awesome) The movies gave Ron the short end of the stick.

- Weasley/Malfoy Fued. Who else wanted to see Arthur and Lucius have a fist fight in a bookstore? Exactly.

- Albus Dumbledore isn’t all Sunshine and Daisys. He does some really messed up stuff yet no one ever seems to question this.

- Remus was the last Marauder. Yet his and his wife, Tonk’s, deaths are barley acknowledged.

- Also Teddy. Harry’s Godson.

- Harry’s and Ginnys relationship is not built on. It’s just there. Ugh. Heck Movie Ginny isn’t that great. You don’t know much about her except: She’s the only girl in Ron’s family. She’s the youngest Weasley. She’s obsessed with Harry. She’s a good Quidditch player. She has a temper. She was possessed by Riddle’s Dairy when she was eleven. She’s obsessed with Harry.

- Draco is essentially Harry’s antithesis. Where is he in some critical scenes in the movies?

- Where’s the Luna love???? Harry’s pretty rude to her in some scenes.

- There is no S.P.E.W. And Hermione’s more ruthless side is gone.

- The guys hair in The Goblet of Fire. Get a hair cut. Please.

- Some of Molly’s less than Stellar Moments. (Ex. When she believed rumors about Hermione and so treated he coldly. How horrible she was to Fleur. Ect)

- Fleur. Fleur and Bill still get married but the objections to the wedding aren’t as presented in the movies. Not is Molly’s and Ginny’s extreme dislike of Fleur. Or when Arthur apologizes to Fleur. Or really any of Fleurs best moments. The whole courting process is skipped.

- House Elves. The House Elves of Hogwarts.

- Percy Weasley. The ‘betrayal’. The returned Weasley sweater. Him turning to protect his family and fight for Hogwarts at the last minute. All gone. Which involves being forgiven by the Weasley Twins not an hour before Fred dies.

- The connection of the Black sisters. Specifically Adromeda - mother of Tonks. Who is Sirius cousin. Who married Remus Lupin. Tonks and Remus the parents of Teddy.

- Dean Thomas is pretty much gone.

- Rita Skeeter. Illegal Animagus. Hermione kept her in a jar.

- The movies didn’t allow Radcliffe to be sassy and sarcastic enough. Harry Potter is one of the sassiest boys to ever walk through the halls of Hogwarts!

- Harry didn’t fix his wand in the last movie.

- The history of the Marauders.

- The history explaining why Snape could never be comfortable around and trust Remus Lupin.

#disney #challenge #film #movie #mcu #Batman #2021 #Harry Potter

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aenariasbookshelf · 4 years

Text

So, you wanted a story about how Steve and Darcy adopted a cat...

Well, here you go, as requested (you delightful people know who you are ;). Hot off the presses and definitely not beta read. Yes, this is in the same verse as the quarantine ficlets, though I imagine it takes place a few months before the quarantine actually hits. I also envision all of the quarantine stories taking place in the same universe as these stories, though there’s no need to read them to understand what’s going on in these ficlets (that said, I would love it if you read them anyway).

On with the fic! And with the cats.

Steve can easily and confidently say that he likes being at Darcy’s apartment far more than he likes staying on the Avengers compound. Yes, he’s got his rooms there, especially on those late nights when he gets back from a mission and can barely take the short steps from the hangar to his bed, but Darcy’s place feels far more like home than any place he’s lived for the longest time. The cozy attic apartment she’s adopted as her own is in a small, upstate hamlet about twenty minutes away from the compound, close enough for work and emergencies, but just far enough away that he feels like he can actually separate himself from the job for a time and relax with his girl.

And really, more and more of his belongings have been migrating over there lately anyway, slipping in neatly and nicely with Darcy’s belongings, and if that’s not a sign…

That cozy apartment is where Steve is heading this night, gunning his motorcycle along the roads just a little bit faster because the sky is a heavy grey, about to start downpouring any minute, and the last thing he wants is to get stuck on the roads in the rain. He manages to make it all the way to the tiny, gravel parking lot behind Darcy’s building before the storm breaks and soaks him through near instantly. He swears under his breath, knowing that his clothes are a write-off at this point, but at least he’s home. The bike gets propped against the back wall of the building and a tarp dropped over it. With a couple of clicked buttons Steve sets the security on the bike, and all but runs for the door.

A small noise by the garbage bins stops him, however. It’s small, frail, barely heard over the rain, but his ears are sensitive enough to make out the cries. Some sort of animal, Steve realizes, and he’s enough of a soft touch to try and help it out. He may regret it depending on what type of animal it is, but he’s pretty sure he’s immune to rabies thanks to the serum. Hopefully.

The cries stop coming, but Steve pokes his head behind the garbage bins anyway. It’s hard to make out in the low light, but huddling between the bins and the house walls is a sodden lump of multicolored fur, shivering hard. He thinks it’s a cat, but he’s got to be careful otherwise he’s certain she’ll dart off. He? Well, he’ll figure it out once he gets her inside. Cats can be grabbed by the scruff, he thinks, like mother cats usually do, right?

Well, no place out but through.

Steve takes a deep breath, blinks some cold rain out of his eyes, and reaches out as quickly as he can to grab the cat and bring it close. By some miracle he’s quicker than the cat is, pulling her sturdy body towards him so he can snuggle it into his jacket, away from the rain. There’s definitely some claws digging into his stomach now, yes, and the cat’s wriggling all over the place, but at least he can get them both inside and dried off.

When he gets inside he’s greeted by Darcy, who then pauses in her tracks to take in the sight in front of her. Her eyes trail all over him, from his dripping hair to his shoes leaving puddles on the rug, to the cat head wiggling its way out of his jacket to give an angry howl to the world.

“I see we have company,” Darcy grins.

“It was hiding behind the garbage cans outside.” Lightning flashes through the windows, as if to emphasize the circumstances in which the cat has made itself known to them. “I couldn’t leave it outside in this.”

“You’re adorable. And I agree, no one should be out there right now. One second.” Darcy all but runs to the bathroom, returning with a couple of thick towels. One towel gets draped over Steve’s neck, and the other?

She moves in front of Steve, the towel held out like a shield in front of her. “Okay, you lower the zipper slowly, and I’ll hopefully get a hold of her before she runs and hides under the bed and we don’t see her for a week.”

“You’ve had cats before?”

“My neighbors did, growing up. I got some good cuddle time out of it.”

It’s another downright task, trying to coordinate the jacket with the towel to try and guide the cat right into Darcy’s arms, but somehow they manage to do it with a minimum of damage. “Hello, you,” Darcy all but croons to the cat, bundling her close and keeping all four paws tucked firmly in the towel. “I hate to tell you this, but I think you need a bath.”

Steve looks down at his dripping self, frowning as he breathes deep. “I didn’t think I got that dirty trying to get her out of there.”

“I’m talking to the cat,” Darcy fires back. She gives him a wink, saying, “you could probably stand to dry off a bit though, even though I think we’ll just get soaked through after bath-time.”

“I...will go dry off then.”

Darcy stretches up to give him a quick peck on the lips, still snuggling the cat close as she then turns to head towards the kitchen. “Oh, and bring band-aids when you get back; we’re going to need them.”

**********

An hour and a half, the better part of a bottle of Dawn dish soap, three band-aids, two clothes changes, and one very grumpy cat later, Steve is spread out on the bed, the cat perched on his stomach and kneading away at him. Darcy’s stretched out along his side, careful fingers carding through the cat’s now clean and tangle-free fur. “I think she likes you,” Darcy says. They both watch as the cat’s kneading slows down and she circles once, pillowing her head on her paws and eyes falling shut.

“We probably can’t keep her,” Steve murmurs. He strokes the cat’s head gently, watching her whiskers twitch and eyes flicker open to give him a glare.

“I don’t see why we couldn’t,” Darcy replies. “She can stay here. I’m pretty sure the landlord won’t have a problem with us having a cat.” Steve turns to her, watching as her face softens and she runs her fingers over the multicolored fur once more. “And it’ll be nice to have a furry face to come home to on those days when you’re halfway around the world.”

Steve wants to make some quippy, lighthearted statement in response to that, but he can’t. He understands the sentiment all too well. (It’s hard for him to admit that, in general, he wants to go out on missions less and less these days, but that’s a deep dive into his psyche that he’s in no mood to deal with those thoughts tonight.) So instead, he twists carefully so as not to dislodge the cat, and presses a warm, lingering kiss to Darcy’s forehead.

**********

Of course, the cat ends up staying. A trip to the vet for an exam and a thorough flea dip also reveals she’s about a year old, most likely has some sort of Maine Coon somewhere in her background due to the size of those paws, and is absolutely not microchipped.

With a little furry face that sweet, how can they not bring her home?

“You need a name.” Steve’s on the floor with the cat, watching indulgently as she bats around the packaging from all of the new supplies they picked up for her. Darcy sits down a little ways away, waving around one of those soft toys that’s stuffed to the brim with catnip. The nip is more than enough to get the cat’s attention, because she spins in place and crouches low, eyes glued to the toy. She slinks forward a few steps and then pounces, nipping the toy out of Darcy’s hands and dashing a few feet away to shake the living daylights out of the toy. “That was surprisingly graceful,” Steve says.

As if she could understand him, the cat gives Steve a glare that seems to say, ‘you have the gall to doubt me?’ “Very regal,” Steve fires back at the cat, who clearly cannot understand him and proceeds to bunny kick the toy into submission.

“Something regal,” Darcy muses. She watches the cat for another minute, head tilted to the side, deep in thought. “How about Juno? Queen of the gods. A regal name for a regal cat?”

And so, Juno she becomes.

(of course I had to give this cat a Roman goddess name in honor of my own Roman goddess cat. How could I not?)

#darcy x steve #shieldshock #Darcy Lewis #Steve Rogers #ficlet #fic #my fic #quarantine ficlets #because cats

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until-we-fall-in-love · 4 years

Text

creature-song

Pairings: Wanda Maximoff x Reader, Bucky Barnes x Reader, light Steve Rogers x Reader, light Bucky Barnes x Steve Rogers, light Wanda Maximoff x Bucky Barnes

Summary: You should turn away. But you let it happen, let it happen because some dark, most trapped part of you wants to. A piece of you that you have chained like an animal, a mongrel bitch, and tried to let die. It paces inside you now, hungry and waiting and ready.

1600s America AU, Witch!AU, Possesed!Bucky, Gothic, Horror

Warnings: Smut, gore, violence, demons, possession, sacrilegious themes. This is 18+ as most of my works are.

If you are under 18 you should not be reading this!

A/N: hello guys!! this is a little late but its for @barnesrogersvstheworld writing AYAOTDchallenge!! it was supposed to be for halloween, but i’ve been insanely busy and i think November is spookier anyways because it’s when things truly die and whither away and the cold comes on lol. this is a whole mess, but i’ve been heavily inspired about witches and possession because of a class im currently taking! it got long so i’ll split it into two parts! enjoy and pls let me know what you think!!

my prompt was: the task of navigating darkness by candlelight

***

1692, Massachusetts

The day is filled with fog and smoke, a bleak grayness that shrouds all in it’s gloominess. The whole town seems washed out, everyone’s faces grey and slack. The crops are dying, growing brown and muted in color, fading away into death and nothingness. Your world seems covered in death recently, in the thick, heavy, inescapable blanket of it.

There’s been another two murders. People torn apart, their bodies lie in the main road of town for all to see and gawk and pray over.

Their blood is the brightest color you have seen in all of November. Saturated and sticky, sliding from them like the juice of berries in high summer, like the color the leaves had been before they’d all fallen away, like poppies and roses. Their skulls are bashed inward, as if made of clay, the sludge of them leaking through as flies buzz, buzz, buzz around them. As if they weren’t people once, but always food for insect, for the earth. Their limbs are twisted at strange, rag doll angles, and you think there was nothing but softness inside of them. No bone, there couldn’t have been with the way they lay there, all twisted and slack.

Their eyes are hollow. Open. Their mouths agape as bugs skitter and crawl and press outward in their feast of flesh.

There’s moaning in the streets, howling cries of a mother or a sister or a wife. It’s horrific, if you dig into the pit of yourself, but it’s the fourth pair of bodies that have been found dead in recent weeks. It almost isn’t shocking anymore.

Wanda presses closer to your side, your dearest friend, her body warm and soft. Flushed with color and light, the cold nipping at her cheeks, her nose. The wind lifts her auburn hair from her cheeks, her lashes fluttering in the breeze. She catches your hand with one of her own, tangling your fingers together. Her palm fits yours easily and swiftly, as if it’s where she belongs, as if it’s where you belong, too.

“At least he’ll stop breathing down your neck about an engagement.” Wanda says quietly, her lips brushing the shell of your ear. She is warm and lulling in the cold autumn air that seems to be pushing through your wool dress, your scarf. Trying to worm it’s way beneath and make a home of your body.

Perhaps you will never be warm again, if the cold decides to settle deep into your bones.

“What?” You ask, blinking away from the bodies, from your murky thoughts.

“Mr. Fowler.” Wanda murmurs, nodding to one of the bodies, “He always upset you, he always pressured you for an engagement.”

You glance towards the bodies once more, find the shape of them, the faces so crudely misshapen now, but you finally catch the lines of his features. The dark hair, short and balding. As if you finally see the full picture.

Oh. It’s Mr. Fowler, then. And Mr. Adams rotting beside him.

“Yes,” You say quietly, weary of the spark in Wanda’s eyes, the glimmer that ensnares you, “I suppose so.”

Wanda is all you have in recent years, another orphaned girl your village does not wish to worry or feed. So you worry and feed each other. You both claim to be trying to find husbands, trying to marry off into another household. Truthfully, though, neither of you have ever searched. You’re content to live together, secluded, removed from all of the prying eyes of your small, imposing world. You wish to go home with her now, in fact, want to curl up beside a fire and lean into her side until your eyes grow heavy and soft. You want her nimble fingers carding through your hair, her touch upon your neck--

A broad hand comes down upon your shoulder then and you jump, almost let out a yelp in surprise. You whirl around to face them, tilting your face up to find Steve Rogers looking down upon you. The sculpted lines of his face, the shocking blue eyes, the flush to his pale cheeks. He has always looked like a tragic hero to you; a Hercules, Perseus, noble and damned and fighting against all odds.

Beside him, Bucky stands broad and pale faced. He won’t look at the bodies. There are deep, darkened blossoms beneath his eyes. It makes his already depthless and haunted eyes look worse, blackened out, charcoal blue. He crosses his arms across his great, wide chest; one of them the off-beat shine of metal, iron and leather creaking with the movement. Like a piece of armor, the leather strap reaching up to his shoulder, so that if he moves it, it may move the forearm of his appendage. The fingers lay motionless, cold and gleaming. Such an odd, strange invention to the rest of the town; they fear him because of it. But he has only ever helped you and Wanda, the way Steve has kept a watchful eye on the pair of you.

If Steve looks like a Greek hero to you, you think Bucky looks like a Shakespearean one; damned because of his own choices, falling from grace; A Hamlet, Macbeth.

“You shouldn’t watch this,” Steve murmurs to you two, already turning you from the gore and bloodshed with his warm hand, wishing the flesh of him would sink into you and flush you with heat, “Come on,” He then urges you gently, “Buck and I will help you with some morning chores.”

He’s always been so giving, overly helpful, a twinge protective over the pair of you. Loyal, terribly so, as he stands beside Bucky, the pariah of town.

And you let him guide you away, your fingers still woven tightly with Wanda’s, who still peaks over her shoulder at the seeping crimson of flesh and blood and body, as if they were petals of flowers to admire than corpses to rot. Her eyes glitter strangely when she turns back to you.

Bucky follows like a shadow, head hung low.

***

The crack, snap of wood being split into two is felt in your chest, the steady motion and sound falling into tune with every other beat of your heart. Bucky lifts the axe high with one arm, before bringing it down sharply upon the wood. It splits easily, a crack of lightning, of metal as it falls apart then.

You feed the few hens that you and Wanda share, spreading feed onto the ground as they cluck and scurry around you.

Steve helps Wanda fix the barn door, their figures blurry and grey in the fog and bleakness.

You gaze at Bucky, the shadows that seem to cling to him.

“You look tired, Mr. Barnes.” You speak up, tossing the rest of the feed to the chickens who scurry after it. You leave their pen, the gate creaking as you step nearer to him. The axe falls with strength and brutality, bursts the wood in half.

“I haven’t been sleeping well.” He grunts, tossing the wood aside. He sets another piece upon the block, lifts his axe high. You can see the movement of muscle, the strength and cutting edge of them.

“No?” You ask, curling your fingers into your sleeves; you’re so cold still, stiff and frigid and snow hasn’t even touched the ground yet. You shiver, you think it will be an awful and long winter. “Why not?”

The axe smashes down upon the wood.

He lets out a breath, shakes his head, the dark locks of his hair brushing his cheeks which are deeply flushed from the cold, from the exertion. He looks handsome, you think, with the peak of his chest beneath his long shirt.

“I’ve been having strange dreams recently.” He then admits with the soft gruffness of his voice, eyes flickering to you.

You stand idly, know that idleness is a sin; you should be working. Working, busy hands can never sin. But you step towards him and your eyes watch the movement of his chest and torso, wonder what he looks like bare--

“What kind of dreams?” You ask, voice gone soft as you peer at him.

He straightens up a moment to his full height, now turning his eyes on you, “Curious little thing, aren’t you?” He half scolds you, and you feel small but suddenly bold. There’s a catch in his eyes, a gleaming not dissimilar to Wanda’s. It’s haunting, exhilarating, it makes you take another few steps closer as if drawn to him by an unnatural force. And then he answers, “They’re nightmares. Horrible dreams.”

“Of what?”

His lips twist into a ghost of a smile and he shakes his head, “They’re not for a girl’s ears.”

“I’m not a girl,” You counter, “I haven’t been for many moons.”

His eyes flash to you, at the rather crude reference of the blood that spills from you monthly. He is not appalled, he is not shocked or scandalized, instead he peers deeper into you. As if he can see the twisting of your innards, all of the blood that might spill from you the way it had from Mr. Fowler. Would you paint November in the bright flare of red, too? Bring color to this washed out world.

“I dream I slip from my body.” He says and his eyes grow glassy, far-off. You near him as he continues, “Or that I no longer control myself.” His breath stutters and you are fully ensnared in him now, “And I do monstrous deeds.”

“Of what?” You breathe, looking up into his face, so haunted and hollow and frightened.

His lip trembles, and he exhales;

“I knew they would be dead this morning.”

“Mr. Barnes,” You gasp and his eyes suddenly snap to you, wholly black and wide, and you are so startled that you try to lurch back.

But he grabs you with speed and strength, and cold metal wraps around your wrist, around the fluttering, lively pulse beneath your thin skin. A moth’s wings pinned, a rabbit in a snare. When he speaks, it is strange and spellbinding, “I know you hated Mr. Fowler.” He says through a wall of his white, white teeth.

You look down at the metal hand that seems to have come to life, yelp at the way the unnatural fingers tighten upon you, squeezing, as if they are his very limb. As if it is flesh and bone, a steel skeleton come to life.

“I have peered into your soul, temptress, and I know you thought his blood was pretty.” He snarls low and guttural, his eyes digging into you like a curved, arching dagger.

Wildly, your eyes fly over his face, now twisted into such misery and rage. You try to pull your wrist from his metal grasp, your face flushing with color from exertion. Your eyes glitter with sudden tears, the cold air pricking at them. “Mr. Barnes--” You gasp, voice catching, breath curling into the air between you two.

All he does is pull you forward, jerking you into the strong expanse of his chest as he lifts your wrist. “I know your thoughts are rotting.” He rumbles, and the sound vibrates through him and down into the marrow of your bones “You want more than this. Your heart longs for what it shouldn’t.”

“Bucky, you’re hurting me.” You whimper, trying to twist and squirm but it's useless against the strength of him.

“Am I?” He hisses, voice like insects swarming, “I know what you want, little one.” He then croons so lowly that it slithers down into you like a serpent, coils into the darkest, most wretched parts of you. Sinks down into your core to unfurl in a sudden burst of heat--

And with the way he looks at you; as if you are to be devoured, as if you are to be torn apart by him or worshiped on an unholy altar. Your heart beats an unsteady, thunderous rhythm in the cavity of your chest.

It echoes inside of you, demanding of you something you don’t know how to feed.

His body is warm against yours, unnaturally so, save for the frigid hand constricting around the delicate skin of your wrist. You think he’ll bruise you, you think he’ll mark you for all to see and you’ll carry his brand. His eyes are as dark as a starless sky, blown out black as coal, as black as the he goat in the barn, as the smoke of hellfire.

“Bucky!” Steve shouts suddenly, and the two of you lurch away as if something has forced you apart. You cradle your wrist, try to rub the ache away, your heart still ricocheting around inside of you, as if it very well might escape entirely.

Bucky blinks in horror, his eyes returning to the gentle midnight blue that you know so dearly. He stumbles back, his metal arm returning inanimate by his side. If it weren’t for the frightened, wild look in his face, you’d think it would’ve never happened at all.

“I need your help for a moment!” Steve yells, voice echoing.

A flock of black birds burst into the shapeless, endless, grey sky at the loud noise. You jump at their sudden explosion of flight. They squawk and screech, wings flapping like your heart beating.

Whatever had filled Bucky has fled now and his eyes are clear and shining, his cheeks flushed again, no unnatural darkness tracing the edges of his features. You watch him warily, your mind suddenly feverish with what he’d said to you, with the searing touch that now seems to scorch your skin.

I knew they would be dead this morning.

You should tell someone; Steve, Wanda, a minister. You should flee.

But all you say is, “Go,” And you nod your head towards Steve and Wanda, “I will light a fire to warm you after.”

He looks at you warily, as if he might apologize or thank you or question you; there’s such confusion in his eyes. He is lost, swimming in that black sea. What did I do? He asks silently, pleads with you, what have I done?

You look away, unwilling to answer. He moves on cautiously, towards Steve and Wanda in the distance. You begin to make a fire as if all is normal, and all you can think about is how you are no longer shivering with cold.

As if an ember has sparked, been cradled to a small flame in the cavernous depths of your soul.

***

Some days later, Wanda wakes you at an odd hour of the night, moonlight spilling in through the small window of your shared bedroom. It fills the room with reaching shadows and cutting, silver light. You’d been sleeping soundly, curled onto your side when you are roused by small, seeking hands.

You turn, eyes fluttering, a blurry shape in front of you. You make out Wanda’s impish features, the shadow of her slender figure. And her eyes--

Oh, her eyes.

They’re glowing strangely, fever bright and glittering like rubies in the night. She sinks upon you, her body sliding so she straddles your hips, laying herself along you. You can feel the soft lines of her; her chest to yours, the heat of her nose and lips upon your neck and shoulder.

“Wanda,” You exhale, twisting, a little confused. Her fingertips are hot, like little embers, dancing along bare skin.

“Hush, my heart.” She shushes, “My little shrike.” She cooes, “My moon and stars.” Her nose and lips brush your cheek, her searching hands dipping underneath the thin, cotton nightgown that wraps around your body.

“Wanda,” You gasp as her lips settle into a kiss upon the flamed skin of your cheek. “What are you doing?”

She pulls back so that you may see her in all her nightshade glory, her hair sliding along her bare shoulders, her nightgown down, spilling around her arms so the tops of her breasts are revealed. She looks almost wild-eyed, strange and beautiful and seductive in the night. Her eyes swim before you, blood red and glittering and enchanting. There’s something heady and intoxicating about her, something you want to taste, that you want to sink into and drown in.

“Giving you what you want,” She says on a simple sigh, just as her fingers find the curve of your breast, little dancing flames that have you shutter and arch. She tilts her head with wide, bright eyes; there’s a sweet, coy smile playing at her lips, her lashes fluttering like moth’s wings, as she asks too innocently, her voice gone high and soft and beguiling;

“Isn’t this what you want, little one?”

Her clever fingers find the peak, make you squirm, make heat flood through you. She draws back the covers with her other hand to find your bare leg, your bare thigh, sliding up to your bare--

“Wanda!” You jolt, suddenly shy, trying to sit up but she forces you down.

She grins wickedly, “Don’t hide from me.” And her nimble fingers stroke between your legs where you’ve become slippery and warm and silky. You feel flushed and heady, hypnotized by her. She sighs against you, settles deeper into your body like a corpse sinking into a grave, pushing her finger inside to make you gasp aloud. To claim you, to touch you in a way that no hand has ever touched before.

“This isn’t new to you, though, is it?” She breathes, almost hisses, “I know because I hear you some nights.” Her fingers twist and a moan tumbles out of your lips, and she laughs, bright and warm, “Just like that, dearest.”

You squirm, and slowly lose your inhibitions with every push and pull of her fingers, every glide of her. Had you not dreamed of this? Had you not wondered with a sinful mind what it might be like to feel her like this, to taste and be tasted by her? Had you not wondered what heaven or hell might have felt like? She’s damnation, sweet salvation; something so visceral and entangled within the pits of you, something profound and holy.

The world falls away so that it is only you two and the moon, the pleasure she gives and torments you with. The town slips away, the rules, the Bible, your Holy God all dissipates like fog until you are only born of this warmth and vicious sweetness. She keeps you teetering on an edge, cruel mistress of night that she is. She trembles with you on a new beginning, baptized between your thighs, between hers. She lets you touch and explore the softness of her body with curious and hungry hands, no longer idle.

She brands you with lips and teeth and tongue, makes you wild and insatiable. Her fingers wrap around your tender throat as she guides you towards another sharp and jagged edge.

Her cheeks glow against yours, a face of fire and heat, her breaths tumultuous and warm against your shoulder. “You’re mine,” She seems to half-sob, her little hand tightening upon your throat as if to claim you, “Mine. I live in you, and you have possessed me so thoroughly I think I could die.”

A broken moan from you, a gasp.

“Say it,” She then hisses through her teeth, “Say you’re mine.”

You whimper, push your hips into her hands as if she has bewitched you, taken hold of your very soul. The words fall from your kiss stung and abused lips, eager and knowing it to be true, “I’m yours, Wanda, I’m yours--”

And then she claims you with lips, with body and soul, forces you into oblivion. She laughs with delight against your mouth, drinks up your cries and buries herself into the crooks and corners of your body. Of your very being.

She lays with you beneath the moonlight, a new strange power surges through her, a brightness that cannot be dimmed. You think she might be a devil, a witch, a creature of the night with her lullaby voice and twilight kiss. You think she is damned and maybe you are, too.

You think she has claimed you and, as you tighten yourself around her body, your nails digging into her soft flesh, you think that you have claimed her, too.

***

Wanda has never looked brighter, more flushed with life and vitality. She is radiant, even in all the grayness of devouring and lonesome autumn, when winter is on it’s tails. The town is thoroughly terrified and sick with horror as another two bodies arise. They’re just as the others, a bright mess of crimson and maroon and sludge.

Steve and Bucky stay near you and Wanda, watch over you both closely. Bucky is changed, too, something in him has been bent and broken and fractured. You think he’s bleeding internally, you think there is something in him that needs to be taken out.

Or maybe it doesn’t. His smiles are more hooked, shadowed, strange and tempting. You wonder what his teeth would feel like against your neck-- if he would taste like Wanda, if he’d touch you like her, too.

You’ve never touched a man before. You’ve never been touched by one, either.

Wanda and Bucky are strange together, you think. And you grow jealous when you see her fluttering her lashes at him and cooing. You don’t know who you’re more jealous of, which one of them you want to claw and tear apart with viciousness, with love and heat and something demented.

Steve notices this new change, too, and he tries to console you when you pout. You think he would make a good husband if a husband was something you were interested in. So valiant and golden, too polished for your unclean hands.

But husbands are so base, so simple. Wanda has opened your mind to something higher, something more enchanting and powerful.

And in the middle of the nights, when it is only you and her, she promises to give you more. She promises to guide you further into such wonder that she has discovered. Then she devours you and makes you tremble and shake with her might and love.

She grows stronger with each day; odd happenings following her. She grows angry and a glass may shatter. A neighbor who glares at you suddenly loses two of his cows. Someone calls Bucky an abomination and suddenly they are struck ill.

When she returns to you, while you still pout with Steve, still mad over her attention to Bucky, she smiles brightly. She wraps her arms around your shoulders and kisses your cheek, “Tonight is the night, my stars.” And then she nuzzles at your jaw, amorous and warm, “Tonight is the night that I give you all the power I have been harboring.”

She takes your hands in hers, kisses the inside of your wrist, “Tonight you become like me, in eternal darkness.”

Her teeth nick your wrist playfully and she looks at you with burning, hooded eyes. You think if she could, she’d lay you out on the dirt and take you right there. Hitch up your skirts and grind her hips against yours until you were both desperate and wild for release.

But Steve is there, and Bucky, too.

You wish she would, still.

She laughs and saunters away as if she knows your thoughts. The wind howls and bays, as if it knows, too.

***

She dresses you that night in a thin, white gown. You whine that you’ll freeze to death, but she shushes you with burning lips. She promises not, promises that you will never feel cold again after tonight.

She leads you barefoot and shivering out to the forest by the dim, flickering light of a candle. It burns in her hand, wax dripping and sliding the way honey does in the summer. You long for summer suddenly, for the warmth and sea of green. The candle casts little, dancing shadows that seem to lurk and follow you both.

She leads you by hand, guides you into the thick of the forest where the wolves howl and the foxes yip and the coyotes yowl. The owl cooes, eyes peering at you in the darkness. You are lead to a clearing, and the small, fluttering candle that you’ve used to navigate illuminates the shape of a man.

Large and muscled, broad shouldered and lonesome in the woods.

“Don’t be scared,” Wanda coos, “Go to him.”

Warily, you ease past her, past the flickering, gold light of the candle. And even in the darkness, you recognize his face, the unnatural metal arm--

Bucky stands bare from the waist up and you flush at his nudity, at the shape of a man. Hadn’t you wondered about his chest beneath his clothes? About his abdomen? Your eyes flicker lower and you blink, quickly avert your eyes as your blush grows deeper. His body is far different than Wanda’s.

“Mr. Barnes,” You breathe, and Wanda comes to your side, lifting the candle up to illuminate his handsome and shadowed face.

His eyes are purely black, inky, the way they’d been that day not so long ago, when he’d seized you so tightly. He looks different, cutting and jagged.

“Somewhat.” Wanda answers you with a smile. “He is changed, though.”

“Possessed,” You gasp, the thought striking you deeply and suddenly. Like a blow to your chest, you realize you gaze upon a demon.

His eyes snap to you,“Hello, temptress.” He says in a voice that is his and not his all at once.

“Are you afraid?” Wanda purrs and you shudder at her voice, at the cold that pricks your skin, at the hungry, hollow look in Bucky’s face. The forest seems alive and breathing, shuddering with you, terrified and expectant of what it is to transpire.

The moon is full, hanging and heavy and open mouthed in a horrified scream against the sea of blackness.

“Should I be?” You ask quietly, a whisper of the wind, and Wanda’s eyes glitter excitedly. Her eyes flash red, warming and shimmering like embers.

Wanda sets the candle aside, comes to your back. She slides her fingers beneath your nightgown, begins to ease it down past your shoulders. You should protest, you should force her to stop, shield yourself from the gaze of the man in front of you. From the demon in front of you. But you let it happen, let it happen because some dark, most trapped part of you wants to. A piece of you that you have chained like an animal, a mongrel bitch, and tried to let die. It paces inside you now, hungry and waiting and ready.

It runs its teeth along the tender, pink inner flesh of you. It’s creature-song sings to you now, a siren to surrender to.

So you stand in the darkness, the guttering flame of the candle upon you, bare and shivering in front of evil.

And evil lies you on the cold, unforgiving ground. Wanda is there beside you, stroking your face and your hair with warm, gentle fingers. More gentle than she has ever been with you, as if she can hear the fearful, pounding of your heart caught between your shuddering ribs. You’re suddenly new to touch, virginal and trembling, a new flower to be opened.

The weight of Bucky settles upon you, his body unnaturally warm and burning, his broad shoulders wide upon you. His lips and nose nuzzle your jaw, your neck, also with surprising care. You shift your legs, open them tentatively to fit his waist in the cradle of your hips and—

You can feel him there, the hard line of him and you flush, suddenly squeak.

“Don’t be afraid, little one.” He rumbles, and his voice sounds clearer, as if the demon doesn’t speak for him any longer, but only the midnight timber of Bucky’s sweet voice. He lifts his head and only the slate, blue eyes of him gaze down at you. “I’ll be gentle,” He promises, rubbing his bearded cheek to yours; so rough compared to Wanda’s smooth one.

“I know this is what you wanted.” Wanda says softly, her lips at your ear, tucking your hair from your face. “I know how you gaze at him.”

The first touch of Bucky’s hands are rough and make you jolt; one calloused and scarred and another cold and metal. They slide along the dips and curves of you, firm and gentle. You squirm slightly, base and animal upon the ground.

“I’ll make you mine,” He murmurs, nosing at your neck, his teeth skimming lightly there. “My bride of darkness, queen of beasts.” His voice dips now into that lowly, snaking one of a demon, “I’ve been waiting for you for so long, my love.”

His hips roll, a push against yours that have you clinging to his large frame. He is so much bigger than what you know, so overpowering. Wanda ravishes you but she is slight and nimble. You make a noise of surprise, a whimper, a squeak.

“Relax,” He coos darkly, his flesh hand sliding up your bare legs. “You’re hurting here, aren’t you? Aching in the pit of you.” And his warm, rough fingers slide against you; revealing that, despite your fear, you’ve become molten and slick. You can feel his hooked grin, “Oh, little queen, and how you’ve longed for me, too.”

He strokes until you are pliant beneath him, urging you on, Wanda pressing kisses to your cheeks and neck, collar bones and shoulders. You shudder beneath him, let something inside of you curl and coil, like a serpent, like the tightening of a rope, pulled to its full length, creaking and swaying as everything grows that much tighter.

“You were born for me,” Bucky’s rumbling voice is in your ears, against your throat laid bare for him, his voice seems to echo in the darkest pieces of your mind and heart. “Born for this.” He sighs, leaning heavier into you before he suddenly pushes down the length of your body.

He settles between your legs, spreading them wide with his shoulders. Pearl moonlight, silver and opal fall across his features like pale silk that you have only ever dreamed about. In this light, he could’ve been an angel, a creature made of softness and delicacies, his black eyes turning up to find you and stuttering back into lovely blue.

He bows his head like you could be holy, like you are to be prayed to. His hair tickles the bare skin of your thighs, his fingers prodding gently and then his mouth presses to where you’re most sensitive.

You arch like a bow off the ground at the first touch and Wanda is there to comfort you. She eases you up slightly, let’s your back lay against the soft warmth of her chest and strokes your face and neck, down to your breasts.

She grasps your hands when you pull and twist at him so that you lay helpless in her arms, helpless to the too-hot glide of his mouth against you. The forest is silent save for your cries, you are the wolf that howls, the crying fox, the whining coyote. You let go, let them consume you until you don’t recognize yourself. Until your nails feel sharp and your heart feels so full it could burst from all the aching.

“Please,” You whimper, your hips pushing towards his lips in desperation, “Please, I can’t take this any longer!”

He laughs darkly against the slick pink flesh of you, “Didn’t their God teach you patience, darkling?”

And he waits until you’re nothing but an animal for him, until your head is spinning and there are tears streaming down your heated cheeks. Not until you dig nails into Wanda’s hands so deeply that you have broken skin and she hisses through her teeth. He gives you no release, cruel as he is, and eventually slides up along your body once more.

He grasps Wanda by the back of the neck and pulls her sharply to his shining lips. She moans, the sound going straight down into the depths of you.

“My loyal servant,” He tells her, his eyes once more black as a raven, shining under the flash of silver moonshine. “You brought her to me.” He murmurs reverently and she looks up at him adoringly, her wide eyes that flare deeply red and maroon are glittering like gemstones in a cave.

“Make her ours.” Wanda then breathes, and he smiles all sharp and gutting.

He grasps your hips with metal and flesh, draws them closer and slides you towards him. Your head falls to Wanda’s abdomen, her lap. Her fingers brush your wet cheeks and you mewl, twist into her touch. He kneels before you, worshiping, and opens his trousers.

You don’t have time to think because you can feel him between your legs now. He brushes the hard length of him along where you’re most sensitive and desperate. You feel empty suddenly, knowing that he will fill you, and suddenly tentative.

He is large and burning and the crown of him dips inside of where no man has been. He exhales harshly, eyes seeped in black, so depthless and dark that it swallows the moon light. The first slow, heavy push of him makes you cry out.

“I-I can’t—“ You half beg, feel the stretch and breach of him deep inside of you, the pressure and heat that terrifies you.

“Oh, you will,” He almost growls, as if you’re undoing him. His eyes are fixed to where he eases in deeper, slides slowly and he groans, broken and in the back of his throat. “You will, even if you’re so small.”

Another slow push and then he sinks into you entirely, sinks down so that he covers you in all his strength. His breaths are ragged; he is unwoven by you, falling apart as he stretches you open.

You give another cry, hold incredibly still beneath him as the pressure mounts. You feel as if you’re splintering, broken open like ripe fruit, bursting forth with a new heat. Your hand squabbles over the muscles of his back before sinking into his skin with nails.

You become overwhelmed, drag your nails deep into his skin to mark him, to urge him on or force him out, you can’t tell. You bare your teeth, let out a broken moan, a half-growl against the vein of his neck. You realize your own vulnerability, belly-up and soft to him, open and waiting.

Wanda soothes you when he begins to move in you, traces her fingertips over your swollen lips, sinks inside the sweetness of your mouth and lets you suckle and kiss and bite. There’s a fever inside you, tormenting your insides. You whimper, the sound pulling at Bucky, and when he looks back down at you, his eyes burst back into blue. The demon seems to slink away, or Bucky has regained control, again.

You almost expect him to jolt away again, to flush with fear but—

“Oh,” He gasps instead, unraveled man, fallen from grace. He gathers you in his arms, pulls you closer and tucks you into him, as if he could pull you beneath his skin and bury you behind the strong bones of his ribs. He holds fast to you, suddenly lifts you into his lap, into his arms. “Oh, pretty girl.” He murmurs as he moves you slowly over him, foggy and heady with you.

Your world begins to blur. You don’t know where the demon ends and Bucky begins. You don’t think you care, when all of that pain and burning gives way to a hedonistic pleasure. You move over him on your own, can feel the slickness of you, you can feel the deep seated ache you need to ease.

The teetering edge, the right and creeping rope, ready to snap. The leash on the beast inside of you begins to splinter.

Wanda’s at your back then, lips at your neck, brushing your ear. “Repeat after me,” She murmurs, voice a lulling warmth that sinks into your marrow.

“Et dabo tibi animam meam,” She murmurs, her voice gaining a haunting, otherworldly inflection, as if other voices buzz alongside hers.

So you repeat with a thick, honeyed tongue the Latin words that seems to simmer and etch themselves into you. You feel the power surge in her, in him, in you; a tether woven tightly between you three. His thrusts become rougher, his eyes flooding with crude black once more.

“Nunc, et in perpetuum magis.” Wanda finishes in your ear, a possessive hand curled around the bones of your waist, along the curve of your breast.

The words fall from your mouth as easily as if you’ve known them your entire, unforgiving life. And then there is a pull, snap of your heartstrings. The howling mongrel in you bursts loose, the heat and life and viciousness unfurls from within. You feel as if you’re being torn apart, as if another creature is clawing its way out of your core, your soft stomach and aching chest.

The demon groans, spills inside of you; his seed so hot that you feel it may burn you. As if it burns its way through you, into your womb and heart and being.

“You’re mine now,” The demon and Bucky say, rough hand cradling your cheek. “Semper magis.” He hushes against your lips and seals it with a claiming, damned kiss.

Then he sinks talons into your soul, teeth into your bottom lip and your heart, locks his essence tight to yours and throws away the ancient, heavy key.

***

Part Two

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fantasyrat · 6 years

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The Frigid Hunt

The night was cold and dreary. The air was wet with frost. Snow crunched under a pair of thick leather boots worn by a young huntsman. Jeremy Miller’s teeth chattered as hot wisps of breath sprang forth from his frost ridden lungs. His arms held tightly around him, desperately trying to cling to what little warmth remained within his shuddering body. He slowly rose his head to glance up at the full moon, his only light in the vast darkness of the forest. But the trees were closing in, their shadows would soon kill his only means of salvation.

The weight of the dead vixen in his bag, strapped over his shoulder, felt heavier and heavier with every step forward. He could damn his hounds that had run in a frenzy for another kill. He could damn his horse for throwing him, fleeing in terror from the beast the hounds had sought. Jeremy could even damn himself and his pride for sending him on such a hunt with little more than his pistol and a knife. But he could never damn the one who had sent him on this quest in the first place, for she was his heart’s desire.

Elizabeth Commons defied her namesake and was anything but common! The daughter of a wealthy landowner and a coveted beauty with many suitors having lined up at her door. The very thought of her thick, fire-red hair gave Jeremy a small sensation of warmth and some small semblance of comfort. It helped him take another step forward, and another when he thought of her lovely brown eyes, nearly the shade of a chunk of amber. How he loved to watch her in the spring when she’d run and play with her smaller siblings, her laughter like a siren’s call to his ears. But, oh, it was her smile that did him in. Elizabeth’s wry smile caused his heart to pound in his chest and send his blood racing at every attempt to woo the remarkable gem in his little hamlet. It drove him mad with desire.

His mind briefly thought once more of the dead vixen in the burlap sack. Elizabeth doing much as he was certain the vixen had done in her life. She gave him chase, played hard to get, and that made the prize all the more alluring. Elizabeth was a vixen and he a dashing, roguish fox pursuing her as his mate for life. He’d chased her for three long years now, stubbornly refusing to relent where many others had. He’d been there to listen to her woes as she told him of Mister Carpenter, who had apparently given up and skipped town for greener pastures after months of walks together and gifts and poetry. “He was such a lovely companion,” She told Jeremy as she tossed breadcrumbs to the ducks at her father’s pond. “But I simply couldn’t see myself with him, no matter how charming he is. Still, I hope his anger will subside in time and he will write to me. Perhaps he will find a new love and we can become lifelong friends.” “If it matters so much to you, my dear, I will gladly look for him and tell him of how you still care for him.” Jeremy had offered, knowing full well the girl would refuse. She wanted to give the would-be suitor time and space before they could reconcile in the future. If Carpenter never appeared in her life again that would suit him just fine. And then there was Mister Roberts, who had sadly taken his own life by hanging only a day after confessing his love for the young woman. Elizabeth, no doubt appalled by such a shameless and desperate display thought Jeremy, had remained composed as she gently but firmly rejected his proposal. The poor girl was delicate, kind, and compassionate. It had brought her to tears to think she was responsible for Robert's death. For Jeremy himself, he had to hide his smile in her hair as he held her close, whispering soothing words in her ear. Those other suitors were weak, unsuitable to possess the glorious jewel that was Elizabeth Commons. But he, Jeremy Miller, was strong. An accomplished young huntsman with a keen eye that never failed to capture his quarry. He was never one to back down or let anything stand in the way of something he wanted. He would have her, wear down her pride, and take her as his bride and finally to their bed. Then, it happened; an advancement in his pursuit! He’d received a letter from Elizabeth to come to her family’s estate and meet her in the gardens. He made no hesitation, charging his steed at a near-full gallop as if the devil was at his heels, down the road to the estate. There, in the gardens, Elizabeth issued him a challenge to prove his worth to her.

“In the woods, just beyond my father’s farm, lies the den of a vixen.” She’d told him. He’d almost not grasped what the young woman was saying as her voice distracted him so. “That vixen has stolen chickens from us before and has recently had a litter of cubs. No doubt she’ll soon be more desperate for an easy meal so that she may feed them. Bring me her hide and kill her cubs. Then, I will consider your proposal, Mister Miller.”

With a cocksure grin, Jeremy went down to one knee and took her hand in his, gently planting a lingering kiss on the back of it.

“My sweet lady Elizabeth,” He purred. “The vixen’s hide is as good as yours. I swear it on my life.”

He’d set off the very next morning and, by noon, his quarry was defeated and her litter dealt with as he was determined to stake his claim on the young maiden before nightfall. Jeremy had then begun to ride towards home on the back of his horse with joy and visions of the charming Elizabeth dancing in his head, making his chest swell with pride in himself. ’Jeremy, old boy, you’ve outdone yourself this time.’ He thought. ‘Now the prize is in sight. All you need now is only to reach out and take it!’ So caught up in his thoughts of the young woman and their future marriage bed that he’d not noticed his hounds stop to attention. Only when they howled, signaling to their master that another hunt was on, and ran out into the thick woods did Jeremy bring himself back into the moment. He ushered his horse to follow the pack, but they had gone through the thicket. The dense shrubs and thorny branches were not meant for a large beast such as a horse to traverse.

Suddenly, the ungodly sound of the hounds' cries of agony filled the air. Whatever they had sought, they’d been no match for. One by one, each of their whimpering voices died, sending shivers of pure fear and dread up Jeremy’s spine. Just as he was about to turn tail and have his steed take off down the path, a guttural, sickening snarl was echoed from seemingly all around them. Jeremy’s horse loosed a terrified squeal and reared up, throwing its rider off its back and running away at breakneck speed. Having been knocked unconscious from the fall, the cold was what woke Jeremy hours later. He’d opened his eyes and saw nothing but darkness until the moon peered out from behind the clouds.

Now, here he was. Freezing to his core, trying to stay on the path despite the dark. The trees now having stolen away his only source of light. He’d been so sure of himself. Absolutely certain he’d return before dusk and have Elizabeth’s hand that very evening that he’d not bothered with anything to aid him through such a disaster. He’d no flint or steel. No dried goods to sustain his growling belly. All he could do was keep moving forward.

But the huntsman froze when before him a pair of yellow eyes peered out at him from the darkness. Slowly, stirring from where those eyes stood, came the same snarl that had spooked his horse. This was the beast that had killed his hounds! His frozen hands clumsily reached for his pistol, but it was futile. The beast charged at the huntsman and leapt onto him with ungodly speed and ferocity, its jaws sinking deeply into Jeremy’s neck before he could even scream.

Once she’d had her fill, the beast stood back up on two canid legs that slowly morphed into the petite snow-white limbs of a woman. Elizabeth smirked as she wiped away the blood on her lips with the back of her wrist.

“Thank you so much for your help, Mister Miller.” She cooed, reaching into the dead huntsman’s bag and pulled out the russet furred carcass of the vixen. “It simply wouldn’t do to have a bunch of foxes popping up in wolf county now, would it?”

Elizabeth then tossed the carcass aside for the lesser creatures. It was a meal not worth the effort, especially with a large family to feed. Carpenter’s remains were long gone and nothing was left of Roberts except for a pudding she and her mother had made with the lesser parts of the man. Still, she could hardly complain as food came with ease to her pack. So many suitors over the years, only needing a soft voice and a shy smile to lure them in. And the superstitious townsfolk were the easiest part. No one questioned her family on any of the disappearances. The small cluster of people knew Carpenter had moved to a different village. Had a few... ‘witnesses’ had said they’d seen the man packing up his belongings onto a horsedrawn cart late at night. Of course, Roberts had been a rather unexpected but not unwelcome surprise. And, with her father providing for the funeral service, the closed casket ceremony had been lovely, even without the body to view and mourn over. Off in the distance came a howl and Elizabeth perked up. Her father was calling her home. She sighed at her father’s impatience and reached down, heaving Jeremy’s remains over her shoulder with ease. She and her family would eat well in the weeks to come, knowing well how to ration their meats. Winter was a brutal mistress for all, but one only needed to be just as brutal to survive after all.

#Got in the writing mood and spun a halloween short tale #nothing fancy

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likeniobe · 6 years

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Hamlet’s haunting by a vocal register associated with female vociferation in general and female street-cries in particular invites us to consider how it may have influenced the staging of Ophelia’s cries following her descent into madness. Like the ghost, the mad Ophelia becomes a wayward wanderer, entering and exiting the stage, to borrow Hamlet’s apt phrase, as her “business and desire” direct her (1.5.129). Her attitude toward her interlocutors is one of advertisement, in that she “call[s] the attention of others” in “admonition, warning, precept, [and] instruction” (OED, “advertisement,” 2): “pray you, mark,“ she repeatedly insists (4.5.27, 35), echoing the ghost’s “List,…O list!” Ophelia’s evocation of this vocal register is further suggested by her comparison of herself to an owl (“They say the owl was a baker’s daughter” [4.5.42-43]), for the term was an onomatopoeia deriving from the Latin ulula meaning to howl or ululate (OED, “owl, n.” etymology). The owl, on account of its doleful, nocturnal cry, was widely perceived to be a harbinger of death and misfortune, and was thus frequently associated not only with the nocturnal world of ghosts and spirits but with the vocal idiom of street-criers, as when Sir Oliver Owlet’s Men cry their play at the market cross, or when the owl-like screech of Gayton’s rouncival is likened to the pig-women of Bartholomew Fair.

Shakespeare elsewhere associates owls, as birds of prey, with predatory women, and more specifically with predatory female lust. Ophelia’s lunacy likewise renders her a menacing, if not sexually predacious, figure. There are suggestions in the text that her voicings of madness may at times have resonated on the stage as cacophonous cries rather than sweetly lyrical singing. her second entrance, for example, is heralded by Laertes, “How now? What noise is that?” (4.5.122). Yet in Laertes’ view, Ophelia’s cries stir emotion in a way that eloquence pronounced trippingly on the tongue cannot: “Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge,” he says, “It could not move thus” (4.5.163-64). The staging of Ophelia’s madness represents a novel solution to the dilemma posed by the performance of tragic outrage in the aftermath of the War of the Theaters, insofar as it weaves the tragic pathos of the boy-actor’s lyrical voice together with the auditory register of the female crier. If Ophelia’s wayward wandering and singing of old lauds are evocative of a crier of ballads, her importunate solicitations are reminiscent of the ubiquitous figure of the herb-wife. Such women, who were known to advertise the medicinal and symbolic properties of their herbs and flowers, as Ophelia does, were so common on the streets of early modern London that an Act of Common Council singles them out from the population of female criers, citing “herbe wives” as among the “divers unruly people…inhabiting in or neere the city,” who wander about, crying their wares, and practicing “sundry abuses…[in] the common Markets, and streets of the City of London.

“cries and oysterwives” in labors lost, natasha korda

#hamlet #shakespeare #early modern #sch

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iorvethofeastholt · 6 years

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Chapter IV: A Sticky Situation

(Long read)

It was the afternoon, but the forest of Duskwood was dark. There was nothing especially strange about that; Duskwood was always dark. Though the canopy formed by the topmost branches of the tallest trees were not particularly dense, somehow there was never quite enough natural light in what was once the Grand Hamlet. Perhaps it was the case of Roland’s Doom or the looming evil of the tower Karazhan, but that is a story for another time. For now, it was easy to say that the light in the forest was dim, the plant-life didn’t seem to mind, and the wildlife adapted fairly well. Some developed sensitive hearing or bat-like sonar locating abilities. The more intelligent creatures, such as humans, fashioned torches from sticks, rags and lamp-oil. However, for a majority of the creatures who resided in Duskwood, the near-darkness suited their purposes perfectly.

On a high branch in a grand oak tree, not too far off from one of the main paths through the forest, a large silvery spider sat patiently. It was about as big as a medium sized dog, though it was easily able to distribute its weight enough so that its weight would not tax the branch. Besides, oak trees are sturdy, and the spider was grateful for that. A long drop with a sharp stop would be very unfortunate for it, for it was quite happy to be alive, and was looking forward to many more years in its forest home. Like many creatures on the planet of Azeroth, it was self-aware, and fairly intelligent, too. A high level of magic can do some pretty interesting things to the life in the area, and when that incident with the Scythe of Elune went down so many years ago, it went with quite a bang. Generations of animals and plants had been affected, and travel through the forest was cautioned against as “rather unwise.” Duskwood became a place where you couldn’t even trust the grass beneath your feet, let alone the shadows glimpsed out of the corner of your eye.

And so on this particular not-at-all-bright day, the spider was sitting on its branch, humming a happy tune in its head, thinking of what it will be eating for dinner. It hadn’t thought of any words to go with the tune yet, though it suspected the word ‘yummy,’ would feature prominently. Mentally sighing, the spider plucked aimlessly at the thick silken rope it held in two of its forelegs. It stretched all the way down to a huge, almost invisible net that hung between two trees, down near ground level. The net was an intricate latticework of such ropes, sticky and slick, designed to tangle and snare its dinner. The spider plucked the rope again; it was its towline, and in time it would tell the spider when some luckless creature had stumbled into its web, and discovered firsthand the fatal difference between predator and prey. Right now, there was nothing, the web was clear, but the spider didn’t mind. The spider, like all its kind, was blessed with infinite patience. Besides, it had a couple of carcasses in its nearby larder, enough to keep it going until its next meal. Which was bound to be pretty soon; it was in a prime spot, it had ‘fished’ here before, it was just far enough away from the path to go unnoticed, just close enough to catch travelers who’d lost their way. All it had to do was sit tight, wait and let its dinner come..

The spider mentally scratched the word “tasty” from its song, deeming it unsuitable. If it was going to be honest with itself, the whole concept was a bit beneath it. The spider composed incredible poems before now, why did it find its mind occupied with what really didn’t have the potential to be more than a nursery rhyme was a myste- Suddenly, the towline in its forelegs twitched. The silvery fiend instantly forgot the song, focusing its mind on the task at hand. It could have been the wind, of course; it was rather windy today, and if the direction had changed it would be blowing the web about a bit. The spider waited a few moments, feeling the vibrations run through the line, up its legs, felt the tingling in its body. ‘No,’ the spider thought, feeling the erratic pattern shift rapidly, ‘not the wind. Food. Prey. Dinner…’

The spider crept cautiously along the tow-line, hanging upside down by all of its legs. As he neared the top of the web, it began enthusiastically to hum the ‘Yummy Song’ in its head. No doubt if it could drool it would have been doing so now. Yet, the spider would have to exercise caution, though; it wasn’t the most dangerous creature in this forest, and it had no intention of running blindly into a fight where it could get hurt. Once the spider was a couple of branches above its web, though, it squealed with delight. Struggling furiously in the centre of his web was a human, its favorite kind of prey. A male, rather large, with a mass of dirty blonde hair now a mess, trapped in sticky threads, holding his head fast in place. The spider was also relieved to see that the human didn’t appear to have one of those nasty flaming fire-sticks they often carried around. Excellent. The hungry spider didn’t want its entire home, tree and all, going up in flames because of that curious human defense mechanism. The Human man did have a weapon though, one of those cruel, poking sharp sticks. Right now the Human male, though tangled in the web, was still mobile enough to attempt to use the weapon to free himself by cutting the thick strands webbing that had coiled around his body. Well, he would just have to see about that.

Luckily for this silvery spider he was part of a breed of tree-arachnids gifted by nature (and aforementioned magic) with two set of spinnerets, the primary set at the base of the abdomen, used for the actual construction of webs, towlines and even parachutes, and a secondary set just underneath the mandibles. The function of this set was to produce a strand or two of sticky threads if the spider needed them in a hurry. Some spiders used it to build small nets, some for lassos or bolas. Right now, our hero the spider, needed a noose. With deft forelegwork, the spider spun a line of silk and twisted it upon itself to form a nice wide loop. It gave himself a nice length of thread to play with, and focussed on its prey. The human was quite strong, and he had managed to sever enough threads and extricate himself from enough coils to be almost free. The spider smiled inwardly. Perhaps this would hamper the mans progress. With a flick of a foreleg, he sent the noose hurtling down to the trapped human. The loop slipped over the human’s head, brushing past the still-sticky dirty blonde hair, past the shoulders to settle neatly around his chest. The human cried out in shock and surprise as the spider quickly tugged on the line, pulling the noose tight. He flicked the line a few times for good measure, coiling it around the human’s upper body, effectively pinioning its limbs.

The spider secured the noose’s end to the branch it was sitting on and prepared another sticky thread. Now to take care of that weapon. It pulled a thread from its under mouth, long and straight, with a gooey blob on the end. Swift as an arrow, the spider hurled the web at its target, the sharp-stick the human still clutched in its pinned hand. The blob struck the blade with a noticeable ‘splut’, and with a mighty tug the spider yanked the weapon out of its victim’s fingers. The human yelped with surprise and dismay, watching as it danced away, now dangling just out of reach. That should seal the deal. Time for a personal appearance the spider though.The web rocked as the spider landed on its uppermost edge. Feeling his surroundings shake, the human craned its neck upwards, eyes widening in terror as he realized the full horror of his situation. The struggling began again in earnest, but it was no good, the human was clearly doomed. The spider, knowing it lacked any kind of paralyzing venom, decided to secure the rest of the human’s limbs next. From there to the wrapping, and from the wrapping to the larder. Completely sorted the spider thought. Ignoring the loud yells the human was now making, the spider slowly crawled over its quivering body and reached its legs. The sounds quietened down to heavy breathing, the spider didn’t notice. It was thinking how fantastically easy this had been compared to some of its other meals, yet that’s when disaster struck.

Suddenly, a blow to the head sent the spider reeling, falling from the web to land with a thud on the leafy forest floor. “Shit,” the spider thought dazedly, its vision fading. “That humans legs! They’re fully free!” That man had kicked me! 'How dare – that’s not – of all the – ' The spider lay on the ground, legs twitching as it tried to gather its senses. The man’s kick had been pretty damn powerful, and now, as the spider watched, the man was pulling his legs up almost to his chest. The man pulled a sharp-stick, smaller than the one it taken earlier, from out of what looked like his foot. There was obviously more to these humans than the spider thought. The spider would have to be more careful in future. The spider got to its feet and approached the tower of a man haltingly. He was sawing swiftly at his bonds with the short sharp-stick, and what’s more he was almost free. Damn, was he fast! The human looked at him and, with a snarl, threw its short-stick with precise aim. The man struck a hind leg of the spider, slicing it neatly off, and the silvery fiend howled in pain.

The spider sighed sadly in its mind, abandoning the joyful hum that went through his head, and began to work on a mournful poem. Perhaps it would be called “Hunger.” With one last look, the spider turned his head to look at the human. The spider then tilted its head curiously as it noticed the man’s seemingly unnatural orange eyes, it was far too busy trying to eat the man before getting a good look at him. The only thing the spider could hear muttered from the tired man was, “I really hate Duskwood,” before it watched the man run off into the darkness of the forest.

#iorvethofeastholt #whydidithavetobespiders

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glowrioustrash · 6 years

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Don’t Go Out There

Prompt: 53: “Don’t go out there. Especially once the sun goes down.” “Why not?” “You don’t wanna know.” and 80: “I just found out my best friend and love of my life isn’t human and you’re criticizing me for being shocked?!” from this list, specifically with Vampire Seth. Requested by anon.

Pairing: Vampire!Seth Rollins x unnamed OC

Word Count: 2400+

Warnings: Light swearing. I think that’s

Author’s Note: No sparkling in the sunlight here folks. I combined a few different styles/lore into what creates vamps in this world, so I didn’t stick strictly to one pre-existing rule. It was fun to write in AU and I enjoyed the spooky bits. They were a challenge, but I’m happy with them for my first attempt. Edit: omg so I just saw where it was mislabeled from when I copied everything over. Everything should be fine now. Embarassing lol

Tagging: @castielscamander / @therealfivefeetoffuckingfury

My girlfriends had warned me, but I didn’t want to listen. They said that eventually the rose-tinted honeymoon glasses of my relationship would come off, but I didn’t believe them. It had been over two years with Seth and the giddy, “new relationship” excitement hadn’t faded yet, so I had doubted it ever could. They said eventually something would shatter the illusion I held of him and there would be no turning back. Maybe I needed more positive friends, but maybe they were right.

I had moved in with Seth almost a month ago, which had been the catalyst for even more pessimistic remarks from my girls over brunch but I shrugged them all off. If they had men like my Seth, they would understand. We lived in different parts of the same city, but his little suburb was so small and secluded, I didn’t even know it existed before I met him. It was like a little gem of a hamlet trapped inside the city. I was excited to call it home.

“I want you to do something for me.” Seth had whispered as we lay in bed together on the first night, the only light coming from the streetlamp outside the window.

“Again? Already?” I giggled? We were both sticky, sweaty and satiated after celebrating taking this next step in our relationship.

“Not like that.” He grinned, nuzzling my neck.

“What then?” I squirmed, his beard tickling me.

“Don’t go out there. Especially once the sun goes down.” He murmured against my skin.

“Why not?”

“You don’t wanna know.”

“Seth, I can handle myself…” I started to protest but he shook his head.

“I know you think this is a beautiful neighbourhood, but things get weird at night. Just don’t do it. For me?” He turned his gorgeous brown eyes on me and I couldn’t resist.

I had forgotten the promise I’d made him that night. I remembered watching as my mugs took up counter space beside his or how his eyebrows wiggled as he opened a box to find it full of underwear. I remembered the way it felt when he wrapped his arms around me and said “Welcome home” and how he welcomed me well into the morning. That tiny conversation just slipped through the cracks.

As I walked the few blocks home from the store, I couldn’t help but gaze around the suburb. If at all possible, it looked even more beautiful at night. I had seen it after dark before, but always with Seth by my side. Never had the dimly lit neighbourhood held my undivided attention. I took my usual route to and from the store, cutting across a few alleys and crossing a park. I had walked this path enough during the day that I didn’t need to think about where I was going.

A shuffling noise behind me brought me out of my thoughts. I glanced over my shoulder, expecting to see someone else on the street, but no one was there. Come to think of it, the cashier had been the only person I had seen all night. I hadn’t passed anyone walking to the store and there was no one else shopping. Just goes to show how removed our little neighbourhood is from the hustle and bustle.

The shuffling happened again, interrupting my thoughts. It had sounded closer this time, but as I looked around there was still nothing there. I tried to change how I was moving, checking if it was a noise my jacket was making as I walked but that didn’t seem to be it. I picked up my pace a little.

The breeze picked up as I got closer to home making me shiver. I’d only grabbed a very light jacket and it wasn’t helping much against the cool wind. I was already a little on edge, the soft howl of the wind and the noises of leaves rustling making me scan the street continuously. A gust of wind blew my hair over my neck, making me shiver.

The next time I heard the shuffling noise, I swear I heard laughter along with it. I stopped walking and spun around, looking for the source of the noises I’d been hearing.

“Is someone there?” I called into the alley. I was met by silence but couldn’t shake the feeling of not being alone. One weird noise in the night is a coincidence, these repeated noises were too much to handle.

I turned, ready to speed walk the rest of the way home, but jumped as I saw the silhouette of a man standing at the end of the alley. He hadn’t been there a second ago. He wasn’t walking or moving, just standing. The alley was narrow enough that I would have to pass him to continue home. I was too scared to move, and he didn’t seem to be moving soon either.

“No.” A voice growled from directly behind me, making me scream and drop my shopping bag. I whirled around, ready to attack with every ounce of my being. I didn’t know how to fight, but I could claw, scratch, kick and bite.

I almost sobbed in relief when I saw that it was Seth behind me. I collapsed against him, burying my head into his shoulder.

“Just a little taste.” The man drawled.

“I said no.” Seth’s voice was like nothing I’d ever heard come out of him before. I whimpered, clinging to him tighter. I could feel how tense he was under his shirt, his entire body seemed ready to strike.

The man chuckled darkly before his footsteps echoed down the alley, fading into the distance. The tension left Seth’s body as the footsteps got farther and farther away.

“I told you not to go out alone at night.” He whispered into my ear, his arms wrapping around me.

“I-I’m sorry. I’ll never do it again.” I promised. I moved to pull away but Seth just held me tighter.

“Wait.” He ordered. I looked up at him but could was too close to see his face, his chin taking up most of my view.

“What’s wrong?”

“Just wait.” Was all he said.

“Seth, I’m already scared to death and you’re making it worse. Can we please just go home?” I asked, trying to push away. He looked down at me and I gasped. In the dimly lit alley, I could see his eyes were tinted red. Were they glowing? Why were they-

“Seth… w-what…” I could barely form any words, shaking in his arms as I tried to push away.

“Calm down, I’m not going to hurt you.” He tried to soothe, but that only made me panic.

“Seth, let me go.” I cried, trying to wiggle free. He loosened his arms, letting me slip free. I took several quick steps back, almost tripping as I stared at him.

“It’s okay, it’s just me.” He followed as I moved away, arms raised like he was approaching a scared animal.

“Seth, what’s going on? Why are your eyes-“ I shook my head. I couldn’t bring myself to say it. I felt my chest getting tighter and tighter.

“Let’s just go home and I’ll explain everything.” He offered, still advancing on me. He stepped into a beam of light from the street, the light glinting off his long, pointed teeth. Pointed teeth?!

“Y-your teeth.” I stuttered, tripping over a crack in the pavement and falling backwards.

“Shit.” He hissed, turning away and covering his mouth. I jumped at the distraction, scrambling up and sprinting to the entrance of the alley as fast as I could. Seth called after me but I didn’t stop.

I collided with something as I turned the corner, screaming as I felt arms reach out to steady me. Looking up, I couldn’t believe I was looking at Seth.

“How did you-“ I panted, staring up at him in fear. “You were-“ I couldn’t do anything as my vision grew dark and I felt myself fall limp in his arms.

----

I woke slowly, laying in a comfortable bed. My nose told me it was mine and Seth’s bed as I snuggled deeper into the pillow. My head hurt and I felt exhausted. I whined quietly under my breath at the feeling.

“You’re awake.” Seth’s voice was rough and I could tell there was something wrong. I slowly opened my eyes, turning to look in his direction. He was sitting on a chair he’d pulled into the room. The covers on his side of the bed were untouched. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired.” I mumbled, looking him over. His hair was a mess and he was wearing the same clothes as last night. Had he not slept- last night. I sat up in bed, watching him with wide eyes as I remembered.

“Sweetheart, please calm down. I don’t want you passing out again.” He begged, but didn’t move from the chair. His fingers twitched against the armrests, but he was still otherwise. I watched him, my body shaking and muscles tight, ready to jump out of the bed and run.

“W-What was that?” I finally stuttered. “Last night?”

“I should have told you this sooner.” Seth sighed and bent his head, his hair falling forward and shielding his face from me. I glanced at the bedroom door, knowing that I’d never get there before Seth did. He was faster than I was, always had been, and that was before I had seen him last night. It was like he appeared around that corner by magic. “I’m not who- I’m not what you think I am.”

“What are you?” I whispered, scared my voice would crack if I spoke much louder.

“The short answer?” He chuckled bitterly. “Vampire.”

A silence engulfed the room as I processed what Seth had said. Vampire. Vampires don’t exist. They’re made up for horror movies and Halloween costumes. Besides, I had seen Seth eat food, not blood. He’d been out during the day and didn’t explode into a pike of ash. I’d never seen him bite into a clove of garlic but I don’t remember him going out of his way to avoid garlic either.

Seth’s chuckle startled me out of my thoughts.

“Myths. Those are all myths.” He spoke, confusing me. Now what was he talking about?

“Sunlight, garlic.” He explained. “We’re weaker in the sun, but it doesn’t kill us instantly. I have no idea where the garlic comes from. Probably some garlic farmer trying to make a quick buck off of paranoia.”

…How did he know that was what I had been thinking?

“I can read minds.” He answered, looking up at me hesitantly. “I also have incredible speed and strength – at least I do when I’m not in sunlight. The way it was explained to me is that it makes us weak. If we stay in it too long it might kill us, but it would be like slowly wasting away. I wouldn’t burst into flames.”

“That’s why you hate the beach?” I asked. I knew it was a dumb question, but it felt like my brain was shutting down. Between the head ache I’d woken up with and the shock of information I was getting, I couldn’t think straight.

“That’s what you’re hung up on?” Seth laughed.

“I just found out my best friend and love of my life isn’t human and you’re criticizing me for being shocked?!” I snapped, a gasp leaving my mouth immediately afterwards. Saying it myself made it so much more real. I threw the covers back on the bed and climbed out the opposite side from where Seth was sitting.

“Please, don’t go!” He begged, standing as I did. “Please. I’ll answer anything you want. Everything. I still eat normal food but I drink blood, a pint every few days or so. I don’t drink human blood, only animal blood. There are vampires who drink human blood and those are the ones you need to be scared of, not me. Never me.” He ranted, trying to supply the answers to the questions she wasn’t even asking yet.

“It’s still me. I’m still Seth Rollins, the Seth Rollins that loves you with all his heart and that you love back… just a little less human than you originally thought.”

“Why should I believe you?” I breathed. “I… I know what you are,” I thought back on last night. The eyes, the teeth, the speed. I had no doubt in my mind he was telling the truth about what he is.

“Have I hurt you yet?” He answered. “If I was looking for some random person to drink from or play with, don’t you think that would have happened by now? Why would I be telling you all of this after being together for over two years? I should have told you sooner, but I was so scared. I couldn’t handle the thought of you leaving me. Please don’t leave me.”

I watched the emotion plain as day on his face. The vampires shown in classic movies always look so stoic, not like Seth did in this moment. He looked like he might collapse at any moment. I’m sure if I took a single step toward that door, he would break.

Two years I’ve loved this man, and I’d known him long before I loved him. I knew him- I thought I knew him inside and out. Could I just… walk away?

The silence stretched between us. If Seth was reading my mind, he didn’t show it. He didn’t comment as the war in my head waged, weighing out either side. Do I stay with the man I love or leave this… vampire?

I took a shaky breath as I sat back down on the bed. Relief flashed through Seth’s eyes as he mirrored me, sitting on the opposite edge.

“I… I still have a lot of questions.” I told him.

“I know.” He gave a nod before correcting himself. “Not- I haven’t been- This is your decision to make and I wanted to give you the privacy to make it. I meant it figuratively. I don’t literally know what you’re thinking. At least not right now.”

I couldn’t help but grin, a soft laugh escaping my lips. One of Seth’s nervous habits was rambling. It didn’t come out often, only when he was incredibly nervous. He’d rambled on our first few dates. He rambled the first morning we woke up together. He rambled when he asked me to move in. Maybe he was still my Seth.

I reached out towards the middle of the bed, my hand upturned. Seth took it in his own without hesitation, lacing our fingers together with a soft squeeze. Seth was the first one to break the silence.

“Where do you want to start?”

#Seth Rollins imagine #Seth Rollins fic #Seth Rollins fan fic #Seth Rollins fan fiction #Seth Rollins x OC #Vampire!Seth #Glowrious writings #Halloween prompt

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