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thecoochiefairy · 1 year

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𝖓𝖊𝖜 𝖘𝖆𝖑𝖊𝖒

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR.

more suckin’ and fuckin’. beware !

𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐌𝐀’𝐒 𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐒𝐄.

“PUT YOUR CARDS UP, MOTHERFUCKER.”

Sin has her eyes squinted as she stares with a vengeance, the deck of cards in her hands hovered over the rest of her face as she hides them. Aries sits across from her with an equally competitive look. They had been playing Uno for about two hours now, unable to quit the game since Aries had yet to win a round. It had gotten to a point where they were now gambling the children’s game, taking this as seriously as they would anything else.

“The color is…green,” Sin grins.

“Green? Again? You’ fuckin’ with me now,” Aries curses, drawing another card as Sin begins dancing in hopes that it’d piss him off.

“Awe, no greens in that deck?” Sin teases, taking a scoop out of the ice cream carton she holds, placing the spoon in her mouth as she takes her cards back in her hands.

“I said I’ve had no greens since we started this round, but I bet you knew that. You’ probably know every single card I have!”

Sin gasps, “Are you accusing me of cheating?”

“I just might be. Now stop stalling, put your cards down.”

“Hm, you might be onto something, cause I have another green,” Sin shrugs, placing her card down as she’s now left with two. Aries then places two of his cards down, Sin then scoffing.

“Nuh-uh, playboy! Who said we was stacking? We never agreed to that!”

“Imma’ do what I have to do to win this game, I want all my money back!”

“Looks like you’re gonna need a loan, cause—“ Sin then places all of her cards down, all of them shining the color of green against the table, “Uno, Uno out, all that good shit!” She cheers. Aries throws his cards down as she slides the money in between them closer, giggling evilly.

“That’s a damn shame,” he shakes his head, “I’m never playing with you again, thief.”

“Yeah, yeah. But uh— this ain’t enough for me, the hell I’m supposed to do with ten dollars?”

“Make it enough?” Aries frowns, “What the hell else do you want? You’ve already stolen my pride.”

“Hmm,” she thinks to herself, scanning the infinite amount of jewelry he wears, a thought then appearing in her mind.

“You gon’ have to come up off that chain.”

Aries places his hand over his chest, looking around at the other people standing around the Training Building as he asks, “Who you talking to? You can’t be talking about my chain.”

“Sure am. Specifically the biggest one, that Jesus piece. Cough it up,” She places her hand out, clacking her nails together as she waits.

“C’mon, pretty—“

“Oh spare me that, the new found nickname is cute, but it ain’t enough. I’m waiting!”

“I’ll do anything else…I’ll roll all your blunts, rub your ass until you fall asleep, hang from the corner of the table by my shirt, please?”

“All sounds appealing, but not as appealing as that chain. Now remove it before I get to moving shit with my mind.”

Aries groans, mumbling curses under his breath as he removes the chain from around his neck. Although he wants to slam it down in her hand, he gently places it in her palm. Sin smiles as she takes the jewelry and clasps it around her neck, the large gold piece shining along her brown skin. She stands from the table as she dances in a circle, modeling the piece as she teases, “Mhm, you like?”

“You look alright. But nah, forreal, we doing another round. I need my shit back immediately,” he responds, suppressing the smile that wants to come upon his face as he watches her.

“I’ll tell you what,” she then sits back down, removing the necklace and placing it back in her palm as she requests, “Come get it back.”

Aries tilts his head, “You tryna’ be funny?”

“Nope. You want it back, come take it from me,” she taunts, smiling evilly as she sees his facial expression.

He raises an eyebrow, “You wanna play?”

“I don’t see you making no moves yet,” she recalls, swinging the pendant back and forth in front of him, quickly moving her hand back as she sees him lean forward. She then puckers her lips as she smooches towards him.

“We snatching chains? Count me in the game!”

Sin and Aries both turn their heads as Buffy appears with Elijah and Trey behind her, all of them seating themselves at the table with the two.

“I’m already up a Jesus Piece, try your chances,” Sin invites. Aries shakes his head as he disagrees, “She is enjoying the five minutes she got with my shit. I’ll go get another set of cards, there isn’t enough for five people.”

He stands from the table and makes his way towards the kitchen, Sin looking back as she sees all three of them smiling weirdly at her. She frowns, “What?”

“Nothing. I just see that y’all both got each other’s noses wide open,” Buffy teases.

“Girl bye, kiss my ass,” Sin chuckles.

“No thank you, seems like Aries has been doing enough of that!” Trey flicks a card at her, Elijah unable to hold back his laugh as well.

“Fuck you,” Sin chuckles.

In the week that had gone by, Sin feared ever since her and Aries were intimate that it would’ve been awkward or change their relationship entirely. It instead brought them closer together. It did make them more lustful for one another, hence her friends making fun of her for it. With her body transitioning and her senses heightened with everything she did, intimacy felt a thousand times better with the benefit of never becoming tired. She wanted to tell herself that she was using it as a distraction, but she couldn’t deny the connection she felt with him, sex or not.

“Aries must be putting that shit down when there’s a constant smile on your face. Has hell finally frozen over?” Trey gasps.

“You don’t have to question that, I got the chance to hear them go at it. I’d watch, sounds like y’all be having a great time,” Buffy shrugs.

“What?” Sin’s eyes went wide, “Why didn’t you tell me you heard me?”

“Oh girl, don’t be shy. Me and Blue came to Adonis’ place cause he was looking for Aries, when we opened the door we just happened to hear,” Buffy shrugs off, Sin unable to help but feel embarrassed.

She wasn’t trying to broadcast her and Aries’ newfound part of their relationship, but she knew there was no way in hiding it either. She could tell Aries didn’t have a problem publicly expressing his feelings towards her, but she could admit that it made her a little uncomfortable due to it being something she’d never experienced. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel for him either, she just wanted to make sure the sex wasn’t the reason for it.

Sin raises her eyes as she sees Aries appear back with a new set of cards, Buffy then complimenting her as she continues to poke fun, “I love you in a black dress, who you looking sexy for?”

Her bare face and freckles combination looked almost russet from being in the sun, cobalt hair and body-con onyx dress complimenting her well. She could feel Aries’ eyes suddenly on her, unsure why the stare he had made her skin feel warm.

“Me and Sin went down to New Orleans this morning to a crystal shop, nothing too special,” Elijah explained, offering a deck of cards to Buffy.

“Rude, and you didn’t invite me?” Buffy turns to Sin, snatching the cards from Elijah’s hand.

“The man came knocking on my door asking to drive with him at seven this morning, girl. You were asleep,” Sin blinks.

“True. Still could’ve texted,” she playfully rolls her eyes.

“You uh…heard from Cloud?” Sin then changes the topic, her friends seeing the worry upon her face.

‘He said he hasn't been feeling well, been in his room for about a week now,” Elijah shrugs. She nods her head, unable to respond. Rethinking their entire situation just made her stomach ache.

“I need to borrow Sin real quick, my pops just mind linked me,” Aries announces.

“What happened?” It took Sin’s attention, placing her cards down against the table.

“He needs to talk to you about getting in contact with Faye from Elysian. He’s tryna’ set up another meeting,” He explains.

“Why does he need me to talk to Faye?” She frowns.

“He said maybe she’d be more comfortable talking to you, I don’t know,” Aries shrugs.

Sin rolls her eyes, not in the mood to have any important discussions. At the same time she’s not the one to go against Adonis, so she stands from her seat and passes her cards to Elijah.

“Hold these for me, lovely. I trust you won’t look at them,” she grabs her carton of ice cream, placing her purse next to him as well.

“Got you,” Elijah nods, putting them beside himself.

“Sure you coming back?” Buffy teases, the rest of them watching as Aries is already walking towards the meeting room.

“Yes, be prepared to get that ass whooped once I come back!” She calls, now following behind Aries once they continue their game.

Sin continues to walk behind Aries as they enter the quiet hallway, her eyes focused on her carton of ice cream as she absentmindedly enters the meeting room and hears the door close. When she looks up, she sees that the room is completely empty, chairs against the walls as if no one had been in there for days.

“Um, are they coming now?”

“Nope,” Aries replies. Sin shrieks as he lifts her onto the table effortlessly, scooting her closer to him by her thighs.

“You lied to get me out of the Uno game? Damn shame,” she shakes her head, Aries placing his lips against her neck and kissing passionately along her skin. She presses her unoccupied hand against his chest as she laughs, “What did you need?”

“I haven’t been alone with you in a couple of days,” he travels his hand to the back of her neck, keeping his eyes upon hers.

“Boy, I came to your room this morning and have been with you since then. I was busy last night,” she explains.

“Doing what?”

“Oh?” She raises her eyebrow, “Don’t be getting all nosey. I hung out with Mariah and Buffy, we went to Dutchess— one of the girls in your pack— she does piercings.”

“Nobody being nosey, I’m just asking. You got anything?”

“I got a tongue piercing, but then immediately removed it, hence why I’m eating ice cream. I was thinking about getting another tattoo, but the healing process is kinda a pain in the ass—which I’m not understanding, I heal extremely quickly everywhere else,” she banters, Aries continuing to latch along the skin of her neck as he sucks aggressively.

“Mhm,” he pushes her to continue, hands traveling down her body as his fingers find the top of her dress. He easily pulls it down, seeing the cross in between her breast as he pulls the material to her abdomen.

“Are you listening?”

“Yeah. I like this dress,” he compliments.

“The dress or the way I look in it?” She plays along.

“The way you look out of it,” he replies. Sin lifts her hips as he pulls the dress to the floor, now leaving her bare as she wears nothing under.

Aries takes one of his hands, reaching out to gain access to the ice cream container beside the both of them. He leans back a bit to press his finger into the cup, Sin watches as he then runs his finger over her neck, the coldness making her jump.

Tracing the vanilla ice cream from her collarbone to her abdomen, Aries couldn't help but admire how lost her eyes became with just the littlest movements of his fingers. She was practically hypnotized.

He ran his tongue all the way down her stomach, Sin giggling at the ticklish feeling as he spread her legs wider and lifted them over his shoulders. Dragging her to the end of the table, he gently pressed kisses along her inner thighs which coaxed her to let out a breathy exhale. The advantage of her wearing no underwear had her bare opening glistening tempestuously, her posture completely normal all up until his tongue ran along her clit.

She ignited his taste buds, groaning at how something so vulgar was alluring, locking his mouth down as he sucked wildly. Sin’s lower abdomen trembled at the merciless action. Her upper body seated up as he slowly shoved his fingers inside of her, scissoring her open and Aries listening as she moaned in his ears. Her long acrylics rubbed at the pattern of his waves, his nose inhaling her vanilla scent and delectable taste, a mixture of inebriety that he now desired for.

Not having the patience for any foreplay, they pulled one another into a kiss that caused Sin to sigh through her nose. She kept her arm around his neck as he picked her up from the table, alarming her to wrap her legs around his waist, back colliding with another cold surface that had been the wall across from them. Aries bent his body to lock his forearms under her knees, Sin flexible enough to make her knees press directly along the wall. His arms were now the only thing holding her up. Sin was now planted only a few inches below him, fire in her eyes as she stared up at him, the bright hues of blue from her hair stuck to parts of her face yet she looked flawless to him.

He slides into her, a gasp he hadn’t gotten tired of hearing streaming past her lips. Aries slammed in after their hips touched, deep enough to have her chest release all air she breathed.

He relentlessly fucked her, her throat locked tight although her mouth had been parted for her to release mewls for him. He cocked his head to the side as he looked down at her, figuring he should do something to get her to actually speak. He then pulled out of her until only the tip kissed at her opening, Sin groaning from the loss of fullness, begging quietly, “Don’t stop.”

He dragged out the tension as he slid her back down, Sin slapping a palm across her mouth as she let her muscles relax, moaning loudly that she felt as though someone would hear.

"There you go," Aries arrogantly muttered, waiting for that reaction as he beckoned, “Tell me it feels good.”

"Yes. Yes, it feels good," Her eyes watered, hands precariously slapping against his back to dig her nails into his skin, tiredly gazing into his eyes. Her stomach coiled to inform her of the heavy orgasm approaching her body.

"Tell me when you're cumming."

Her hand flew back to cover her mouth, eyes wide as they bore directly into his, small tears leaking down her face as she muffled her own sounds. She said something, but he couldn't hear her. He fucked her harder to get an answer.

"I can't hear you." He went to kiss her neck, feeling the vibrations from her throat on his lips.

"Yes, I'm cumming," She gasped, pulling her hand away as her eyes fluttered shut.

"I'm cumming,” she repeated again.

"You cumming?" He teased, making his voice a beneficial aid to her orgasm, Sin nodding vigorously. She makes herself dizzy as she lands her lips right back on his, Aries parting his lips to descend his tongue across her own, Sin keening and wrapping her arms around his neck to deepen their kiss.

"I'm cumming." She answered him asthmatically amongst his lips one last time, her orgasm rippling through as her chest collapsed on Aries’. Her arms are ready to snap like twigs. It was silent, accepting her climax striking at her like thunder bolts. She released the loudest moan she’s sure she’d done at this moment, dragging out the words to make it more definite.

“Cum inside me," she pleaded, Aries staring at her like she had lost her damn senses. She definitely wasn't in her right mind at the moment. "Please."

"Sin—“

She reaches between them to take hold of him, pulling him back in and lowering her legs to wrap them around his waist. She rocks her hips down to let him feel how much wetter she became, the squelch echoing in the room evident to their ears which had Aries grunt. She ran her tongue across his Adam's apple, bringing her face back up as she lowly laughed, pure lust against her face.

"Do it, please.”

Aries spread her ass apart with his fingers and took a step back so they could be away from the wall. He drove into her, flesh pinched between his finger tips, abdomen tingling and giving her his last few movements before he released inside her. Sin blissfully closed her eyes and trembled at the feeling, call her crazy.

“You tryna’ trap me,” he states, lips almost touching hers as he breathes heavily into her mouth.

Sin teases, “Boy—please,” going to lower her hand and grab between his legs. The sudden vibration of her phone against the table catches her attention, her eyes able to read that it was a text from Sybil.

Sin’s entire posture changes. It annoys her with the kind of power this woman holds over her. Sybil could change her entire energy by something as simple as her texting, she really didn’t want to know what she needed.

“Fuck,” she mutters.

“What’s wrong?”

“Sybil wants me to come visit her,” she becomes irritated, releasing her arm from around his neck yet he still holds her, seating her lower half on the table with his arm wrapped around her waist.

“You need to go talk to her anyways. Tell her what’s been going on and ask her about Oseidon,” Aries points out, ignoring the way her eyes rise up to look at him with displeasure.

“Ask her what? She’s just gonna lie.”

“Or maybe she doesn’t care enough to be the villain that she’ll tell you everything you need to know? You don’t even know what’s gonna happen once you get there.”

“You’re a great help,” Sin smiles, nothing behind it.

“I’m just saying that you need to go talk to her. If you feel like you have nothing to say to her, the least you can do is go ask about what’s going on with your dad. I know you want to hear about that,” Aries encourages.

She doesn’t want him to be right, but she knows that she’s itching to know anything about Iver. If he’d awoken, moved, even if he breathed heavier than usual. She wanted to be able to talk to him instead of Sybil, but considering she was the only person she had back in New Salem, she figured— fuck it.

“Okay,” she simply says, not wanting to talk about it anymore.

“Okay?”

“Okay, Aries,” she brushes him off.

“I’m not tryna be your father or anything, I’m just saying. You being stubborn isn’t gonna help you or the people in your coven. The faster you talk to her, the further we can figure out all this witch hunter bullshit.”

“Yeah,” Sin sighs, “I know. I’ll be fine, imma’ just talk to her and let Adonis know what she says.”

“When you plan on leaving?”

“It’s still pretty early, I wanna get this done as quickly as possible so— I’ll probably pack now and then head out,” she plans.

“Okay. I um…wanted to ask you something?”

“Yeah?” She halts her movements of getting dressed, her eyes boring into his movements that suddenly become nervous.

“Well—not ask. I wanted to…..apologize…”

“For?”

“...I realized it might make you uncomfortable if I put my hand around your throat during sex. Maybe even a trigger or sum’—“

“Aries, that’s sweet, baby. But you’re fine,” Sin can’t contain the small laugh at his random concern.

“You sure? Cause I can stop,” he suggests.

“I accepted your apology about it the first time, and I’m accepting it now, okay? You have my consent. It’s actually enjoyable when it isn’t murderous,” she kisses his chin a couple of times, Aries uttering, “Doesn’t make me feel too much better about it but I hear you.”

Her heart squeezes in her chest as he leans down and actually kisses her, rising upwards as he then wraps his arm around her shoulders and plants his lips upon her forehead. They sit in a comfortable silence.

“Want a little sum’ before you go?—“

“And you ruin the moment,” Sin sighs, “Boy, one— you just gave me some dick. Two, I’m gonna use this time to give my coochie some hibernation. If you’re not eating it, you’re fucking it.”

“Thought you didn’t get tired?” He pokes fun.

“Mmm, my body doesn’t get tired. My vagina however, wants a little breather. Is that okay?”

“When you was gonna tell me that you like for me to nut in you?” He changes the subject.

“Uh— I don’t know? I didn’t think it was anything important to tell you.”

“Are you on…?”

“Why the fuck would I ask you to cum in me if I didn’t have anything to protect myself?” She shoos off his hands, grabbing for her dress that’s on the ground and she begins putting it back on.

“I don’t know, maybe you’re just psychotic,” he grabs her ass as she bends over, Sin swatting his hand aggressively.

“Funny. I’m a witch, but that doesn’t make me a woman without a uterus—or ovaries that can create babies. Sybil has this spell, she calls it a ‘Plan W.’”

“….Like Plan B?”

“What’s that?”

“Do you know anything forreal’?”

“Bite me,” she spits, adjusting her dress as she grabs for her phone. She doesn’t realize that Aries is right behind her again.

“Say less—“

She yelps as he tries to grab for her, jerking out of the way as she opens the door and slams it behind herself. She could deal with his nymphomaniac tendencies later.

THE TWO HOURS OF SILENCE WAS ALMOST THERAPEUTIC. Sin being able to swim in the ocean of her own mind gave her time to figure out how she wanted to go about this conversation with Sybil. She didn’t want to be catty or bitchy. Peaceful was the word that continued to cross her mind. When she arrived at New Salem, she spoke to a few of the people that still decided to stay despite everything going on, letting them in on what information she had. She knew she was stalling at this point.

But once she arrived at her grandmother's house, greeted her with a hug and Sybil responded with a look of confusion— she was entirely wrong about her approach. Sin now sat across from her at the dining table as she stared down as the beignets waiting to be ingested. It was unfortunate that she was entirely too annoyed to overkill her favorite dessert.

“What happened to us, Sin?”

Sin’s blank stare disappears as she looksat Sybil, immediately ready to pounce at such an empty question. She quickly fires back, “Us? What happened to you? I’m good on my side.”

“Well amuse me then. Tell me about some things going on in your life,” Sybil suggests.

“I’m not in the mood to entertain, why do you care?”

“I can’t be interested in what my granddaughter has to say?” Sybil asks, her voice anything less but condescending in Sin’s ears.

“No, you can’t be. Considering you’ve never been interested until it’s time to have a serious conversation and you’re trying to avoid it.”

“Have you been…feeling any different?”

“Why would I— what the hell are you talking about?” Sin frowns, ready to get up and walk out.

Sybil eyes her up and down, the previous question not nearly as bad as she then asks Sin, “Have you been having sex?”

“What?” Sin feels her heart had sunk to her ass, “W—What does this have to do with anything?! Why do you need to know who I’m—giving my goodies to?!”

Sybil still remains calm although her questions are absolutely insane. Her posture of carelessness Sin never carried within herself, it almost made her enraged.

“You’re being real’ weird right now,” Sin squints, “Anyways. Since you wanna know so much, I’ll tell you we haven’t got much information out of any place we’ve been to. Except that despite us all being in the same boat, it doesn’t make us ally’s. We went to Oseidon and were kidnapped. Did you know that?”

“Not up until this moment,” Sybil replies, taking a small plate beside her and placing a beignet upon it.

“You sure?”

“If you’re trying to get at anything specific, please spare the passive aggression,” Sybil sighs. Sin scoffs, crossing her arms.

“I don’t know, stuff just doesn’t seem to add up. While being held hostage they told us that confidential information was released by a witch. They seemed to believe I was that powerful witch they spoke upon, but I don’t recall being the most powerful witch at this moment,” she sarcastically shrugs.

“You should take it as a compliment.”

“You tryna’ be funny?”

“No, but you are being a smart ass.”

“We were there for an entire week, grandma. Tortured and probed on some bullshit vendetta that wasn’t even for us,” Sin becomes serious, trying to allow Sybil to understand the severity of the situation.

“Tortured, how so?”

“Tortured as in tortured. Pheme and Cloud were critically assaulted, he refuses to tell me the specifics of what happened—“

“You don’t know something that happened to your partner…whom you’re supposed to share everything with?” Sybil’s face fills with a confusion that makes Sin want to itch.

“Is that what you’re seriously taking out of this entire conversation?”

“Well you can’t seem to answer the question of what happened to Cloud or anyone else, so maybe the extremity to you may be hyperbolized.”

“Hyperbolized?” Sin raises her eyebrows. She laughed at how pointless talking to her felt, knowing that when she arrived home it would come with some bullshit, but she didn’t think it would be this bad.

“I’m over this. Where’s my father?” She stands from the table.

“Why can’t you feel comfortable enough to talk to me about anything you have going on, Sin?”

“Our relationship started off with you only wanting to use me for your advantage. Not for the fact that your first and only son gave you a grandchild, not because I could’ve continued the legacy of my mother. This relationship is strictly business at this point. I’m gonna make sure our coven is protected and you could do me a favor by doing the same. Now what’s going on with Iver?” Sin can feel her temperature rising, imagining herself jumping across the table.

“We moved him to his bedroom and made sure he’s bathed and comfortable, that’s all I can tell you,” Sybil shrugs, bringing the mug she holds up to her lips.

“That’s it?”

“That’s all,” Sybil stirs the spoon inside the cup, holding the handle across from her face.

“Hm. It’s funny, you had me drive two hours to interrogate me, yet you bring absolutely nothing to the table. You always cry about how you want us to work things out. Here I am, look what you’re doing.”

“What am I doing to you, exactly?”

“You’re not doing anything to me. But you are lying,” Sin fires back.

A flash of emotion comes across Sybil’s face. It’s like she’d almost cracked, like she wasn’t expecting Sin to catch onto her undermining ways. She’d seen this before, the animatronic movements Faye responded with in Elysian.

“Sin, I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“Oh! You don’t want to talk anymore? After having me waste my time and come all the way down here to please you, you don’t want to talk anymore. That’s fine. I’m leaving—“

“I didn’t say you had to leave, Sin,” Sybil reminds.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because it’s late at night, and that’s a long drive.”

“Because it’s late at night,” Sin repeats, almost bored.

“You haven’t finished your beignets,” Sybil then points out, pushing them to her side of the table as she continues, “You can head back to doggy daycare tomorrow.”

“I wasn’t asking for permission to head back to Providence. Have you even spoken to Adonis?”

“Why do you think I called you?”

“You can’t be more ridiculous,” Sin blatantly states.

“Why don’t you tell me about this boy that’s on your mind?”

Sin’s taken aback. She clears her throat as she interrogates, “Who said anything about—“

“You’ve clearly got it all wrong about thinking I don’t know you.”

Sin seats herself back in the chair. She figures that she needs to make this two hour drive worth the time, maybe a grandmother's touch to all of her personal issues wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe Sybil did know her more than she thought.

“Well…you’re right. There’s another boy.”

“You’re interested in him?”

“Interested is a bit of a loose term,” Sin mutters, taking a small plate from the middle of the table in preparation to take a beignet.

“How so?”

“Um— we really like each other? It’s just too much going on to elevate in terms of an official relationship. So for now—“

“For now you just have sex.”

Sin can feel her cheeks becoming warm, now dreading the fact that she allowed herself to open up to Sybil.

“Not exactly?” Sin twiddles her fingers.

“Okay, y’all have—fun together. Let’s say that,” Sybil corrects herself.

“Yeah, fun. He’s just— he’s been a comfort to me despite everything going on with Cloud, Pheme and Nadia. After the whole situation happened at Oseidon they completely shut me out, and the pack members have been really supportive towards me. More than my own family. They’re starting to feel like family more,” Sin admits.

“Well let’s not get too ahead of ourselves, Sin. You can’t trust them so easily. Don’t be naive, a wolf will always be a wolf.”

“What?” Sin frowns, “They’ve been more trusting in these months then you’ve been!”

“So now we’re back to bickering,” Sybil sighs, drained of Sin’s back and forth emotions.

“Maybe they can teach us something, grandma. The way that Providence is united is something we need.”

“So you’re turning on me?”

“You know that’s not what I meant, grandma,” Sin pinches the bridge of her nose.

“If you want to befriend those dogs, fine by me.��

“Don’t call them that.”

Sybil finds that statement amusing, laughing as she replies, “You get offended as if you are one!”

Sybil continues laughing, unaware that Sin has gone quiet at that statement. Sin stands from the table and pushes the beignets back to the middle, grabbing her belongings as she tells Sybil through her laughs, “I’ll stay the night with Dad.”

“What’s that on your arm?”

Before Sin can protest, Sybil’s already grabbing her arm and looking at her wrist, seeing the green veins protruding out she runs her finger along the skin.

“What the hell is this?”

Sin almost panics at the question. She knew Sybil could barely put a smile on her face at the thought of Providence, she couldn’t imagine the baby she’d have knowing that she had become one of them.

Sin snatches her arm back as she says, “Stop acting as if you’re actually interested.”

“Why is it always a knife fight with you?”

The question has Sin halt her movement as she’s now on her way towards the front door. It was a simple question, yet the feeling that went along her body made it way more than that. It angered her that Sybil acted clueless to her actions, her patronizing tone, and her bad attempt at hiding her true motives. She didn’t know how much more of it she could take.

“It isn’t a knife fight for me, Sybil. You’re the one that hides the knife behind your back, while my hands are completely empty.”

With that, she slammed the door behind herself. For once she’d left Sybil entirely speechless.

#black #black fantasy #black love #black stories #reading #romance #writers on tumblr #black literature #black tumblr #salem witch trials #witch #black witches #black wolves saga #new salem

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lululeighsworld · 7 months

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FE OC Week Day 4 - Tragedy!

absolutely not shocking that im thrilled to share the horrors Summoner Leigh has been subjected to (by me). if you love your oc, put them through the wringer is how the saying goes, right?

gonna immediately throw this under a readmore. content warning for character death and the usual fe villain awfulness. tl;dr Summoner Leigh has been murdered twice in two separate timelines and they end up being an undead puppet each time.

[day 1 introductions] [day 2 relationships] [day 3 backstory?]

so one of my favourite ideas feh has established is that there are an infinite amount of worlds that exist and heroes can be summoned from. this lends itself REALLY WELL to playing around with various "what if?" scenarios, especially in consideration of the different "bad ends" a character may find themself face to face with.

(gonna try and save the details of these bad ends for the last day so i can talk about them alongside the good ends. for now, i'll just focus on the tragedy side of things.)

Nemhain: Soulless Havoc

Like other cohorts of Hel, Nemhain takes their name from a mythological figure — in their case it is Nemain, the personification of the frenzied havoc of war from Irish mythology. Nemhain is to Leigh as Líf and Tharsir are to Alfonse and Veronica: soldiers in Hel's army of the dead, from an alternate timeline when both Askr and Embla were defeated by the undead realm. Having been murdered by Garon shortly after his arrival, Hel saw an opportunity with the summoner's corpse and decided to experiment with her construction of undead soldiers. Robbed of their voice and without Askr's blessing upon their soul (Hel has stolen this too), Nemhain is a ruthless and silent killing machine, roaming the battlefield with nary a trace and tearing a part their victims in the blink of an eye. They often return to Hel soaked in the blood of their victims, phosphorescent green (similar to arsenic-laced wallpaper) hue glowing sickeningly in the realm's darkness. Those who escape Nemhain's wrath report hearing the rattling of chains moments before the attack; others claim to have felt nauseous, the sensation lasting long after leaving the battlefield. Mysteriously, some succumb to an unidentifiable illness despite their initial luck.

jello-colour refs and my poor attempt at trying to put their design to paper (im a writer not a character designer okay)

oh the bird flying above Nemhain in the second picture? in this alternate timeline, Summoner Leigh nursed an injured starling back to health before they got jello'd. starlings are very good at mimicking human speech, and may have picked up on their speech patterns while in their care. after becoming Nemhain, the starling finds and follows them. it's very unsettling when heroes who knew the summoner hear their voice but see the monstrosity before them on the battlefield :')

Leigh: Beloathed Puppet

Anankos' hold on his vessels should never be underestimated, least of all by one whom wields the power to return heroes home. The arrival of Fallen!Lilith spells ruin for Summoner Leigh, convincing the wavering vessel which stands at their side to betray their trust and feelings so they can return to the Betrayed King's side. The deed is done when the point of a lance finds itself buried in the summoner's abdomen, to which they are then dragged half-dead by Gunter towards the dias where Lilith awaits. Mercy would have been leaving them in Askr to die after using Breidablik to send them home. The Mad Dragon is anything but merciful, however. With what little life they have remaining, Leigh finds themself tumbling over the cliff side of the Bottomless Canyon; they're dead before they reach Valla, just a corpse for Anankos' amusement. Similar to the kingdom's inhabitants, Leigh becomes an Invisible Soldier, now a puppet with no longer a will of their own.

:'''"") don't you just love when your oc's crush is the cause of their death. admittedly i go back and forth on the exact details of this tragedy all the time because there is just so much angst to play with.

speaking in terms of feh plot, the betrayal happens sometime during book 6 (both after Leigh first confesses their feelings to Gunter at the end of book 4 and Fallen!Lilith's appearance in book 6) but before Leigh starts studying magic under Niime and book 7 (Anankos shows up himself in book 7 and i wanna do something different with him storytelling wise).

im also undecided on how much Fallen!Leigh would remember Gunter, if at all. and yes they'll probably get a cool outfit! but ive been indecisive as hell for years and cannot for the life of me decide what i want it to look like. ah well, can't figure out everything all at once less i have nothing to brainstorm in the future!!

that's all for now! if you made it this far, thank you for reading!!

diver by Firefly Graphics

#fe oc week #summoner leigh #summoner oc #nemhain (feh oc)#phew this ended up being a long one......sorry not sorry i thrive 90% on angst #in truth i do have some scribbles for fallen!leigh's outfit but i look at them after i finish and go hmmm actually i don't like this anymor #it would probably help if i figured out what their role in the story would be after becoming a puppet but i like keeping my options open!!!#gunter knowing what he did though......YEAH......YEAH..........really that's what im here for the most #old man live with the consequences of your actions?#just add another layer of icing to the old man is suffering cake

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land-of-troves-and-rabbit-holes · 10 months

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What the classes' powers are (LOTARH edition)

Thief: aspect-stealing, aspect-moving powers that lead to them having all of the aspect. all of it. culminates in them being cloaked in all the aspect power they’ve accumulated, which charges up equipment they’ve stolen too. oh and they can bring their aspect to bear when stealing, and sometimes it’s as flashy as what comes after.

Prince: bring out their aspect’s most destructive, explosive potential. they get deadlier as they become more in tune with their aspect inside them. synergizes with their fighting style and use of their weapon extremely well. their powers are suited for protectors and warriors, and they often knew how to fight long before they started playing sburb.

Knight: bending their aspect’s basic powers to stunning and unprecedented uses. it permeates what they do in battle, but they’re equally adept at intrigue/daily life purposes. (like a knight of time gaming the stock exchange with future knowledge, or a knight of blood knowing what their team needs and how to keep the peace under impossible odds.)

Mages: aspect magic system that requires time and careful study to reach its peak. their magic system is complex, needs some forethought to be most effective, and takes inspiration from irl divination rituals (like astrology, tarot, or predictive algorithms). though as they get stronger, they’re not predicting the future, but putting it together in advance.

Witch: quick-fire superpowers that seem to come naturally to them. they were actually bestowed at a grievous price, and take on some flavor from the dreadfully powerful entity that bestowed them. (jade’s space powers are imbued with light from the green sun, and the handmaid’s clockwork majyyk eyes shared lord english’s rainbow aesthetic.)

Seer: sensing and exploration powers, plus a suite of spells they can cast with high versatility. they are already natural strategists and planners, so these spells are extra bomb. they also get aspect knowledge from other timelines and experience it as visions or flashes of intuition. (seers of mind can even “remem8er” long chains of memories from alternate timelines.)

Rogue: aspect-stealing, aspect-moving powers that give people buffs/debuffs/utilities. can store huge amounts of aspect in objects, or take it away. their aspect also gives them a suite of mobility and stealth powers that make it easy to get in and out of places. they are great at stealing things, and awesome at getting those things where they need to go.

Sylph: weave aspect into things, like a fairy enchanting things to upgrade them. they imbue their personal gear, weapons, and even gifts to friends with buffs from their aspect and their personal connection to it. they also gain wound-healing powers related to their aspect, including a self-heal that stitches them back together even after by all measures they’re already dead.

Maid: they can just. make. their aspect. like they hold an infinite pitcher of it and they can pour out a hundred gallons wherever they want at a moment’s notice. this helps them with longevity too - they are also naturally resilient, and use their aspect to endure, defend, or heal very easily. when the strength goes both ways, there’s really no stopping them.

Heir: it’s called being good. seriously. they get all the "common” aspect powers very early and 1000% stronger straight out the gate. they can also transform themselves into their aspect, or become the focal point of its power. that last bit means they can tap into its entire body of strengths by redirecting it into themselves. (it makes them a narrative force of nature, like an heir of breath being unlimited by the confines of a story.)

Page: anything related to their aspect just kind of bends to their will. they’re always getting a little of what they want no matter what, no need to ask. and when they work for it, the whole world turns their way. culminates in an “aspect field” around them that makes game constructs (living entities, inanimate objects, physical forces, fate itself) work in their favor.

Bard: bring out their aspect’s chaotic potential. it goes wild when they want it to - any rule can be broken, anything at all can break. they also get a powerful transformation that lets them tap into the more destructive extent of their powers. the strongest bards are accompanied by a signature audio cue that strikes their aspect into others, like a honk.

#homestuck #classpect #classpect powers tag

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comaranism · 2 years

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Globalisation and the Individual

Advances in technology throughout the last century have allowed for the growth of transport and communication infrastructure around the world. There are three key elements of globalisation to define: cultural, economic and political globalisation. Where globalisation has the potential to bring the world together, we must observe how in reality it has been used as an extension of imperialism. Lenin wrote that imperialism was the highest stage of capitalism; Lenin correctly observed also that monopolisation was the end result of capitalism and with the monopolisation of industry; companies can then outsource labour and production with effectively zero competition.

The contradictions of imperialism are evident in globalisation; capitalist hierarchies must be propped up by the myth of infinite economic growth and the threat of forever war is used to enforce the economic globalisation of smaller countries, which has disastrous consequences for those countries whose economies must then gravitate around the imperialist economy. An imperialist country will enforce political and economic globalisation with military bases around the world. This comes with a grave cost: the people and the environment. People all around the world suffer from the effects of imperialist globalisation. Be them the outsourced slave labour picking quinoa in Peru or the “costs-too-much-to-hire” Australian citizen applying to pick fruit on a farm in Queensland. We have seen globalisation perverted by imperialism as a means to underpay foreign workers to increase the profit margins of companies operating in Imperialist countries. Now we must ask ourselves what is the role of the individual under globalisation?

Individualism places the intrinsic worth of the individual of that over the worth of the collective which we find to be a direct contradiction to socialism. The individual finds themselves then in competition with other individuals, rather than working together for the benefit of the many. The individual now has to own a car, buy a house and if they can’t afford one rent one, these are the chains of the ruling class to shackle the individual to debt. But it’s “fine” actually, because what you’re buying when you buy a car is the freedom and don’t worry that that means the freedom to navigate a city designed emphasising car travel. When you’re buying a house you’re buying your kingdom, a castle, you want to be a king don’t you? Individualism makes every man a “king” of their own 250sqm kingdom. Through this economic necessity, the individual is forced to now be in competition for resources and accessibility, there must now be a winner and a loser in each transaction, and the relationships between individuals are transformed from Proletarianism to Entrepreneurial. So it can be extracted that through bourgeois individualism, community suffers.

The ruling class heavily invests in promoting bourgeois individualism because the rights of the individual are more readily stolen than the rights of the collective. We have seen the promotion of individualism in the casualisation of workforces, workers now under threat of having their jobs outsourced to cheaper foreign labour accept with gratitude for what they’re given. The fabricated concept of an individual carbon footprint passes the blame from corporations and the negative effects of globalisation on to you an individual whom has no real power to affect change on a meaningful level. The individual cuts down on how many plastic bottled soda pops they drink to make a difference but soda-company still makes plastic by the million tonnes a year.

We again see the contradictions of imperialism in the inhumane treatment of refugees at the borders of imperialist countries. The individualist recognises the refugee as a threat, people looking to come to more prosperous countries and then take up scarce jobs and resources. The question of why is not asked by the individualist, Michael Parenti writes in ‘Blackshirts and Reds’, that when we think without Marx’s perspective we seldom ask why certain things happen. Without Marx’s perspective, the individual is doomed to see the world without framework and fails to associate social problems and the socio-economic forces that create them. Why are brown refugees getting locked up on Nauru when white Ukrainian refugees were fast tracked visa applications as a result of the Russian War on Ukraine? Without framework, we see the Russian declaration of war on Ukraine as a complete act of injustice, and fail to associate the War thousands who have died in Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast since 2014. The individual has many roles under globalisation, but even those who benefit from living in an imperialist country are victims of misinformation and debt. This leaves the individual with confused intention, the liberal supports NATO and Ukraine because of the unjust invasion by Russia, thinks that the biggest nuclear threat is the DPRK and thinks that Cuba is a dictatorship. All these things have contradictions in the truth of course, the capitalist dictatorship rules with these lies and distractions, because not only again are the individuals rights more readily stolen than the collectives, the distracted collective now must first advocate the truth before they advocate change.

The ruling capitalist class has waged war on the ideologies of the working class and sought to create divisions between the people. So it is resolutely necessary for the absolute rejection of bourgeois individualism and only then the individual can then start to examine their relationship between themselves and the collective. Working class consciousness is the water to the seed of the working class revolution and is the beginning of removal of barriers towards collective action in the interest the working class.

#long post

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htgcyoga · 2 years

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Thirty-Seven Things that Bodhisattvas Do By Thomge Zangpo (1295-1369) https://youtu.be/sT1jeUK4aeA Namo Lokeshvaraya Although seeing all dharmas neither come nor go To help wandering beings sole effort you show. To the supreme Guru and savior Chenrezi, With respectful three doors I prostrate constantly. The perfect Buddhas, source of help and happiness, Are born when sublime dharma has been accomplished. And since that depends upon knowing what to do The bodhisattvas' practice, I'll explain to you. 1. When the rare ship of freedom and riches is won, For us and others to cross samsara's ocean Without any neglect both the day and night through To hear, think, and train is what bodhisattvas do. 2. To our close kith and kin, like water passion sways. To our distant enemies, like fire hatreds blaze. Forgetting discernment, dark ignorance ensues. To cast off homelands is what bodhisattvas do. 3. Afflictions slowly fade when bad places are shunned. Virtue easily grows where there's no distraction. With a clear mind trust in the dharma is produced. To stay secluded is what bodhisattvas do. 4. From each and every dear companion we will part. We will leave possessions for which we've strived so hard. The body's guest house the guest, consciousness, will lose. To renounce this life is what bodhisattvas do. 5. When with certain people, the three poisons increase. Hearing, thinking, and training decline and grow weak. Love and compassion become completely removed. To give up bad friends is what bodhisattvas do. 6. When attending special people, faults are consumed. Qualities increase like the waxing of the moon. To cherish sublime teachers with greater value, Than our own body is what bodhisattvas do. 7. Within samsara's dungeons they themselves are chained. So, who do worldly gods have the power to save? Thus, in the three jewels' undeceiving refuge To go for shelter is what bodhisattvas do. 8. The most hard to bear are lower realms' sufferings. Shakyamuni taught they are the fruit of bad deeds. Therefore, even at the cost of our lives, to choose To never do wrong is what bodhisattvas do. 9. The pleasures of the three realms are like dew on grass. They fall to peril in a momentary flash. For the unchanging state of freedom absolute, To seek and to strive is what bodhisattvas do. 10. Since beginningless time, us they have had love for. What good is happiness, when our mothers suffer? To free infinite beings by giving birth to The enlightened mind is what bodhisattvas do. 11. From desire for pleasure all suffering springs forth. From thoughts to help others complete Buddhas are born. To take others' pain as we fully substitute Our own happiness is what bodhisattvas do. 12. Even if those by force of greedy obsession, Steal or have stolen all our wealth and possessions, To offer them our bodies, wealth, and all virtues Within the three times is what bodhisattvas do. 13. Even without having done the slightest of faults If people come along and cut our heads right off, Through compassion's power, to take their non-virtues All upon ourselves is what bodhisattvas do. 14. Even if about us people speak vicious words And proclaim them across the entire universe, With a pure heart of love to express through and through All their qualities is what bodhisattvas do. 15. At gatherings of masses, even if people Expose all our hidden faults and call us evil, Recognizing them as our teachers of virtue, To bow with respect is what bodhisattvas do. 16. Even if those for whom we have cared like our child Look upon us as if we are their arch rivals, Like a mother for her children stricken with flu, To love them still more is what bodhisattvas do. 17. Even if equal or inferior beings, Under power of pride degrade us and demean, To show respect for them as we would our Guru Received on our crowns is what bodhisattvas do. 18. Destitute and by people forever despised, Stricken by grave illness and demons in our lives, Still, the sin and pain of all beings to assume With courageous hearts is what bodhisattvas do. 19. Although famous and revered by many beings, With a great fortune like the god of wealth achieved, To see that grandeurs of existence have no truth, And not be haughty is what bodhisattvas do. 20. If our enemy of hatred has not been tamed, Outer foes may be vanquished, yet still escalate. With armies of love and compassion to subdue Our own stream of mind is what bodhisattvas do. 21. Salty water and sense pleasures are much the same. However much enjoyed, thirsts grow and never fade. All things by which longing and desire are produced To cast off at once is what bodhisattvas do. 22. Whatever the appearance, it is our own mind. Mind's nature transcends concepts since primeval time. Attributes of something grasped and one grasping to Not to form in mind is what bodhisattvas do. 23. When meeting with objects so lovely to the mind, Just like rainbows that appear in the summertime Beautiful things appear, yet see they have no truth. To give up desire is what bodhisattvas do. 24. All agonies are like our child's death in a dream. Holding illusions as real, we grow most weary. When situations of adversity ensue, To see illusion is what bodhisattvas do. 25. We must give even our lives for enlightenment. Do outer objects really need to be mentioned? With no hope for reward or karma to bear fruit To be generous is what bodhisattvas do. 26. If without discipline our own goal is not reached, Quite laughable a wish to help others would seem. Without having any mundane intent pursued To guard discipline is what bodhisattvas do. 27. For bodhisattvas who wish for virtue's pleasure, All doers of harm are like a precious treasure. Towards all without having hostile attitudes To practice patience is what bodhisattvas do. 28. Hearers and self-made Buddhas work just for themselves. Yet, strive like it's a fire on their heads that they quell. To rouse diligence, the source of fine attributes, For all beings' sake is what bodhisattvas do. 29. Understanding through insight while resting calmly Our afflictions are brought to their entire defeat, To practice concentration that transcends in truth The four formless realms is what bodhisattvas do. 30. Our complete enlightenment can not be achieved, Through the first five perfections, with wisdom lacking. To practice wisdom with method and no thought to Three separate spheres is what bodhisattvas do. 31. When our very mistakes we fail to comprehend, Though seeming like dharma, we may do wrong actions. With our mistakes constantly inquired into To abandon them is what bodhisattvas do. 32. If under power of afflictions, we discuss Other bodhisattva's faults we become corrupt. To speak not of the faults of those who've gone into The great vehicle is what bodhisattvas do. 33. Seeking gain and respect will lead to quarreling. Hearing, thinking, and training decline and grow weak. To give up clinging to the households of those who Are kin and patrons is what bodhisattvas do. 34. Harsh words create disturbances in others' minds, And lead the bodhisattva's conduct to decline. To give up the harsh words which are unpleasant to The minds of others is what bodhisattvas do. 35. When afflictions are habits, they're hard to turn back. So with the sword-like cure of mindfulness in grasp, As soon as afflictions like desire are produced, To strike them right down is what bodhisattvas do. 36. In short, in all activities we undertake, We must ask, "How is my mind in this present state?" Fulfilling the goal of others through continued Mindful awareness is what bodhisattvas do. 37. To dispel sufferings of infinite beings, Understanding the three spheres' complete purity, To dedicate such earnestly attained virtue For enlightenment is what bodhisattvas do. Adhering to the teachings of the sublime ones, Meanings of sutras, tantras, and explanations, I wrote for those wishing to follow the path through, These thirty-seven things that bodhisattvas do. Since I have a poor mind and my learning is weak, Scholars will not be pleased by this poetry. Yet since I drew from sutras and sublime teachings, These practices are without mistakes, I believe. Still bodhisattvas' actions are waves of greatness, And it's hard for my poor mind to fathom their depths. For faults, errors, contradictions, and all the rest O' sublime ones have patience, I humbly request! May all beings, by virtue arising from this, Through bodhichitta relative and ultimate, Dwelling not in extremes of existence or peace, Become the same as our protector Chenrezi. For the sake of benefiting himself and others, the scripture and logic expounding monk, Thogme (1295-1369), composed this in the Ngülchu Rinchen Cave. BUDDHA VISIONS PRESS Portland, Oregon www.buddhavisions.com [email protected] Copyright © 2015 by Eric Fry-Miller. All rights reserved. https://www.instagram.com/p/Cd810RyJR6l/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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queernuck · 3 years

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The Cleveland Browns made the playoffs. The Islanders made the Eastern Conference Finals.

And that’s enough for me.

So long, so long I have been living like this, pretending that I want to keep on living, that life feels worthwhile, that I don’t want to kill myself. Suicide is for cowards but ive been chickening out for a whole decade, to the point where getting on the subway was itself something that involved convincing myself not to jump in front of it. I remember once while working in the city, I watched and waited as two trains came in and left, trying to get the energy to jump in front of them. I had decided, if I couldn’t do it by the time a second train came and went, I would go to work and save it for another day. I came very close, my legs tense like a linebacker on 4th & Goal, but I didn’t do it. Maybe it would be better if I had, I would have saved not only myself but a lot of other people a lot of pain and suffering. I’ve been dealing with feeling suicidal for a decade, an entire ten years, and made it through. And for what? I lost a retail job at minimum wage, I’ve seen the Giants go from two-time Super Bowl kingslayers to a team that relied on the Eagles for a playoff berth, I got to see Evangelion only for the final Rebuild film to be infinitely delayed, I have a useless non-degree that allows me to eloquently describe how the Democrats and Republicans alike are driving this stolen land to Fascism while sycophants tell me Vote Blue No Matter Who. I’m so tired, I’m not even the person people think me to be, since if I were, I wouldn’t be in this mess.

My paychecks, as hard-earned as they were, never seemed to be mine in any real sense, and it made me so frustrated that something in me broke at the beginning of this year. I made some mistakes, some very stupid ones, and got myself fired. I took money from and distorted the inventory of my store to get what amounted to pocket money, less than two paychecks. I was tempted because I feel so powerless, so much like nothing I could ever say or do matters, and so I decided to lash out against a place that mattered to me, against people I cared about deeply. Chain stores, corporations, all of those things are not really high on my list of things to care about. Barnes & Noble pushed out local booksellers years ago, an irony not lost on me whenever our own competition with Amazon was made apparent. We were reaping what we had sown. But what always interested on top of this irony was how symbolic these things could be to people, how much we figured into so may memories for so many. The Manga Aisle at Barnes & Noble is a staple of 2006 scene culture, a way that kids without the pocket money to afford the newest volume of Bleach it Naruto could keep up before scams became widely available. How the store was a place where people studying for standardized tests could use the test prep guides to try and get ready for the eugenic ritual of the standardized test. And just how much a chain bookstore became a substitute, socially, for the now-absent local bookstore. We bear the guilt for that, but at the same time we were still selling books, giving people a place to get coffee and sit and read and talk, in ways that libraries may not be able to. We certainly can never replace a library, given just what a library does for people. But we did do a lot of good all the same. Before it closed, some of my fondest memories came when I was the exact sort of annoying teenage customer I grew to hate, hanging out at the Columbus Circle Borders. Working at Barnes & Noble was tiring, dehumanizing, difficult, made me feel like I would never measure up to the authors we sold, the people books were written about, that I was a failure. And I am, as my death shows. But it also made me a part of something I was proud of. And that Above & Beyond pin I earned is in my jacket still, a reminder of something.

That something was shown in so many of the coworkers I had, who were incredible in so many ways. I feel awful for what I did, I genuinely do, because of how it may have hurt people who thought so kindly of me, people who deserve so much good. I wish I had the ability to address each of them individually but this decision was hastily made, and i have a feeling it will show in the things I miss in this note. Audra, your help in finding me a way to use the company policies to my advantage as a worker was something that gave me faith even after having seen the despicable firings and cuts the company went through. Linda, I can’t quite square the circle here given my actions, but I want to say your disappointment broke my heart and that while I will not be the one who shows it, your reassurance that everyone makes mistakes was welcome.

To my (former) fellow booksellers at Store 2216, all of my love and my sincerest apologies. You all have so much good in you, your willingness to listen to my ADHD-fueled rants and to discuss so many things with an incredible frankness was always impressive, in addition to part of what I loved about all of you. I want you all to be happy, and the kinship I felt with you was a vital part of what kept me going. It was tough, as you all know. But at times, it almost felt worth it.

The same is true of my CTY friends: it was a weird, magical place that frankly, a lot of us idealized for far too long and which sk many of us eventually outgrew without being able to let go of. And that was tough, that was something we had a great deal of difficulty understanding, that what helped us once was not always going to be helping us, was not always what we needed. But in eventually finding that, we found solace, we realized how life as a whole functions and just what it is that we can take from places like it.

To my other family, my Cleo family, I know I haven’t been terribly active lately, but I can never, ever thank you enough for the belonging you gave me. I have never felt anywhere as welcoming as Cleo. As warm as Cleo (even as we struggled to pay for the oil bill) was. As kind and understanding. As tolerant. As questioning and inquisitive into what that tolerance meant to us. I am thankful, eternally, for what you all did for me. The incredible experiences I had as a Cleo make me proud of what the organization can represent, and one of my dying wishes is that the organization continues to reach out to marginalized communities on Trinity’s campus. There is much work to be done in making sure abusers cannot hide in our family, but I trust you all to do that work. Tucker Carlson is a Trinity grad and we must embody the opposite of what he stands for, no matter how difficult it may be. I could go on about how this means opposing liberals and Liberalism/Neo—Liberalism due to the truth of tolerance resulting in a Popper-esque Paradox of Tolerance that implies Popper is a worthwhile philosopher, but that’s another issue.

To my friends on that Blue Hellsite, tumblr, you made a continual presence worth it, even with all of the bullshit this place brings. It’s the reason I read so much Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze & Guattari, read Žižek against himself, and so on and so on, and the value of that to me can never be overstated. I learned so much from the ways in which I learned to analyze the world, and that in turn became a huge inspiration for why I should try to do what I could to make the world closer to a place of revolution, one where we could perhaps eke out a living for one another. I loved how much I could be an unrepentant nerd and still love hockey on there, and while the

NHL fans on tumblr are incredibly annoying,

I can deal with that compared to the racism of most hockey fans.

Mom, Dad? I just couldn’t live with you any longer. I’m so sorry.

Grandma, I love you.

And the things I leave behind? Donate what can be donated. Hats, please auction, or at least offer to other HatHeads at a reasonable price. I had some nice ones. As for assorted albums, clothing, and other things, sell them and donate to a Harm Reduction organization, or organizations that advocate for PWUD in a radical fashion. WE DESERVE AUTONOMY!

I am a victim of the War on Drugs. Sobriety was always hellish to me, and I could never take it. I want people to be able to live how they want, to see sobriety and being on drugs as equally valuable states, to see the two as no different from one another.

Abolish all gun laws

End the War on Terror

Decriminalize and legalize all drugs, sobriety is what killed me.

I love all of you.

LET’S GO ISLANDERS!

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hesgunnalovethis · 3 years

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Act of Guilt

Summary: Your actions planetside begin to interfere with your daily life and Leonard McCoy, struggling to see you this way, wants to help.

TW: Teen rating for mature themes, we’re talking through some sleep paralysis, we’re having bad dreams, we're absolutely full of angst but we end on a high besties <33

This one goes out to all my homies that are overworked and underappreciated :’) whether it be school, college, uni, careers or general life; you are seen, you are valid and I think you’re doing a great job and so does our homeboy Leonard McCoy.

Masterlist!

Word Count: 1855

You were used to waking up against the frigid grey of the Enterprise. Even as a high ranking officer you were each assigned the same internal quarters, uniform in presentation. Glutted, you often heard a little more than you wanted to on either side of your walls. You feared that perhaps they heard a little too much as well.

You were used to waking up with frozen limbs. With the same familiar feeling washing over your head before rushing down to tighten your chest. The same reluctance to open your eyes to reveal whichever heinous scene your subconscious displayed within your familiar raw walls.

Every night played out the same: the face of someone you loved in front of your pointed phaser switched to kill, heaved awake by the thud of their lifeless body, held a frozen prisoner forced to endure whichever fear felt most prominent that morning.

Recently you couldn’t even bring yourself to near the bed. You’d return from shifts to sit on the bitter floor and recount the enemies you’d killed in the name of Starfleet. You’d think of their lives, their loved ones, their dreams.

You were brought to Starfleet to be a doctor; now it seems they’d have you do anything but.

It was Thursday. You made your way to the medbay to be briefed on the rota for this week. You weaved in and out of a sea of uniforms who stalked towards their own respective bases for their own respective rotas.

Your week often looked the same - another sense of routine you couldn’t seem to escape - five days with the ground team, one shift in the medbay, one day off. Your medbay shift was always the same too. Sunday shift: the biggest influx of causalities, highs of inpatients with the longest turnover time, most surgeries performed and somehow always understaffed.

Moving towards your, makeshift, office you picked up your PADD and looked for the rota that Leonard always sent to you prior to the briefing. Seven days of ground work. You almost doubled over from the thought of it. Your entire body felt hot as you took deep breath convincing bodily fluids to stay put.

With frantic pace you arrived at Leonard’s, very much real, office and found him turned away finishing his notes for the day.

You dropped the PADD in front of him with force, “Explain.”

“You know that if I had it my way you’d be here seven days a week.” Leonard spoke as if rehearsed, he’d obviously anticipated your visit.

“You have jurisdiction here, Leonard. Surely there’s something you can do? Something you haven’t tried?” You scrambled out as Leonard put his pen down and held his head in his hands.

“I’ve tried everything darlin’. You don’t know how important it is to me that you’re here.” Your mind flicked through your conversations in the medbay that went on a little too long as you stood a little too close. Stolen moments through the day you’d fill with genuine laughter and escapism. The fresh flowers that would appear in your crooked office that he’d never let you thank him for. You remembered the shifts where Leonard would let you take the lead while he caught up on sleep on his couch. The days you’d both stay behind and drink away the sourness until you met the sweetness of his lips on yours. “I’ve tried everything.”

“Tell them we’re understaffed. Tell them I’m indispensable. Tell them-” Your voice broke. Leonard head lifted at the sound revealing a deep hole in his cheek unmistakably driven in by a phaser shot.

You gasped, stumbling back through his office tripping over the coffee table centre piece of the room. Leonard moved towards you. Unable to take your eyes off the hole in his face as your hands dripped with blood and guilt you expelled your body weight willing the pull door to push open. Leonard’s hands levelled either side of the door frame his face close to yours. Ears muffled and knees giving way you pressed your eyes shut concealing the scene.

“Y/N?” Leonard asked after a few moments of stillness before lifting one of your eyelids shining his torch in each eye. As you readjusted to the light you saw Leonard’s face again, clean of everything but concern. You glanced round the room to find the coffee table the only thing out of place and your hands sweating but clean. You reached for Leonard pulling him in towards you. His hands swept round your back and he pressed a kiss into your temple.

“What” he asked, “the hell was that?”

“Felt like my dream.” You said performing exercises to convince Leonard you did not have a head injury without him asking.

“And you often have dreams of murderous me?” Leonard dissolved, guiding you towards the seats in the middle of the room, straightening the coffee table.

“No. I often have dreams of murderous me.”

Curious and cautious Leonard sat opposite you and reached for your hand. He pulled back sharply at first “You’re iced.” He clasped both your hands in his and puffed a long warm breath between them. Slowly your anxiety began to melt. The breath was real. The warmth was real.

“Every night I have a dream, eerily like an away mission, only the faces are swapped and I know who I’m killing. And then, I wake up and watch them die on my floor and my body screams at me to wake up and help them but I’m frozen. I can’t move.”

“Sleep paralysis?” Leonard asked still rubbing your hands between his own.

“That would be my guess. Every morning. Some nights I can’t face it.”

“What do you do those nights?”

“I stay up. Sit on the ground and think about all the lives I’ve taken in a job where I’m supposed to save them.” You stood up and walked towards the window in Leonard’s office, poking open the blinds to view the busy medbay. You sighed at the internal architecture of the ship. “It’s like I’m not real. I exist within grey walls or as a killing machine.” You slumped back down in the chair.

Leonard leaned forward slipping his hand round the back of your neck, scratching the base of your hair line. He held eye contact with you and sincerely stated, “You’re quite dramatic.”

“Week after week, Leonard. Every time I shut my eyes I see you or Jim or- or Chekov lifeless because of me! Makes you think of what those lives I’ve ended meant to someone else.” You stood up again walking towards the blinds, poking them open slightly hoping to see a different landscape. “And why does this ship have no exterior windows! Would it kill them to let me see the stars? Remind me where I came from.” Spitting the end vehemently towards Starfleet architects.

“Why don’t you come and stay with me for a while?” Leonard placed a hand on your shoulder, his other hand working the blinds out of your fingers before you broke them. “A change of scenery might do some good.”

“Aren’t you going to tell me I need to work through my guilt and reconceptualise my relationship with my job?”

“You’re a damn fine doctor Y/N. You don’t need me to tell you that, you just need a clear head to realise it for yourself.”

Leonard led you out of the medbay shouting a mere, “I’m a doctor, not a motivational speaker damnit.” In place of his weekly briefing.

Together you walked the length of the ship. Leonard asked you more about your dreams presenting it as conversational but you could see the medical cogs in his brain turning. “You’ve never had psychological training?” Leonard asked at one point with a startled stopping of his feet.

“Psychological training? What med school did you go to?” Scoffing at his faith in The Academy.

“Not med school, but I did a fair whack before I joined Jim’s ground team. You’ve never had- my god! No wonder you’re wracked with guilt darlin’ that is- that is- how did you ever end up planetside?”

“I don’t know I’m just pretty handy with a phaser I guess.” You said as you arrived at a door with the letters C.M.O emblazed on the front. “Nice door. How come I’ve never been here?”

Leonard shrugged “ ‘s not my fault you prefer the desk.” He stated opening the door to his double sized room.

Smooth navy covered the walls, beautifully contrasting the deep wooden furniture and shelves of brown bottles. Surrounded by whiffs of comforting warm fires and cheap rum you watched as Leonard ordered on the lights and followed him through to the next room. There was no doubt that Leonard lived a full life back home. His living space was full of southern knick-knacks and photographs of people you’d never known. There was a small collection of silver neck chains on show, thoroughly worn although never while on shift and nine or ten small stacks of crime novels strewn across the floor.

“This might cheer you up sweetheart.” Leonard tossed his PADD onto his cracked brown leather couch and made his way to the back wall which was entirely concealed by a deep purple curtain. Taking a bundle of the thick fabric in his hands, he eyed you before trudging it across the room revealing a vast ceiling to floor window. You caught your reflection in the glass and clapped your mouth shut looking to Leonard in shock.

“Bit of a sick joke for an aviophobiac.” Leonard physically shuddered at the open black, “But if it makes you happy it’s worth it.”

Bounding over the top of Leonards sofa to get a better look, you gazed out over the space you’d called home for past three years. Something about the infinite expanse always grounded you. The lack of endings and the billions of possibilities that presented made all of your worries and problems seem positively insignificant. It left you searing with luck to be living regardless. You moved even closer letting your breath fog up the glass. Leonard moved behind you hugging you round the middle and resting his chin on your shoulder.

“Look at it Leonard. Isn’t it just-”

“Horrifying?”

“Do you really look at that and feel nothing?” You were aghast at the thought.

Leonard sighed “I appreciate the sentiment of it.” He concluded. “It reminds me of a Jorge Luis Borges quote.”

“I didn’t realise you were so well read.” You both shared another moment of genuine laughter, “What’s the quote?”

“He says, ‘I’m not sure I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people I have met, all the women that I have loved;” He squeezed your arm as he spoke “All the cities I have visited.’ Reminds me of you actually. All the lives you’ve saved in the medbay and planeside. You leave a part of you everywhere you go; that’s what I think is beautiful, doll.”

You turned to him. He held your gaze firmly and you knew he meant the words he’d spoken. You rested your head against his chest silently thanking him for his kindness, you knew he’d never let you say it out loud. This wasn’t your home, but Leonard smelled of home for we all leave a part of ourselves in those we love.

Together you turned the couch to face the window and under Leonard’s duvet slept a full night of dreamless sleep woken only by a PADD dropped on your chest with the same force you’d dropped at Leonard yesterday.

“Five days in the medbay.” He gestured towards the open rota displayed on the screen, “Two days off. Including Sunday.”

#leonard mccoy imagines #bones imagines #leonard mccoy x reader #bones x reader #mccoy x reader #mccoy imagines #dr mccoy x reader #bones star trek #star trek fanfiction #star trek imagines #star trek fic #doctor mccoy #doctor mccoy x reader

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wonderloste · 2 years

Note

✦ faelen by chance? 😳

RE : & KISS PROMPT.

✦ › 67 . when one person stops the kiss to apologize and the other answers by kissing them more . // @juwul.

IN THE HEART OF THE ENEMY’S CASTLE, Faelen had once found refuge locking himself in the deepest parts of its hallowed halls, hiding from the winged Queen that now sat upon the castle’s tattered throne. Now as he slowly closes the gilded doors behind them and locks them into place with a golden key, he feels sorrow for the once beautiful kingdom. Would it have been, he could have taken them on a tour of the most beautiful rose gardens in all of Wonderland. Stepping out into the Red Queen’s wilted garden is anything but. There at the entrance of the once lovely, now crumbling gazebo, Plum stands in wait for him, staring back expectantly in a way that pulls him from his mourning. They could not stay here, not forever. But whilst they had to traverse through enemy territory, best to do so under the enemy’s nose, as least expected. He tucks his stolen key back under his shirt, kept upon a crystal chain, and returns to her.

As he approaches, he reaches out to rest his hand against her arm. The opposite raises to rest his finger beneath her chin, directing her gaze out to the expansive garden wilting amidst the Queen’s darkness. “It was not always like this,” he murmurs, longing in his tone. “This kingdom was beautiful once. Its people were beautiful, artistic, kind. Those of us who remain are broken and wilted. But we were not always hers.” He scans the area, then his eyes close alongside a drawn out sigh. When he looks at them again, there is an indescribable mess of emotions in his expression. Loss, hurt, melancholy... yet still, hope, beauty, love. “Everything she touches withers. This is why I will do all in my power to ensure you traverse safely through this kingdom so that you may make it to Spade Kingdom. Do you understand?”

As if to emphasize his point, he releases her only enough to cup both her cheeks in his hands, so that he may meet her gaze steadily. Serious at first, his expression softens after a beat of silence passes between them. His thumb strokes her cheek tenderly and smiles.

“Of everything living this day in Wonderland -- from the trees to the flora to the creatures who live alongside us -- you are infinitely the most precious. The most loving. The most important. You are everything.” He knows it must be scary to face such a reality. To have an entire realm that is not your own looking to you, wondering what your next step will be. But as much pressure as it is to bring millions of strangers hope, so too is it warm to stand before her. Wonderland’s light in the darkness... He wishes he could correctly convey the happiness she brings to him, just being here. Just being who she is. Not Alice, not a savior, not a hero. Just Plum. For a moment, it seems he starts to choke himself up, as when he speaks again, he sounds on the verge of tears. “I am so sorry that you must bear this mantle. You deserve... so much better.”

Holding her face gently, he leans down to press his lips to her forehead. It is not a fleeting gesture. He lingers, presses his own forehead to hers even after his lips have left her skin. He is content to enjoy the moment of solitary silence. They do not often experience them : traveling across the middle of Heart Kingdom had done little in way of their paranoia, constantly in danger. But it had taught him to take the precious memories he could make between the war and the bloodshed and the running. Him, a slave -- a puppet ... her -- a fugitive, a sacrifice. In truth, his heart aches knowing that this moment too, will end. That he will escort her to the border. That she will leave. He cannot protect them from the rest of Wonderland : not from the Jabberwocky, nor from the war.

But now ... right now, he could make her feel safe. Alice is everything to Wonderland, but the one who bears the title -- the outsider who has fallen into his company, she is everything to him.

“I truly wish,” he finally breaks the prolonged silence, pulling away just enough to look at her, but not creating more distance. “that one day I will stand before you, beautiful and whole and my own. That I may bring you back to these gardens and show you how vibrant they are in the spring. I want to walk with you in a time where you have no burdens on your shoulders or price on your head. When I do not have one foot on a grave and a guillotine at my throat.” That is his wish. His dream. Lifeless he has wandered these halls, but he didn’t want to slip back into hiding in the depths of this castle. “You’ve given me the strength to find meaning in that. I want my heart back. For so long, I have lived a shell of myself, a dead man walking. I truly, truly believe that if you can change my fate, you can rewrite your own. And I imagine all the things we could do, if Wonderland weren’t in this state... if your ‘fate’ wasn’t what it was. But I would not change any of it. You will rewrite your fate. Regardless of what happens to me, you will.”

His gaze shifts down to their lips. A beat passes, then two, and finally he seems to make up his mind. Slowly, he closes his eyes and eliminates the remaining distance between them. The gesture is wholly chaste, gentle : a tender kiss pressed to her lips as his hands hold her, pull her towards him. There’s a stumble between them as their bodies move a step forward towards one-another, but he doesn’t falter. His kiss lasts for only a few seconds, agonizingly short but longer than he’d meant for it to all the same. He realizes in that moment, he doesn’t want to let her go : and part of him wishes she had told him not to, so that he wouldn’t.

He wears a comforting smile, tears building on his lashes, but still they remain unfallen. Despite knowing better, he is still so close to them, reluctant to move further. “Forgive me.” To her credit, she stands tall alongside him. They are both out of place, caught together in an exchange that should not happen by any logical sense -- this was meant to be a quick detour. But now he stands there, unable to tear his attention away from her. And he’s better for it. By the grace of the one who now held what little of his heart remains in that moment, she tugs him towards her again and he easily complies, without complaint. He knows he shouldn’t, but he is a Wonderlandian and he is nothing if not mad. Should he choose his heart over his mind, so be it. He wants to kiss her again.

This time, when he kisses her at her behest, he drops one arm to wrap around her waist and pull her to him, properly. The other slides to rest delicately against her neck, fingers tangling with the ends of their hair. Rather than murmur baseless apologies against her lips, he gives in to her and pulls her up, lifting her to the tips of her toes whilst supporting her in a way that allows him to deepen the kiss. He holds her in a way that is equal parts yearning and loving -- it is clear, he will not be the one to pull away, not this time.

For the first time in centuries, the roses in the former King of Heart’s garden bore witness to an act of love : a blinding light in the middle of the Red Queen’s endless shadows.

#:') I FEEL LIKE I DID A BAD JOB WITH THIS ONE BUT I TRIED #I HAVVE EMOTIONS THANKS FOR THIS LMAO #holds my face in my hands....#aaaaa #juwul #◟ ♤ FAELEN › can’t run so you must hide‚ won’t make it back this time.#◟ ⋆ IC › paint the roses red.

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scribeofmorpheus · 3 years

Text

Himmeløyne [23/?]

Pairing: Loki Odinson x Reader

Catch Up Here | Masterlist

Warnings: Angst???

A/N: Please check out my original story, The Abstract Dark (previously: Our Lady of Darkness), for some spooks, a little witch-craft under moonlight, and terryfying vampyre-like things! (18+ mature content)

Taglist is open! Reblog, comment or leave a like please ☺

~Y/N

The armour took the brunt of the impact as soon as the portal blinked out of existence, seizing the world of Verdenspeil in a swirl of oblivion.

A grunt left your throat, then your ears picked up on Baldrick’s noise of discomfort—he had landed on his arm funny, but nothing seemed broken.

“Are you okay?” you helped him to his feet.

The boy nodded, eyes fixed on the fallen dagger a few paces across the room.

There was a pedestal in the centre of the room, a keyhole of a four-pronged star in the centre made for the dagger on the floor—the dagger Sigrid gave you.

You stood up to take a better look at Mímir’s Tomb. The circular room gleamed silver and gold from the armours of giant statuesque figures chained onto open tombs built into the walls. Their design was similar to the Valkyrie armour you now wore, only cruder from warring, from wear and tear. That revelation gave you pause for concern, if there were signs of use, there may be signs of the life that once inhabited the armour.

Baldrick walked over to the dagger, then on his tippy toes, wedged it into the keyhole slot and turned it counter-clockwise. Just as Sköll and Hati chase after the sun and moon in endless circles, the room began to turn like a drum racing downhill.

The spinning was so intense you feared you’d throw up. Baldrick held onto the pedestal and kept his eyes shut. From the ceiling, a contraption lowered a stone platform. As it descended, the room began to stop spinning, and the armoured figures began to stir.

“Baldrick,” you ushered him close to you, shielding him with your arm as he grabbed your cyan blue cloak that swept the floor. The swish and swing of blades being drawn emanated from the sheaths of the armoured figures.

You swallowed, holding your breath. Fingers birthing blue aura in anticipation of a fight. Then, with a loud and deafening thud, the platform locked onto a triangular dip in the floor, a head floating in a curtain of magic and light.

One armoured figure took a step, and as you raised your hand defensively, Baldrick whispered: “No.”

The armoured figure cluttered to the floor, scattering into hundreds of pieces—as did all the others. A helmet rolled to Baldrick’s feet, ornate, a golden set of horns shaped like an elk’s. With childish wonder, fear wiped off his face and he picked up the helmet and put it on, turning to smile with bright teeth at you.

You laughed, unexpectedly and wholeheartedly. It was a rare gift to see pure, unrestrained joy come from nothing. This little boy in front of you carried a connection, his magic made a home in yours, made itself feel like it had been there for years, like it was beyond familiarity. You knew he was manipulating your emotions, perhaps without even realising it, but for some inexplicable reason, you weren’t worried.

The wisps of your magic died down, then the head spoke: “I’d recognise that magic anywhere… You’ve been touched by the Stone of the Ancients.”

You turned to the head, an opal gemstone for one eye, and sky blues like your own for the other. His hair was grey and long, worn with Viking braids and beads knotted on the ends of a few dreaded strands. His beard was thin and braided, tribal tattoos on either side of his temple in the form of roots of the World Tree.

“Mímir,” you said.

“The one and only,” he winked. “Come closer, let me have a better look at you. My eyesight isn’t what it was, being locked away in the cold dark for over a millennia will do that to you.”

You and Baldrick moved closer to Mímir’s line of sight.

“Your eye, it is as mine,” you said.

“A gift from my sister,” he said with a wistful tinge. His focus turned to Baldrick with interest. Recognition. “You, boy, I know you—of you. Your essence is blindingly radiant. So much power for such a small thing. Frightening. World spanning. You—Yes! It is you that I dreamt of all those years ago—you will war with the brother. You will be the Herald of Twilight. Herald of the end!”

Baldrick did not react to the words that he heard, he only blinked slow, lethargic with growing fatigue.

You instinctively wrapped a protective arm around the boy's frame, taking a step back. Mímir turned his sights back on you, squinting. “And you… You are the last of the Himmel Kvinner. Your fate will be that of tragedy and truth. Love and despair. Life and the expanse of space between living and death. You are the Forgotten One.” He quieted in contemplation, sighing deeply with burden. “I see. Yes, I see now. The prince… he sleeps, does he not?”

“H-How do you know that?”

Mímir smirked, “My knowledge is infinite. I see all. And I see nothing. That is why the Allfather trapped me here. Once, I could see through the very weavings of time itself. Beyond realms. Beyond the limits of my body. Now I see remembrances of what I once dreamt. I am but a fraction of what I was. But even beheaded, I am still the wise Mímir, the first to drink from the well of knowledge. The first to be granted the vision of the Stone of the Ancients. The last pureblood heir to the House of Bölþorn the Just.” At the invocation of his house and title, Mímir’s skin turned to a proud, Jotun blue and then back to pale.

“Then you know of a way to wake him?”

“I see patience is lost on you. A millennia and my first guests cannot even humour an old man the chance to goad.” The head laughed, bemused by your dismissal of his grand introduction. “Very well. No, I cannot help you, but I keep the one who does.”

“What do you mean by keep?”

“Her reliquaries, your boy here immobilised them just by thinking it.”

“The statues?”

“Yes. Twenty-seven suits of armour for the twenty-seven pieces of my sister that Bor hacked with his axe.”

“Your sister?”

“Bestla.”

“Bor did that to Bestla? I thought they were lovers. Why would he do that his own wife?”

“Wife?” Mímir shouted the word as if it were a preposterous thing. “Ha! Is that the spin the Æsir are using now? Wiping away the blood from their history books, I see. Bestla was never Bor’s wife! Not by choice. She was his peace treaty. His flesh and blood armistice with the Jotuns after the Dark Alliance threatened to end the war; with him on the losing side!” His real eye flashed, lips moving with no sound. A spell had been cast. “I’ll let her speak for herself.”

Torches burst in blue flame. Suddenly, Jotun script burned to life, etching itself into the wall beside the moving tapestries of what could only be living history.

“It has been a long time since I ever saw our histories unfold on these walls,” Mímir sighed, half sadness, half gratitude. “It will be a refreshing change of pace, having someone know of the true story.”

Baldrick, drawn to the magic, began to read aloud, his tongue picking up the Jotun language with fluency. Dust, once housed in the shattered pieces of armour, began to materialise into a cloud. It roped around the room in an orb-like shape, drawn to you like a moth to flame.

Then, after Baldrick read the final inscription aloud, a piercing pain brought you to your knees. The mark of Odin sparking with life, a scream leaving your lips. Somehow the mark was interfering with the spell Baldrick had just unknowingly cast.

“Oh, no-no-no-no!” Mímir panicked. “You were marked. Quick, boy, grab one of the reliquary’s swords and hold it over the flame. Sorry, lass, but this will sting, we have to sever the mark’s connection to Odin’s magic.”

Baldrick rushed to do as Mímir said, his little feet working hurriedly. When he reached you, the sword that was too big for his grip glowed with the heat of the blue flames, threatening to bring a whole new kind of pain

“What will happen to me once the Ægishjalmar is gone?” you squeezed the raw muscle near your mark. Your mind flashed to the battle in the throne room again. To the frostbite of unbridled power.

“I know what you fear. I saw the battle in the throne room. I saw what you became because of Odin’s magic. The power you wield will be your own, I assure you, lass.” Mímir’s cadence was truthful, assured.

“Will it be dangerous?” you asked. “My magic?”

“All magic is dangerous, lass. The sooner you embrace that, the sooner you find balance.”

Baldrick searched your expression, needing to know whether to proceed or not. With a bitter taste in your mouth—partly for not wanting him to have to do something so hard, partly for your own sake—you bit down on a belt strap and nodded.

The burn was subliminal compared to having Odin’s passive magic seared out of you. It was like having a piece of you stolen without ever realising it was there to begin with. When the smell of burning flesh diffused, and the blade dropped to the ground, you felt dizzy, not as sober as before.

The magic that was denied to complete itself before was now free to continue without the resistance of Odin’s magic. The dust from the reliquaries wasn’t dust at all, they were ashes, the vestiges of Bestla.

The ashes coalesced into a physical mimicry of Bestla—and she looked every bit as fierce and beautiful as she had in the book. Tall, strong arms, midnight hair, long and thick to her tailbone. The red of her Jotun eyes was diluted, cloudy. And the tribal markings painted on her face and arms was of a powdered white. She was a vision. Demanding. Anomalistic.

“Ahhh,” Bestla breathed in deep, taking in air till her lungs promised to burst. “It has been ages since I felt the cold. The air. Light.” She laughed in glee. Slightly mad, but she was excused of that twistedness.

“And it is good to see you again, dear sister,” Mímir laughed.

Bestla turned quick on her heels, a stretch to her cheeks from her growing smile, “Mim? I never imagined I’d ever see you again.” She crossed over to his side of the room in two quick strides. Her fingers hovered over the jewel he had in one of his eye cavities. “Who did this to you?”

“Your son,” he said, downcast.

Bestla let out a contemplative hum, not in the least surprised, “So, he turned out just like his father.”

“I tried my best, but he had too much of his father’s pride, too much of that Æsir spirit.”

The giantess turned to you and then the boy, “You have finally come.”

You staggered to your feet, patience fully wilted, “It seems, every portal I jump through, every new world I discover, and every new person I meet, knows of what I am and what I will do before I do. I must admit, it is quite frustrating.”

“I can only imagine. You travelled all this way for hope, for a way to wake the one you love. Love… It has been a while since I felt its aura. It is beautiful on you. And waning. As is the construct of time,” Bestla closed the distance between the two of you, her height seeming doubled from up close. You opened your mouth to speak, but she countered with a raised hand. “Yes, I know of a way to wake him.” She waved her hand and your memories of the throne room battle were pulled from your mind, displayed in illusions of light and shadow. “When Odin cast the incantation, he unleashed your full potential. That potential is as mine was, once.” She waved her hand again and the illusion turned to that of a blue box, slithering with light. The Jotun Artefact that gave you your power. “This is the Stone of the Ancients. One of six. My people guarded it for generations. Its essence was intertwined with the very fabric of Jotunheim, as a heart does to a body, so when the Æsir stole it from our temples to use as a weapon against the Vanir during the First Great War, our planet fell to ruin. Ruin and endless winters.”

The illusion showed the decimation of spring and summer from the unimaginable beauty of a Jotunheim you had never seen before. A Jotunheim of peace and vibrancy that was all wiped away for the frozen tundra you knew all too well.

“You mean… it was Bor that started the war between the Giants and the Asgardians?” you asked.

“Aye, lass, the very same Tyrant King,” Mímir said. “Your dark prince isn’t the heir to a murderous legacy, he is the heir of the wronged. Heir to desolation as long as the Stone of the Ancients is never returned to Jotunheim.”

“Is that why I was lead here? You want me to help you restore Jotunheim?”

Bestla and Mímir shook their heads. You knew that look. It was the look of loss.

“No, dear one, Jotunheim is lost. Forever.” She said. “Fate is a tricky thing. My brother has seen how I meet my end, and I require you to do so. I swore to have my revenge, and I will, with your help.”

“If… If I help you, you will show me how to wake Loki?”

“You already know how to,” Bestla waved her hand and replayed the moment after energy ripped from your body. Then you were gurgling on the ground, hand stretched out to touch Loki’s as he bled on the floor. Breath hitched. Pained. And then you saw something new, the magic took over your body for a moment, and free from Odin’s spell, you spoke an incantation of your own. Slivers of your magic swimming across the marble floors to latch onto Loki’s fingernails and swim up the stream of his veins to rest around his cheeks.

Baldrick’s mouth pried open, a Jotun word leaving his mouth.

Bestla continued speaking as the illusion dissolved to the image of Loki hovering on a gold curtain of light in the healing chamber: “You saved his life. Our magic, our connection to the stone is primal. It is instinct and memory and emotion. That is why I cursed the Stone before I was locked in those reliquaries. I ensured only those who would understand my pain, the depths of my betrayal, would gain the stone’s power—women. And when Odin hid the stone on earth, he never imagined it would infect those on Midgard as it did to my people. But I never imagined he’d use that as a way to experiment on the women, to make them his weapons of destruction against my own kind, all the while making them believe they were chosen. God kissed. But if he never did, then you wouldn’t be here now. Like I said, fate is a tricky thing.

“When you reached for your prince—for Loki—you weren’t simply praying to no-one, you were praying to the stone. And it heard you. So it placed him in a deep slumber as it healed him from within, but the physical was not all that was damaged. Loki is a fraught boy. Torn apart by two halves that will always be at war. And in that throne room, one half finally won, and to him, it was the wrong half. The monster he was taught to hate. The monster all children are taught to fear: the Giant. I know of a spell that will allow you to enter his mind and bring him back, but like all things—”

“It comes with a price,” you weren’t the least bit surprised, but being a pawn in everyone else’s plans was becoming a thorn in your side. “And if I refuse?”

Bestla gave you an apologetic look, “Child, I said fate was tricky, I never said we got to choose.” She waved her hand one last time, and suddenly you were levitating from the floor, vision going black, ears ringing.

“Do not fret, when you awake, the answer will be as familiar to you as walking,” Bestla promised. “For familiar magic tends to want to be understood.”

Then, nothing. Just black and hard floor.

~Heimdall

When Heimdall and the rest of his companions reached the side of the mountain where the entrance to Mímir’s Tomb was, it was already sunrise the next day.

Moving his hands close to one another in the way of the old ways, he spoke in his native Vanir tongue, using blood to smear his handprint on a circular plate centred on the door.

In short order, the doors pried apart in slow motions, dust and the smell of ancients flooding out of the tomb.

“There is a chance the protection seals are still in place, enter with caution, and with weapons drawn,” he told the others as they disappeared into the maw of the tomb.

Heimdall gasped when he saw the reliquary statues broken to pieces. Whoever had done this possessed strong magic, but it couldn’t have been Y/N’s, she was still weak from the leeching, still new to her power. The pedestal where Mimir’s head had been laid to rest was bare, no sign of the one-eyed prophet anywhere.

“He’s gone,” he said.

“Mímir? How? It’s not like a head can just sprout legs and walk away,” Fandral said. “I must say, I am a little disappointed. Missing the chance to see one of the last living survivors of the Great War, it does sting a little. Imagine all the secrets her held.”

“Could we have trusted them?” Sif said with some restraint, nowhere near as enthusiastic as Fandral. “He was locked away for a reason. Probably because he was dangerous.”

“And now he is gone,” Volstagg said.

“A problem for another day,” Heimdall said.

“Over here!” Hogun shouted from a dark corner of the room, behind the centre pedestal, dagger locked in place. “I found them.”

“Them?” Sif ran in Hogun’s direction and Heimdall followed.

On the floor was Y/N, out cold, but alive. Her essence was changed, almost exonerated of another’s influence, yet not completely alone. There was something else banging around in the softest, more quiet parts of her magic. Something new. He noticed then that her brand was cauterised from her flesh. Next to her was a boy, strange, bearing a hefty presence. He was the wielder of the magic that destroyed the protective seals on the reliquaries. For someone so young, that was unfounded. What was his connection to Y/N, Heimdall wondered.

He picked her off the floor while Hogun carried the boy. With ease creeping into his chest, he said, “Let’s go home.”

#loki #loki x y/n #loki imagine #loki odinson x y/n #tom hiddleston imagine

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mercysought · 3 years

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“War breeds fear. Fear breeds a desire for simplicity. Good and evil. Right or wrong. Chains of command.”

The priestess sat by a single grey rock. Beside her a girl rested her head on her lap, over the softer fabric of dark and worn armour. Long and braided hair, dirty blonde even in the light shimmery light around them, loose strands swaying in the wind; caught by long and spider-like fingers pulling them down. Those same fingers who brush lightly against the side of her head. The motion is smooth and careful, each stroke keeping the strands neately over her head. The eyes of the girl do not move over her shoulder when steps are heard, when the wind picks up softly, when the glass from the Eluvian at the bottom of the hill behind them shines brightly at the arrival of another.

They continue looking into the distant hills, distant and glazed. The priestess’ dark eyes glance over her shoulder, over her pauldron, to the figure that walks slowly over to the hill that they both rested in. The caresses atop the other’s head do not stop and her attention doesn’t linger on the figure for long.

The balance is thin, artificially kept with a iron fist. The air around them warm, but what remained left a hint of a searing warmth of a desert. Cherry blossom pink, almost white in the direct sunlight that bathes the scarred dark skin of the soldier, hold onto the single tree’s branches; knowing Autumn is just around the corner, its hungry winds ready to tear through the branches like the touch of an eager but careless lover.

The armour she wore was, much like all in her life, patch work and half memories of a time that had long since passed. Newer materials melted and twisted into older shapes and enchantments that, if pressed, would sing in old tongues that no living being could likely remember. No one except perhaps them. The two figures. The one that caressed a young woman’s head and the man that came to a stop only a few steps behind her.

A wolf in the shape of a man, with no pack and no sense of loyalty.

The woman, girl, had no vallas’lin. Not over her hands, not over her face. No ink touched the tanned eyelids or the freckled nose. The braids were simple, practical and utalitarian. A scout, truly, just not one that had been prepared to encounter one such as her.

“I thought that a painful but swift death was what awaited us when you forced this curse upon the world. That all would come to a sharp halt. Desentigrate completely... The air...” she breathes deeply and all around them the air trembles. In front of them, a sharp cliff falling into a grey abyss shakes. As if her breathing, a single breath, was enough to blow the small and fragile balance left in this space away. Unmake it completely. Dark eyes fall on the woman, her fingers coming to rest on the side of her face. This girl that didn’t know any better, looped into a war that she would never fully grasp “Simply sucked out of our children’s breath, stolen like their future and their world.”

How stomach-churning it was to think that they had fought side by side now. Connected by a single goal: To not allow a man shem’len to use one of the People’s (hers) powers to tear whatever was left of the world asunder.

She had not worn this armour then, during the years that she had found temporary refuge in Tarasyl'an Te'las. And he had not showed his hand. How fortunate it had been they they had never truly seen enough of each other’s faces during the height of the War of Elvhenan. He was not as powerful as he had been then; she knew because she wasn’t either. Moreover, he held no more shields, not as many, as he had before.

A coward, yes, but one that had still come alone upon hearing of a strange woman that had been spotted in the crossroads with a missing scout. One of many, but the first that had been left behind.

“But to have witness not a death, but a change... A metamorphisis so harsh where they no longer recognised themselves...“ the woman’s expression softens. The scars on her face deeper than they had been last they had seen each other, pulling rich skin as a frown forms.

Picked off and hunted. The ones killed were lucky, though the priestess doubted they had found their way to the Beyond. Bodies were not often recovered. There was often nothing to find. With their Gods exiled, killed, imprisioned, away (who knew at this point)... The People disappeared into the cities that crumbled and temples whose protection tore and eroded with time and the waining of their own magic.

Their own life force flickering like a candle whose air is slowly being cut “It was not death that awaited those that could not or would not enter Uthenera.” torn and dragged from temples. Kept under a deep statis like animals, used for their knowledge and their blood for rituals that were useless and foolish. Their language torn to pieces, used and abused until one could no longer recognise it. Their towards changed to fit other’s needs.

Their bodies kept bound, working without rest, their children disconnected from their culture, shamed for their features. What had awaited them, what had awaited her had not been death. Not one death. Not a swift one

Her hand brushes the girl’s hair, her body shifts over the large rock to face the man. Dark eyes, tired and sunken are loud in their simmering fury “It was pure, unbridled cruelty.“

The air around them is stale, the wind that swirls at the mouth of the cliff cannot roll over the short and patch work of grass that sorrounds them. The man dressed in wolf’s furs looks at her intently, lips closed into thin lines and eyes that do a poor job to conceal the reflected contemptment.

“Hearing you, of all people, speak of cruelty...” a short lived snarl takes hold on his lips but as his shoulders straighten once again it is but a distant memory. Not unlike the echoed words that she had come to hear of their coversation with the Inquisitor. A passing comment, one borne out of exasperation. A single and light arch of his eyebrow “Had it been Falon’din to do so, I must wonder if your accusations would have flowed so easily.“

It is her turn to snarl and it comes like a stone crashing through thin and carefully laid glass panes within a temple’s windows. It is scorched onto the earth, pulling at scarred skin as the earth is pulled from the roots of the single tree that shelters them both.

Beneath them the earth shakes and a wave ripples through and crumbles the edges that fall carelessly into the abyss. The girl rises, soft and light and without a care in the world. Carried almost by the air itself, standing by the rock with relaxed shoulders. Eyes still staring to the snowy peak in the distance.

How nice it must have been to sleep. To simply drift off into a different place, to be completely unbothered by any and all realities. To feel comforted in his most vunerable state. How easy it was for him to dimiss the pain of those that he had lied to get on his side. How easy to dismiss their death, their years of punishment. How easy it was for this worm to dismiss those that had been punished in his stead.

“I watched and FOUGHT as MY People died at the hands of shem’len while you and your cowardly dogs SLEPT!“ she rises and from the bottom of the hills in the distance the painting is ripped allowing for dark waters to spill and flood into the grey, misty and infinite valley beneath.

The thought made her blood boil. Her hands closed into fists that could break the ground that they both walked on “I have died a thousand deaths, witnessed every change, carried that weight as the Children wilted beneath the weight of your actions.”

“For all my sins,” all around them the air shrieks, shaking in itself and tearing from the soft brease. Shades of sharp green and red fill the air like blood on water. “I have never sidestepped the consequences of my actions. I have paid its price in blood.” a pause ”Can you say the same?”

credit . .

#the priestess ( muses )#the priestess ( headcanon )#gif tw #long post tw

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alpaca-writes · 3 years

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Mystics, Chapter 21

When Arch becomes hired on at Mystics by the strange shopkeeper Lyrem Nomadus, everything seems to be going well- in fact, their life nearly becomes perfection. Soon enough, however, Arch realizes that perhaps not everything is as perfect as it seems….

Read Chapters 1-20 and more HERE

Taglist: @myst-in-the-mirror, @livingforthewhump

CW: implied captivity, creepy whumper, dead body,

A slightly shorter chapter so that we can catch up with Marcus and Arthur :)

(If you enjoy my work, please reblog) Xx.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: JUST A STEP AWAY

His hand gripped the bowie knife like it was the only thing keeping him from slipping back into that room and into those chains. And Marcus was running. He was running, though his legs were threatening to give out beneath him, and his mind was focused only on the next lengthy sprint ahead of him. He was heading home, and he would be completely unable to explain where he had been. It wasn’t important enough to think about what to say, he just needed safety. Unable to continue on any longer, Marcus stopped beneath a pole where the light above it had conveniently switched off.

“You alright, son?” An unfamiliar voice inquired. “What are you running from?”

He jumped, in the middle of catching his breath. His instincts were frazzled and unpracticed. The only sound he could produce in the moment was a strained gasp. He wouldn’t have minded a little help; even a friendly face would be better than nothing, but ultimately, he knew that on a deserted street it wouldn’t be wise to accept help from strangers. The man continued his approached slowly. The light over Marcus turned on again, filling the space with a glow from above. He noted a distinct sound to the man’s steps. Like he was wearing clogs.

Hunched over and grasping the knotted cramp in his side, Marcus’ eyes rested on the sidewalk. He looked to the side, sensing something out of place. Perhaps his instincts weren’t totally fried. He stood straight again, keeping his eyes on the figure before him now; the thing with the hooves.

“I-I’m fine,” he managed, taking a single step to the side. All he wanted was to go home. Couldn’t he just go home?

“You certainly don’t look fine.” Paimon looked down at himself and realized all too late, why Marcus had first regarded him with such hostility. “Oh, dear me. In all the rush, I suppose I’ve forgotten to dress myself properly.”

The man closed the gap suddenly. Marcus reacted and swiped the bowie knife across the man’s face to keep him away. It connected, and for a moment, Marcus believed he had missed, since the man didn’t really seem to care. A thin stream of blood ran down the side of his face as he stepped into the light.

“Go ahead,” Paimon chuckled. “Try to do me in the way you did Lyrem. See how it ends for you.”

“I-I”- Marcus stumbled over his words, and then backed up into the empty street as he tried to rightfully assert his innocence in the situation- but alas, he had stolen Arthur’s blade, and so anyone would have assumed that Marcus was the reason Lyrem’s body lay crumpled there. “I didn’t do it- I- I swear it man. It was this other guy”-

Paimon sighed, his antlers morphed above his head, changing in the glinting streetlight. His eyes; solid shadow.

“He was a friend to me, you know.”

Paimon snapped his fingers, and Marcus was promptly immersed into the Depths of Despair. There was quite the opportunity here. Paimon wouldn’t dream of letting it go to waste.

------------------------

Arthur rummaged through one of three old Rubbermaid bins in the back room, trying to be quick, as he suspected Marcus’ return to the world would provide him with more guests than he wanted at the moment. Lyrem had a stash of interesting items back here, but how to use any of them as a weapon, he didn’t know. Finally, at the bottom of the bin, he saw something more familiar. It was a cloudy jar of liquid, beside a simple King James Holy book that horror movies loved to reference. It was old holy water, perhaps, but it would do well for when he found that wretched demon again. He threw a yellow stone to the side, and added the jar to his collection of useful items.

“Perfect,” he whispered under his breath. The rest of the Rubbermaid bins only had stacks of old albums, CDs rarely played and easily discarded, and a few old toys- stuffed animals, and a single clear plastic soother that had yellowed with age. There was a baggy of bright pink sparkling confetti in that bin as well. Shaking his head, he picked up an old gyro wheel and flicked it into rotation as he pondered who these items would have belonged to once.

Arthur carried it across the room, twisting his wrist at regular intervals. Earlier, he had found a length of rope stashed along the wall, and large beaming flashlight with a fresh d-cell. With no available plan to find Arch or where Paimon might have taken them, he resolved himself to the next best plan: diving into the Labyrinth. He had to find Charlotte- and if he was very lucky, perhaps Arch would be down there too.

The rope wasn’t infinitely long, but the idea that Arthur had was fairly simple. He’d lead the rope through the doorway, and allow the Labyrinth to take him again, then once inside, he would explore it, search for Charlotte, and leave a trail of sparkling pink confetti behind him. When he found her, only then would he use the flashlight and his makeshift trail to find his way back to the rope. The holy water would be used for defense against any other demons he might find- the gyro wheel was to keep him calm.

It wasn’t a perfect plan, by any means, but it was the only one he had. On top of everything, he had recently lost his favourite knife, and so he found a freshly sharpened bejeweled one to replace it.

Before tying himself off in the alleyway, he resorted to placing his hands over his hips to stare down Lyrem’s now very deceased body. He grunted as he picked it up by the shoulders. Managing to avoid the labyrinth once again, Arthur plopped Lyrem’s body unceremoniously into the back room, knowing that the journey “down-under” would last beyond morning and the less people who came down that alleyway, the better it would be.

He packed all his things needed into a small pack, tied off the rope to an emergency escape outside, and finally opened the door. Listening to the howls of the void, Arthur did a quick mental check, before stepping inside with eyes wide open to find his sister.

#Mystics by Alpaca #mystics #original fiction #Alpaca OCs #writing #writeblr #horror #gore #urban fantasy #fantasy fiction #fantasy fic #fiction #creative writing #whump #whumpblr #writers of tumblr #readers #readers of tumblr #chapter update!

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oriigami · 4 years

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stolen things

[A catalogue of things stolen by, for, and from Princess Vivi of Alabasta with regards to a certain thief, as documented by her long-suffering captain of the guard. Namivivi, Rated T. Read it on AO3 here!]

(1. a necklace)

It starts small, comparatively speaking; a month or so after the rain returns to Alabasta and the country’s pain is soothed at last, there’s a little package of folded cardboard addressed to Princess Vivi buried in amongst the palace’s morning mail. This, in and of itself, isn’t terribly unusual. The princess has taken on a significant portion of the country’s day-to-day administration since her return while her father recovers, and she has many friends and contacts across the country she’s been corresponding with to aid in the rebuilding.

What is unusual, though, is the way it’s addressed. Ordinarily, missives to the princess will be addressed to Her Grace, Princess Nefertari Vivi, stamped in formal black ink on clean white paper and packaging. This one, though, just says Vivi, written in an exceedingly neat hand with nonetheless a few trembles in the lettering, as though the writer had been, perhaps, aboard a boat when penning it.

There’s no return address or sender name- instead, a pinwheel of four thick spiralling lines with a small circle attached to the uppermost swirl has been drawn where one would normally be.

Pell frowns, and breaks the seal on the back of the package. One of the many duties he’s resumed since returning to work (a feat that had required shouting down Chaka, the princess, and the king when they’d tried to insist he remain bedbound) is checking the mail, after all. And he’s been especially vigilant about the princess’s safety.

After everything she’s been through in the past months and years, from her infiltration of Baroque Works to the inevitable nightmare of the civil war to the slow and arduous reconstruction of a devastated country, he can’t think of anyone who more deserves to rest easy at night.

He opens the little package with due caution, and tips its contents out onto the table. He’s not sure what he’s expecting, but it’s not the shimmer of gold that spills out onto the dark wood. It’s a necklace. A pendant shaped like a compass rose hangs from a thin golden chain, with what looks suspiciously like a diamond set at its center.

Well. Unusual, perhaps, and definitely expensive, even Pell’s untrained eye can discern that much, but certainly not dangerous. He carefully replaces it in the package and makes his way up to the princess’s rooms, knocking on the doorframe.

(It had become common knowledge around the palace after the first week or so that it was unwise to surprise the princess. She had developed a newfound tendency to stash those tiny daggers of hers in the sleeves of her dresses.)

“Come in,” a slightly distracted voice calls, and so he slips inside. Vivi is bent over her desk, where she always seems to be these days, brow furrowed in thought, worrying the end of her fountain pen between her teeth. She glances up when he enters, and he can’t help but worry, just a little, at how tired she looks.

She’s taken a lot onto her shoulders. He always seems to find her at her desk these days, if she’s not in the council rooms or talking to the citizens or poring over the newspapers or-

“Pell,” she says, smiling slightly. “What is it?”

“Ah.” It takes him a moment to remember why he’s here. “This was sent for you today,” he says, crossing the room to hand her the small package.

She frowns slightly, confused, as she takes it- and then he can see the moment her eyes catch on the little symbol drawn in the corner, that odd pinwheel shape, because she lights up, a smile immediately spreading across her face and brightening her eyes like he hasn’t seen in weeks. She tears into the package like a birthday present, and in seconds the necklace is cupped in her hands, gleaming under the light of her desk lamp.

She swallows hard, and for a moment her face scrunches into a look Pell knows well. Ever since she was a child, she’s always made the same face when struggling not to cry. It’s only a moment, though, and then it passes, leaving her with just a wide smile and shining eyes. She nearly drops the necklace in her fumbling haste to fasten it around her neck.

The compass pendant falls perfectly into place on her chest, the gold bright against desert-dark skin, and she smiles down at it with a softness that makes Pell abruptly feel like he’s intruding on something personal.

“Pell,” she says, and he straightens to attention automatically, “bring all future packages with that symbol on them directly to me, if you don’t mind. No need to check through them.”

“Princess-” he starts to object, but thinks better of it when she shoots him a look that makes him automatically swallow back his protest on behalf of her safety. “...As you say,” he concedes.

She’s always had grit and iron in her, ever since she was young and scrapping with Kohza amidst the sand dunes, but her two years away have tempered her into a pirate in truth, a sharp-eyed young woman who digs her fingernails into everything she treasures and won’t let go no matter how it hurts.

But then, it was pirates who saved Alabasta. Maybe that’s the kind of princess they need.

He turns, and is half out the door when he can’t help but ask, “It’s from them, isn’t it?”

He doesn’t need to specify who. Vivi doesn’t confirm aloud, but when he glances back over his shoulder she’s looking at the wanted posters pinned to her wall with an aching sort of look on her face, and that’s answer enough.

When the next package marked with the same symbol and addressed in the same neat handwriting arrives a month later, he takes it straight to her.

(2. a newspaper)

The sun is rising over Alabasta as the king and princess break their fast. Pell tosses the morning newspaper to the table, and no sooner has it hit the wood that Vivi is snatching it up with all the desperation of a marooned sailor grabbing for a thrown lifeline, nearly tearing through the paper in her urgency.

Pell can’t say he’s surprised by the response, because the front page headline reads STRAWHAT PIRATES LEVEL ENIES LOBBY, printed in striking bold lettering above a photo of a grinning boy wearing a straw hat with all the confidence of a king’s crown. Vivi opens the paper and a sheaf of wanted posters fall out of the centerfold, scattering onto the table.

There’s at least one face among them that Pell doesn’t recognize, and one that he definitely does recognize (clutch-) but certainly hadn’t expected to see grouped among the Strawhats, but neither is the poster that Vivi’s focus falls on first.

Instead, the Princess’s gaze is drawn to one of the lowest bounties of the lot, an dark-eyed woman giving the camera a playful smile over her shoulder, hands tangled in her orange hair and a familiar spiralling symbol emblazoned in deep blue ink on her shoulderblade. Cat Burglar Nami, the poster reads. Wanted Dead or Alive.

Vivi reaches out and brushes fingers against the paper for just a moment, a complicated sort of look on her face that Pell couldn’t begin to put a name to, and he sees her lips move in a whisper of a name. Then all of a sudden she seems to remember she’s not alone, and hastily snatches up the sheaf of wanted posters together with the newspaper and clutches them to her chest like they’re infinitely more precious than mere ink and paper.

“I’ll- be right back,” she says, the words rushed, and then she’s gone from the room before the king can do more than send a slightly befuddled look after her.

Pell sighs, more fondly than anything, and goes to find another newspaper for the king. He has a feeling they won’t be getting that one back.

(3. a kiss)

It’s four months after the Whitebeard War, four months since any word of the Strawhat Pirates has reached Alabasta, and four months of Princess Vivi staring out the windows of the palace and clenching her fists so hard her knuckles go white, when Pell realizes there is an intruder in the palace.

Whoever they are, they are very good. It’s not a broken window that alerts him to their presence, or a scream- nothing so blatant and clumsy. Instead, it’s a faint footprint, left in the thin dusting of sand on the railing of one of the third-floor balconies, just barely visible in the fading light of the setting sun. If not for the inhuman eyesight his devil fruit grants him, he surely would have missed it completely.

The princess’s rooms are nearby, and his heart crawls into his throat. He’s not an idiot. He knows the princess has enemies. He’s seen her slipping out under cover of night to negotiate with pirates and smugglers, words sharp and spine unbending.

(There are times when Pell wishes, for the sake of his peace of mind, that she was just a little less fearless.)

He slips down the hallway silently. There’s light shining from under the princess’s door, and muffled noises from inside the room. He rests one hand on the hilt of his sword, eases the door silently open with his other hand.

It takes him a moment to register what he’s seeing, it’s so far off from what he’d half-feared he’d find.

The princess is pressed against a wall by a woman with orange hair and tan skin who Pell recognizes immediately from the wanted poster on the wall as Cat Burglar Nami. Vivi has her legs up around Nami’s waist and her hands buried in her hair, and she’s kissing her like it’s the end of the world, even as tears run down her cheeks and her shoulders shake.

There’s words murmured between them, too quiet to make out, blurred by voices thick from crying. He hears war, and lost, and should have been there, broken up by kisses and sobs, and he wonders just how much weight his princess has been truly carrying on her shoulders these past months.

Pell takes a step back and noiselessly slips the door closed again, to give them their privacy.

Well. At least she’s not in any danger. He’s going to have to tell the king he really, really shouldn’t get his hopes up about those marriage prospects.

The pirate haunts the palace for another week and a half, and Pell can’t help but be reluctantly impressed by her elusiveness. Her presence only shows in how Vivi’s started to always keep the door to her room tightly closed, in silent footprints on the balcony and the low hum of nighttime murmurings, and in the smile the princess can’t seem to drop.

He has to grab her by the shoulder one morning before she heads into the council chambers and advise, in a quiet voice that can’t help but be long-suffering, that she apply some makeup to the blossoming bruises on her neck.

And then Nami is gone again, like a sea breeze, like she was never there, like pirates are wont to do. A pair of Vivi’s favorite earrings goes with her. The princess doesn’t cry, at least nowhere that Pell can see. She still wears the golden compass necklace every day, bright against her chest, close to her heart, and he thinks he understands, now.

He’d thought the necklace a present from the Strawhat Pirates at large at first, but it isn’t that. It’s a memento from a lover, from a cartographer- a compass pointing ever north. Someday, no matter what, find your way back to me.

(4. a heart)

It doesn’t exactly take a falcon’s eyesight to see that Princess Vivi’s heart doesn’t belong to Alabasta anymore. Or, at least, not wholly to Alabasta. There will always be a part of their princess buried in the golden sands and fed on the oasis waters, and Pell knows that’s why she’s still there with them, and not far away on an unknown ocean with salt in her hair and a rolling deck beneath her feet.

But there’s something about the ocean, about the sea winds and the endless horizon and the boundless freedom it brings, that takes. Pell has known a lot of sailors, and they’ve all had the same look on their eyes that Princess Vivi bears all the time now- always looking, searching for the waves, for the horizon, for the next adventure.

He feels for her. He has always belonged, heart and soul, to Alabasta, and someday he will be buried in its sands. There will never be any other home for him. The princess, though, is torn in two, between two homes and two loves and she can never have one without leaving the other, and that’s a cruel fate, for someone who deserves nothing but kindness after all she’s been through.

It’s one of the reasons he always has to bite his tongue when the king takes it into his head to push the concept of marriage again, floating the names of thoroughly-vetted suitors, even as Princess Vivi gently shuts him down cold. The princess’s heart will go to no respectable young man, that’s clear as day. It’s already been stolen.

That’s what pirates do, after all. They take, just like the ocean they live and die by.

The cat burglar could have asked for any riches Alabasta had left, and the king would have probably honored her request, even gutted as their country was by drought and famine and war. But instead she fled with their princess’s heart in her hands, one treasure that could never be replaced.

(5. a princess)

It’s a dazzlingly bright desert morning in Alubarna when the Pirate King’s navigator arrives at the palace.

There’s no sneaking this time, no scaling walls and vaulting balconies under the cover of darkness. Nami walks right up the sun-bleached stone stairs, all tanned skin and lean muscle, bold as brass for a wanted pirate with hundreds of millions of beri on her head, and Pell doesn’t make a single move to stop her. The tattoo on her shoulder reminds him of a little cardboard package, sent and delivered years ago.

The princess meets her at the doors with a packed bag already on her shoulders, crashing into her arms without even a shred of royal dignity, and Nami doesn’t waste a second before sweeping her up into her arms and into a hungry kiss, like it doesn’t matter in the slightest that there’s dozens of eyes on them, the everyday traffic of guards and politicians and citizens through the palace stopped dead in its tracks.

Maybe it doesn’t, for pirates. Maybe pirates only know how to love like they could be dead tomorrow.

A few of the guards are shooting him confused and somewhat panicked looks; Pell just shakes his head and signals at ease. In all honestly, he’s almost surprised this didn’t happen sooner- but then, Vivi has always been loyal to her country to the point of martyrdom, and it’s only in the past year or so that all the tireless work she has put in to build the country up has finally blossomed to a point where her constant presence is no longer necessary.

The country is safe, and healthy, and at peace, after countless days and nights of fighting with steel and ink to make it so. She can rest now, at least for a time, and she deserves nothing less. He knows the bag on her shoulders now has been ready in her room for weeks.

Nami and Vivi finally break apart for breath, and Nami rests her forehead against the princess’s, grinning like she can’t stop. “Ready to go?” she asks. “Everyone else is waiting with the Sunny at the river port.”

Vivi casts a glance over to Pell, silently questioning, and he bites back a chuckle. “Go on, then, your majesty,” he says, waving a hand, and can’t help but add, to Nami, “At least you had the decency to come to the front door this time, instead of climbing in the window.”

The blushes that decorate both their faces at that are more brilliant red than any desert sunburn he’s ever seen, and then he does have to laugh in truth. And then Vivi is burying her red face in her hands and wheezing with laughter, and the look that Nami gives her is so impossibly soft that Pell feels comforted about his princess’s safety then and there, no words needed.

Once Vivi can meet his eyes again, he smiles, and just says, “Be safe.”

“I will,” she promises, and there’s freedom in her voice.

No one moves a finger to stop them as the laughing thief flees down the front steps of the palace, a stolen princess beaming to outshine the desert sun in her arms.

#my writing #one piece #opfanfic #namivivi #opfic #nami #vivi #op

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