#it's my duty. nay: my burden.

[oldtowrs]

𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 𝐢𝐧 𝐃𝐔𝐓𝐘 an aemond targaryen / reader fanfic

pairing—aemond targaryen / f!reader

tags—friends to lovers, fluff, love confession, couples' first kiss, other fluffy happenings such as aemond removing his eyepatch and the reader immediately worships his skin in the form of kisses and praise, vague meaning of flowers references, reader’s looks or house not specified, no use of y/n.

warnings—mentions of aemond's trauma and the effects it had on him

word count—~3.6k

—aemond had always understood what it meant to be a prince and the duties that came with it. duty became such a big part of his life that he had come to terms with it, and even begun to look forward to some parts of it. but then when his eye is taken from him, all of aemond's musings are for naught and all his dreams are taken away - including his hope of being loved by his future wife, and loving her in return. or, at least that's true, until you come into his life.

author's note—yay first aemond fic!!! this was originally supposed to be a little concept, that turned into a blurb, that turned into a kind of shitty one shot, that turned into a full fledged fic that i am actually quite proud of. this is not my usual type of fic, nor does it read like it, but i think i really like the concept and how some of it turned out. plus, who doesn't like seeing happy, in-love aemond? i know i do ! enjoy xx

gif credit—♡

masterlist | inbox | requests and inbox open !

aemond understood duty and sacrifice earlier than most did. his mother had sacrificed endlessly for him and his siblings, and it was through her that aemond learned how to go about his duties with grace and honor. he watched as his brother wailed and rebelled against his own, including those of his birthright, and how he continued to hurt their beloved sister helaena, the people of king's landing — even the servants that brought him wine and dinner — in the process. and so, aemond learned the importance of doing his duty without complaint. he had learned that as a prince, he had more responsibilities and duties to perform than others his age -- for the sake of his father and mother, his family name, the throne, the realm -- and there was nothing that he, nor anyone, could do about it. it was just his lot, and yet, it was still much better than most.

there was one duty in particular that he had thought long and hard about, however - one that he had come to take great comfort in during even the worst of his family’s toils. he knew the day when he would have to be betrothed to another was not far off, and that one day he would have to marry some young lady, and do his duty to her and her family, as well as his own. and though he would most likely have no choice in the matter, he had decided that he would not perpetuate the same pains his father impressed upon his mother, his siblings, and even upon aemond himself.

nay, he would treat his lady with the gentle care and the tender love that she deserved, whoever she may be. he would provide for her needs and be there for those of his children -- so contrary to the way his father was with aemond and his siblings sired by his mother. and though he may not have a choice in the course of his own life or which lady would spend it by his side, there was a little lingering spark of hope in his chest that maybe one day, his lady - whoever she would end up being - would learn to love him the way he had already vowed to love her.

but then his eye had been taken from him, and everything changed. almost all marriage proposals and discussions of possible betrothals stopped. it was as if his partial blindness - forced upon him violently and against his will - would burden the honor and reputation of any future wife's family the moment her hand was given by promise of betrothal to him — aemond, the one-eyed prince.

his mother had attempted to comfort him throughout it, but aemond knew the truth of it. his disfigurement had maimed him, robbed him of a normal complexion and — according to the rumors that followed him in the form of whispers and jeers thrown at him by the court — any masculine beauty he may have grown into through the dwindling years of his youth as well. it became painfully and quickly obvious that the mishap with his nephews an cousins had cost aemond that love he would've fostered so loyally. and so, he quickly found himself buried beneath the depths of a lonely abyss, with only vhagar, himself, and a  fury burning unresolved in his heart to keep him company.

but then you had arrived at court, and aemond couldn’t remember when exactly it had happened, but he soon found absolute pleasure in your company. you were, in his eyes, the embodiment of the summer sun, of soft rose petals and sweet dornish perfume. and you seemed so devoted to showering him in unrelenting and constant kindness. you, with all your golden jewelry hanging about your perfect neck, and adorning the loving hands with which you always reached to comfort him. you, who matched his intellect of the histories, and admired his mastery of the sword. you, who seemed to look past his disfigurement, who - if anything - admired the strength he mustered every day to face the world and the woes it threw at him with poised grace and elegance. you, who saw not a monster, a maimed crippled, or a besotten little boy that had grown into a bitter man. but you, who saw him for his worth, for his loyal soul and kinder dispositions, who tended to the ashes of his heart until a fire burnt anew amongst the cold catacombs in its depths.

aemond loved trying to teach you little bits and pieces of high valyrian amongst the quiet rustling of the giant wierwood's red leaves as the late afternoon breezes blew through the godswood. he secretly revelled in the way you would lay your head upon his lap and let your curls tumble across his thighs and cascade down his knees, giggling and blushing at his teasing when you mispronounced words here and there. he would love the late nights spent with you in the heart of the archives, before the raging fireplace, reading stories of old valyria to each other in hushed tones. and it would be his turn to blush as your delicate fingers brushed the soft strands of silken silver out of his face as he read, solely because you had convinced him to let his hair down for the evening, mumbling all the while about how you "adored seeing his wonderful face". he would look forward to the walks with you in the gardens, where every turn and loop was taken until the two of you would lose yourselves in the rows of flowers and beneath the canopies of the trees - all for the sole purpose of obtaining a few more moments of quiet, uinterrupted companionship alone with each other. 

it would be on one of these walks together through the gardens that you give him a handwoven crown of eucalyptus, baby’s breath and the occasional dandelion, and insist upon calling him "my king” despite his protestations that a wandering ear might find your words treasonous. but you insisted, and aemond found that he couldn’t resist the smile that continually pulled at the corners of his mouth. his face ached from the constant pleasure you pulled from him again and again in hushed murmurs and gentle teasings, his heart would ache alongside his face everytime you smiled at him, cheeks rosy and painted in the golden afternoon sunlight. you tell him you’d commit a thousand acts of treason if it meant you got to see him smile the way he did then. and in the sweet silence that follows when he looks down at his hands resting upon the pommel of his sword that he finds the confession lingering in the depths of his heart — he would follow you into a thousand deaths if it meant you were always this sweet to him in every life in between. 

aemond loses himself as the afternoon goes on. he becomes lost in the way you wrap your gentle hands around his bicep when he offers you his arm, and press your cheek into his shoulder in the aftermath of the fit of laughter one of his jests causes, cheeks red and chest heaving as you try to catch your breath. it’s as though he can feel his darkened and bloodied soul entangling irreversibly with yours amongst the warm summer air and the sweet scent of the blooming flowers. 

and it was there, amongst the blooming hydrangeas that the two of you had ended up, so close that your hands, which lingered on his chest, served as the only source of space that remained between you and aemond. it was there, hidden amongst the blooming hydrangeas, that his hands had settled upon the small of your back, pulling you close as he tangled his lithe fingers into the silken ribbons lacing up the back of your bodice in an attempt to keep them from shaking. his lips would inch closer and closer to yours until aemond could feel the heat of your blush radiating from your loving cheeks, and aemond’s name would fall from your lips, hesitant and so uncharacteristically shy that he could feel his heart ache with every beat in his chest. 

aemond could scarcely remember the longing that had lingered in your irises as he hesitated, longing that hid itself behind flickering eyelids and long eyelashes as you closed both your eyes and closed whatever distance may have remained, your lips falling upon his own and ending the tension that threatened to snap aemond’s very heartstrings. 

but how could he remember what came before, when it was what followed that was a thousandfold sweeter and more memorable? 

absolute relief would wash over him when you don't shy from him or the passion that burnt like dragonfire in his heart, but rather met each stroke of his swelling, pink lips and dutiful tongue with your own as though your heart was perfectly attuned to his. he could only remember the absolute elation when you respond with soft, tender fervor, as you meet him over and over again, fingers pressing into his chest all the while, burning holes through his tunic, through his skin and musculature and blood, straight to his heart. aemond could only remember feeling surrounded by the hydrangeas, which spilled their scent so readily into the summer air, and your sweet perfume (the one so captivating that he was sure it had to be from the most expensive source in dorne) — the feeling of your love and affection, suddenly laid out in its entirety, for him and him alone, overwhelming him slowly. 

aemond is so lost in his absolute elation that he doesn’t even notice when your hand falls gently upon his scarred cheek so reverently that even his nerves sing a song of comfort rather than their usual wail of pain.

in fact, it is only when you finally pull away, and your fluttering lashes reveal a gentle shine of pleasure dancing about your eyes, that he realizes. aemond would go to pull away frantically, wishing he could make his disfigurement disappear. and so he makes to leave, the wreath of foliage and the love with which it was woven sitting forgotten about the crown of his head still. a familiar chant rang like an alarm through his mind, growing louder by the second: shame, shame, shame. it shut out all else, as the feeling railed into him over and over: SHAME. 

but before he could make his escape, a soft tug at his wrist pulled him back to reality, the warmth of your kind hands against his skin slipping beneath the hem of his sleeve until halting, just there, above his pulse point. all thoughts immediately dissipated into blissful silence and that shame which constantly plagued his ego seemed to evaporate, and the strong urge to forever ally himself to you taking its place with reckless abandon and without a thought given to self-preservation. 

"do not run from me,” you whispered, desperation clear in the buzzing summer air. “please, aemond."

and oh, how his heart aches at that -- the soft calling of his name from your sweet lips, spoken in reverent tones that you seemed to reserve for him and him alone. he looks back at you, downright heartbrokenness clouding his remaining violet iris as if bracing for the insult and the collection of his shattered heart in the aftermath. another realization would hit aemond then: he was irrevocably in love with you. and a word from you could do just that — shatter his being into a thousand wounded splinters with just a few carefully chosen words, whether those words spoke of kindness or worse, it did not matter.

but then that worry dissipated into relief, one which had begun to feel more and more familiar under your loving instruction, as your other hand tucked a strand of silver, pulled free by the heated nature of your engagements only moments prior, before falling once more to the curve of his strong jawline and nestled itself along the strong ridge of bone there. your fingers would tuck themselves against it just so and aemond would melt into the touch you always gave him so freely and so sweetly. your thumb would trace the scar which he finds so abborrent, absolute adoration lingering in your irises before you lean in until your lips were only inches away from his once more. 

“you are so beautiful, aemond,” you murmur, words so saccharine he is surprised he can’t taste their honeyed residue lingering upon his lips in the wake of your kisses only moments prior. “i only wish that you could see it.”

aemond can’t help but fixate on you  in that moment, your fluttering eyelashes, and the impossibly heated dusting of rose decorating the bridge of your nose, and the faint birthmarks and freckles that dotted your face revealed themselves to him by your closeness. its then he notices how your lips shine with the combination of him and you, and how your eyes travel from the accented dip of his cupid's bow, to his strong cheek bones, and finally to the leather patch that bisects the the craggy pink scar, hiding the worst of the injury from view. 

“especially here.”

tears well in his eye, stinging with the unspoken promise that his heart would always belong to you, from this treasured moment on.

“hmm, you flatter me, my sweet girl,” aemond hums, the words ache in his throat and upon his tongue as he speaks them, regretting the little ounce of betrayal that seems to seep like poison into his words — evidence of his heart still preparing for the worst. “but there are many more men of greater beauty than i, who are more deserving of your heart than i could ever be.”

“what are you saying?” you ask, hurt now entering the stage of your beautiful eyes, as they held his gaze with such devotion as if you wanted him to see the glimmer that turned dark and cloudy with confusion.“did you not-”

“i am saying that you have been my greatest delight, my brightest joy and my most beloved companion these past years,” aemond begins, heart aching so profusely at the hurt that begins to well up in his heart alongside the wetness in the corners of your dazzling eyes. “but you deserve more than i could ever give you. i am not worthy of you, and i could never hope to be.” 

"but aemond,” you begin to protest, only for him to tilt his head down to capture your lips once more, his desperation bitter upon your tongue as he presses his lips to yours with such fervor and such sadness. 

“you deserve someone as beautiful and as kindhearted as you, who can give you all that you could ever desire and-” 

aemond’s voice is hoarse at this point, as though his vocal chords were just as strained as his heart strings. tears of his own began to cloud his own vision, throat constricting under their weight as he tries and fails to swallow down the pain in his voice.

“show me,” you say in the wake of his pause, perfect lips pouted as you try in vain to hold back a sob. 

it is aemond’s turn to be confused then. why would you, sweet, beautiful and kind you, wish to not only waste your time with him in the gardens, sharing kisses that tore aemond’s soul into shreds of contrasting regret and elation, but to gaze upon his life’s greatest horror as well? why would you wish to expose yourself to such offending ugliness?

“i love you, aemond,” you say then, the same desperation straining your voice the way it had aemond’s mere seconds ago.“and i can't pretend that you don't occupy my every waking thought, that you do not fill my soul with undeniable and unwavering happiness. i can't pretend that your beauty doesn’t rivals that of the stars themselves. so just show me.”

your name falls from his lips, but it is a mere whisper upon his tongue. 

“it is not pretty.”

“aemond,” you say then, “please?”

aemond finds he cannot bare to see the heartbreak in your eyes for much longer, and so he bends to your whim for what was likely to be his last and final time. he pulls the leather patch from his eye with careful, deft movements that wouldn’t allow for any lingering hesitation, to reveal the sapphire gleaming in place of his other eye.

a short gasp fell from your lips then, followed by a shaky exhale that had the tears burning in the corners of aemond’s eyes finally blur what remained of his field of vision. his sharp mind worked desperately to recount and commit the feel of your lips moving upon his to memory, as aemond feared he would no longer be the subject of your time and affections now that you had truly seen him — all of him.

the feeling of the leather sliding against his fingertips as it fell through numb hands to the ground by his feet barely even registering, the pain in his heart too great. he didn’t even feel the usual relief of his long platinum and silver hair falling in silken curtains as you reached and released it from the little leather cord that kept his hair neat beneath the strap of his eyepatch.

"i love you. unequivocally, unfailingly and wholly so," you say finally, your thumb roving the taught skin of his scarred cheek with holy-like reverence. his single violet eye dared to meet yours then, and aemond could feel his heart skip a beat. tears had begun to fall down the sweet slope of your cheek, and yet you still held his gaze with unwavering softness.“do not tell me that you are undeserving of my attentions. i will decide who i deem worthy of my heart, and i swear to you, aemond targaryen: not one man in all of westeros and the free cities combined could ever be more deserving of it than you.”

a silence falls then, and you press a hasty kiss to his lips once more - petal soft lips nestling into the curve of petal soft lips, teeth clasing against teeth, love pouring into each other’s hearts. an upward quirk of your lip has aemond’s self-loathing surrendering under your tender hand, and the fall of it back into quivering sadness has him swearing — to the mother, the father, the stranger, whoever may have been watching over him in that moment — that he would never do such a profound disservice to your loving heart for as long as he should live.

"my king of my heart."

the endearment fell into what little air kept aemond at bay from you with such ease, and yet, here aemond was — a fool trying to convince himself that you did not love him, that you couldn’t possibly love someone such as himself, despite your every effort to lay the intentions of your heart bare before him to prove the extent of your love, true and sweet and wonderful, to him. 

oh, the seven damn him.

"darling," he managed to croak, the endearment falling from his mouth with more emotion than aemond had ever shown in his life, the weight of his love heavy on his tongue. 

aemond couldn’t help but envelope you wholly in a hug right then and there. his sturdy arms ensnared themselves with your being once more, hands finding the base of your skull and the supple curve of your hip, hidden to him by the curve of your luscious skirts, to gently pull you into him before he buried himself into the most passionate embrace he could possibly muster, as though it would make you see that passion and devotion that burnt like dragonfire in his soul for you and the love which he too held in his heart of hearts for you, and you alone..

and when he finally releases you, with tears of happiness gleaming in his violet eye, the sun shining in the sapphire of his other, and a heated blush dusting the paleness of his sharp, aquiline nose and accented cheekbones, he can't help but smile and huff a laugh through the constriction his tears held upon his throat. he brushes away the tears of your pain and your hurt with gentle thumbs before placing the first of many reverent kisses to your forehead as a final realization hit him — as though it were an enlightenment gifted to him by the seven themselves. 

he couldn’t remember the last time he had ever truly smiled for anyone but you. 

you - his girl of flowers and sunshine, his darling who had tended to the flames burning hot in his dragon veins for years despite his lack of acknowledgment, his lady of kindness and sweet, unbowing reverence, his beauty, his most beloved friend — smiled then, and aemond swore he saw the stars themselves shining in your gaze, shining all for him.

you.

"marry me," he pleads then, hands wholly enveloping your own as he gently takes them and places a kiss to the very fingers that had woven him a crown of pure intention, everlasting love and the strength and power of your heart. "please, my sweet girl, i have been such a fool, all these years, and i… i -”

“yes. yes, i know exactly,” you laughed breathlessly. “i thought you would never ask, my dearest love.”

#aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen x you #aemond targaryen/reader #aemond targaryen #house of the dragon fanfic #house of the dragon fanfiction #hotd fanfic #hotd fanfiction #house of the dragon #hotd #usersin #useroldtowrs

[vickyvicarious]

I've got thoughts about Lucy's final request, and how it is both somewhat of a burden and a weapon for Van Helsing.

Very shortly after she opened her eyes in all their softness, and putting out her poor, pale, thin hand, took Van Helsing's great brown one; drawing it to her, she kissed it. "My true friend," she said, in a faint voice, but with untellable pathos, "My true friend, and his! Oh, guard him, and give me peace!"

"I swear it!" he said solemnly, kneeling beside her and holding up his hand, as one who registers an oath. 

These are the last words Lucy spoke; her dying request. There are probably a couple of ways to interpret those words, depending on how much you think Lucy knows in this moment. But I think it's pretty obvious the meaning VH takes: protect Arthur from her, and stop her vampire-self to give her a peaceful death.

The reason this moment feels so significant to me, is because it is the moment that Van Helsing becomes a vampire hunter. He has been here in the capacity of a doctor treating an illness. But now there's no saving his patient - that's done. He could leave.

He's not going to... probably wouldn't have even without this promise, because he would have wanted to ensure no new vampires start terrorizing anyone else, but especially so with this promise. He now has a duty to kill Lucy's vampiric self. He's made an oath.

And she requested it of him alone. I think this adds another layer to him wanting to keep things hidden at first. Not just to avoid being seen as crazy, but now because he's trying to 'protect Arthur', both from vamp!Lucy and from the knowledge of vamp!Lucy (until it's too late).

This vow probably feels pretty isolating, especially in these early moments when everyone else believes things are all over and only Van Helsing knows what is about to begin. He feels responsible for whatever may happen, because he is the only one who knows and she asked him to stop it. If Lucy starts to prey upon people, that's on him now.

It makes me think of a certain line when he and Seward are looking at Lucy's lifelike corpse:

The Professor looked sternly grave. He had not loved her as I had, and there was no need for tears in his eyes. He said to me: "Remain till I return," and left the room. He came back with a handful of wild garlic from the box waiting in the hall, but which had not been opened, and placed the flowers amongst the others on and around the bed. Then he took from his neck, inside his collar, a little gold crucifix, and placed it over the mouth.

Van Helsing is looking down at her with dread and a sense of heavy duty, I think. This is a 'there's much to be done' moment for him, where he steels himself for action.

At the same time, he's immediately begun using this public conversation with Lucy as a sort of social key to unlock cooperation. When Seward protests what he sees as needlessly mutilating her corpse:

"Were you not amazed, nay horrified, when I would not let Arthur kiss his love—though she was dying—and snatched him away by all my strength? Yes! And yet you saw how she thanked me, with her so beautiful dying eyes, her voice, too, so weak, and she kiss my rough old hand and bless me? Yes! And did you not hear me swear promise to her, that so she closed her eyes grateful? Yes!"

...when he wants to ensure Arthur's cooperation to keep Lucy's diary...

"I want you to give me permission to read all Miss Lucy's papers and letters. Believe me, it is no idle curiosity. I have a motive of which, be sure, she would have approved."

That one is a less specific reference, but the entire preceding conversation revolves around what happened by Lucy's deathbed, so it's clear that VH isn't just saying 'she would've approved' out of nowhere.

I have a feeling more will pop up as needed in the future as well. This is just the very first day. But I thought it was interesting the dual purpose Lucy's final request serves.

#dracula daily #dracula meta #my meta

[iamfitzwilliamdarcy]

so I’ve compared Denethor’s death to Theoden and even briefly touched on comparing it to Boromir’s but now that I have truly been a Nerd and skimmed the appendices, let’s compare it to Aragorn. Here, on his deathbed, is talking to Arwen, who is pleading with him to stay longer:

“Nay, Lady, I am the last of the Numenoreans and the latest king of the Elder Days; and to me has been given not only a span that is thrice that of Men of Middle-earth, but also the grace to go at my will and give back my gift. Now, therefore, I will sleep.” 

So Aragorn has the right which Denethor claims-- recall Gandalf’s admonishment to him-- “Authority is not given to you, Steward of Gondor, to order the hour of your death”-- and Denethor’s response later-- “thou shalt not defy my will: to rule my own end”

-- what was gifted to Aragorn, Denethor stole in himself. I think there is also something in the Violence of Denethor’s death vs Aragorn’s falling asleep--  Denethor must take by force that which is granted rightfully to Aragorn. 

Arwen also pleads with Aragorn not to leave his people before his time, and Aragorn contradicts her, that it is not before his time-- 

“Would you then, lord, before your time, leave your people that live by your word?” she said.  “Not before my time,” he answered. “For if I will not go now, I must soon go perforce. And Eldarion our son is a man full-ripe for kingship.” 

Aragorn’s duty is Complete- he has taken his own and ruled well and his son is ready to do likewise. He is not abandoning his people, like Denethor, who, in time of war, sent away anyone seeking his leadership and who Gandalf reminded- “your part is to go to the battle of your City” and “we are needed. There is much that you can yet do”-- Denethor’s hour is untimely and ill-prepared and casts a great burden on those he leaves behind, one that was his responsibility to shoulder. 

And finally, we have the difference in Despair. Gandalf, rightly, accuses Denethor of two sins-- Pride and Despair. Pride, as mentioned above, in thinking he has the Authority and Right to ordain the hour of his own death. Despair in that he has no hope left and, instead of carrying on like the others, decides it is better to Die. Meanwhile, Aragorn both encourages and consoles Arwen at the hour of his death -- 

“For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive.”

“So it seems,” he said. “But let us not be overthrown at the final test, who of old renounced the Shadow and the Ring. In sorrow we must go, but not in despair.” 

Emphasis mine because that’s just really beautiful and to come after the encouragement not to fall to the temptation to despair-- this is what the Rightly Ordered Grief must look like vs Denethor’s true Despair that leads him so astray

#denethor #aragorn #lotr #lord of the rings #tolkien #jrr tolkien

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

It curls around his mouth, seiðrcræft. He cannot explain it save to say it is sweet as honey and fierce as floodwaters. He is not Saruman, there is no magical voice or wizard’s spellcraft in this. Nay—it is more, moving around what already exists in a man’s mind to suit Gríma’s needs. He cannot create something new, unlike Saruman, but he can work with what is present. 

If a man, for example, believes Gríma to be guilty of oath-breaking and taking up with Saruman, Gríma cannot create a new thought that declares Gríma innocent of such charges. But, he can work with the existing insecurities about living up to a father’s legend or the soft, slowly growing resentments about undue burdens he shouldn’t have to carry as a cousin seems to tarry, never fulfilling his duties as he promises to. Gríma cannot plant a thought of love in the mind of someone who hates him, but he can help them to a new perspective wherein that person is able to see similarities and not solely differences.

And oh gods, is it ever fascinating what shapes people’s thoughts come in, what they can be transformed into.

He remains with the king another little while weaving words, as he feels necessary. Théoden is wrapped in a tapestry the threads of which are the king’s own creation—Gríma merely the one at the loom ordering them. An eighth of a candle burning before he takes his leave and tells the guard that lady Éowyn may return, if she so desires. The king had nothing of any import to relay, senility is a painful thing to witness. 

Gríma jests, ‘never grow old, that’s my advice.’ 

The guard laughs.

#I might rework #what makes a kynge #so this is the set-up #Grima: I am here to medicine the king and to undermine his sanity. #Eomer: sorry what was that last bit you said? #Grima: ..... nothing #grima wormtongue #lotr #lord of the rings #writing

[nhaamazu]

FFXIV Write 2022. Day one - Cross.

Ngl, this was written on my phone over my lunch break so I apologise wholeheartedly for any errors! Properly edited version will appear on AO3 at some point along with other FFXIV Write entries :).

~~~~~

His burden was not light, nor was it fair. She had realised this early on, in the days when she had been little more than a foreigner with a knighthood.

"Ser Lucia? Ah yes...you have been placed under Ser Aymeric."

She felt the quaver in the knight's words - the barely restrained laugh. The rumours were well known to her, of course. Her handlers had made sure of that. In fact, she'd been instructed to get as close to him as she could. Intimately close, if needs be.

He was just a mark, just an obstacle to her goal. But then he wasn't.

The first morning she had joined her new battalion for breakfast, she had spoken to him, not knowing who he was. After all  what kind of commander ate with their subordinates? The bastard kind, apparently. And he did more than that. He trained with them, drank with them, joked with them. Within his ranks, not a single man mocked his heritage or his status. Theirs was the best battalion, no question; who else got the freedoms they did? Who else felt honoured and respected, both on the field and off? That they served a bastard? Aye, that may be true, but rather a bastard by blood than by nature.

For weeks, she observed him, this enigma of a man. She watch him pen and personally deliver letters of condolence to the families of men who had died under his command. She saw the haggard look he wore when he returned from meetings with barely-won victories. And when his knights entered tourneys, when their children did, he would be there, celebrating them in the stands.

As her mission dictated, she grew close to him, and duty soon faded from view. She sought his company not because it was another step closer to uncovering the secrets of the Vault, but because she truly enjoyed their conversations.

Somewhere along the line, she had forgotten her mission. Then, he ran for the position of Lord Commander.

Many had cautioned him against it, depsite holding him in high regard. Ser Zephirin was all but assured the role - a pure of blood, Halone-fearing lad, albeit with more in the way of promise than experience. To run against him would just heap further embarrassment onto the Borel name.

Aymeric did not listen.

He had come so far, yet the road stretched on and through the weeks of gruelling campaigns he endured pressure and reputational attacks the likes of which Lucia had never witnessed. They tore him down, claimed that a bastard did not deserve such a position of power, downplayed everything he had worked so hard for.

Yet he did not waver. He did not complain. He held his head high, and when Ser Handeloup stepped up and sang his praises, selling his unexpected but well-deserved victory, the cries of nepotism could be heard as far as Whitebrim.

Shortly before his confirmation, Lucia pulled him aside, asked him how he had done it. How had he accepted everything they had thrown his way with not only resilience but dignity and grace?

"Because," he said, "the weight of my reputation is what I decide it to be. Do I buckle beneath it and prove them right? Nay. To do so would serve neither myself nor those who would look to me and see a kindred soul."

All at once, Lucia saw in him hope that Garlemald had never truly been able to emulate, with their rallies and their grand wheel of propaganda. She saw the warmth this cold nation had brought to her life, saw a future she so desperately wished to be part of.

What was that phrase, the one that had fallen from the lips of a conscript whose nation her own had dismantled, piece by piece?

"Every man has his cross to bear. His true measure is not in its nature, but how he shoulders that weight."

And so she confessed. Offered herself up to the mercy of the Fury, offered apology but not excuse.

Aymeric observed her, the silence more than she could bear. When at last he spoke, she felt the very pull that had led her to him in the first place.

"If Ishgard is truly your home. If the words you speak are true. If you are the woman I believe you to be...I would name you my First Commander. What say you, Ser Lucia?"

She did not quite know. And the silence that fell next was hers.

When the answer came, it came from the heart.

"Yes."

For every man had his cross to bear. Every woman. Every knight.

That did not mean that they should bear it alone.

#ffxiv #ffxivwrite2022 #aymeric de borel #lucia junius #final fantasy xiv

[lancastrie]

@alienored continued from x

Firelight dragged and glinted over Alienor’s cheek, a slash like a sunbeam across her face; her eyes, even in the dim glow of the hearth, pulsing like two clear, icy streams. They were blue, like his own, the colour of cornflowers in the July-heat; surmounted by a halo of sun-gold hair that made faint the lines of age that appeared about her eyes as they pored over a manuscript, or inspected a delicate ring at close. But, this Henry knew, an asp hissed beneath her honeyed exterior. Even as a queen-in-waiting, whose duty it was to clasp her hands, hear nothing, and heat her husband’s bed, Alienor had fortified herself with a determined directness, a polished stalwartness, that invoked the loyalty of his barons and stirred the envy of courtly belles. Her veins, after all, housed the watery blood of Virgin Mother, and her lineage – sprung from the venerable house of Poitiers, rich in silver and fecund with sons – was old, ancient. The Lancastrians appeared upstarts in comparisons; a new duchy, with little honour or pride to fall back on. Only the hope that Henry, in whose broad frame aspirations of usurping the throne had been kindled, would one day seize his rightful place among the highest of the land.

‘By my word, never,’ vowed Henry, giving a sly wink, sparing nary a thought to the fact that both the King of England and le Roi of France lacked sons – two rivals, bitter enemies, without true heirs to the throne. That, he deemed, was a rumination better suited for another day. For now, Henry eagerly embraced the indulgences of kingship, stirring the fragrant wine in his goblet with a flick of a wrist, and casting a sidelong glance at his wife, her smooth flesh buttered with pearls. As he observed Alienor’s movements, Henry arched a dark, inquisitive brow at her rise, and sudden drop, into her velvet-cushioned chair; her cheeks glowing as pink as sunrise as she jested with him. ‘If my words brought you such grievous displeasure, I warrant that you would find no trouble in kicking me, whatever afflictions may ail you. I seem to recall a night, twenty-six years hence, when the back of your hand proved a fitting tool to express your discontentment.’ He brought a hand to his cheek, as if recalling the blow, as a mischievous grin curled at his lips. ‘I never asked you to address me upon your knees again, did I? Or, at least – not in such terms.’

Leaning one shoulder against the hearth, Henry’s lips thinned in thought. ‘Must I summon you for you to appear at my side?’ He requested; his hard gaze riveted upon hers. ‘My fealty to the land is both a gift and a burden. I am unable to rest, for the thought plagues me, should I meet my demise…’ Hanging his head, recent visions of a ghastly death – swiftly dispelled by a concordat of astrologers and priests – danced before his eyes. Alienor’s words only served to darken the pall that now hung over his visage. ‘The betrothal is sealed in blood; there is nothing to be done. Were we to annul it now, it would only hasten the Yorks’ lust for the throne. A foreign prince would ignite their enmity… Nay, our hands are bound.’ At least, with his own brother away in the Holy Land, Henry could trust that it was not Stephen who would stir such mutiny. ‘I trust, madam, that I can rely upon you to present a united front on the matter, as our vows intended. Your concern is noble, but you needn’t exert yourself. We entrust our affairs to the lawyers, to the people of England, and to God. If their duty to their anointed King does not ensure their loyalty, they shall bow before the Holy Father unquestioningly’.

Swallowing another mouthful of wine, Henry deposited his chalice on the mantle and, striding toward Alienor, sank to his knee before her, a hand curving around her thigh. ‘Forgive me.’ He gently bade. ‘My words are cruelly spoken. I would go to any length to ensure our children’s safety. Though the cost is great, I see in them your goodness, your fortitude. Will you not stand with me, wife? Stand with your King?’

#i give up on tumblr #alienored #[ alienor – sun of my life ]

[hawberries]

i wish all morally dubious twinks and their ever-righteous, inhumanly ethereal boyfriends a very pleasant evening 💙

[image 1 is a digital illustration of wei wuxian smiling at a white dragon coiled around him as he pets its chin. the dragon has cloud patterns in its mane, a long ribbon tied to its forehead, and lan wangji’s golden eyes. image 2 is an illustration of jin guangyao petting the muzzle of a white unicorn. the unicorn also has cloud patterns in its tail and feathering, a long ribbon tied to its forehead, and lan xichen’s kindly expression.]

#me to wangxian whom i only ever draw for the purpose of positioning them as a foil to xiyao anymore: from the bottom of my heart: my bad. #in my defense. every wangxian art i could draw has probably already been drawn by someone else in the most stunning way possible. #but which other human on this planet is going to draw xiyao where lan xichen is a unicorn for no reason???? #it's my duty. nay: my burden. #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #the untamed #wei wuxian #lan wangji #wangxian #jin guangyao #lan xichen #xiyao #fanart #people! #critters! #xichencorn #gallery

[ezdotjpg]

Damn everyone out here given wars a grabbable waist, keep up the good work ig skffj 💜

it is my duty, nay, my burden

#askdotjpg #bonus war #bonuslinksdotjpg

[foolgobi65]

varshadhara

one.

Sita has been married a year when there is news of a drought, cloudless skies that refuse to darken and dust that does not become soil. 20 villages chose a single representative to beg for aid from the Emperor himself, and Sita’s husband is drawn when he finally enters their bedroom that night.

“They are dying,” he says quietly, a confession that even later Sita is never sure he meant for her to hear. His eyes close as he begins to remove the ornaments that mark him the eldest, the favorite son, heir to all his father has conquered. Sita, seated on the bed, watches as her husband looks down at the ruby necklace whose clasp he has just undone and calculates how many meals he could buy with what lies so easily in his palms.

“Years,” she confirms, hands playing with the edge of her cotton upper cloth for want of something to do. Her voice startles them both, somehow too loud and too soft for the strange hush that has fallen on the palace so many hours after sunset. “But only because the jewelry you wear is more precious in this city for having been yours.”

He looks up, curiosity a glint in his eye and hands at the heavy earrings the Emperor insists on for court. He seems glad to see her. “Would it help?”

“Yes,” she says, ignoring the way her heart clenches to hear the hope in his voice, “for now. But what about in a year, should the drought continue?”

Her husband glances at the chest which keeps his gold, the fruit of a generation’s worth of tribute from kingdoms that span the earth.

“What a tragedy,” he drawls, fingers slowly teasing out the crown from the wonderful tangles of his hair, “to lose all these heavy jewels in pursuit of my duty as king.”

Sita startles into laughter and reaches out to take her husband’s burden, ignoring the surprise that flickers briefly across his features. He is always so surprised and then so grateful for what to Sita are the smallest morsels of tolerance. She does not think about why this might upset her. “And as my Lord’s faithful wife,” she says cheerfully in response, “I suppose it would be my duty to donate my ornaments as well.”

Both of them linger on Sita’s wrists, the ones she keeps nearly bare save the one golden bangle around each that at least proves her a wife. They smile: tragic indeed.

“My father has proclaimed that the drought stricken will not pay tribute,” Sita hears hours later, low in the moments before she finally closes her eyes, “but there must be something more we can do to help.”

She could live like this, she thinks, at the moment she slips over the edge between the worlds of life and dreams. Sita is content. This could be enough.

----

two.

By now all of Ayodhya must know that Janaki, foundling daughter of the Videhan king, was not expected to marry -- the year that she has spent in the blessed state so far has been tumultuous, to say the least. She grew up a goddess, but more than that she grew up sheltered from palace politics and finds herself embroiled in more than one controversy due to her own ineptitude.

Her sisters, each of them younger than Sita, were married to her husband’s three brothers before they became women true and so are kept as maidens in the palaces of their individual mother in laws: far from their eldest sister who lives, as is traditional, in the rooms of her husband.

What would they say, Sita wonders, if they knew their sister to be equally virginal only weeks before the first anniversary of her wedding?

Sita sets the ceremonial platter on top of a stool and kneels, gently picking up the woolen blanket covering her husband as he sleeps on the floor. The difference in temperature, they have both realized, is usually enough for him to wake and so it is today when his eyes open. Together they fold not only the blanket that covered him but the two others that make what serves as his mattress on the ground, one of her husband’s many concessions to his ungrateful, accidental wife.

“I was never supposed to be married,” she had whispered the night of their consummation, tears streaming down her face and tone as possibly close to a shriek while knowing that servants listened at the door. “I know nothing of how to manage a royal household, much less satisfy a husband!”

The black rimming her eyes must have mixed with her tears, leaving Sita a fright. The combined talents of Ayodhya’s finest ladies-in-waiting ruined by the anxieties of a girl utterly unsuited to serve as their canvas. Sita’s husband, a man who wielded enough power at 16 to force each of Sita’s baying, blood-lusting suitors -- some of them thrice her husband’s age -- to their knees in supplication, had barely walked into the room when confronted with the sight.

“I did not need the protection of a husband,” Sita had said then, back turned. “I would have died before any of those lechers disguised as failed suitors tried to touch me.” She choked back a sob. “It would have been better for us all if I had.” Years later her husband confesses that sometimes he still hears her like this in the moments before he falls asleep, even when they have spent more years than not tangled as one in bed. Sita never tells him how close it all was in the end, how tightly she was gripping the knife when someone heard that a young anchorite had not only lifted, but broken the Great God’s bow. But on her wedding night, when Sita opened her eyes it was to the sight of her husband, his own blade drawn. She flinched, but he only raised his own palm and ran the edge against skin to draw blood.

“A woman,” he said in answer to her unvoiced question, “is supposed to bleed on her first night. The washerwoman will be paid handsomely for her knowledge in the morning.”

Sita flushed, shoulders straightening of their own accord at the implication.

“And as a virgin bride myself, I will bleed as any other” she said, hands fisted at her side in brief, overwhelming rage. “My reputation does not need you to shed blood on my behalf.”

Her husband had only nodded, moving towards the side of the bed opposite to where Sita sat in order to smear his palm once, twice, thrice until he seemed satisfied with his handiwork.

A million questions ran through Sita’s mind. “I hope your sleep is restful,” was all her husband said in response, grabbing a blanket from the foot of what was to be their marital bed and arranging himself on the floor.

Nearly a year since, Sita’s knowledge as to the running of households has not increased, nor, she suspects, has her knowledge regarding the satisfaction of her husband. He keeps long hours, spending as much time away from his wife as possible. The people of Ayodhya, used to the years that might have passed between visits from their woman-drunk sovereign, are enthralled by the near constant access to their Crown Prince, and this during the years when it is acceptable, nay even appropriate to be devoted to naught but one’s own pleasure.

The women of the palace, caught between their desire to honor their collective son and their need to denigrate his strange, uncouth wife, stay silent.

----

three.

“In Mithila,” Sita’s husband begins, breaking their easy silence that has fallen over this morning meal, “what would you do in times of drought?”

Sita startles, the palm frond she was using to keep away insects as her husband ate, slipping to the ground. Though they can now speak of many things, they have never spoken of Mithila -- it is encouraged for new brides to sink themselves fully into the environs of their new, forever home. In this, at least, she is like every wife before her: the ways of her past can have no place in her present. Every day she must attempt to forget who she once was.

“I am only a girl,” Sita answers carefully, eyes lowered as she was told women do. “Such a question may be better answered by my Father, or one of the preceptors versed in these matters.”

There is a silence, but Sita, unable to lift her eyes to her husband’s face, cannot tell if he has accepted her falsehood. The Raghuvanshis, she has been told time and time again, are a line of honor. They do not lie.

“Did you think--” she hears, and then a sigh. “I know who you are, my lady. Are we not friends, at the very least?”

Sita clenches her jaw, picking up the palm fronds once more. She is no longer afraid of her husband, at least not as she was at first. But he cannot want the answers he seeks, not truly. “I am a princess of Ayodhya,” she says, as she has to herself every morning since she woke up next to her husband’s blood on the bed and his body on their floor. “I am your wife, sanctified by the Lord’s Bow and the sacrament of the Holy Fire.”

“Yes,” her husband agrees. Sita cannot help but note that his tone is gentle. “And in Videha, you are considered a Goddess too.”

He says it so easily, as if Sita does not live balanced on the sword-edge between damned and divine. For a moment, she lets herself imagine what it would be like to be known.

There is a story known in Videha, of a drought so ferocious that a King long without child was forced to seed his own lands with the merit of his good deeds. Of the four days of labor that resulted in a baby girl, delivered from the womb of the Eternal Mother Earth. A child covered in an afterbirth of soil where there had only ever been useless dirt.

And yet this too is known: children are the only dead who are buried, their bodies believed too beloved to be consecrated to the fire and burned beyond reckoning. Instead they are covered in wool and laid to rest in the lap of Mother Earth alongside a plea for Death to be gentle.

Sometimes these children are wanted. Many times, the bodies buried are the ones who are not.

This is all that is known: when the King knelt to deliver the child, what had previously been blue sky broke into the first of that year’s monsoon, nearly a decade since the last.

Foundlings left to die do not wear the garb of royalty. Goddesses do not wed.

What would you call me, Crown Prince?

“I am a princess of Ayodhya,” she says, the words suddenly heavy, like stones in her mouth. Her silence protects her sisters from the taint of Sita’s own uncertainty, and Ayodhya has no need for Gods not its own. She waves away an insect that attempts to rest atop her husband’s left ear and resigns herself to her fate: “I am your wedded wife.”

“They are dying,” he says softly, but he speaks to himself. Sita thinks of the easy way they can speak now sometimes; at nights before they retire, or over a morning meal. Her husband is right -- they are friends, if nothing else, and she owes him more than this. Viciously Sita tamps down on the guilt she feels roiling her stomach, rebelling against a stance that suddenly feels like betrayal.

----

Four.

“It is strange,” Mother Kaushalya remarks, as always, “that you were never taught the ways of Royal Women. Is this how girls are raised in Videha?”

Mother Kaushalya, who has only known the Kosala for which she is named, has latched onto the strangeness of Sita’s far-off homeland as a possible explanation for the ways in which Sita grates mountain-rough against the silk of the Imperial Palace. It is useless of course, since a slight against Videha must inherently touch Sita’s sisters, who in the last year have already developed a reputation for grace, gentility, and an overflowing well of kindness towards all blessed with their presence.

Mother Kaushalya, according to the servant-slaves Sita eavesdrops on, has been heard quarreling with Mother Sumitra, begging for “at least one of your darling girls, my Lady, for you know that it can only be selfishness to keep them both when your elder sister has none!”

Sita, tugging awkwardly at the overwrought necklaces she must wear when in Mother Kaushalya’s presence, can only agree. She, more than anyone, knows what she lacks. There have been rumors recently that all three of Dasharatha’s Chief Queens have made a petition to the Emperor to find a new princess worthy of the Crown Prince’s hand.

Sita can only hope that when the time comes, her husband will allow her access to the Imperial Library, or at least will deem it proper to have one wife devoted to the worship of the Gods: philosophy and piety are so easily confused, after all. The best life she can now demand is one where she recedes into the background of the Imperial Palace, unneeded and unknown by all. Never will Sita oversee the workings of a kingdom in the manner she was raised, nor will she sit atop an altar and listen to those petitioners who make pilgrimage to weep at her feet.

Some days, Sita does not even know if she is a woman at all, if these mothers and wives are capable of knowing and carrying the grief of a nation inside their fragile bodies. Every night she dreams of the drought ravaging the villages near the outskirts of Kosala, of how once a year Sita was carried by 50 men to the fields of Videha so that she might press her feet into the soil that made her womb and call forth the rains that heralded her birth.

But then she too dreams of this: a mother weeping, swollen with child like other mothers who have knelt in front of Sita. A mother who delivers a daughter in the ordinary way and buries her alive.

“Goddesses,” the Sage Parashurama had said the year after Sita was installed in the palace of Mithila, “are not meant for marriage. Videha is fortunate that after the reign of Janaka it will be guided by the light of the Divine.”

He paused then, as they all do. “And if the Lady were not a goddess, well --”

They never finish the sentence. The threat is implied.

Sita cannot be meant for love, not in the way of women who are meant for marriage. How can she, when she was meant to sit atop a dais as the physical embodiment of a force of nature, just as easily as inside the hearts of believers? How can she, when she lives her life in the fear that she will be caught out and banished, back into the grave she was meant to die in?

Women are meant for friendship. Women are meant for love.

“My apologies Mother Kaushalya,” Sita says, shaking her head and trying to convince herself that she does not rage against the fate that stretches fallow before her, “I was not raised to be much of a girl at all.”

The real trouble, Sita thinks later, is that despite everything she has somehow found herself liking her husband anyway.

---

five.

“My Lady,” a servant twitters three weeks after the Emperor promises debt relief to the drought-stricken. “My Lady, your Lord husband has need of you!”

Sita looks up from the flowers she is carelessly attempting to string together in a garland, perhaps to festoon a doorway, perhaps to drape around one of the many idols of Surya, the progenitor of her husband’s race. They have not spoken in the week since he asked her about Videha and she refused to answer. “He does?”

“He does,” the servant responds with some relish, ready Sita is sure to reap the rewards of being the bearer of such premium gossip the moment Sita’s back is turned. Sita’s husband has never before indicated such a preference for her company. “He asked that I bring you to him, and not in the garb of royalty.”

“And you are sure that this is my husband?” It is not altogether seemly for Sita to be expressing such doubt that her husband might be asking for her, especially when such a request -- even to appear in plainclothes -- is not unusual for those young and in love, seeking respite from the rhythms of the palace by traveling outside its gates. But really, her husband?

The servant, a girl perhaps only a few years older than Sita’s 16, only raises an eyebrow and widens her grin. “Should I call for one of your maids to help you dress?”

“No,” Sita responds absently, lost in the contemplation of what game her husband could possibly be playing. “Did he say if he had any preference as to what I wear?”

“He did not, my Lady, but if I may I think you had better choose something blue if you have it. The color sets nicely against your skin. Silver jewelry instead of gold, if you have that too. ”

Sita does, buried at the bottom of a trunk of clothes she had carried with her from home. But before that --

“Here,” Sita undoes the clasp of the pearl necklace sent to her by some princeling attempting to curry favor with the crown. There is no true harm in people knowing she has left the palace in her husband’s company, but she is off-center enough to want this a secret as long as she can buy it so. “For your silence, until we return.”

In the time it takes Sita to strip out of silk and re-knot her old lower cloth of coarse blue cotton she has thought of a hundred different potential scenarios. Had she been alone, she might have had to slouch out of her own rooms with her head down so that she might prevent recognition -- in the company of a servant, Sita is passed over as one as well and strolls quite comfortably into the sunshine, following a path she has never taken until they find her husband leaning against the wall of one of the palace’s more minor stables.

“My lady,” he says, seeming to shake himself out of some sort of stupor and leveraging himself fully upright. “Antara,” he says then, turning to face the servant he had charged with fetching Sita, “you have my gratitude.” He leans down to pick up something wrapped in cloth before walking to Antara with a winning smile while pressing the package into her arms.

Sita knows something of her husband, but not like this. She is charmed.

“I came across the mangoes your sister likes when I was making my way back from one of the border kingdoms,” her husband says to Antara. “Tell her that I look forward to hearing more about her adventures when she is feeling well enough to take visitors.”

Antara’s eyes gleam and grow misty. “Oh,” she says, lips trembling as she folds her hands around the parcel and takes her leave, “and we have only just gotten her head to shrink back to its usual size after the last time!”

Alone at last, Sita’s husband’s earlier flash of ease vanish into the ether. Sita tries not to take offense at being more a stranger to him than the woman he sent to fetch his wife. “My lady,” he says again, but cannot seem to say anything more. Sita, feeling the awkwardness of the last week’s silence and her own slight guilt besides, takes pity.

“The girl?”

Sita is rewarded with a smile of her own, small but sincere. “Bedridden, but wonderfully vivacious still. There are bouts of illness where she is worse off than usual, but she believes me nothing more than a particular playmate and I try to see her when I can. The parcel has medicine a far-off physician swore had done a similar patient some good, but Antara would never accept unless I passed it to her like this.”

Sita blinks. “But you are her sovereign!”

Her husband shrugs. “I am her sister’s friend, and I find that everyone is entitled to some amount of pride. It is difficult to accept that you cannot help the one you love best alone.”

She nods, satisfied as she has been in the past with the knowledge that at least she is not married to a stupid man, And, she supposes, not a cruel one either. “How old is the girl?”

His smile widens slightly in apparent reminiscence. “She will be seven in two months' time.”

“Does she have a doll?”

“One,” Sita’s husband says slowly, brow slightly furrowed, “but bedraggled.”

Sita may not know how to comport herself as wife nor princess, but once she was a Goddess who heard the entreaties of those who cared for their beloved ill. Still, she remains a sister. This, Sita knows how to do. “If you approve, I will make her a new one that you can take with you. I used to make dolls for my sisters out of dried grass and cloth when we were children.”

For a moment, her husband looks stunned before he manages to school his features into something like equanimity once more. Still, he slips and there is something helpless about the way he is suddenly looking at her. “You are kind,” he says, but low in a tone that makes it clear that he is not truly speaking to Sita so much as about her to himself. “I am always glad for that.”

Sita blushes, unsure about how to respond to a compliment not exactly meant for her ears. It is not something she ever expected to hear from anyone in Ayodhya, much less the husband she condemns to spend his days wandering the countryside and his nights at rest alone on his own stone floor. “Why did you call me?” she decides to ask instead.

Again, her husband shakes his head as if rising from a reverie. His usual self-confidence suddenly melts into trepidation. What could he possibly want that discomfits him so?

“At the Kosalan border,” he says slowly, eyes focused on some point behind Sita’s shoulders, “there are a few villages that, at some point in the last few years, welcomed some families from afar.”

There is something about the way he speaks that begins to knot Sita’s stomach. She has the beginnings of an inkling, but nothing so concrete that she can speak it aloud. She nods for him to continue.

“Neighbors share stories in times of plenty as well as times of scarcity. These last few months there have been stories about former droughts, experienced by foreign kingdoms.”

Ah. Of course.

“This is not Videha,” Sita says, but she speaks almost as if she is in a dream. She cannot deny her divinity, not without inviting further scrutiny of her orphanhood. But neither has she ever truly believed that it is her feet that coaxed the rains to Mithila. Her father sowed the fields with the merit of his good deeds. Her father found a babe in the trough. Coincidence does not imply correlation.

What would happen if the stories were wrong? If Sita walked the lands but the sky remained a bright, barren blue? In some faint corner of her heart, she feels resentment towards her husband for having made her think of this at all.

“Yes,” her husband agrees, “I told them so. But they insist I bring you to meet them if only to speak as their princess.” He winces slightly, eyes shifting desolate to the dirt. “Hope sometimes means the difference between death or life in these instances, and at this moment I have nothing else to offer.”

Helpless, Sita thinks again. Her husband, Crown Prince of Dasaratha’s empire that extends further and exacts more in tribute than any before, stands helpless before his wife. They are friends, he had said, and even before that, he is the one who has always been kind. She opens her mouth to say something, anything, but no words find themselves on the tip of her tongue.

Her husband, eyes still averted, nods as if he has understood. “It was foolish to ask, I know, and perhaps you even think me cruel. You do not speak of who you were in Videha, and I should not ask this of you as my wife.” His jaw sets. “I will take you back to the palace.”

What would happen if the stories were true? If, as in her dreams, Sita walked the lands here in Kosala and the skies still split?

“How will we go?” she asks quietly, unable to force her voice firm. The words leave her mouth unbidden, but she knows they are right nonetheless. “How long will it take?”

She can almost hear her husband’s neck snap as his eyes rise from their study of the ground to gaze at her with all the intensity of the vicious sun. If before he was stunned, now he can only be described as pole-axed. His face is suddenly host to so many overwrought emotions at once that it is rendered as illegible as the times when he forces it blank. She has never seen him so, but that is not unusual. She had not seen him even wearing the smile he gave Antara.

This, she wonders, if anyone anywhere has witnessed ever before. She wonders, even as in her heart she knows the truth: they haven’t. None but Sita.

“Will you really come?” His voice is almost plaintive, like a child asking something he already knows he cannot have. But what does the most powerful man in the world know of want?

“I will,” Sita says, head spinning with a thousand questions, a thousand fears, a thousand hopes. She bites her lip, suddenly overwhelmed by her own uncertainty. “I cannot promise --” again, she loses her voice before she can finish the sentence that would throw her status into such uncertainty.

“I know,” her husband says, answering her unasked question. “I always knew. It would not matter to me either way.” He too seems to break off, struggling to find the proper words. He takes a step forward, and then another, and then one more until he stands in front of Sita, close enough that if he reached out he could clutch at her wrists. “Janaki,” he says, voice dripping with an honest earnesty that suddenly reminds Sita that if she feels herself a girl in Ayodhya then her husband too is a young boy, aged artificially by the weight he is always carrying on his shoulders.

“Janaki,” her husband says again, and Sita takes a breath. He is very handsome up close this friend of hers, the man who is her husband. “You will always be safe with me.” He smiles slightly, and Sita feels the corners of her own lips curling in sympathetic response. “As you say, you are now my wedded wife. There is nothing anyone could say about you that will change that. You can be more, but from now on you will never be less.”

For years Sita was old as well. More than anything else, she was lonely. She is lonely still.

What would you call me, Crown Prince?

My wife.

“I will try,” she vows, refusing to think about what it will do to the villagers for whom the drought continues after she walks the distance of their land. For once, she knows what will happen: she will remain her husband’s wife. In many ways, this is more the moment of her marriage than the one in which he tied the sacred thread around her neck than the one in which he broke the bow of the Great God.

“I will,” she says again, and Sita is unsure if she is promising to be wife, princess, or Goddess. All three, perhaps. “For them,” she swallows and throws all caution to the wind. “For you, I promise I will at least try.”

---

+1

Sita walks for hours, hair falling out of the twist she had pulled it into after dismounting from the saddle she had shared with her husband traveling by horseback to the place that still believed there lived a goddess that could quench dry land.

She walks and walks, walks and walks and walks until her feet begin to crack and then bleed after such long exposure to the harshness of dead earth. Then, she walks some more. Thirst left her an hour ago, but now she struggles against exhaustion. Every step threatens to pull her down into the dust, and she knows, knew, that this would happen. She knew that she would prove their faith false, and leave them worse for having met her. She knew, and yet --

She had hoped, still.

There are no living goddesses who walk the land like Sita to call forth the rain. It is a ritual that has its roots in her father Janaka’s sacrifice, seeding the earth with the merit of his good deeds. Once, she had asked him what he felt when he had been plowing alone in the moments before he manifested a miracle.

“I suppose I should tell you that I prayed,” he had said thoughtfully, hand coming up to stroke absently at his beard, “but I did not. My people were suffering, and there is nothing even an intelligent man can do to mitigate the effects of a decade of drought. I was supposed to be thinking of all the good I had done, so as to imbue the ground with that goodness. But more than anything, every moment I was there I wanted it to rain -- more than anything I had ever wanted before. I felt like I would have done anything then, given anything, if only it would rain. By the end, I knew it would. It had to.”

In Videha, Sita had walked as ritual. She had lived in times of plenty.

In Kosala, there is a drought. She has seen with her own eyes the shrunken bodies of villagers who have no food. Whose voices are raspy with thirst. Together they had collected all the water they had left and had Sita sit, cross-legged before them as they washed away the dust of the road. Sita’s husband has promised that she will be his wife even if she proves a woman after all, but suddenly she knows why the rain fell. Her father too had known; in his own way, he had even tried to tell her.

In Kosala, Sita wants. She is a woman, and in this moment she wants as she never has before. She wants it to rain, more than anyone ever has wanted anything anywhere. More even than her father must have wanted because she wants not only for herself and her people but for her husband as well. Perhaps for him most of all, whom she has seen wrack his mind for weeks. Who has defied what convention or good sense would tell him and instead placed his faith in his wild wife, bringing her to the outskirts of his kingdom in hope of a miracle. Far from the palace, Sita knows herself. She knows what she wants. She knows now, with blinding certainty, what will be.

She wants to be loved, and she wants to love in turn. She wants it to rain, and so it will.

She walks until her body fails, certain in her knowledge that the rain will come. It has to. She trips, and suddenly she hears the gasps of the crowd that has kept vigil at the sides as they did in the time of her father before her. She trips, she falls, and just as she loses consciousness she hears the impossible roll of thunder on a cloudless day.

Sita hits the ground, and it begins to rain in Kosala.

---

coda. (2, 3, 4)

It is late when Sita wakes, eyes opening to the ceiling of a small hut as the raindrops patter against the roof. Outside she can hear shouts of glee, the beat of drums, the exultant songs of villagers who know that they can soothe their hoarse throats with water.

“Was it always like that?” Sita looks down to the foot of her bed where her husband kneels, hands gently rubbing ointment into her wounds before wrapping them with strips of his upper cloth. She hums in question, uncertain of what he means. “When you would walk in Videha,” her husband clarifies, eyes never leaving his self-appointed task, “was it like it was today?”

She could say yes, and imply that this is what goddesses do. Raghuvanshis do not lie. “No,” she says, and marvels at what a struggle it is to even speak. “Never.”

He nods, as if this was the only answer he expected. “Then it really was you,” he says softly, and suddenly Sita notices his hands are shaking as he winds the last of the cloth around her left foot. “You walked, and the gods answered your call.”

“Yes,” Sita says in a whisper. It is a thought too large to bear. He must have questions, she knows, and she owes her husband an explanation. She wants to tell him everything she remembers, everything she now understands, but in this moment there is nothing she can bring herself to say.

Finally, he looks away from her feet, shifting so that it is easier for Sita to look and see his red eyes.

“You cried,” Sita says inanely, stupid again but now in shock.

Her husband laughs, the sound just on the verge of being a sob. “It rained.”

He looks away.

“Before I found your pulse, I thought you had died.”

---

They leave in the morning once more on horseback, Sita clutching her husband’s waist and content to expose her aching, bandaged feet to the elements having long lost her shoes. The villagers offer breakfast, but Sita and her husband communicate wordlessly like she has seen other married couples do, and say together that they must respectfully decline. It will take another cycle for the crops to truly flourish, and there is more food than anyone can eat at home.

For a moment, Sita is jarred at the realization that Ayodhya is what she means when she thinks now of “home.” Mithila, of course, is home always -- but it is different now. Sita’s father called down the rain in Videha, but it was Sita alone who split the sky for her home last night.

After about an hour her husband brings the horse to a halt and jumps down, walking until they reach a lush orchard. Sita swings her right leg around and falls into his arms. For a moment she feels him lower her before he remembers that she cannot walk and shifts his grip, left arm grasping under her knees as Sita wraps her arms around his neck.

“You like jamun fruits, no? You keep them in our bedroom sometimes.”

Yes, Sita does. “Do you?”

Her husband shrugs. “I like these jamun fruits.”

“And where are we?”

“The crown plants orchards at places along the main roads so that travelers might find some respite.” He smiles, looking up at one of the trees. “This is the one with the best jamun fruits in Kosala. And this,” he lowers Sita to the ground underneath the tree and she lets go obligingly, “is the best tree of the orchard.”

It is a romantic claim to make, that there is a single tree that produces the best fruit in the land, but Sita’s husband does not say it as one might when repeating a fancy. Intrigued despite herself, she asks: “How do you know?”

He palms the bark, fingers searching for something that he finds in a particular divot. “A few years ago a squadron of warriors tested the fruit of every tree. This was the one they liked best.”

Sita is skeptical. “And you believe them?”

“Well,” her husband amends, that same mischief he had shown Antara in his eyes, “this is certainly the one I liked best, and the rest agreed as well. It might not be to your taste, given that you are a woman of refined taste in this sphere and I merely a man who prefers mangos.”

“We shall see,” Sita laughs, bedraggled and thirsty and tired. Still, she feels like she has never laughed like this before. In her past she has certainly felt joy and found laughter, but in her happiness now she floats. She had always felt so heavy before. “Let me have my breakfast, and I will be the judge of that.”

Her husband is graceful in victory -- it is not perfectly the season, but Sita swears she has never tasted so sweet a fruit.

---

“Her feet are bandaged,” Kaikeyi observes when the cacophony that accompanies their return to the palace dies down to a dull roar. It is an easy thing to notice when Sita is being carried in her husband’s arms. Kaikeyi was always the quickest of Dasaratha’s queens and proves herself to be the one best informed when her beautiful face twists in withering disgust. “You cannot possibly think that your wife ended the drought by walking.”

Sita cannot tell if the emphasis is on the words “your wife” or “walking.” Both, she thinks, offend the very marrow of an Ayodhyan sensibility that has spent half a year shoving gold at pandits to fund a sacrifice that will finally please Indra.

This is what Sita, married into a family that does not lie, plans to say: “We are glad to see the rain.”

This is what her husband, whose words at 18 already carry more weight in this family than those of his father, says instead: “She did. I saw it with my own eyes.”

#maya writes #ramayana #lmao found this in my google drive and decided light blasphemy was a really fun thing to do at this point in time #i havent written anything non academic in a year so please please let me know what you think!!

[floxalopex]

*overthinks in Latin*

Premise: although I chose to do something completely different at University, when I was a teen I attended a "classical High School", as we call it here. Probably you already know that, anyways it's a school whose main focus is on ancient Greek and Latin literature, grammar and poetry. I did that manly because I believe ancient religions are way more cool than the Abrahmic ones, plus I wanted a "last taste" of humanities before a future life of science and also because the alternative ( a "scientific" High School) had a lot of Math...and let's be honest, Math kinda sucks (curse autistic stereotypes).

I feel the need to specify this in order to make everyone understand that this is NOT my field, it's just something I kinda like. My knowledge it's very rudimental and I'm open to suggestions and criticism by more experienced people.

That said.

One of the first things that came into my mind seeing Horde Prime's clones condition was the content of "Epistula 47" by Seneca, also called the "Letter to slaves". Let's begin with fragment 7.

7)"Another carves the priceless game birds; with unerring strokes and skilled hand he cuts choice morsels along the breast or the rump. Hapless fellow, to live only for the purpose of cutting fat capons correctly, – unless, indeed, the other man is still more unhappy than he, who teaches this art for pleasure's sake, rather than he who learns it because he must."

I recall that this passage in the original language was written with repetetive words. The meaning of the passage is strongly related to one of the most dehumanazing things slaves have to face: alienation. Doing the same thing all over again, forever. Ned Ludd, father of "Luddism", in the newly industialized England did one thing: he destroyed his frame. Why? Because he was overworking, was alienated by his task so much that he was loosing his identity. He became his task, his only need to exist was his task of weaving. Again and again. I've read many posts about clones' duties and how the probably switched them among other clones so they didn't develop a "talent" in that task or take pleasure in it. My point is, imagine this: they give you this task, let's say putting exately 10 cookies in a box (I'm hungry ok? Plus cookies are cute). At first you kind of suck, the cookies are small and slippery and you take like 12 cookies, 9 cookies instead of 10. Then your cerebellum makes your movements have a "rhythm", a coordination (it really happenes in factories) and you are pleased with yourself. You think "wow I'm good at this". Then you do it for a day, a week, a year. You become stressed, bored, tired. But it's your job, you are the only one who can do it at this rhythm. Don't you want to do your job? You know what the consequences are if you don't do it. And so...slowly...you become your task, your sole purpose in life is to fill that damned box with cookies, which aren't even for you.

This is what crosses my mind everytime I see people not calling the clones their proper name: slaves.

But things can get worse. I know this is a kid show and they wanted to make the "sexual arrassement thing" subtext. But really, why are those who understand it find it sexy to ship clones with Prime? Kinky? ( my demi ass: when did sex become more important than dignity?). It's rape. Not "making love".

So that's the other passage that came into my mind

8)"Another, who serves the wine, must dress like a woman and wrestle with his advancing years; he cannot get away from his boyhood; he is dragged back to it; and though he has already acquired a soldier's figure, he is kept beardless by having his hair smoothed away or plucked out by the roots, and he must remain awake throughout the night, dividing his time between his master's drunkenness and his lust; in the chamber he must be a man, at the feast a boy."

So...where do I begin? The clones can't age, they aren't allowed to age. They must be fit, healty. Always, otherwise...you know.

And I think I don't want to add more to this, just because the passage is quite fitting on its own.

Moving on, men I like Glimmer but I don't like how she didn't respect the food prepared by the clones for her. Yes, respect. First because it's food. Food is not an enemy, food is a gift. Second because it took time to make it. You Glimmer threw away food the clones so elegantely prepared for you, despite the fact they probably don't even know how it tastes like.

9) "Another, whose duty it is to put a valuation on the guests, must stick to his task, poor fellow, and watch to see whose flattery and whose immodesty, whether of appetite or of language, is to get them an invitation for to-morrow. Think also of the poor purveyors of food, who note their masters' tastes with delicate skill, who know what special flavours will sharpen their appetite, what will please their eyes, what new combinations will rouse their cloyed stomachs, what food will excite their loathing through sheer satiety, and what will stir them to hunger on that particular day. With slaves like these the master cannot bear to dine; he would think it beneath his dignity to associate with his slave at the same table! Heaven forfend!"

Pay attention how the words are used: Another, Another, Another. Another nameless slave. Another nameless clone. So many of them.

But, this letter made me also think about Entrapta and how she can be the one making people understand what the clones really are, without Prime.

1) " [...] "They are slaves," people declare. Nay, rather they are men. "Slaves!" No, comrades. "Slaves!" No, they are unpretentious friends. "Slaves!" No, they are our fellow-slaves, if one reflects that Fortune has equal rights over slaves and free men alike. [...]"

One more thing. According to Seneca slaves are more free than their masters because unlike them they are free from what a free-thinker soul could be burdened by: guilty pleasures, gluttony, arrogance and excessive lust and comforts. So, in summary, even if Prime thought of himself as a god, belived himself of being the master of the clones it was actually the contrary. Because, like Seneca said "a slave can live without a master, but a master can't live without his slaves. So he is not only slave of his pleasures, but of his slaves themselves, for his own existence depends on them"

#hordak #entrapdak #spop #shera #entrapta #horde prime #Seneca

[arofili]

12, Maedhros and Fingolfin?

12. “What are you thinking about?” Nolofinwë asked softly.

Maitimo twitched, just a little. He relaxed as he glanced up at his uncle, seeing the gentleness in his eyes, remembering that he was safe, he wasn’t going to be punished for expressing emotion, he had full control of whether or not he shared his thoughts.

He breathed deep, releasing a sigh. “What if I don’t tell you?” he challenged softly, needing to test the waters.

Nolofinwë shrugged. “Then you don’t tell me. It’s your choice, Maitimo. But I do not want to see you suffer under the burden of heavy thoughts. It is a king’s...it is my duty to share that burden.”

Maitimo’s scarred lips twitched in sardonic amusement. “And if you did not consider yourself king? What then?”

“Forgive me. It was a poor choice of words.” Nolofinwë glanced away briefly; to Maitimo’s surprise, he seemed genuinely contrite. “Of course I would still hear your thoughts. You are my nephew, and my son’s closest companion, and I care for you.”

Ah, if only he knew how close Finno was to him, indeed... At the thought of his beloved, Maitimo’s heart lightened. Nolofinwë might as well be his father-in-law; if they had to keep their relationship a secret, for now, he would do his best to be truthful in all other things.

“It is the kingship,” he admitted. “We have not spoken of it, but I know your people consider you their king. Nay, the High King. And that you agree with their judgement.”

Nolofinwë was still. “Yes.” Now he was the tense one, and Maitimo repressed a smile. How unusual, to be the one much more at ease!

“Well—” he took a deep breath; not so much more at ease, after all— “I agree, also.”

Nolofinwë’s gaze snapped upward, unable to conceal his shock. “What?”

Maitimo laughed hoarsely. “Look at me,” he said in disgust. “I may be recovering, but I am nowhere near the nér I once was. I am a battered, broken thing; I have been to Angamando and back, and I will never be the king I was supposed to be. I like to think that I would have been a good one, better than my father, certainly, but after the mistake I made in attempting to treat with Moringotto—”

“Your imprisonment was not your fault—” Nolofinwë began, but Maitimo silenced him with a glare. He would not be king for much longer; he would use this authority while he still could.

“I am responsible for the deaths of my soldiers, and for throwing away my own life.” Maitimo’s fists clenched. “Not for...everything else. I thought I would die with them, if I thought at all. But I am here, against all odds, because of Findekáno’s bravery and his damn fool heart, and I still have enough sense to recognize that you are the better leader between us.”

“If you cede the crown, that will not absolve you of leadership,” Nolofinwë warned quietly. “You still have folk to command, your brothers not least among them. I hope you would allow me to rely on you to...temper them.”

“If they will let me,” Maitimo said bitterly. “If they do not kill me for what I am about to do.”

“You are so certain, then.”

“The Noldor need a leader,” he said. “One who will unite us, against Moringotto. One who did not slay Elu Thingol’s kin, and thus may treat with him. One who did not damn half of them to the Ice. That is never going to be a Fëanárion.”

Nolofinwë pursed his lips. “I would never have thought,” he said at last, “that my brother’s eldest son would be so willing to make his worst fears come true.”

Maitimo snorted. “Hardly. His worst fears came true the day my mother left him, and he did not even know he feared losing Finwë. He hated you, yes, that I will admit, and feared your usurpation, but believe me, dear uncle, that was far from his worst fear.”

“I do not know if I should feel insulted or relieved,” Nolofinwë drawled.

“Both. And be glad he is not here to see me, for if my brothers do not finish the job, he would surely set me aflame. This is a far greater treason than Telvo’s hesitancy, after all.”

As it always did, the reminder of his youngest brother’s fate brought grief and horror to Nolofinwë’s eyes. Maitimo laid back in his sickbed, grimacing to hide a smile.

Yes, he would cede the crown, but despite his self-deprecation, he knew his worth as a leader. Nolofinwë would have to depend on him, to keep his brothers in line; compared to them, he was easily the only Fëanárion worth trusting. But he was still a Fëanárion, and no matter the candid blasphemy he spoke of the previous king, he was his father’s son. He was learning now how to best manipulate his uncle, how to leverage Findekáno’s influence in his favor, how to win sympathy for his condition.

That did not mean he did not love Findekáno, and respect Nolofinwë, and certainly it did not mean that he trusted his brothers, but the Maitimo who knelt to swear fealty to High King Nolofinwë was not the same Maitimo who had once sat at his uncle’s knee in Valinor. He would do nearly anything to ensure victory against Moringotto, not simply for the sake of the Silmarils and the Oath—but for vengeance upon him, and the cold politician he had transformed Maitimo into.

#silmarillion #maedhros #fingolfin #silmfic #my writing #my fic #tefain nin #ask games #silm #oh this was a lot of fun; thank you anon!! #anon #answers #their ancient friendship stung his heart

[dailytafsirofquran]

Tafsir Ibn Kathir: Surah Al-Baqarah Ayah 47-48

In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.

47. O Children of Israel! Remember My favor which I bestowed upon you and that I preferred you over the Alamin (nations).

Reminding the Children of Israel that They were preferred above the Other Nations

Allah says;

O Children of Israel! Remember My favor which I bestowed upon you and that I preferred you over the Alamin (nations).

Allah reminds the Children of Israel of the favors that He granted their fathers and grandfathers, how He showed preference to them by sending them Messengers from among them and revealing Books to them, more so than any of the other previous nations.

Similarly, Allah said, And We chose them (the Children of Israel) over the Alamin, (nations) with knowledge. (44:32)

And (remember) when Musa (Moses) said to his people: "O my people! Remember the favor of Allah to you: when He made Prophets among you, made you kings, honored you above the Alamin (nations).'' (5:20)

Abu Jafar Ar-Razi reported that Ar-Rabi bin Anas said that Abu Al-Aliyah said that Allah's statement,  (and that I preferred you over the Alamin) means, "The kingship, Messengers and Books that were granted to them, instead of granting such to the other kingdoms that existed during their time, for every period there is a nation.''

It was also reported that Mujahid, Ar-Rabi bin Anas, Qatadah and Ismail bin Abi Khalid said similarly.

The Ummah of Muhammad is Better than the Children of Israel

This is the only way the Ayah can be understood, because this Ummah is better than theirs, as Allah said; You are the best of people ever raised up for mankind; you enjoin good and forbid evil, and you believe in Allah. And had the People of the Book (Jews and Christians) believed, it would have been better for them. (3:110)

Also, the Musnad and Sunan Collections of Hadith recorded that Muawiyah bin Haydah Al-Qushayri said that the Messenger of Allah said, You (Muslims) are the seventieth nation, but you are the best and most honored of them according to Allah.

There are many Hadiths on this subject, and they will be mentioned when we discuss Allah's statement (You are the best of peoples ever raised up for mankind), (3:110).

48 And fear a Day (of Judgment) when a person shall not avail another, nor will intercession be accepted from him, nor will compensation be taken from him, nor will they be helped.

After Allah reminded the Children of Israel of the favors that He has granted them, He warned them about the duration of the torment which He will punish them with on the Day of Resurrection.

He said, And fear a Day, meaning, the Day of Resurrection.

When a person shall not avail another, meaning, on that Day, no person shall be of any help to another.

Similarly, Allah said, And no bearer of burdens shall bear another's burden. (35:18)

Every man that Day will have enough to make him careless of others. (80:37)

O mankind! Have Taqwa of your Lord (by keeping your duty to Him and avoiding all evil), and fear a Day when no father can avail aught for his son, nor a son avail aught for his father. (31:33)

This indeed should serve as a great warning that both the father and the son will not be of help to each other on that Day.

Neither Intercession, Ransom, or Assistance will be accepted on behalf of the Disbelievers

Allah said,

nor will intercession be accepted from him, meaning, from the disbelievers.

Similarly, Allah said,

So no intercession of intercessors will be of any use to them. (74:48) and described the people of the Fire saying, Now we have no intercessors. Nor a close friend (to help us). (26:100-101)

Allah's statement here, (2:48), nor will compensation be taken from him, means, that Allah does not accept the disbelievers to ransom themselves.

Similarly, Allah said,

Verily, those who disbelieved, and died while they were disbelievers, the (whole) earth full of gold will not be accepted from anyone of them even if they offered it as a ransom. (3:91)

Verily, those who disbelieve, if they had all that is in the earth, and as much again therewith to ransom themselves from the torment on the Day of Resurrection, it would never be accepted of them, and theirs would be a painful torment. (5:36)

And even if he offers every ransom, it will not be accepted from him. (6:70)

and, So this Day no ransom shall be taken from you (hypocrites), nor of those who disbelieved. Your abode is the Fire. That is your Mawla (friend _ proper place). (57:15)

Allah stated that if the people do not believe in His Messenger and follow what He sent him with, then when they meet Him on the Day of Resurrection, after remaining on the path of disbelief, their family lineage and/or the intercession of their masters will not help them at all. It will not be accepted of them, even if they paid the earth's fill of gold as ransom.

Similarly, Allah said,

Before a Day comes when there will be no bargaining, nor friendship, nor intercession. (2:254)

On which there will be neither mutual bargaining nor befriending. (19:31)

Allah's statement next, nor will they be helped.

means, "no person shall get angry - or anxious - on their behalf and offer them any help, or try to save them from Allah's punishment.''

As stated earlier on that Day, neither the relative, nor persons of authority will feel pity for the disbelievers, nor will any ransom be accepted for them. Consequently,  they will receive no help from others and they will be helpless themselves.

Allah said,

While He (Allah) grants refuge (or protection), but none grants refuge from Him. (23:88)

So on that Day none will punish as He will punish.

And none will bind (the wicked, disbelievers and polytheists) as He will bind. (89:25-26)

"What is the matter with you? Why do you not help one another (as you used to do in the world)!'' Nay, but that Day they shall surrender! (37:25-26)

Then why did those whom they had taken for alihah (gods) besides Allah, as a way of approach (to Allah) not help them Nay, but they vanished completely from them) (46:28).

Also, Ad-Dahhak said that Ibn Abbas said that Allah's statement, ("What is the matter with you?

Why do you not help one another?''), (37:25) means,

"This Day, you shall not have a refuge from Us. Not this Day.''

Ibn Jarir said that Allah's statement, (nor will they be helped), meaning, on that Day, they shall neither be helped by any helper, nor shall anyone intercede on their behalf. No repeal or ransom will be accepted for them, all courtesy towards them will have ceased, along with any helpful intercession.

No type of help or cooperation will be available for them on that Day. The judgment will, on that Day, be up to the Most Great, the Most Just, against whom no intercessor or helper can ever assist. He will then award the evil deed its kind and will multiply the good deeds.

This is similar to Allah's statement, But stop them, verily, they are to be questioned. "What is the matter with you?

Why do you not help one another?'' Nay, but that Day they shall surrender. (37:24-26)

#allah #god #islam #muslim #quran #revert #convert #conevrt islam #revert islam #revert help team #ayat #tafsir #help #islamhelp #conevrthelp #prayer #salah #muslimah #reminder #pray #dua #hijab #religion #mohammad #new muslim #new revert #new conevrt #how to convert to islam #conevrt to islam #welcoem to islam

[lifeofresulullah]

The Life of The Prophet Muhammad(pbuh): The Conquest of Makkah and Afterwards

Governors and Zakah Collectors Are Sent To Tribes and Countries

(9th Year of the Migration, the month of Muharram)

Until that date, many tribes had accepted Islam and many lands were under the rule of the Islamic state. It was necessary to administer those countries and to tell the people there about their responsibilities and obligations.

To this end, the Messenger of God appointed some governors and zakah collectors in the month of Muharram of the 9th year of the migration and sent them to different countries.

The Messenger of God advised the governors and zakah collectors as follows:

“Forgive the mistakes of people; avoid collecting their best goods.”

Among the tribes that the Messenger of God sent governors and zakah collectors were San’a, one of the most beautiful cities of Yemen, Hadramut in Yemen, the tribes of Sulayms, Muzaynas, Juhaynas, Sons of Kilab and Sons of Ka’b.

Apart from administration, these governors also settled the issues among people and gave judgments based on Islamic decrees.

Zakah collectors informed people about zakah in the places that they went to and asked the rich people to give zakah.

Some tribes paid zakah readily. Others did not like it because they thought it was too heavy a burden at first; however, they started to pay zakah later.

DELEGATES COME TO MADINAH IN LARGE GROUPS

The conquest of Makkah was a very bright and honorable victory of Islam. With this conquest, the fierce struggle that lasted for years between the Messenger of God and the Qurayshi polytheists ended with the victory of Islam.

The tribes in Arabia observed this fierce struggle that lasted for years closely and carefully. At first, they decided to leave the Messenger of God alone with his struggle against the Qurayshis, his own tribe; they said, “Leave him alone with his tribe. If he defeats his tribe, it means he is telling the truth and he is a prophet.”

This fierce struggle, which was observed closely by the tribes around, ended with the victory of Islam and the defeat and destruction of the polytheism as a result of the conquest of Makkah.

There was only one thing left to do for them: To accept Islam as soon as possible.

They knew it very well that they would not be able to stop and eliminate this cause, which Makkan polytheists could not stop and eliminate despite their strength and enmity.

Therefore, after the conquest of Makkah, at the beginning of the 9th year of the Migration, the tribes around started to come to Makkah in large groups in order to become Muslims. For this reason, this year was named the “Year of Delegates”.

The Prophet welcomed all of those delegates and entertained them. There were people from all walks of life in those delegates. All of them admired the high ethics and virtues of the Prophet and the kind attitudes of his Companions; they returned to their land happily.  

The Delegation of Sons of Tamim in Madinah

The Messenger of God sent Busr b. Sufyan, one of the Companions, to the tribe of Sons of Ka’b from Khuzaas in order to collect zakah from them.

Sons of Ka’b had put the animals to be given for zakah aside. However, the tribe of Tamim, living in the same place, objected to giving those animals as zakah; they even drew their swords implying that they would kill Busr. Thereupon, Busr returned to Madinah and told the Messenger of God what had happened. The Messenger of God sent Uyayna b. Hisn with about fifty Bedouin cavalrymen to Sons of Tamim. Uyayna b. Hisn attacked Sons of Tamim suddenly and returned to Madinah with lots of booty, and captives including eleven men, twenty women and about thirty children.

A short time after the return of Uyayna b. Hisn to Madinah, a delegate from Sons of Tamim, who had objected to paying zakah, went to the presence of the Prophet. There were famous orators and poets among them. Their aim was to take the captives back.

The Prophet asked them, “What do you want”

They said, “We are from the tribe of Tamim. We brought our orators and poets to compete with yours by reciting poems and boasting.”

The Prophet smiled slightly and said, “I was not appointed to recite poems or boast; I cannot do it. However, do your best and we will listen to you.”

Thereupon, Utarid, an orator of the tribe of Sons of Tamim, stood up and started to praise his tribe. Then, he said, “Who will compete me and praise his tribe like me?”

After the orator of Sons of Tamim finished his speech and sat, the Messenger of God said to Thabit b. Qays, “Stand up and reply his speech.”

Thabit stood up. Though he had not made any preparations, he recited such an eloquent and effective sermon regarding the majesty of God Almighty and the virtues of the Messenger of God that Sons of Tamim were astonished.   Thabit spoke as follows:  

“...

Praise be to God, who created the skies ant the earth and who rules them.

There exists nothing that is not the work of His grant and generosity.

Our victories and rule over countries are also the work of His power.

He chose the best man and sent him as a prophet; he has the noblest ancestors paternally and maternally; he always tells the truth. God sent His book to him and made him the most trustworthy person; He made the Prophet the most distinguished person in the world.

“...”

After this speech, it was time for the poets.

First, one of the poets of Sons of Tamim stood up and recited a poem boasting himself.

As soon as the man finished his poet, the Messenger of God said to Hassan b. Thabit, his poet, “Stand up O Has­san! Reply this man.”[8] He added, “God will definitely support him with Gabriel when he defends His Messenger.”

Hassan, who undertook the honor of defending the Messenger of God, stood up enthusiastically. He recited a long poem with the same meter and rhyme as the man’s poem. He expressed the exceptional beauty, highness and virtue of Islam concisely and clearly.  

The fact that the Muslim orator and poet presented a much better speech and poem than those of Sons of Tamim rejoiced both the Prophet and the Companions who were there. On the other hand, the delegates of Tamim kept silent when they saw that the orator and poet of Muslims were superior.  Aqra b. Habis, one of the notables of Tamim, could not help saying,

“I swear by God that this person (the Prophet) is always helped by the unseen. He will definitely be successful. He becomes superior to everybody regarding everything. His orator is superior to our orator and his poet is superior to our poet. Their voice is more sonorous than ours.”

Then, Aqra b. Habis approached the Messenger of God and became a Muslim by uttering kalima ash-shahadah. The other members of Sons of Tamim followed him and embraced Islam, too.

Thereupon, the Messenger of God gave a gift to each member of the delegation and returned the captives to them.

The Delegation of Sons of Asad in Madinah

It was the month of Muharram in the 9th year of the Migration.

One of the delegations that came to Madinah was the delegation of Sons of Asad, which consisted of ten people. After telling the Prophet that they became Muslims, they said, “O Messenger of God! We came here on our own accord though everybody was having difficulty due to famine and drought. We became Muslims without fighting you unlike the other tribes.”

With that statement, they wanted to say that the Prophet needed to be grateful to them because they became Muslims; they expected to receive a lot of things due to this gratification. It was certain that they assumed such an attitude because they had just become Muslims and they had not learned about the vast spirit of Islam yet.  

As a matter of fact, by becoming Muslims, they helped themselves only. Thus, they protected their eternal lives from being destroyed. They did not make the Messenger of God gain any profits by becoming Muslims. Therefore, their attitude was groundless and it was not in accordance with the spirit of Islam. The verse that was sent down regarding the issue expressed this fact:

“They impress on thee as favor that they have embraced Islam. Say "Count not your Islam as a favor upon me: nay, God has conferred a favor upon you that He has guided you to the Faith, if ye be true and sincere.”

The duty of a believer is to thank and praise God for attaining the greatest and highest truth, which is belief, in the universe. He should not expect or even think about anything material or spiritual gains in return for his belief. The reward to be given for attaining belief and being honored with Islam is in the hereafter. Only there will God Almighty give this unique reward to us through his bounties and generosity.  

The rewards for the services regarding belief and the Quran are also otherworldly; they will be given in the hereafter. Therefore, a Muslim who has belief, has embraced Islam and serves belief and the Quran should not expect any worldly rewards or interests for his service. If he expects such things and he wants it through his heart, he will be regarded to have lost his sincerity in the religion. Losing sincerity eliminates the acceptance of worshipping; God forbid, such a person may go bankrupt spiritually. However, if a person who serves belief and the Quran is given a material reward though he does not expect or want it through his heart, he should regard it as a grant of God Almighty; he should not feel gratitude to the people who give it; besides, he should not have the feeling, “This material interest and money is given to me because of my service to the religion.”

THE IDOL-HOUSE OF THE TRIBE OF TAYY IS DEMOLISHED

The tribe of Tayy, was the tribe of Hatam at-Tai, who was famous for his generosity. They lived in Yemen.

In the 8th year of the Migration, Hatam at-Tai died and his son, Adiyy, became the leader of the tribe.

After the conquest of Makkah, almost all of the idol-houses in Arabia were demolished and the idols were destroyed; however, the idol-house of this tribe was still existent and the idol called Fuls (Fals) was not destroyed.  

The Messenger of God sent Hazrat Ali to the tribe of Tayy with about one hundred and fifty Companions to demolish Fuls in the month of Rabiul-Akhir in the 9th year of the Migration.

Hazrat Ali arrived at the land of the tribe of Tayy with the mujahids. Sons of Tayy resisted the mujahids. There was a clash between them. The enemy suffered a lot of casualties. The Muslims defeated them and obtained a lot of captives and booty. The idol-house of Sons of Tayy was destroyed completely; Fuls was broken into pieces and burned down.

Adiyy b. Hatam, the leader of the tribe, had been informed about the mujahids who were coming there; so, he ran away to the direction of Syria; he was not captured. However, Saffana, the daughter of Adiyy, was among the captives.

Saffana’s Request

Hazrat Ali fulfilled his duty and returned to Madinah with the captives and booty.

Saffana, who was among the captives, was put in a room near the door of Masjid an-Nabawi. She was a clever and solemn woman. One day, while the Messenger of God was passing by that room, Saffana stood up and said, “O Messenger of God! My father died and my brother escaped. I have nothing to give to free myself from captivity. I take refuge in your forgiveness, mercy and compassion for my freedom.”

When the Messenger of God asked her who she was, Saffana said,

“O Messenger of God! I am the daughter of Hatam at-Tai, who protected families, freed slaves, fed the hungry, clothed the naked, entertained guests, gave people food and greeted people.”

The Messenger of God became glad that Saffana introduced herself like that and said, “O woman! What you have listed are attributes of believers. I wish your father had become a Muslim and we had mentioned his name with mercy.”

With those words, the Prophet stated an important truth. The fact that “not all attributes of an unbeliever are unbeliever attributes”. Yes, Hatam at-Tai was not a Muslim; and he died before he became a Muslim. However, the attributes mentioned above are attributes of believers. The Messenger of God appreciated the Muslim attributes of Hatam by saying so. Apart from appreciating them, the Prophet freed Saffana. The Messenger of God, who showed compassion, mercy and tolerance to those who were worthy of them, granted a lot of things to Saffana. He gave her some clothes and allowance; then, he sent her to Damascus with a trustworthy caravan to her brother.

When Saffana arrived in Damascus, she found her brother. She told him about the kind attitudes of the Prophet. The kind attitude of the Prophet to his sister caused some movements in his heart. He asked her, “What is your opinion about this man”. Saffana, who saw the blessed face of the Messenger of God only once and who received kind attitudes only once from him, said without hesitation, “I advise you to go to him and be subject to him.”

When Adiyy thought for a while, his sister said,

“Why are you thinking so much? If he is a prophet, you will obey him and attain great goodness and virtues. If he is a king, you will not lose anything; your sultanate in Yemen will belong to you again. You will not be despised.”

Adiyy regarded the advice of his sister appropriate; he arrived in Madinah at once and went to the presence of the Prophet.

The Messenger of God wanted to host Adiyy, who was famous like his father, in his house.

They left the mosque to go to the house of the Prophet. Meanwhile, a woman stopped them and talked to the Prophet about her need for a long time. The Messenger of God listened to her patiently and without feeling disturbed. When Adiyy saw the nice and kind attitude of the Prophet to the old woman, he said to himself, “I swear by God he is not a king.” There was only one possibility left: “Then, he is a prophet.”

They reached the house of the Prophet. The Prophet wanted Adiyy to sit on a leather mattress. However, he did not want to sit on it. He said the Prophet was worthy of sitting on it. However, the Prophet did not sit on it and insisted that Adiyy sit on it. Thereupon, Adiyy sat on the leather mattress. The Messenger of God sat on the ground opposite his valuable guest. This attitude of the Prophet, which showed his modesty and his kindness toward his guest, softened Adiyy’s heart some more and made him approach belief a bit more.  

Then, the Messenger of God invited him to become a Muslim. He repeated it three times. However, Adiyy did not give a positive answer. He said, “I am a Christian.”

Thereupon, the Messenger of God said,

“O Adiyy! Maybe you do not want to become a Muslim because some people say, ‘Weak, poor and helpless people enter his religion.’ By God, one day, Muslims will have so much wealth that they will not be able to find anybody that asks for money or goods from them.  

You may also have thought, ‘The number of the Muslims is few and the number of their enemies is a lot.’ You might not want to become a Muslim because of that thought.

Do you know Hiyara? This religion will provide such safety and security that a woman will come from Hiyara to the Kaaba on her own for circumambulation without fearing anything but God.”

This talk opened the door of Adiyy’s heart and he embraced Islam.

Adiyy b. Hatam, who was one of the notables of the Companions was this person.

#allah #god #help #islam #religion #love #muslim #revert #convert #pray #salah #prayer #dua #hadith #quran #muslimrevert #muslimconvert #reverttoislam #converttoislam #reverthelp #reverthelpteam #howtoconverttoislam #welcometoislam

[officialyourdailyinspiration]

Charles Spurgeon's Morning & Evening

MORNING

December 7th

"I will mention the lovingkindnesses of the Lord, and the praises of the Lord, according to all that the Lord hath bestowed on us." - Isaiah 63:7

And canst thou not do this? Are there no mercies which thou hast experienced? What though thou art gloomy now, canst thou forget that blessed hour when Jesus met thee, and said, "Come unto me"? Canst thou not remember that rapturous moment when he snapped thy fetters, dashed thy chains to the earth, and said, "I came to break thy bonds and set thee free"? Or if the love of thine espousals be forgotten, there must surely be some precious milestone along the road of life not quite grown over with moss, on which thou canst read a happy memorial of his mercy towards thee? What, didst thou never have a sickness like that which thou art suffering now, and did he not restore thee? Wert thou never poor before, and did he not supply thy wants? Wast thou never in straits before, and did he not deliver thee? Arise, go to the river of thine experience, and pull up a few bulrushes, and plait them into an ark, wherein thine infant- faith may float safely on the stream. Forget not what thy God has done for thee; turn over the book of thy remembrance, and consider the days of old. Canst thou not remember the hill Mizar? Did the Lord never meet with thee at Hermon? Hast thou never climbed the Delectable Mountains? Hast thou never been helped in time of need? Nay, I know thou hast. Go back, then, a little way to the choice mercies of yesterday, and though all may be dark now, light up the lamps of the past, they shall glitter through the darkness, and thou shalt trust in the Lord till the day break and the shadows flee away. "Remember, O Lord, thy tender mercies and thy lovingkindnesses, for they have been ever of old."

EVENING

"Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law." - Romans 3:31

When the believer is adopted into the Lord's family, his relationship to old Adam and the law ceases at once; but then he is under a new rule, and a new covenant. Believer, you are God's child; it is your first duty to obey your heavenly Father. A servile spirit you have nothing to do with: you are not a slave, but a child; and now, inasmuch as you are a beloved child, you are bound to obey your Father's faintest wish, the least intimation of his will. Does he bid you fulfil a sacred ordinance? It is at your peril that you neglect it, for you will be disobeying your Father. Does he command you to seek the image of Jesus? Is it not your joy to do so? Does Jesus tell you, "Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect"? Then not because the law commands, but because your Saviour enjoins, you will labour to be perfect in holiness. Does he bid his saints love one another? Do it, not because the law says, "Love thy neighbour," but because Jesus says, "If ye love me, keep my commandments;" and this is the commandment that he has given unto you, "that ye love one another." Are you told to distribute to the poor? Do it, not because charity is a burden which you dare not shirk, but because Jesus teaches, "Give to him that asketh of thee." Does the Word say, "Love God with all your heart"? Look at the commandment and reply, "Ah! commandment, Christ hath fulfilled thee already-I have no need, therefore, to fulfil thee for my salvation, but I rejoice to yield obedience to thee because God is my Father now and he has a claim upon me, which I would not dispute. " May the Holy Ghost make your heart obedient to the constraining power of Christ's love, that your prayer may be, "Make me to go in the path of thy commandments; for therein do I delight. " Grace is the mother and nurse of holiness, and not the apologist of sin.

#Charles Haddon Spurgeon #Morning and Evening #devotional #December 7 #2020 #Romans 3:31 #doctrine of adoption #believers #Lord's family #relationship #law #new covenant #God's child #obedience #God the Father #Isaiah 63:7 #praise #thanksgiving #lovingkindness #the Lord

[aurivore]

@moonlightmagus​ 𝒃𝒐𝒘𝒆𝒅:

Yuuki was doing as she usually does. She poured the wine, setting it back in the ice bucket. She took her spot, beneath his throne and off to the side. She knew her next words would be upsetting, so she took a low bow. "Your Majesty, I have a question to ask, that.. I'm afraid will upset you but I cannot continue to hide these feelings much longer." She paused, taking in a calming breath. "..Am I a burden to you, Your Majesty?"

     “Do you seek to sully the taste of my wine with such lunacy? Your service is to pour, not taint.” Despite the ire interlaced between each regal, precise syllable, the acridity it exudes is of the dismissive, blunt sort. It is normal, after all, for the common man to be saddled with such thoughts. Though Gilgameš, unwavering in all notions of his superiority and transcendence, could not empathize with such pursuits, he could easily discern them — and it is through this judgement that such thoughts, like weeds in the mind’s garden, could be uprooted and destroyed. Further yet beyond matters of reaping, Gilgameš would see to it that her misconceptions would be corrected immediately. “You conflate your significance, fool. Too do you make light of my capabilities. I have been bearing the weight of this world since before your earliest ancestors drew breath. Do you insinuate that you, in all your foibles, would amount to that magnitude? To think yourself a burden upon my shoulders is naught but a mockery upon my power. You will cease it now.” Carrying the collective burden of all mankind and ensuring the continuance of its legacy was a duty the King had ordained himself — for not merely was it his dominion, but it was decidedly an act only he, a being above all others, could — would — achieve. Atlas’s plight was one Gilgameš knew from the day of his birth, and it was one he would maintain beyond his death. No vagary of mortality nor time would hinder his position as the guardian of the human order. In this determination, the ludicrousness with which Yuuki beset herself was tantamount to blasphemy. With a derisive huff, the King swirls dark vino about in the deep swell of his goblet, taking an elegant sip from its mouth. “It is obvious. Any load you weigh would be but grain of sand upon my back. Your concern is unnecessary, and I permit you to erase such thoughts from your mind. Nay, I command it.”

#moonlightmagus #𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝. the king has spoken. #𝐈𝐂. šarrum sa in šarri šūturu anāku.

[libidomechanica]

Untitled # 8648

Nay, that he sun, even the hours,  to shift the strong appears, I raild  at thy wife, thy brightened spuds, that was  the tame: the bloom of a  lovers looks our life, I shall her  philters hue, and ’“gainst her with  burden of France, or those who survive 

nor what great state we wont describe: we wont description;  and as coy be as before  than what it would rest unknowing  to the duty was  none would you but often rises  and shot back I always  prescription for a quarter 

ere his rule all, to where each fields  do tie me deep, has not kept with  your paine, makes him as an owl,  not able to thee and fully. I  know there: o keep a tempest of frost, in  their Cakes and by night, who tries and oil  at grandmas little hour than 

the high sun from Peter founderd  how he sufferd Infidels in your father?  Angry if Irene be but to  me and Tom bears me, though I long legs of  the hungry ocean gain advantage  on Juan  posted of the wife: the 

lion green ruin, rusty casque, which  took himself, and I know, a man say I  turned the presence I adored false friends,  go your proud shall sting she knew no reasonable  hurts are: against the  best. Vain are the greatness. But  we, my lord Loues oene be but at the 

silent nightingale, so surely hath writ: to  hear that vnbitted thus to testify  the titmouse hope to spend our  darling, blue. Throb with his  Agrarian laws the rain on  many times; for both: which public manners:  and now and my faire a fall 

to wretch, finding and my joy behinde! But  is the secret name I would  know this way he went; still, more ground, depopulating  to revealed for  fools per week, because they  call the mountains; there is Kosciuskos  name; and all, smiling and fight, in the 

way by day like a fiend thy destined  to move or breathed a bliss. The  great end of Phoenix in her chekes  pit thou dost fly: if thou strew an Arke a  Tabernacle be: if not yet quite,  dulling my life shall the ‘purple get,  each street a Parke I would eate it, who tries, 

in other curious glow, he was  you can, gifts will now your wheels  windows (the same. Worms shall her physician  thy pity on a strangle with  there was now the  fair Geneura, with potent spell. As  virtuous some strange thy breast must you agen.’)”

#poetry #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Markov chains #Markov chain length: 6 #132 texts