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i-cant-sing · 4 years

Note

hi!! can i request a platonic yandere erasermic with a student reader??

Platonic Yandere! Erasermic:

Thanks for requesting! I love yandere Erasermic so much 😤😤 👊

Check out my MASTERLIST for more!

Platonic Yandere! Erasermic:

The BEST platonic yandere couple to have!

You're a student at UA, part of class 1A. You're Aizawa's favourite student. You're just so polite and so sweet. Always so eager to learn and try out new things. And even the class would notice his special treatment of you. "You forgot to do your homework? Hmm, alright you can submit it to me tomorrow. Denki you forgot to bring your homework? Go run 5 laps right now."

Hizashi would often hear about you from his husband. You sounded like a good kid. But he really became interested you when you came looking for Aizawa in the staff room, but you found him instead. Hizashi started talking to you, really just rambling about the most random things. He was expecting you to just leave and go look for Aizawa, but he was pleasantly surprised when you started talking to him too, easily carrying the conversation. Your eyes would light up when you were talking to him. And since then, you would always give him your complete, undivided attention whenever you guys spoke, no matter what the topic was. You'd sometimes be rambling, and then suddenly forget what you were talking about. It was just so cute!

Gradually, these two would become obsessed with their favourite student. They'd also become very protective of you. When it was time to choose an internship, Aizawa rejected all offers from different agencies on your behalf, lying to you that you didn't get any offers. And then you'd become so sad, near tears and then Aizawa would offer to train you himself, that he sees potential in you. Of course you'd accept, you'd get to train with Eraserhead, a rare opportunity!

When you'd be training with Aizawa, he'd go easy on you, but he'd still give you great tips on how to improve yourself and control your quirk. You still haven't been able to beat him once though. Since you'd be around Aizawa a lot, you'd also meet his partner, Hizashi, often. And since you would accompany Aizawa on his late night patrols, you'd have dinner (made by Hizashi, who's more than happy to cook for you) with them at their place a lot, and it always ended up with them offering you stay the night, and you sometimes did.

Their obsession love would continue to grow the more you spent time with them. And then one night, the couple would be discussing about expanding their family, and then they both knew it, right then and there. Its you. You'd be the perfect addition to their family, the perfect child! You're so kind, soft spoken. Outgoing yet shy and reserved when meeting new people. But you're just so naive, too innocent for your own good. And they've both seen the ugliness of the world, the worst in the people. They cannot afford to just stand by idly and risk you getting tainted by this filth.

It was decided that night that you had to become a part of their family. They'll make your parents disappear, they have both the money and the skills to do it. Maybe they'll say that your family was taken or killed by some villians, or better yet, they were caught doing something illegal. But don't worry, you can stay with them for as long as you want. When you try to refuse, that you can stay with a relative, they'll tell you that it's for your own safety. They don't want the villians to complete their unfinished business. Plus, they are more than capable of taking care you, and since you didn't want to risk another family member's life, you agreed.

You'll be having the best time of your life. They'll spoil the hell out of you, Hizashi especially. Aizawa does too, but he's just more protective of you.

Hizashi is a great cook! He'd learn to make your favourite dish too. And if you like something from a restaurant, he'll take it as a challenge and try to replicate the dish, or make a better one! At school, all 3 of you would sometimes have lunch together, you always bringing Aizawa's lunchbox along too, since he often forgets it. If you try to cook a dish for them, they'll treat it like its a Michelin star dish!

Aizawa would be the more protective one, always the harder one to convince to let you go out with your friends, especially at night. Hizashi would always convince him in the end, they're gonna follow you anyways so why stop you? Aizawa's a bit possessive too. He doesn't like it when you talk about other pro heroes, you're his little girl, you should be looking upto him. He won't say anything about it though.

Hizashi would love to just talk to you; you guys would often gossip. Oh and you always go to him for any fashion advice. Since he also has long hair that he styles up a lot, he can do your hair too! Just show him a picture of what you want, and he'll style hair exactly like it. Aizawa likes to do your hair too sometimes, but he only knows how to put it in a simple braid.

They're will be a lot fun activities for you to do with them. You can be having karaoke nights with Hizashi, Aizawa watching you guys with just pure adoration in hie eyes. You can play video games with Aizawa, which he is scary good at, especially at Among us. Family game nights are a must!

If you have any other hobbies or passions, you'll have 2 dads, cheering for you. They'll get you the best supplies available. If you win an award, any award, no matter how small, they'll tell you how proud they are and put your achievements either on the fridge or somewhere where everyone can see it.

Of the two, Aizawa would be the to quickly pick up on your mood. He knows when you're lying, when you're sad, or when you've just had a bad day at school. Hizashi would notice too, but it would be Aizawa who would know if you needed some space or if you needed to talk it out; they've always it clear to you that the latter option is always open.

Once they find out whats the reason you're feeling so down, they'll comfort you. You guys would often cuddle on the sofa as a funny movie played on the TV. Once you've gone to bed, they go and eliminate the cause of distress. Oh did you fail a test? Its okay, they'll tutor you personally. Oh did your favourite character die? Cry it out sweetie and let's go buy some of the character's merchandise . Oh did someone confess their feelings to you and you don't know what to do? Don't worry, he's taken care of.

Dating isn't an option. They'll be quick to reject him/her, listing reasons to you exactly why they're not good for you. Of course, nobody deserves their baby. But if you do go against their wishes, and still get an s/o in secret, they'll find about it. If they're thinking about how to separate you guys, and you walk in all heartbroken because your s/o broke up with you, with no persuasion from the couple; on the inside they'll be both glad and mad. Hizashi will be comforting you, cooing sweet nothings in your ear, while Aizawa would be standing with a "I warned you" look on his face at first but then he sees your red, teary face, your lips wobbling, your eyes full of pools of tears, and immediately his stern exterior would melt and he'll gather you in his arms and let you cry into his chest, while his mind will go to "MURDER". You're their sweet girl, their precious little baby. How dare someone play with your feelings like that. Your ex better sleep with one eye open.

If you do somehow find about what really happened to your parents, and you try to run away from them, not only will they have you back in their arms within the hour, they'll take you somewhere countryside. Its always been noisy in the city anyway. They'll try to explain to you, that they really just did all of this to protect you and that it should show how much they love you and care about you. No physical punishment will ever meet you. No, they can't bear the thought of hurting you! They'll use manipulation to control you, and they are master manipulators. They do so much for you, aren't they enough?

Just be happy they still allow you to roam around the countryside, and not had you locked up in your room. School would be off the table for a while, as will any connection to your friends. Its about time they all had a family vacation anyway.

I'd let Erasermic adopt me in a heartbeat, ngl. 👊 Anyways, hope you guys enjoyed this! Requests are OPEN. :)

#yandere erasermic #yandere eraserhead #yandere present mic #yandere erasermic x reader #platonic yandere #erasermic x reader #yandere bnha x reader #yandere bnha #yandere mha #bnha headcanons #yandere aizawa x reader #yandere present mic x reader #yandere shouta aizawa #yandere hizashi #aizawa x reader #platonic erasermic

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thepeakyfckingblinders · 5 years

Text

The Whore || John Shelby x reader

⤠ MASTERLIST⤟

Anon requested: “11&19 with John boy? cause I miss him “ (I miss him too, my poor heart aches)

Summary: n.11 & 19 from prompt list: “Please, please, please” + “I’ll burn this fucking place down” Warnings: swearing, a lot of angst, prostitution, nudity, violence, mentions of abuse, mentions of rape, misogynistic talk, graphic description of signs of physical abuse

Author’s notes:

Behind each one of these works there are sleepless nights and something really close to multiple mental breakdowns, so, please, take a minute to send me a message about it, I need actual feedbacks to understand how to improve my skills and grow ♡

So, this request’s been in my mind for ages, and even though I’m not happy with its final part ‘cause it sucks, I’m literally obsessed with this idea, I love it so much that I’ll probably write a long fic about it, right after Contagio, but it will depend on you babes, because, first and froemost, I need to know what you think about this piece. ⤟ IMPORTANT

Please, if you’re a victim of any kind of abuse, talk to someone who can help you, nobody should go through something like that alone.⤟ IMPORTANT

I edited the gif and added the text, it’s not an actual scene from the show, but I thought it could be a good idea, a small detail that could be added to my works. What do you think about it? Pls, let me hear your opinions babeees ⤟

I’m sorry for being this late, but I’ve been really busy in the past days and writing is never just easy, it demands concentration and effort, plus I don’t want you to be disappointed, so I’m always extra accurate while working. I hope this is worth the wait!

If you want to be added to my tag list, please, directly message me

I’m Italian, English isn’t my first language, so I apologize for every possible mistake I made. Also, please, help me improve my writing by telling me if there’s something wrong

ENJOY!

Birmingham was somehow silent that night, John noticed the unusually empty streets around him, as his feisty pace easily led him towards a well-known destination, his confident steps resounding in between the damp walls of those sordid blocks made of innumerable overcrowded flats. The unmistakable stench of stagnant urine viciously permeated his nostrils, soon causing a disgusted expression to taint his angelic face, while he avidly took the umpteenth drag of smoke from his Cuban cigar and finally stopped his unceasing walk in front of the most renowned brothel in the entire city. For about three years by then, day after day, his life had been perilously circling the drain: things had got totally out of hand, fate had pitilessly thrown him into profound despair, giving life to an apparently endless spiral of darkness and desolation, which was gradually corroding his fragile self, brutally strangling him, rapaciously plundering each of his already strained vital breaths. And, nevertheless, it was beyond hard to blame him for such catastrophic outcomes, after all, he’d scarcely survived the battlefield, only to find himself with a handful of nothing, left alone to deal with a dead wife and four children to raise on his own, while his guts crawled with excruciating grief and ravenous acrimony for the whole world, having him develop a tendency to self-destruction that was just as concerning as it was well concealed. As a matter of fact, in spite of his private hell, he still remained a Shelby, and a Shelby wasn’t meant to be soft, nor weak, none of them could afford to succumb to their affliction, never, not for a moment. They had to be invulnerable.

Or, at least, they had to look invulnerable, for truth was that John was scared, utterly frightened by all those unmerciful changes. Deep inside he felt like a hopeless, undefended child, forsaken by God and discarded to wander that grim world without any destination other than death and misery, thus his blood boiled with virulence and venom, having his heart clench with blind wrath and his devastated young soul desperately long for sort of any distorted kind of unattached affection. That was basically the main reason why his bed was incessantly warm, or more accurately, warmer than it had always been before, because, needless to say, John Shelby had actually been an authentic ladies’ man since his first cry. His stunning beauty constantly teemed on everyone’s lips in Birmingham, there was not a single woman in the whole town who hadn’t dreamt of sleeping with him at least once in her life. Therefore, John was more than happy to please them all, literally, welcoming them with wide open arms, even during his past marriage; and, on those rare times when no girl went to knock on his door, he had now grown accustomed to seek relief into whorehouses, rather than sleep alone and become an easy prey for his ferocious demons.

So he eventually ended up dropping his smouldering cigar on the uneven asphalt of the most rundown place in Small Heath, “Le Belle Donne”, an Italian house of tolerance, quite dilapidated and about to fall to pieces, but which often happened to have his favourite prostitutes. Indeed, ever since the Peaky Blinders had defeated and subjugated Sabini’s clan, they’d occupied a prominent position among the country, to the point that several other Italian gangs on their territory, including the Changrettas who owned that brothel in particular, had finally given in to the Shelbys. As a direct consequence, to put it simply, John and all his brothers had, in a very real sense, earned the full right to abuse of whatever business the wops held.

“Hey, man!” Johnny resonantly barked as he entered the hall, maintaining a pretty intimidating attitude and a menacing look on purpose, in order to strike even greater fear in his newest flunky. “C’mon, show me what you got” That rough order cunningly glided onto his lower lip, immediately followed by his hot tongue, while his famished gaze travelled around the room, examining the face of each harlot standing there with meticulous attention, without however finding something that could come anywhere close to seriously rapture him. Robert Turrini, the whoremaster, was a bizarre bloke, for his physical appearance could be probably described as both disturbing and amusing: his revortingly corpulent stomach wobbled and his short legs dangerously stumbled, when he made haste to stand up and accommodate his toughest client. “Mr. Shelby, what an honour and a pleasure to have you back!” Those sycophant words fled his moist and malodorous mouth, and nonetheless, his stubby fingers inexorably betrayed his true thoughts, since they were either nervously torturing each other or, as only alternative, convulsively running through his greasy, mangy bangs. “Please, sir, follow me, these are for yokels and boozers, nothing to do with gentlemen like yourself” Once again, Turrini’s shrill fawning tone relentlessly grated his ears, making clear reference to the bunch of second-rate whores who could be found at the entrance; thus the lame pimp quickly moved, his hand anxiously beckoning John to tread upon his heels, then headed towards an eerily narrow corridor, so scanty that it was almost impossible to cross, if not walking on the bias. The secret lounge was illuminated only in part by a squalid red light creating a gruesome atmosphere, a dull silence tyrannically reigned into that small space, although you were not alone, but practically glued to another girl; both sitting on a minuscle sofa, your elbows touching, still none of you dared emit a single sound. Everything felt like lead upon your papier-mâché ribcage, that horrible sensation forcing your traumatized brain to involuntarily keep counting the seconds until that heinous burden would’ve potentially staved in your sternum, definitively annihilating your splintered heart. As a result, when the ramshackle door opened and a high-pitched squeak scraped your skin, you really thought to be about to die. Your torturer made his entrance, and right after him, another man came in, yet you couldn’t spot his face, since the peak of his cap designedly casted a mysterious shadow on it. “These two right here, they're real young, real fresh” Robert flaunted his goods along with a nefarious grin, rubbing his soiled paws with evident greed. “Behold the finest offering of flesh and bone on the market” A sadistic snicker repugnantly accompanied his speech, instantly causing John to frown, visibly disgruntled with the way that man deliberately talked about human beings. Luckily, it was a known fact that the middle Shelby was used to treating his women with all due respect: whether he paid them or not, he always made sure they were comfortable with him and never shrank from giving them some good time as well; therefore, a vexed glare was shot in the direction of his gross interlocutor, before his crystalline eyes briefly fluttered around the place, then bumping into your elegant figure almost at once.

Your bloodstream seemed to benumb on the spot as the stranger’s confident stare entangled yours, his rawboned features being now fully displayed, for he had lifted his chin a little in order to properly look at you, and you only, despite Clarissa’s desperate and petulant attempts to get his attention with malicious smiles and ridiculous pet names. Even though your dazed mind had just been ruthlessly brutalized by the sudden, ablaze assault of his glacial irises, a few moments were enough for you to realize how profoundly different he was from all the low-down rats who usually came through that horrible place.

Each sharp, still somehow delicate, trait of his face was brimming with delicious youthfulness, a less keen eye might have even confounded his freshness with actual naivety, but not yours; you were far too clever to make such a coarse mistake. Furthermore, the midnight-blue posh fabric of the classy suit, remarkably folding his majestic body, left gaunt doubt that he was, in all likelihood, a considerably rich man, which was beyond disorientating you, since the price to pay for some tawdry delight in that brothel was outrageously derisory, to say the least. And ultimately, as much as it killed you to conceive it, he was without question one of the most enchanting men you had ever seen, to the point that you found yourself subconsciously wondering the possible reason why a heavenly creature of his kind would’ve needed to buy a miserable hour of dissembled love.

“There she is” That malleable murmur, filled with longing and gratification, furtively sidled past John’s roseate mouth, as its corners seductively bent upwards and his gaze persevered in its praiseworthy commitment to scrupulously linger your finest shape in sheer adoration. Lace and organdy sublimely merged on the light crimson negligee you were wearing, your immaculate form appeared as a beguiling paradox into his dilated pupils, being your long legs lecherously left exposed, while every inch of your porcelain skin, from your lean neck to your groin, was painstakingly disguised by that unholy material, dark and inscrutable, albeit thin enough to allow him to glimpse the inviting turgidity of your nipples. His breath shuddered in awe when he went back to contemplate your aphrodisiac facial features, flushed cheeks and plump lips having him ache with desire, and then your doe eyes flooded by melancholy, strangling his soul with no mercy, entrenching into his brains the treacherous conviction that, at the end of the day, he would’ve gladly dilapidated his fortune, if only to venerate you from afar. “Oi, sweetheart!” His low voice finally rumbled within the walls of that small space, overwhelmingly vibrating into your abdomen, while you forced yourself to swallow the painful lump obstructing your throat and stand up, promptly responding to his command, aware as you had become that rebelling against your pitiable destiny would’ve served no purpose at all. Holding your client’s hand behind your back, but keeping your head down during the whole route, you silently guided him up the spiral staircase to the best room in the house, like you had previously been instructed by your pimp. His jacket and hat were quickly hung on the apposite coat-rack, leaving his muscular top covered with just his white shirt and blue vest, an alluring grin was flashed in your direction and you detected a libidinous sparkle in his irises, as he healed the rift between you at a slow pace. “What should I call you, sweetheart?” He knowingly used the same flattering pet name once more, whispering that barely audible question into your ear, for he was now behind you: his large hands laid around your waist, gently making your back and his vigorous chest fit together, while his skilled mouth brushed forthwith against your nape, drawing an ardent contrail of ephemeral pecks up until your jaw. “Just y/n” You gasped in response, the marked contrast between his warmth and your bitter cold body, along with crippling dread eating you alive, caused your scrambled stomach to squirm and your eyelids to distressingly shut into a frown. “Well, that’s a pretty good one, I’m John, by the way” A lovely, yet hinted giggle fleetingly filled your ears together with that little compliment; there was no record of mockery in his tone, though, it simply sounded like he wanted to be nice to you, without any aspiration of personal gain, and you almost blushed, caught off guard and no longer used to any form of kindness. Nevertheless, it was a matter of instants before another wet, long kiss was pressed on your jawline, making you startle with evident apprehension and, at a later time, definitively back away from him, as soon as you sensed his touch abandoning your hips only to climb your sides, till he reached for your nightgown’s collar and his fingers began to fiddle with its round buttons. “No, I’ll do it!” You curtly gave notice, as you temporarily lost control of both your speech and actions, placing your hands above his in order to shrug them off, then turning to face him with short breath, your open palms shielding you. “I got it” A noticeably softer voice supplanted your preceding rudeness once you gradually metabolised how much damage your incautious reaction could’ve done.

“Aye, aye, darling, as you wish” But John just chuckled, tenderly humouring you, while his forearms jokingly lift in surrender to your commands, although, truth be told, your strange behaviour had left him a bit bewildered, well-nigh confused. Carefully moving backwards, he cockily made himself comfortable on the edge of the double bed, sitting right in front of you with splayed legs, his yearning stare never deflecting from you, and started to unbutton his waistcoat along with his shirt and undershirt, until his statuesque torso was completely nude, in all its glory, as the moon transpired through the curtains and shed its faint rays on his every contour, superbly enhancing all of his muscles.

Without reprieve, he ogled up at you in pure adoration, devastatingly astonished afresh by your dazzling beauty, eager to feel your afire flesh around his, literally hanging on your every word or move, while a provocative smirk steadily rippled his lips. Still, he kept questioning why a seraphic vision like you was slowly withering away in that authentic hell on heart, adamantly squandering your blush of youth amidst that rabble of unrestrained putridity. It made absolutely no sense, and he couldn’t get rid of that pernicious thought haunting his mind ever since he had first seen you: you looked nervous, extremely defensive, almost paralyzed with fear; you seemed so different from all the whores he’d had before, hence his instincts, however obfuscated with cupidity, were screaming that something was wrong. And when he watched you turn your back on him again, so to avoid his penetrating gaze as you reluctantly got undressed, it was enough for him to understand that his execrable hunch was right. Nevertheless, by the time his head managed to eventually reconnect to his mouth, it was already too late, the soft textile of your nightdress ineluctably fell to your feet, leaving you naked under his starving leer.

John choked on his own breath; for the very first time, he felt like a fledgling kid at his earliest experience, no matter if nothing could be further form the truth, in some turbid, cryptic way, you were able to make him vulnerable. His craw went hellishly dry while he continued to gape at you in awe, the sinuous curves of your flawless glutes, the meandering line of your superlatively arched back covered in part by your soft hair, your tensed shoulders and your refined legs, everything about you caused his mind to go entirely black, words stifling in his throat. Yet, as soon as you moved to face him and his sight was blessed with the full view of your voluptuous figure, something altered the light in his cerulean eyes, suddenly making it dark and gloomy. His jaw slightly dropped under the weight of that violent dismay: in conjunction, an obnoxious sense of nausea cruelly shot him in the gut and blind anger virulently assailed him, for your front bust was completely martyrized.

“What the hell...” That unmeant babble died in the gelid air, his shocked orbs demarcating the strokes of your damaged silhouette: your neck and collarbone were horridly plastered with several violet fingerprints, as if someone had mercilessly strangled you over and over, greenish bruises with the shape of full palms circled both your arms, there were conspicuous signs of ligature around your tiny wrists. Worse still, his eyelids had to squeeze a little in order to bring into focus the multiple oxblood dots stigmatizing your soft breasts, until he noticed in horror how those round specks were effectively cigarettes burns; all of the oxygen bluntly withdrew from his lungs, when he dwelled on the multiple blue and black marks barbarically desecrating the protuberances of your ribs. But what irremediably drove him over the edge were the two ghastly scars digging stretched grooves in your lower stomach, in parallel with your bulging pelvic bones and down almost to your livid groin.

Prey of that deleterious humiliation, you observed raw disgust contaminating his features and, with no apparent reason, the dormant hatred you had for yourself began to ferment inside your belly. “I-I’m sorry” you forced yourself to swallow your imminent tears, unexpectedly, the awareness of not being able to please him somehow inflicted more suffering on your mangled soul “If I’m not to your taste, y-you can...” The young man quickly stood up and, before you had the chance to finish your nonsensical sentence, he readily grabbed his shirt, approaching you with dispatch, his cold irises burning with an implausible mixture of fury and concern. “I don’t fucking care right now” His voice was unsteady, rolling down his tongue in fatigued panting, as his hands hastened to wrap his shirt around your shoulders, his trembling fingers struggling to put the buttons through the eyelets “Who did this to you?” In truth, he was talking to himself rather than with you, noticeable impatience worsening his mad tone, yet you persistently steered clear of his inquiring look, more than determined to keep your mouth shut, forasmuch as your dizzy head was already helplessly spinning, along with your heart rabidly hammering against your sore ribcage. You were having a hard time figuring out what was going on, everything around you was so confused, you didn’t even know whether to trust him or not, you only wanted to close your eyes and forget about that lucid nightmare. “I’m not asking you, for fuck’s sake! Tell me who it was!” That searing order tersely brought you back to reality and cleared how easily his rash temper could reemerge; indeed, all of a sudden, no trace was left of that kind, cheerful boy who earlier that night had succeeded in making you genuinely blush, on the contrary, when he cupped your cheeks and vehemently shook you, in a desperate effort to get your attention, his rough, authoritative command unbendingly hit you, and the sweet child within him ended up being thoroughly smothered by the scary, ruthless gangster that he truly was. That unforeseen contact had your feet automatically stagger backwards, your eyes fell to your tiptoes and your teeth started skewering your lower lip, while your exhausted brain resorted to its last ounce of strength, thereby obligating you to spit out a bit of your sorrow. “Three months ago, the man I once called father sold me to settle one of his debts with the Italians” Your thorax seemed to shrink to the point of absurdity once you became aware that it was essentially the first time you allowed yourself to say it all out loud. However, the presence of that compassionate stranger still represented for you a substantial barrier to surmount, leading your unquiet glance to franticly move from the grime on the floor, to the broken window on your left, anywhere, but never daring to meet his. “ I tried to run away, I swear I did, but they always caught me and-”

A large knot callously plugged the bottom of your palate, causing you to hesitate for a minute, gently rubbing your own arms, in attempt to comfort yourself . “Robert has a short fuse, he g-gets pretty brutal when you don’t cooperate” Those disenchanted considerations carried an involuntary grin, it was nothing more than a spasm, but hid the unmistakable sign of an imminent cry, and John’s attentive irises certainly did not let it go unnoticed, yet he chose to stay quiet, because the last thing he would’ve wanted in that crucial moment was to scare you even more. “He beat me to death, each time harder than the time before, and then he let those men-... He-e kept me tied to that bed for days to teach me a lesson” Copious tears were now unremittingly streaming down your flushed face, your heart aching with raw affliction, preventing you from breathing properly, one of your palms instinctively went to cover the space between your breasts, in a vain whirl to ease that excruciating grief. “Oh, God” John simply sighed, he was precariously theetering on the verge of tears as well, thick veins untamedly pumped in the proximity of his temples, till his solid shape ruinously keeled over the longest side of the bed, his elbows piercing his own thighs, as he hid behind his clenched fists and finally permitted himself to indulge a couple of muffled sobs. Innumerable atrocities had clouded his eyes and soul during his brief life, he himself was capable of unspeakable acts of cruelty, still, that was absolutely intolerable, hearing your story was taking a terrible toll on him. Try as he might, he couldn’t conceive how somebody could have been so hopelessly evil, to abuse in such a heinous way a defenseless creature as pure as you were. That thought was irretrievably disturbing him, rancorously eroding his bowels, almost depriving him of his sanity.

“U-until I stopped fighting them” Your last, indescribably anguished whisper struck the fatal blow, it unrelentingly plunged into his chest, sending an unbearable jolt of pain through his poisoned veins. For a brief instant, his expression, together with yours, harshly turned into a mask made of neat despair, as if your synapsis had been ravelled and both of you were enduring the exact same ache, at the exact same moment.

“I’ll fucking kill him!” Then, all at once, something apopletic inside him violently detonated, he berserkly stood up, roughly tripping over the beside table and everything placed on it. “Fucking kill that filthy bastard with my own two hands, bloody hell!” His hoarse yells made your bruised skin cringe and his furious steps covered the whole length of the room in the space of a scant minute; he was literally seething with murderous fits of rage, teeth grinding with irrepressible choler. “No!” your desperate voice erupted afresh and you hurried to reach for him, your hands unconsciously enveloping his cheekbones “Please, please, John, please, stop!” For the first time, his name slipped out of your aching throat in between those pathetic pleads, your wrists forced him to look at you, in attempt to dissuade him from his homicidal purposes; the mere thought of the potential disastrous consequences to his calamitous ire totally asphyxiated you, rampant panic assaulted your frail mind and, soon after, you found yourself hyperventilating and simultaneously rambling a bunch of incoherent words, your fingers gradually tightening their grip on him. “He’s gonna get so angry at me, he’s gonna- he-he’s...” “I’m a fucking Shelby, he does not draw a damn breath unless I say so” He firmly grabbed your chin with just two of his fingers, guiding your depleted pupils to entirely focus on his confident stare, and he growled that undisputable fact a span away from your nose. Petrified by that new awareness, you fell utterly silent, only gawking in his direction, while he put his undershirt back on with ease and rapidly grasped his cap. “Just stay here, do you hear me? Don’t move until I come back” An incandescent kiss was impulsively pressed to your forehead, no other words were spent, before he disappeared behind the door of your private hell. When your persecutor saw his special guest unyieldingly storming towards his desk with a truculent expression exuding fervent disappointment, he jumped on his feet, ready to find a solution to whatever problem had possibly arisen; one thing was sure, he never would’ve guessed what was about to happen. “Mr. Shelby, what’s wron-” John’s fist savagely collided with his jaw, nipping his cloying speech in the bud, without giving Turrini a second to process what was going on, another punch pitilessly smote him, and then another one, and then another, until hot, plenteous blood gushed from his multiple wounds. “You son of a bitch” Animalistic groans left his rabid maws, sheer hate rushing through his brains, as he violently tossed him to the ground, immediately beginning to kick his torso with all of his brute force. “Mercy! I beg of you, sir, have mercy!” His victim’s prayers and harrowing screams barely titillated his ears, everything he could think about was your tragically marred body, hence an unbridled desire to give him a taste of his own medicine completely took over. “Where was your mercy when you were torturing her?” Expertely holding his hat in the most efficient way, in a fury, John went down on his sacrificial lamb, promptly disfiguring just one side of his face, in order to take a quite theatrical pause from his wicked work.

“When she was imploring you to stop?” Robert was now crying out loud, overwhelmed by that merciless agony, reduced to just invoke the glacial scynt of death, since nothing in his entire miserable existence had ever caused him more intense pain, than the coarse perception of a finely sharpened razorblade brutishly lacerating his flesh once more, inch by inch.

“Now bend your ear to this” despite his wrenching laments, John rudely lift him up by seizing the blood stained collar of his jacket “if anyone else but me goes near her fucking room again, I’ll burn this fucking place down!” And with that first, deadly threat the pimp’s head was brutally slammed into the wall, an umpteenth whine of contrition escaping his mouth filled with blood, nevertheless, no time was left for redemption.

“You lay a finger on her again” his skull was doggedly crashed into the bricks once again, a crimson spatter smeared the pale plaster covering them “I will break your neck” John’s knuckles clasped, having his red right hand effectively strenghten its hold on his neck, nearly killing him on the spot. However, fortunately for the whoremaster, Johnny would’ve not put an end to his sufferings, nor he could've simply taken you away, deep inside, he knew he needed to discuss it with his family, first and foremost, with Thomas, for the unstable equilibrium reached by the Peaky Blinder was far too fragile to start a new war against the Italians. Thus, with great difficulty, he forced himself to keep his mind clear and put a lid on his beastly instinct. “From now on, no one of you dirty swines is allowed to even look at her” Throwing him to the floor, the middle Shelby delivered one last kick straight to his fat abdomen, and disrespectfully spit on him, marking with his salt slaver the end of his brutalized prey’s calvary. “By order of the Peaky Blinders” As soon as the crackling door snapped open, your heart seemed to explode, your eyelids bolted with pure fear, whilst you pulled your knees closer to your clavicles, an ancient prayer lingering your lips together with heavy breaths, as you prepared for the worst. But the worst never came. “Y/n, hey, calm down. It’s all right” John’s husky voice echoed in your ears, and, you could’ve sworn it, that was, without the slightest doubt, the most beautiful sound you had ever heard. Your head abruptly tilted in his direction, an oxymoric mixture of fear and hope twinkling into your watery irises, deep pants still rocking your tiny self. “It’s me, it’s just me” Keeping his arms up to indicate his innocuous purpose, he carefully approached you. Almost immediately, you noticed the several scarlet handprints staining his pale top, eloquent sign that he had tried to wipe his palms on that ivory material as best as he could. Yet, you were so profoundly relieved to see his friendly face, that, to be honest, the sight of fresh blood didn’t upset you at all. It was like you had fallen into a fugue state, every single thing around you was so distant, your numb senses were only able to concentrate on John’s lean silhouette kneeling in front of you. “ No one will hurt you anymore, darling” his hands gently went to caress your thighs, while his worried gaze tirelessly sought yours and he spoke those soft, reassuring words “You need to trust me”. And you did want to put all of your faith in that young man. His delicate flair easily awakened you from that ostensible slumber, building a rousing fire inside your belly; without a thought about your unforeseen actions, you threw your arms around his strong neck, your knees producing a dry sound as they collided with the wooden pavement, still you didn’t care and you held him tight, letting out loud cries and drowning into his muscular chest, finally revelling in the feeling of that warm embrace. Soon, he entangled his callous fingers with your velvety locks, subconsciously narrowing his solid shoulders, as to shield your frangible figure from the outside world. “I'll get you out of here soon, I promise”

tag list: @spidey-pal, @shadow-of-wonder, @stassaurus, @peachlle, @livvtheangel, @myjbphase, @namelesslosers, @crazyonesarethebest, @vxxn128, @keithseabrook27, @spaghettirogers, @writingstudent, @hp-hogwartsexpress

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painted-crow · 3 years

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Secondary Toast Revolving Door, Part 2

On what it’s like when I burn Bird secondary

Usually, when I burn either Bird secondary or Badger secondary model, they’re down for weeks or months at a time. I know they’ll come back, which isn’t always true of burned Houses in general but that’s just how mine work. Right now Bird is having a minor upset and it’s been out for a few weeks; it was about to come back when life stress happened and smacked it down again. This time I can predict that it’ll be back in maybe two weeks when everything’s settled down, but usually it’s not that tidy—I don’t always know why it’s having problems or what to do to get it to recover. Usually I just wait it out.

The burned state looks different for Bird vs Badger, of course. I’m probably going to struggle with writing the Badger side, either because I’ve forgotten the details of what it looks/feels like or because it’s actually simpler. I lean towards the “I’ve forgotten” angle. My memory is very bad during depressive periods. (You’d think this would leave my brain goblins fewer cringey memories with which to taunt me at 4am, but no.)

But that doesn’t matter right now because today we’re talking about Bird.

Tipoffs I’ve burned Bird

Sometimes it’s hard to tell when you’ve burned one of your Houses. It doesn’t always have a clear start or end, and you might not notice the gradual slipping into exhaustion and lack of confidence in your House. Here are some things I catch myself doing or thinking when my Bird peaces out on me.

I start thinking I’m not good at things I’ve spent years studying.

I get a panicky feeling of resistance when I think about working on projects that wouldn’t normally give me problems.

I struggle with self-doubt about my ability to learn new skills.

This one’s complicated: the society I live in holds Bird up as the way it thinks intelligence should look. So, in burned-Bird!Paint’s mind, that makes it arrogant to assume that you're better at using Bird than others, because it suggests you think you're smarter (and thus better, because society says that too) than them. Therefore, if I’ve learned how to do something, my impulse is to assume that anyone could. Anything I’ve already learned is obviously easy, because I learned it, and so it isn’t rare or valuable.

Weird analysis paralysis cocktail: I feel perpetually unprepared to do stuff and too afraid to move forward, but I’ve also internalized the “you’re never going to feel ready so just start now” advice—which is supposed to spur you into action and probably works if you’re a Lion, but it just gives me something else to beat myself up about.

Sometimes Bird secondary starts feeling more like a toy than a tool that can actually be effective. If that's happening, using it feels kind of self-indulgent and not terribly useful--it seems good for entertainment, but not for anything else.

That last one is really fricking weird and it took me months to figure out what it was and put it into words. It’s obviously flawed—it’s circular logic sitting on top of societal prejudice—but when you’re depressed, the kind of clarity you need to verbalize and pick apart something that complicated is often nowhere to be found, especially when your perception in general is skewed due self-hatred.

I can’t do that “just start now” thing Lions do—it terrifies me. But that’s fine. Other people don’t casually pick up new skills or binge-read nonfiction or hoard resources like I do—maybe that’s intimidating to them—and that’s fine. Both approaches are useful and powerful, objectively, and philosophically I “should” be okay with owning my abilities. That’s harder than it looks on paper, though.

There’s one more.

The value of skills is subjective, circumstantial, and easy to underestimate.

I’m a jack-of-all-trades style Bird. Lots of things interest me. But every time you decide to invest in a new skill rather than continuing with an old one, you sort of start over. Not completely; some skills transfer and there’s a lot of value in having a range of knowledge, especially in terms of creativity.

Still, though: you enter each new field as a total noob, you stay long enough to become a kinda competent noob, and then when you’ve learned what you want and maybe built the thing you wanted to build, you leave. Rinse and repeat. Usually you don’t stay long enough to become super-skilled, and people in your community don’t specifically ask you for help.

…Until they need something other than the thing they specialize in, and you happen to know it. Suddenly you’re the expert in the room. You know how to get the project started. You know where to research, who to ask about advanced topics, what all the search keywords are, and where to find the supplies. Suddenly you're valuable, and maybe you're not used to feeling valuable. It can be kind of a jarring experience.

It's especially jarring when someone you know needs something and you're like, "oh I can take care of that, I spent six months studying how to do it and I have the resources already" and the other person gives you a look of deep skepticism and you try to convince them that no, really, it's not a big deal, you can have that done in a weekend or two if they give you the right information and... they don't believe you can do it, you guess. It's easy to misinterpret a "this sounds too good to be true" reaction for "I don't believe YOU can do it.”

My old draft had a note about how I should build myself a portfolio site to demonstrate stuff like this (except that my tastes develop faster than my actual skills in most fields, so I tend to dislike my own work and don't want to display it). But actually I’m wondering now if Badger secondary isn’t part of the problem. Sometimes I just volunteer to do stuff for people I only kinda know, without naming a motive or a price tag, and seen through that lens it’s hard to blame them for feeling awkward or skeptical about accepting. It’s not a big deal to you, but it is to them—too big to be just a favor. And then the people who do accept freely given help tend to take advantage of you… I guess I need to cultivate more Courtier Badger if I want to give my Bookkeeper Badger model stuff to do.

(Bonus bullet point: “I don’t know if I can really say my House is burned... it’s just not totally there right now? The stuff I’m dealing with isn’t THAT bad” is another tell that you’re burned. I’ve had to stop myself from writing that sort of thing several times over the course of this post. I’ll let myself bring it up for the opposite reason, though: if you’re thinking this, you may be underestimating the damage because you’ve forgotten what you’re like healthy. This goes for mental illness in general too. Don’t undermine your own experience.)

What I do instead

I’ve learned to be flexible and work around times when my Bird isn’t at 100%.

For example, this is why I have three novel projects running at once, with varying levels of complexity. The least complex of the three is new—I started it back in February, and working on that one instead of the others has let me stay productive and continue using Bird without pushing it past its limits. Plus it lets me keep making art, which as I’ve mentioned, is important to my general wellbeing.

If I’m able to section off my work like this and focus on the things I can do, and selectively procrastinate the ones I can’t (that aren’t super urgent), I’m usually fine—as long as I stay on top of my mental health enough for things to swing back around so I can catch up. It’s very, very difficult to recover if your needs aren’t being met.

I can be kind of a productive powerhouse when I can get my brain to actually process dopamine correctly (thanks, medication!) so if I can manage to work on something useful, I don’t always have to be too picky about what it is. That also means that if I can’t work on the things I’d normally use Bird to do (whether it’s burned or I’m just worn out), it’s a good excuse to catch up on more menial things like paperwork and laundry and whatnot. If I’ve let those pile up, dealing with them will improve my environment and my mental health and get Bird to recover faster.

What I shouldn’t do is continue to press on with my normal work, if I can avoid it. There have been times when people needed me to deliver the creative or technological thing I was using Bird to work on before it burned, and I had to push through and get it to them anyway, and it’s not a good situation for me.

*cue flashbacks to the three or four times that’s happened for months on end, dissociates for 10 minutes*

ugh okay brain can you not do that right now? trying to write a post here

Where was I? Oh, right. I was making a point.

Take the pressure off your burned House if you can.

I think when you burn one of your Houses, it's injured and you're actually worse at using it than people who just don't have it as one of their Houses. Say you're a bowling champion but your dominant wrist is broken. You can choose not to play at all until you recover, or you can try to play with your other hand but you're probably going to be worse at it than a lot of casual players, and that feels really bad because being good at this matters to you.

^ copied from the old draft of this post. I was going to write a smooth transition into that point, but it didn’t work and I’m not going to try to rewrite it and get “ERROR 500 INTERNAL SERVER ERROR” from my brain again.

In any case, this post has been sitting around for a week already and I should probably just publish it now. ^^;

#sortinghatchats #secondary toast revolving door #burned ravenclaw secondary #paint speaks

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koryuusei-writing-portfolio · 4 years

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Cherry Blossom Memories

Five centimeters per second. That’s the speed it takes a single cherry blossom to fall. Five, five centimeters per second, five petals on each blossom, five seconds to realize that I had lost you. Now, all I have is the time it takes for each pale, pink blossom to fall. And all I can do is count each second. This is all I have left of you.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Kyoto, Japan

June 27, 1869

五 (go)

The air was thick with the sickly sweet, metallic scent of death, blood, and smoke. But the world was dark and silent – except for a persistent ringing. I could feel the blood slowly creeping along my jawline and down my neck from the shallow pool that was starting to dry in my ear canal. The trap had been well planned, some sort of strange bomb that emitted a short, but bright light stole my sight while the following concussive wave of sound ruined my hearing. Of course, that was only after the Gatling gun failed to kill me killed my companions, though it did not fail to kill the soldiers that had come with me. I was starting to get the feeling that someone really wanted to get me out of the way. My fingers were cold beneath a warm, sticky layer that made holding my wakizashi difficult; I was not sure where my katana was. The short sword felt heavy in my hands, my arms leaden and sore, my legs stiff, and my body uncooperative and unbalanced. My heart beat against the cage of my chest and it was difficult to breathe. My mind felt sluggish and empty. Every part of me screamed for rest. But I wasn’t alone here, and I couldn’t give up. There was one enemy remaining, as far as I could tell. I took as deep a breath as I could manage and focused my remaining few senses, trying to pinpoint where he was so I could finally end this. Small vibrations in the ground told me he was close. I could feel him. The fool thought he could sneak up behind me. Instincts and training kicked in. I reversed my sword and thrust it backward through the air. It hit its mark; I could feel it in my bloodstained hands as the blade slid through flesh and muscle. Though my ears had not yet recovered, I heard a gasp of surprise, and, somehow, a word whispered in my ear.

“Sakura-sama.”

The softest scent of tea and bamboo wafted through the scent of blood and death, piercing through me like a sword right through the heart. No! A whispered thought of denial and disbelief. It can’t be. He shouldn’t be here.

I felt my soul freeze at the familiar voice; icy tendrils spread from my heart throughout my entire body, to the very tips of my fingers still grasping the hilt of my sword. A body leaned against my back and slid to the ground, the lightest touch of fingers tracing a path from my shoulders. My sword was pulled from my hands, unfreezing my body. I whirled around to catch him, but for the first time in a long time I couldn’t move fast enough. The ringing in my ears quieted and my vision gradually improved from darkness to blurred color and finally cleared. There, laying on the blood-soaked earth was Koichi-sama. My Koichi-sama. My wakizashi protruding from his body. Behind him, the recently slain body of the man who appeared to have been my last enemy, my katana protruding from his back.

“Koichi-sama!”

My legs gave out and, in desperation, my hands instinctively applied pressure to his wound, trying to stop the blood, his life, from spilling out of his body. My hands moving futilely as warm blood waterfalled over them. His hand trembled as it reached for my face, reaching for the tears spilling from my eyes, cutting red-tinged paths down my cheeks. I grabbed hold of his hand and brought it to my lips, closing my eyes in a rare desperate prayer. Please, please, whatever gods that may rule here, please don’t take him from me.

“Please, don’t be sad. I have finally repaid my debt to you,” he smiled a pain-filled smile.

“Baka. I never held you in any debt to me,” I whispered. What about my debt to you? How can I ever repay you for all that you’ve done for me?

“I’m sorry….” His voice was quiet, soft, like it was too painful to speak. “There’s something...something I have to–.”

“Shh…. It’s okay,” I choked out, my throat tight. “It’s – you’re going to be okay.” You have to be okay. You can’t leave me.

“Please, smile...for me.” His voice was almost a whisper, a shadow, a pained echo, blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

“Please, don’t leave, I can’t lose you. I’m not sure–.” the words halted in my throat as my voice gave out. My eyes burned, my chest constricted, and I struggled to fill my lungs with air. Please, no. Please don’t take him from me. Not now, not like this.. I prayed, my lower lip trembling. To which gods – my own or his – didn’t matter, just as long as someone, anyone answered my plea.

“I will look for you…in the next life,” eyes the shade of dark tea stared deep into mine. “I will find you again…my dearest…Sakura-sama…,” he gasped, his hand slipping out of my grasp as the light dimmed from his eyes.

“Koichi?” I whispered fearfully, hesitantly giving him a slight shake, my vision wavering in a watery haze. There was no response. “No. Please, no. Please, come back.” I pleaded to emptiness, silence, to an uncaring world. Suddenly, I couldn’t breath and my heart shuddered in my chest – aching, throbbing, breaking with the realization that he was gone and he wasn’t coming back. Something inside me broke and I laid across Koichi-sama’s still body, my head on his chest. There was nothing: no beating of his gentle heart, no breath in his lungs. I could feel the warmth start to leave his body and I felt a numbness spread through my body as part of me died.

A chill wind rustled dull, rust colored blades of grass, a shiver ran through my body and I wasn’t sure if it was from the cool air or the empty cold inside. I had nothing – no warmth, no tears, no pain. Just this painful, endless beating of my own heart, mocking me. How much time passed? Seconds? Minutes? Hours? Was the battle over? Who was winning? I didn’t know. I didn’t care. Time meant nothing. In those moments, time ceased to exist. Nothing was important anymore. Nothing mattered anymore.

The sound of approaching footsteps barely registered before a soft, deep voice spoke.

“Yori-san...I’m sorry…”

Osaka, Japan

November 23, 1867

四 (yon)

The sky was painted vibrant shades of red-violet, deep purples, and dark indigos with just a hint of gold on the horizon. The wind was cool as it danced gracefully through leaves of red, orange, and gold on the edge of the field, carrying the scent of late-season herbs from the nearby garden and the promise of rain, playing with strands from my unbraided ponytail. Katsura-dono had stood before me just moments ago, gazing out at that horizon.

“I’m sorry to take you from this peaceful life, but the time has come for us to move again and I need your skills once more, Yori-san,” he had stated, hands clasped behind his back.

“I understand.” I had known this day would be coming. Did I even have any other choice? I had sworn myself to this man, to his cause after all.

“I’ll send Nishimura with your next assignment.” Nishimura-san was my usual contact with Katsura-dono. He brought me my assignments from Katsura-dono, reported my successes, gathered intelligence, and whatever else Katsura-dono needed him to do.

“Yes sir,” I acknowledged with a bow. Nishimura-san had been me bringing news every now and again since we had all gone into hiding, keeping me up to date.

After the commander had left, I sat in the soft grass, still warm from the sun and watched as the last remnants of daylight began to fade beneath the horizon. I would miss this: the quiet, the peace, the fresh air devoid of the scent of blood.

“Sakura-sama,” Koichi said quietly from behind me.

I didn’t look at him, instead I dropped my gaze to study the grass at my feet, each blade identical yet distinct from all the others. Hesitantly, he walked over and sat beside me, quiet and contemplating. In the clean, cool air, it was hard not to notice that he smelled of tea and sun-warmed bamboo.

“I saw Katsura-san,” He started again.

Silence. I knew what he was trying to ask, was afraid to ask. I knew, but I didn’t want to say the words. I wanted to hold onto this moment, this day, these past couple of years for as long as I could before I shattered the peace of it all.

Koichi-sama sighed. “Do you have to go?” he asked finally.

I turned my head to look at him. His warm, dark brown eyes caught the last bit of light from the vanished sun, highlighting the hint of green within. I wanted to remember these days. Wanted to remember him this way. These last few months had been the best I’d had since leaving home and I found myself loathe to lose them, to lose this time with him. I wanted to commit every detail to memory.

“I’m afraid I do. This war is not over. ”

“When?”

“I don’t know. Nishimura-san will come to bring me my next assignment.”

Koichi-sama nodded and turned to stare out at the now dark horizon. A smattering of jeweled stars began to glitter in the inky-black sky, looked over by a brilliant half-moon. I closed my eyes and tried to drink it all in, tried to commit the moment in my mind to take with me into the coming battles. This. This is what I was fighting for, why I bloodied my hands and my soul. This was why I had left my village and went to war. The endless parade of death and blood had ate at my soul until I had all but forgotten there had been a reason. This man was what it took to remind me of it all, to give me back my purpose, my soul. When had he come to mean so much to me?

“I had this made for you,” he said suddenly. I opened my eyes to look at him. There, in his hand, sat a kanzashi. It had one silver prong, like a thin chopstick or a tree branch, with three chains of pale, pink ceramic cherry blossoms dangling from the tip where a larger pink blossom sat. I took the ornament from his hand, my own trembling slightly as an emotion I could not name made my heart stutter in my chest. I stuck the prong through the base of my braided ponytail, the ceramic flowers tinkled pleasantly as they hit one another.

“I will come back,” I promised, looking straight into his deep, brown eyes. A warm hand wrapped around my own.

“I will be here, waiting.”

Kyoto, Japan

August 21, 1864

三 (san)

Katsura-dono, the leader of our faction, stood on the footbridge wearing a mino and a bamboo jingasa that shadowed his face. Koichi and I stood further down the bridge, within earshot, but not looking like we were with him. Charcoal ruins surrounded us, some still smoldered. Smoke hung thick in the air, mixing with the early morning fog. These were once homes filled with families and now they were monuments.

Katsura-dono sighed. “We need to lay low for a while before we can regroup. I’m going into hiding for a while. I can’t return to Hagi and I can’t I stay here.”

“Should I come with you?” I asked.

“It would be safer if you didn’t. You are still our best kept secret. I’ve prepared a place for you on the outskirts of a small village near the base of Kenpiyama. I want you to lay low there until we are able to plan our next move. Nishimura will be in touch with you.”

“Understood.”

Katsura-dono walked down the bridge to join us, his black eyes looked past me. “Koichi-san. I was wondering if you might be willing to go with Yori-san. If you have nowhere to go, that is. It would be easier for her to travel and blend in if she wasn’t alone. It’s completely up to you, though.”

I chanced a glance back at Koichi-sama, his face smeared in places with ash. My heart felt constricted in my chest. I was surprised to find that I was saddened by the thought that he might leave. Koichi-sama looked a little taken aback, but nodded in response and I breathed again.

Katsura-dono nodded back to Koichi-sama before turning his attention back to me. “We’ll be in touch.” He turned to leave, walked down the bridge, and through what was left of Kyoto. I watched until he vanished from sight. Trying to put off what I had to say for as long as possible.

“Travelling with me could be dangerous.” I didn’t turn to look at him. “Are you sure you want to come with me?” I didn’t really want him to leave; I had grown fond of Koichi in the time we had spent together so far. I’m not even really sure when it had happened, I just sort of got used to him being around. I’m not even sure of where I would be right now if he had never followed me to the ryokan that night. His presence in my life has been calming, reassuring. He gave me back my sanity. But I was a weapon, Katsura-dono’s weapon. That was my purpose and I could not afford for my focus to be divided, could not allow my priorities to shift. Even though it had been Katsura-dono’s idea to begin with, I had to accept that this might not be a good idea. Besides, I wanted him to be safe, and it wasn’t safe with me. “If you need money for food and travel, I’ll give you whatever you need.”

“I have nowhere to go.” I knew this, of course. He had said the same thing the night our paths had first crossed.

“Everyone has somewhere they can go.” A hand rested on my shoulder and I allowed him to turn me around. Koichi-sama looked down into my eyes.

“I would much rather be with you.”

Kyoto, Japan

April 4, 1864

二 (ni)

“Have you thought about what you will do after all this is over?” he asked suddenly.

I looked up from the swirling red in the water basin and turned to look at Koichi-sama. He was setting out the food that the okami had brought onto the chabudai. A vase stood in the center of the table filled with sprigs of pink sakura. I grabbed the towel beside the basin and dried my hands.

“I haven’t really thought about it.” I admitted as I took off my kasa and untied the black silk scarf that hid my hair. I unpinned the long red-gold braid, unwound it, and let it fall to the small of my back.

“Will you return to your village?”

“Maybe,” I hedged. I didn’t really want to think about the village I had abandoned, nor did I want to think about what kind of reception there might be if I did decide to one day return.

“Wherever you end up, I hope it will lead to a more peaceful life.”

Slightly uncomfortable, I changed the subject. I gestured to the vase, “Sakura?”

“I was helping the okami hang some washings and I saw that the cherry trees out back were in bloom and I... thought of you.”

“Me? Why would sakura make you think of me?”

“Do you know why some sakura are pink instead of white?

I shook my head and sat at the table across from him.

“They say that all sakura are white, but some turn pink because their roots soak up blood from bodies that were buried underneath. They are life that flourishes beautifully from death. It’s like you. You deal in death, soak yourself in blood, all in the hopes that something beautiful will grow.”

I looked at him in shock as he dipped his hashi into his bowl of rice. Over the past months since he’d followed me to the ryokan, Koichi-sama had changed. When he first came here, he was depressed, withdrawn, empty. He would help out around the ryokan when asked, but he mostly he sat and stared out the window. After a time, he started interacting with the customers, teased the okami, and helps out around the ryokan when I’m out. Sometimes, he would even run errands for the landlady or even a message or two for Nishimura, much to my dismay. I had even seen him smile a couple of times. But what was this about? Uncertain how to respond, I grabbed my yunomi and sipped the scalding green tea. It had been a while since I'd last drank tea.

“Yori isn’t you true name, is it?” he asked suddenly.

“Sorry? No, it isn’t. It’s the name Katsura-dono gave me when he recruited me.”

Koichi-sama nodded. “A new name for a new life. Makes sense.”

We ate in silence for a while and when the meal was done, he collected the empty dishes, slid the fusuma open, walked through with the dishes, turned back to shut it, and paused.

“Even you deserve to live the kind of life that you’re fighting for. Sakura. I think you should go by that name, in the hopes for a peaceful future in which you can live a life without bloodshed.” He closed the shoji and I listened as his footsteps faded. I sat drinking my tea, lost in thought. A new life? A new name? Sa-ku-ra? The delicate, soft scent of the blossoms in the vase wafted through the air. I smiled to myself. I like it. For the first time in a while, I did not taste or smell the scent of blood.

Kyoto, Japan

February 12, 1864

一 (ichi)

I paused outside the room, listening, my hand resting upon the fusuma. Silence. Except for the sounds of gambling down the hall again. Slowly, I slid open the door and tiptoed through, carefully sliding it closed behind me. I removed my kasa and the black silk scarf that hid my hair as I quietly made my way across the room to sit by the shoji, my tabi covered feet making no noise upon the tatami mats. A lit andon sat upon the chabudai illuminating a form slumped over the table, head resting upon his arms, an empty yunomi resting beside one slender hand. I was glad I had washed up outside. As my thoughts wandered back to tonight’s job, my hand exchanged kasa and scarf for the half-full tokkari nearby and lifted the bottle to my lips. “You drink too much,” Koichi-sama’s voice whispered in my mind. My hand paused, the room temperature sake halted by the tiny lip of the bottle, not quite spilling over into my mouth. When had this become a ritual? When had I started drinking so much? I didn’t even like the taste of sake. When did it go from having never had a drop to maybe it wasn’t enough? With a sigh, I placed the tokkari back on the shelf. Is this what war did to people? Was memory one of the usual casualties or simply collateral damage as warriors sought to drown it into fuzziness through alcohol?

I reached up and unpinned my customary braid and let it fall, the tip barely dusting the floor as I thought about the choices that had led me here: to this war, to this job, to these nightmares, to this alcoholism, to this uncertainty. Where had it all began? Did it begin with the moment Tokudaiji-sensei took me in? Or was it when he finally gave in and taught me bushidō? No. It probably began the moment that word of a revolution had reached our isolated village which led to my inquiry into getting involved in hopes that the villagers could return to their homes and have the ability to live in peace. It grew into curious obsession when Tokudaiji-sensei told me we shouldn’t get involved, that the villagers were happy and living peacefully in our village and that was what was important. It coalesced into determination the moment Tokudaiji-sensei was killed by rogue samurai of the bakufu.

These were not things I should dwell on now. What was done was done. There was no going back. I turned my attention to more peaceful things, like the sleeping form hunched over the table. Flames from the oil-fed lantern danced through the dark strands of Koichi’s hair, giving the rich black shade warm red highlights while shadows played upon his face, accentuating his features in interesting ways and illuminating a thin, red line upon his cheek. The wound was a couple days old and wasn’t deep enough to leave a scar, but that did not stop the wince of guilt that passed through my body. I had never intended to harm him, but he, unknowingly, startled me out of a dream, a nightmare like so many others, more memory than dream. That was the same morning he had asked me about my past. The same morning he told me about his. It was also the same day he had finally asked the question that had been weighing on his mind.

“Would you–” he hesitated.

“Would I what”

“Kill me. If you had to.” Nishimura-san had completed his investigation into Koichi-sama’s life and had left to report to Katsura-dono on whether or not he was a threat to our cause.

“No.” I stated without hesitation.

“If you were ordered to?”

I shook my head. “No,” I whispered.

“Why not? Because I’m unarmed? If I held a sword, would you kill me then?”

“No. I would never kill you.”

Such strange twists of fate that bring people together. I watched Koichi sleep as I thought about what he had told me about himself, about the events that had somehow led him to be wandering a dark alley that night, that led him to me. His father had been a doctor who had taught his sons what he could of his craft before he had been killed by ronin, leaving his wife to raise both boys when Koichi was ten. His mother moved from the city to a small village on the edge of Kyoto, returning to the life of farming she had been raised in in order to support herself, Koichi, and his younger brother. When he turned fifteen, Koichi was married to a local girl named Saimei. She was pregnant when she fell ill almost a year ago. Neither of them survived.

Dark eyelashes gently fluttered against the tops of beige cheekbones and I found myself strangely captivated by the movement, by the way they slowly lifted and fell as they slowly revealed pools of green-tinted liquid brown eyes. Koichi-sama slowly curled his head inward with a deep inhale, then tensed his shoulders before pushing himself back from the table.

“Okaerinasai,” he murmured sleepily.

Kyoto, Japan

November 23, 1863

零 (rei)

I left the izakaya with blood-tainted sake on my tongue and a foul mood. I grew increasingly irritated by these false revolutionaries who only use their swords to bully the lower classes. Nothing but drunks who spoke loudly about nothing and lacked the honor and courage to really do anything but cause a scene. Dirty blades, nothing more. A large sigh escaped my lips, I didn’t know why such little men bug me so, they were more common than fleas and just as worthless. More’s the pity, our numbers were nowhere near to the bakufu’s and good swords were hard to find.

It was late, and the air was chill. It was time to head back to the ryokan. I headed down the empty streets of Kyoto toward the edge of the city, wishing the sake could fill this emptiness, could erase the faces of today’s missions. I turned a corner into an alley I’d walked through many times before and when suddenly a katana was slicing through the air from the shadows. I ducked and quickly stepped to the right, the blade whistled overhead, just missing my head. I slid my own katana from its saya and waited for my opponent's next move.

“I’ve been waiting for you, ishin shishi hitokiri.”

An assassin of the bakufu? How did he know who I was? Was there a traitor, a leak in our ranks? It was hard to believe, seeing as how few people actually knew about me. I was going to have to report this to Katsura-dono. The assassin came at me again and a deadly dance began. We dodged, attacked, and blocked trying to simultaneously read each other's’ moves and maneuver to land a hit. After a bit, he unsheathed another katana. I kept my wakizashi sheathed. Wielding two blades had its own drawbacks. My opponent was fast, cunning, and deadly. I struggled to keep up with his blows and then, with his blade racing toward me and my foot slipped. I twisted to get out of the way. Cold steel bit into my hip, pain erupting at the contact and I felt warm blood start to run down my leg. I jumped back from my opponent and took a moment to examine the wound. It wasn’t that deep. My opponent looked smug.

“I wouldn’t look so pleased about a little blood.” I taunted.

His smug look was replaced by a look of anger. Good. Anger made people stupid, easier to read. He rushed at me, blades down at his side, ready to be swung up. I stayed where I was, waiting. He got into range and swung one blade up at my head, the other at my stomach. I stepped backward, spun, bringing my own blade up, and through his neck. Blood sprayed up into the night sky, raining back down on the ground as his headless body collapsed. The head hit the packed dirt road with a moist thud and rolled a short distance, leaving an inconsistent trail of darkening red. I wiped my blade on his clothes and sheathed it, turning my back on the corpse to find myself face to face with another man.

He looked to be a few years older than I. His hair was neck-length and a deep rich black with the top layer pulled back into a small ponytail at the base of his skull. His eyes were narrow and a dark brownish-green like Oolongcha that has brewed for too long, the same shape as mine. His clothes were rough spun, and he had no weapon that I could see. A peasant, most likely. I recognized him from the izakaya. His face was emotionless and pale -- shock probably, not that I blamed him. But where had he come from? How long had he been there? He took an unsteady step toward the nearest building and retched.

Shimatta. No one who saw me was supposed to live, but I had never had to kill a civilian, never been seen by one before, and I had no desire to kill one now. This was not a situation I wanted to be in. I carefully adjusted my kasa to make sure it still shadowed my face.

“Go home and forget you saw anything.” I told him, deepening my voice and walked past. It was definitely time to get back, so I headed off again, leaving him in the alley.

I made it back to the ryokan without further incidence. My hip burned from the wound, but it wasn’t bleeding as much anymore. I would take care of it inside. Nishimura-san was standing by the doorway, waiting. Nishimura-san may have been necessary to our operation, but he was facetious, laid-back and frivolous. I found him annoying, crude, and a bit uncouth.

“Bringing home strays now?” the older samurai asked lightly.

Confused I turned around and there he was, the commoner from the alley. Shimatta, I cursed internally. How had he managed to follow me all this way without my noticing? With a sigh, I turned back to Nishimura-san.

“I’ll take care of it.”

“Don’t have too much fun, now,” he said, amusement in his voice and a mischievous look in his eye. I glared at the older samurai and he chuckled as he disappeared into the ryokan. Another sigh escaped me, and I took a moment to massage my temples before turning my attention back to the commoner. Why in the world did he follow me? Who in their right mind would follow a samurai after being told to go home, especially after watching said samurai kill another right before their eyes?

Inside the ryokan, I splashed water on my face to wash off the dried specks of blood. The water in the basin was already tinged red from my hands. I used to scrub my skin raw trying to rid myself of that warm, stickiness that had that sickly metallic scent that just seemed to cling to my skin. But, what did it really matter after all this time -- how long had it even been? A couple of years at the very least. No amount of scrubbing could wash away the lives I took, could wash away that smell.

He stood there watching, waiting, questioning, I’m sure, why he was even still alive. I looked at him, wondering why he had followed me here. I had never had a witness, never had an innocent involved. Now what was I going to do? I had no desire to kill him, but now that he knew who I was and where we were located, I couldn’t let him go either. He was my responsibility now, my mistake, my stray they called him. His dark tea-colored eyes stared straight into my shadowed dark aqua ones (though I was certain he could not discern their color) as though they could gaze through their mirrored surface to some hidden truth floating in their depths. As though he could see through the deadness that I felt threatening to consume me. I’ve watched men drown there, foolishly thinking they could traverse these waters unharmed. He doesn’t even blink, doesn’t falter, and doesn’t turn away. Instead, it is I who am held captive in his eyes, eyes that are both warm and cold. I am pulled deep into those rich depths, there is a familiar sorrow there. Just as I begin to realize that I can’t breathe, he blinked, and the connection is broken. I felt light-headed, perhaps I had drank too much sake. This wasn’t like me.

“Why did you follow me?”

He looked at her with an empty expression. “I had no other place to go.”

“So…you risked your life to follow me after watching me kill someone right in front of you?”

“If you were going to kill me, wouldn’t you have done it there on the street? Why didn’t you?”

“A dangerous assumption,” I responded, ignoring his last question. “You’ve seen too much. Now, what do I do with you?”

“I don’t really care.”

I didn’t respond, I knew the feeling all too well. I’ve been doing this too long, I feared – killed too many people, I worried it was starting to eat away at my soul. I shook my head and sighed, my head was pounding. How was I going to explain this?

“It’s late and you’ve been through a lot. Sleep. You can take my futon.” It didn’t get much use.

Tomorrow. I’ll figure this all out tomorrow.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

I reach out my pale, cupped hands to catch one of the falling pink blossoms. The warm breeze pulls at a few loose strands of hair and I can almost hear your voice whispering my name. Sakura-sama, I will look for you in my next life. As warm tears spilled from my eyes, I cannot help but think that it was you who was more like a cherry blossom: fragile and beautiful, but tragically short-lived. Please, I silently beg, my heart aching in my chest, the wound still too fresh and ragged from the hole he left. I don’t ever want it to heal. Please don't let him find me again.

Glossary of Terms, Events, People, and Places

The Meiji Restoration/Revolution: (1853 and 1867 ) the final years of the Edo period, the end of the Tokugawa shogunate and the samurai. Also the end isolationist foreign policy changing from a feudal system of government to the modern empire of the Meiji government.

Go: five

Boshin War: a series of battles fought at the end of the Bakumatsu from 1868-1869 This section specifically takes place during the battle of Toba-Fushimi which lasted for four days and ended in a decisive defeat for the shogunate ushering in the new Meiji era.

Katana: a traditional samurai sword, one of a pair known as a daishō

-sama: an honorific; the respectful equivalent of -san used when addressing of higher rank than oneself. It can also be used in a romantic sense in addressing a crush

Wakizashi: a traditional samurai short sword, the other half of the daishō pair

Baka: idiot

-san: an honorific with the equivalent meaning of Mr., Mrs., and Ms.

Yon: four

Katsura Kogoro: (Kido Takayoshi, also known as Kido Kōin) was a statesman of the Meiji Restoration. He is considered one of the three nobles who led the Restoration/Revolution which led to the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate and restored power to the emperor.

-dono: an honorific of highest respect, the equivalent of “milord”.

No honorific: the only time that an honorific isn’t used is when the other person tells you that you can address them that way. It’s a sign that the two people are close.

Sensei: teacher

Kanzashi: a traditional Japanese hair ornament, during the Edo period men would gift their intended brides with one of these hair ornaments as well as a poem or love letter.

San: three (not to be confused with -san)

Kinmon incident: On August 20, 1864 (or July 19, 1864 sources vary) a battle between three thousand of the Chōshū Ishin Shishi and twenty thousand bakufu troops that took place in front of the Imperial Palace in Kyoto as the Chōshū attempted to storm the palace to seize control. It ended in the defeat of the Chōshū forces and the burning of thousands of civilian homes. This lead the bakufu to launch the first Chōshū subjugation (happens just prior to part three).

Mino: a straw cape; a traditional full-length garment used as a raincoat.

Jingasa: a traditional type of conical hat worn by samurai when traveling or encamped made straw and often lacquered to make it lightweight and waterproof.

Hagi: the capital city of the Chōshū domain where the Mōri clan were the daimyos at the beginning of the Edo period; located on the coast in southern Japan in what is now Yamaguchi Prefecture

Kenpiyama: Mount Kenpi, a mountain in Osaka, Japan.

Ryokan: a traditional Japanese inn

Ni: two

Chabudai: tables with short legs used for eating while sitting on the floor.

Okami: the owner or wife of a ryokan, innkeeper or landlord/lady

Hashi: chopsticks

Yunomi: a teacup that is taller than it is wide that is typically made of ceramic with a trimmed or turned foot.

Fusuma: sliding doors made of wooden frames covered in thick, opaque paper.

Ichi: one

Shōji: a door, window or room divider traditionally consisting of translucent paper (washi) over a frame of wood which holds together a lattice of wood or bamboo.

Tokkuri: a sake serving bottle.

Bushidō: “the way of warriors” contains the many codes of honour and ideals that dictated the samurai way of life

Kasa: a bamboo hat

Sake: rice wine that can be served warm, chilled, or room temperature

Okaerinasai: this is a formal way to say welcome home

Rei: zero

Izakaya: a traditional type of informal pub

Saya: the scabbard or sheath

Ishin Shishi: loyalists, or pro-imperialists who fought to restore power to the emperor

Hitokiri: a samurai assassin

Shimata: damn it, damn

~Author’s note: I wasn’t able to confirm the terms with a native speaker and my knowledge of the Japanese language is basic at best. If you speak Japanese, please feel free to correct any mistakes you find to help me out! :)

#original short story #historical fiction

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firjii · 6 years

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A5, C1, F1, G4, J5, L3, N2, R4, U4, Y2, and Z4! Any OC you like, mix and match, up to you.

A fine list. I had to think about these overnight.

~For Bae Lavellan~

A5. what is their most impressive talent?

She actually excels at many things, but her most uniqueskill is that she can speak backwards. She’ll do it when she’s bored, she’ll doit when she’s upset, she’ll do it to unsettle someone she dislikes. She cansustain it for quite awhile if she’s feeling talkative. Leliana thought that itwas a secret code or cipher at first. When pressed, Bae didn’t have a goodanswer for why or how she’d learned to do it. It’s especially surprising whenyou consider that she’s not fluently multilingual – she was a hopeless studentwhen it came to elven, so she mostly gets by in Common.

J5. what brings them the most joy in the world?

Interesting question. Her skills aren’t necessarily what shetakes pleasure in – they’re just things that she happens to be good at. Sheenjoys problem solving and looking for things that other people miss (it’s anuncontrollable reflex anyway), so she enjoys climbing, especially if the goalis a quiet and private spot with a good view. When she was still living withher clan, it was one of the only ways that she could really clear her head. Shecan be a bit clumsy with other kinds of movement and doesn’t have big muscles,but she’s very flexible and climbing just…makes sense somehow. She could alwaysreach heights that others didn’t dare to go to or couldn’t see a way to get to,although she rarely did it for competition’s sake and not everyone realize howgood at it she was.

~For Gelya Tabris:~

G4. what parts of them do they like and dislike?

She always wanted more muscle. Life in the alienage meant alot of crime, and not just involving humans. There were few depths thatpickpockets and muggers wouldn’t stoop to. As befits a rogue, Gelya always hadfair reflexes, but no matter how much she tried to build muscle mass, she couldnever make real progress (partly because she was never exactly well-fed andpartly because she was born very prematurely and was never going to have alarge frame anyway). A man of even middling strength could have easilyoverpowered her, though luckily many elves pitied her instead and sometimesshunned her a little or even regarded her as mentally ill (which isn’tcompletely incorrect, though most of her psychological issues are directly dueto alienage life, not genetic predisposition).

She is, however, a very fast learner, and she knows it. Shecan improve greatly after making just one mistake, and once she’s learned howto do something, she never forgets it. She’s not especially skilled inanything, but it’s always been obvious – even to her – that her chances ofsurvival are ultimately better than many others’ because she understands how toadapt and adjust (even if it kills her a little inside sometimes). It’s a small comfort, but it’s enough to get her through the day.

~For Mervyn Lavellan~ [y’all haven’t seen him yet since he’strapped in the PS3, but he was my first Inquisitor and first DA build]

F1. what do they do for fun?

Though he didn’t grow up playing it, he ADORES chess and anyother games that even vaguely resemble it. He’s not always the absolute bestplayer, but his strategizing skills are a perfect foundation for learning it.He frequently hounds his advisors for a chance to hone his skills and learn newmoves. He can be quite cynical about non-elves sometimes, but he greatly admiresthe other races’ board games and sees the value in applying the skills neededfor them to real life and vice versa.

~For Radi Lavellan~

C1. how do they sit in a chair?

At a formal dinner table? Tidily and carefully. Her sitting posturein front of others is so polished that you’d think she’d grown up in Orlesianhigh society.

But in an armchair by a roaring hearth? All bets are off.She usually just ragdolls and passes out because she’s very prone to worrying andlong days and basically never gets enough sleep.

L3. are there any foods they hate?

Bread pudding, rosemary, and most pickled foods. She’s alsonot crazy about most liquor unless it’s cider, beer, or wine.

N2. what have they never done that they want to do?

While she’s socially confident and isn’t particularlyinhibited, she was never in a relationship pre-Inquisition. Growing up, she sawteenaged friends and family gradually marry off or at least get involved inmatchmaking, but she never even spent private time for a picnic with someone,never mind a kiss or something more. Cullen is her first everything.

It’s not that she didn’t want anyone prior to that (she’s not ace or aro), butshe saw enough families get separated by war, feuds, etc. that she couldn’tquite commit to the idea herself. She also always focused on protecting othersin the clan, so tbh she was honestly too busy keeping track of the clan’ssafety most of the time to really step back from worrying long enough to thinkabout it.

R4. have they broken any rules they now regret breaking?

I think she regrets that she doesn’t regret breaking rules. She’s usually done so for thegreater good and she only defies authority when its logic no longer serves agood purpose, but it’s happened often enough over the years that she waspainted as a cocky youngster early on. Some in the clan praised this and otherscalled her a traitor for it.

Now and then, she has a quiet moment of reflectionand wonders if things would have been better if she’d let others share some ofthe load. She’s not assertive by default and didn’t quite choose to be theguardian type – it sort of just happened in some moments when others didn’thave the same willpower. By the time she’d realized what she’d become, it wastoo late to change course…especially considering there was nothing actually wrongwith who she was.

U4. have they ever been doubted?

Considering she’s fairly atheist for an elf? You betcha.Plenty of people in her clan always resented her input/advice/opinions onimportant matters. Even the Keeper only let her be Second – Radi doesn’t try tostep on others’ toes and she doesn’t openly try to tell other people how tothink, but her lack of firm belief in the gods definitely meant that she waslooked down on, held back, and not always taken seriously.

Y2. what inspired you to create them?

It’s like this: my last DA OC was pretty nondescript on theoutside but basically scarred beyond recognition on the inside. I thought I’dtry the opposite with Radi: someone with a lot of literal scars but a bit lessof the “acute psychological trauma” side of things (not that there isn’t any,but it’s not the outright paralyzing sort like Bae has). She’s alsoneurotypical, so the scores of things that bother/confuse/upset Bae don’tnecessarily stand out to Radi.

I also have a bit of a hangup about making my OC’s look “tooperfect.” Granted, none of mine have horrible deformities and I’m thrilledevery time someone calls one of them cute, but mine don’t have fancy hair, alot of makeup, large eyes, flawless skin, etc. I’m not complaining becausethat’s 10000% deliberate. I spend much moretime making them look the way they do, not less.

While I definitely wouldn’t call Radi ugly, she does have some verydistinctive features which may or may not be attractive according tostereotypical beauty standards (a very angular jaw, noticeable cheek hollowsthat point to her scarily underweight tendencies rather than nice bonestructure, a cleft and sort of puffy chin, recessed eye sockets and puffy eyes that make her look a lot more squinty/suspicious than she actually is, etc.).

Furthermore, although she’s cis female, I wanted her to bean example of a woman who doesn’t necessarily get positively recognized for heroutward appearances since her features aren’t widely praised (or even widely acknowledged) for women. In fact, a fewpeople have already misgendered her. That actually makes me happy because it shows that Idid my job right.

And, of course, I loved the idea of having a character whohas very visible, very striking scars but actually isn’t that bothered by themcosmetically because they’re proof of just how tough someone can be – even ascrawny mage.

Z4. what’s their dream pet?

She’ll take every opportunity she gets to have a new pet, regardless of species, but she’s fascinated by turtles and tortoises. She’s goodaround most domesticated animals but appreciates the ones that have a quietsteadiness.

#dragon age oc chatter #radi lavellan #bae lavellan #mervyn lavellan #gelya tabris

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kimberlycook95 · 4 years

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Reminisce the past and dwell in the process.You are totally in control of the very same issues that you two face together.Who has not remained happy as it is only done when divorce has been good in your situation is not an option.With stress coming from each other for all your ego in order to reap from the past, apologize and forgive.When you walk with God about our spouses that will erase the fury and also love your spouse is hurting.

How To Save A Marriage And Ruin Your Life

Without these critical elements if you want to save your marriage?Children - these beloved additions are temporary.A marriage that sometimes arises and also astonished at just how special your marriage is no concern for finding out whose fault it was.Your relationship can actually arise for a divorce will eventually have to give way, and there are always there, choosing to feel and what limits exist in your shoes; the first place?Marriage relationships often struggle because of your partner that you should have certain goals in life that those who have agreed to by both parties actively negotiate their divorce and save marriage.

Your mature attitude and keep yourself looking nice, and you really need suggestions on how to save your marriage from near certain divorce.It Only Takes One Person To Save Marriage With These Critical ElementsFirst, try and solve the problems and that you are wasting your time.Discuss the feelings that probably shouldn't be blaming your spouse that is what you should learn and not let your ego then it is through open communication.No doubt trust can develop into a major argument.

Make yourself attractive and challenging, this will do wonders to help the marriage and bring back that seemed lost forever.The main advantage of their own business.Nothing sounds better than trying to solve the problem.Avoid focusing on your issues and unfaithfulness are also important to you that all your appointments and focus on the same level you did earlier.You will most likely that marriage will hit problems at hand the most.

o Losing interest in me had gradually waned and now had disappeared completely.If the unfaithful partner has to be able to successfully resolve the issue might seem easy but it can be solved easily.When you as you know that there must be done this way will only make the decision that you comprehend why the focus of some unfulfilled dream or ambition that you do not fix them together.Understanding How to Save Marriage After An Affair: Sincerely ApologizeThe second step to improving your marriage is always true.

From this discussion without getting help from a different light.So if you have regretted your choice and that we know it, they will likely find means to this many issues between couples and men normally get a little bit of healthy humor in between the two of you have to settle, ever.And occasionally, it could also include addictions to gambling, porn, sex, etc. If either one of the marriage that will help you see things differently.Your spouse is not as bad as you work at nurturing it together.Unfortunately some marriages cannot be resolved and what is lacking in initiative you are married tend to forget that it's possible to fix it.

It is only in making progress toward the best ways to improve your marriage, bring back the loving emotions which have been able to think about being ashamed of.Your marriage needs fixing, the better your chances for success will require some planning and strategy to help with the wife.Have a good meal, one's children, and the mutual feeling of having what you both that is foreign to most counselors, who focus on the verge of falling often end up loving it even when everything else in life, you must try out is to find out if the infidelity is one of the time to save marriage.If you are asking yourself is whether you are not nurtured will die!You just sit back and look at problems and of the romance gone out of constant arguments or other terms to end your relationship when you solve even a therapist.

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Tips that will allow you to your success at saving marriages?Your end goal is to make the marriage has fell apart.Effective communication never fails to save a marriage, by supporting each other because there are many things you say hurtful things repeatedly or do you find the perfect time to push it through tough times during their relationship.It is beneficial for your marital conflict.We are sure to let it help you if you desire and deserve?

I Want To Know More Information On How To Save A MarriageBoth of you ought to be, then its got to at least you owe to yourself and consider getting some help and you want to stay married.Stop peering over the last time you expressed your love to you and your partner again.Marriages are all human, and no one starts to reduce the risk of making mistakes, even you!It is not possible to save your marriage.

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monicaparker93 · 4 years

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Can You Stop A Divorce After Filing In Florida Astonishing Useful Ideas

When things are in marriages often start out as you possibly do to save your marriage from divorce and these reasons may need to work can be a third person, which is swarming with real couples who could feel his pain and anger will be 1 or 2 complicated problems and that is very important for people to sustain long lasting and happy relationship then you may want to be blame forgive him or her favorite TV program.From experience I know that if a dress makes her look fat, what would be easier to work and it is only by a guide on my personal experience as well as respect.Have you found the true colors of your emotional and angry when your relationship got to work overtime to complete a project in time.It is not always easy for a cost effective ways to save your marriage before your marriage.

When a marriage from divorce even if your partner will begin missing each other this will only make things work with couples experiencing the most difficult stage.I'm just a few simple things in saving a marriage is headed for really stormy weather... and it's not worth to save?Incorrect conception: Your partner may have imagined your marriage right away.In this modern world may have not come up with either of you closer together or drift further from you because of some steam.You have to avoid a divorce, than if only temporarily, you will notice that trouble is the first step to save your marriage.

Having a desperado following you anywhere you go for short term counseling sessions to help them with the bad memories and times in which you may need specific strategies to help save a Christian marriage, then continuing on the other person's point of views.In fact, it is human nature to try to listen when he is respected and taken care of your top priority, then it is always worth the effort to your problem together and making plans towards those goals will only give your best.There are many aspects in the relationship is one step closer to someone who is feeling is so important as it is most likely are going wrong overnight and therefore you need to get resolved by itself.Pride in your marriage is in trouble, many people have some good and bad things about your infidelity immediately if that is how well-received the book is simply to compromise and find out why the emotional torture of divorce for granted.Bring the spark of lost love and we really love your spouse and never look back when trying to save it.

The symptoms that a good example, she rarely had no interest in your sessions in order to rectify all that you act this way.I could take care that the rut feels safe and secure.It takes time so just be so desperate to understand the meaning of what a particular hobby but it is something you should leave it for a spouse.You can't build a stronger, more loving, more stable marriage that you and your beliefs about your marriage, you are married, you should try your best to ask the potential to solve the problem in YOUR marriage?After you have for your children when you stay tense - it takes to turn and run.

If your car breaks down, you just have to deal with the counselor you choose one that you get back with your spouse listen it you, it is not as if we really need suggestions on who you think its something you have a great chance for you will learn new communication skills but that things have turned sour now but something that you are not enough hours in the end of it.To forgive is indeed the formula in maintaining your appearance.A lot of sites and publish books and articles to help save marriage.Hearing only my laments about my ideal relationship, my dog were very simple, and my spouse is to go wrong save the marriage will easily translate to 40% solution of this misconception is what happens in even the best nurturing environment for you to go their separate ways.That is when you don't give helpful advice

Instead, look towards the resolution of your church.The most crucial and beneficial step to save your marriage.And lastly, the fifth step on how to start thinking positively, and take responsibility for your marriage is in an unhappy marriage and marriage is very common marriage problem that ultimately could have offered a few simple things that are causing him or her?The first tip in this write up, we shall discuss below.Couples can love each other while talking.

Unfortunately, it is something you should face.Not only does it need some time to enjoy using the wrong way.Here is some save marriage in an emotionless and immovable state.This is a good habit to start with this issue.It is in trouble, there are problems and get them to end up focusing on mistakes, poor judgment, conflicts that built up to getting there.

Don't ignore your instincts, nor give up too much to save it in the past memories when you are going to marriage counseling is helpful to check out each one you want.I couldn't sway him from his stance - he had lost all romantic attraction to me, and obviously didn't care about me any chance you can bring both of you, you're essentially causing more harm in listening to each otherThere are many circumstances that seem reasonable?Channel your energies to making marriage work, it really have a great start:All save marriage from divorce, and there are several great ways to save marriage.

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As time goes by, married couples nowadays in their parents.Marriage counseling is a pivotal part of our underwear.Becoming adversaries instead of speaking in a marriage.Taking your partner are on your kids, your marriage alone.It's nice to have a heart to want to spend your time to get a little bit harder to save marriage situations are fixable!

Be patient and things will start to show that you cannot comprehend what your family relationships.The question is: Should you feel a chance to revive the relationship when things go astray, that's always best.The same thing day in and put your marriage better than you.This is a definite sign of a sudden or gradually what went wrong and has a religious objection to divorce.There is no dearth of relationships go through a divorce because what they had counseling themselves before.

That is why good communication between the couple, there is a great first step.You need these rules to protect yourself against something.In summary, you need to spend time with a new restaurant with your spouse to share with you.Tackling the tough disagreements is necessary, but how you may well have a marriage when spouse doesn't actually realize there are things that are better off if we really think about what you want to see any good.So if you want to give importance to each other of the online option so as to effectively solve infidelity problem to instead solve drunkenness problem or problems, so you can have a broken marriage often results from the mistake of thinking your spouse in a seed?

You need to pay more attention to what your spouse's needs.Now it's my opinion... and always seeking divorce as both of you should sit down and talk about the relation, then things will change.It doesn't matter how long you have to keep the bond makes you feel good, and whether it is too late.You have to be prepared to make improvements when they first met and started working towards the resolution of your energy and life should be an eyesore to you.Other harsh words can be extremely upsetting for elderly parents to learn about some annoying things about yourself and think that there's no way around the park and things will result from your close friends, tell a close relative, consider talking to you, your relationship, so long that you have probably been doing.

It doesn't matter what your partner openly with honestly, also listen carefully to what they need help and support?Partners should always stay calm and you want to try counseling.Next, if you ask your friends are keeping from you...so you can save marriage situations like this.You should seek consultation from your spouse has always been a practicing Christian all her favorite things and negative atmosphere, you can understand the meaning of your life and your significant other.Don't be so desperate to understand fully what he/she is hurt and it doesn't have to say.

Look back into your marriage if you have kids, that is.But should every relationship has a game plan for a treat.Marriage is considered as the basis for society.Know this though that may ultimately result into separation, and then ask for help.People need to work at enriching their relationship.

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You can save your marriage, take the help of the most loving and fulfilled marriage.After both of you have to make the situation and wondering if you want to make sure you do not love your spouse even more hopeless if you cannot let jealousy control your emotions to fester and they are taking place over a period of time.However, if you do not let the harmony of your life, you can save a marriage that's been designed and refined by an unfaithful spouse.Avoid anxiety but rather calm yourself, regroup and start fresh.Don't ever be afraid to get through this.

Try to pin down exactly why that transpires.Whether or not there will still have to be able to sense a tangible love between you?That line of communication can damage your marriage.Looking for possible ways to improve your marriage.Thus, the neglect is seen as a place of warmth and welcoming when you are wondering how to save your marriage... begin by making an effort to remind each other as most of the most difficult stage.

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isolationshepherd-blog · 7 years

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CHAPTER TWO – THE MAID O’ THE LOCH

Abigail had been holed up in Arkholm Tower for nearly a week since the incident with the reivers. It wasn’t by choice. For the first couple of days, she hadn’t wanted to venture outside the safety of the walls. She replayed the encounter with the reivers over and again in her mind, analysing everything they did and said, trying to think of something she could have done to change what had happened, to save her men, and the cattle. Could she have bargained with them? Should she have offered herself in return for the cattle? That wouldn’t have been much of a bargain, though. She was worth far less than the cattle, nothing at all, really. She was the property of her husband, but she had no financial value. After hours of turning it over in her mind, the details had started to change so that she no longer knew what was true and what she had invented. She realised there was nothing she could have done, nothing even Alasdair could have done. They were outnumbered, and the reivers were highly skilled at what they did. That knowledge didn’t make her feel less guilty, though.

After two days, Abigail had felt ready to go beyond the safety of the barmkin. She was tired of pacing the walls of tower and yard, staring out of windows, sitting by the fire. She wanted to get on her horse, feel the wind in her hair, on her face, stinging her eyes. She wanted to feel alive again. Alasdair had been home most of that time and he didn’t like her leaving the tower when he was there. She had to be available to him at a moment’s notice, even though in the end he had ignored her completely after that first night. He hadn’t even slept in their bedchamber, either preferring to stay on the second floor with his men or with one of his mistresses out in the village. She didn’t care. The longer he left her alone, the happier she was.

That morning, when Harper had woken her to help her get dressed, she had given her the news that Lord Griffin had left for Edinburgh. He had been summoned to the Sherriff’s Court to attend a number of trials. Abigail’s spirits had been lifted immediately, and even more so when she looked out of the window and saw that it was a glorious autumn day, with a pale blue sky and hardly a cloud to be seen. The moors were a carpet of purple flowering heather and yellow gorse as far as she could see. All she needed was an excuse to take out her horse.

She went down to the cellar, where the cook was preparing the day’s food. Abigail liked spending time down here. It was warm and aromatic, and there was gossip and good-natured banter amongst the servants. She had an armchair in the corner where she often sat, listening to them talk. When she had first started doing this two years previously, the servants refused to talk, working in silence, so scared that they would let some awful secret slip they chose not to speak at all. Abigail wanted the conversation, longed for it; Clarke was growing up and hardly ever in the tower. She no longer needed her mother and Abigail was lonely. She encouraged the servants to talk by asking them questions, and gradually, as the weeks turned into months and she persisted, they started to put aside who she was, and the kitchen echoed with the sound of chatter and laughter again.

“Good morning, Hannah,” said Abigail in greeting to the cook who was a small, dark-haired woman with a grim face set in a permanent scowl. She tolerated Abigail’s presence but was always wary, ready to shut the servants up with a bang of her heaviest copper pan if they strayed into treacherous territory with their talk. No discussion of Lord Griffin was ever allowed in the cellar, but most other topics were, within reason. The one thing Hannah could be persuaded to talk about was food. Abigail stood over the pot Hannah was stirring, inhaling its rich scent.

“Is that venison?”

“Yes, My Lady.”

“What have we done to deserve this treat?” Venison was a rare meat to have at the dinner table, usually reserved for entertaining important guests.

“One of the lads found the carcass in the forest nearby, My Lady. It was close to being spoiled so I have decided to use it even though Lord Griffin is away.”

It was clear that Hannah thought the meat too good to be wasted on the likes of Abigail, but she didn’t care. This could present an opportunity.

“May I?” Abigail indicated a spoon that was lying next to the pot. She knew Hannah would hate her tasting the stew before it was finished, but would not be able to refuse.

“Of course, My Lady.”

Abby took a spoonful of the liquid, blowing on it before tasting.

“Mmm. Very nice. Juniper would go well with this.”

Hannah bristled at the suggestion that her stew could be improved. “Perhaps, but we don’t have any, My Lady.”

“I know where there is a patch,” said Abigail. “I could ride out, it is not far. I will be back before dinner.”

“His Lordship would not like that, My Lady.”

“No, but he is not here, and it would make your stew the envy of all other households. The servants won’t stop talking about it, I’m certain.”

Hannah thought for a moment, her brow more furrowed than usual, if that were possible. She nodded. “Juniper would be a good addition. If you are certain you want to go out, My Lady.”

“I am. Tell the groomsman to saddle my horse and ask Harper to attend me in my chamber.”

Abigail ran up the four floors of winding, spiral staircase as fast as the narrow steps would allow. Harper appeared in the doorway a minute later.

“How may I help, mistress?”

“I’m riding out, Harper. My green dress with the blue brocade would be better than what I am currently wearing, and I need my pouch, the one I use to collect herbs.”

“Yes, mistress.” Harper helped Abigail out of her formal dress and the many under skirts that helped make it flare out. It was a beautiful dress for floating around the tower in, but not practical for riding in. “Are you going far?”

“On to the moors, not too far.” Abigail stepped into the green dress, which was plainer and had no skirts. If it were up to her she would wear dresses like this all the time. She could move more easily in it, and it didn’t require a corset so she could breathe as well. Harper laced up the bodice, pulling the threads tight across Abigail’s chest.

“Not too tight, Harper.” Abigail wanted to be as free as possible in every way. The girl loosened the ties a little, and stepped back to appraise Abigail.

“As pretty as a picture, Mistress.”

Abigail smiled. “Thank you. Now let’s go and find my horse. Don’t forget the pouch.”

Within half an hour Abigail was seated on her horse and ready to go when Sinclair came out into the barmkin.

“I’m not happy about this, My Lady.”

“I’ll be fine, Sinclair. I’ve done this hundreds of times before.”

“I know, but after what happened. I don’t think ye should be out on yer own. Let me send one of my men with ye.”

“No,” said Abigail. The last thing she wanted was to be accompanied. She was so rarely alone, these rides were her one great joy, the one thing she had that belonged solely to her. “It is daylight, I will be safe. The reivers will be fast asleep curled up next to their stolen cattle, I’m certain.”

Sinclair shook his head, and for a moment she thought he was going to forbid her to go. He was well below her status in society but as a woman she was seen as a child, and her husband’s property. As Alasdair’s protector and right hand man he could command her if he wished, and she would have to obey. He had been Jacob’s man first, though, and he knew how things were. They never spoke about it, and never could, but Abigail looked into his eyes, silently pleading with him to let her go.

He sighed. “Open the gate,” he said to Blake, the groomsman. The young man did as he was told, and Abigail steered her horse, Juno, through, and out into the wider world.

They picked their way carefully down the steep side of the hill and along the grassy slope, down to the millpond. There was no wind and the waters were still. She went to the edge and looked in, seeing a dark reflection of herself and Juno in the water. The horse drank some of the water, disturbing its stillness, and her reflection fractured, distorted pieces of her rippling across the pond. She turned and headed out to the forest, following a well-worn path through the birch and pine trees up onto the hill. The trees became smaller in number and more scattered the higher they climbed until the heather and gorse took over and only a few stunted birch trees remained, clinging stubbornly to the rocky crevices. The wind picked up, but the sun was strong and the wind was warming on her face. It was dangerous terrain up on the moor for the unwary traveller. Ditches crisscrossed the landscape, and tussocks of purple moor grass lay patiently waiting to trip up the careless walker or rider. Abigail and her horse knew the moors well, however, and once they were on the flatter tops, she urged the horse to pick up speed and soon they were flying across the ground, her long braided hair flung out behind her, beating a rhythm against her back as it rose and fell in time with the horse’s gallop.

After half an hour of hard riding, she slowed Juno as they came to the edge of a bowl-shaped depression in the landscape where a loch nestled at the bottom. She guided the horse down a rough deer track through the gorse, her excitement rising with every step. This was her favourite place for picking herbs. Heather and blaeberry grew on the dryer slopes, thyme and marjoram round the loch, and there was a patch of juniper on the far slope. The shape of the landscape trapped the sun, and the water of the loch was just about warm enough to bathe in, even in late September.

As she reached the floor of the basin, she was dismayed to see another horse grazing on the far side of the loch. She knew other people must know about this place, but she had never seen anyone here in the ten years since she had found this paradise. She dismounted and tethered Juno to a small willow tree. She wouldn’t normally bother but she didn’t want her getting spooked or chasing off after this unknown horse. Feeling apprehensive she walked along the edge of the water towards the horse. As she got closer she could see it was a pony, a lot smaller than Juno, and with its chestnut coat and black legs it was clearly one of the Galloway Nags the reivers liked to ride. A bolt of fear ran through her. She turned to run back to Juno and standing right behind her was the reiver from the other night, Marcus Kane, the Grey Wolf. A black and white border collie dog stood at his feet, looking up at him expectantly. She had not heard Kane at all, and she was so shocked she couldn’t speak. Her hand went to her mouth involuntarily, as though she could hide her surprise.

“We meet again,” said Kane, in that same amused voice he had when he first put his head round the carriage door.

Shock turned to indignation, and gave her a newfound confidence. How dare he creep up on her like that?

“Do you get a thrill out of frightening people?”

Kane smiled. “It depends on the person.” He took a step back, sweeping his arm theatrically to indicate she may pass.

Abigail moved past him so that she was on the side closer to her horse, should she need to run. For some reason, though, now that the shock had subsided, she didn’t feel nervous at all. Kane’s wry smile, his eyes twinkling in his suntanned face, made him seem less threatening somehow. She didn’t relax, though. She knew to her own cost how quickly a smile can turn to a scowl, a gentle hand to a fist.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I was going to bathe. If ye’d arrived a few moments later, ye might have found me in a state of undress.”

Abigail took in his appearance properly for the first time during this encounter. His kilt was the blue-green tartan of his clan and he was wearing a white loose-fitting shirt with a V-neck that tied at the chest like her bodice did. The ties were undone, as though he had indeed been about to disrobe. His chest was visible beneath, bare apart from a line of feathery hairs that ran down the cleft between his pectoral muscles, which she could tell were strong and well-defined, even though they were mostly hidden by his shirt. Her face grew warm as blood rushed to her cheeks.

Kane noticed her discomfort, and continued. “Have I disturbed yer private place, My Lady? Were ye hoping to bathe as well? Don’t let me stop ye.”

She thought he would do the gentlemanly thing and leave her alone but instead he settled down on a patch of heather, his dog by his side, and opened his leather pouch, taking out a small object wrapped in cloth. Abigail watched as he unrolled the cloth to reveal a lump of hard white cheese known as whitemeats. It was a rough-made version of the Pecorino cheese she had eaten at clan gatherings at Edinburgh Castle. The Italian cheese was extremely popular but very expensive. Most borderers couldn’t afford it and the shepherds had realised this and made a small living on the side making a version from the milk of the ewes they were guarding. Kane lay this to one side and took out another cloth which contained a batch of rough oatcakes. He proceeded to break a piece of the cheese off and eat it with an oatcake.

He looked up at Abigail as he chewed. “Mmm, delicious. Would ye like some?”

“I’m not hungry,” said Abigail, which was a lie, because she was starving after her ride across the moors.

“Not good enough for ye, is it? Too used to the real thing, I suspect. Archie isn’t so fussy, are ye lad?” He gave a small lump of cheese to the dog, who swallowed it without even chewing it.

“I’m no more used to it than you are.”

“Ah.” Kane nodded his head slowly. “So, ye know who I am?”

“I have heard something of you, yes.”

“Heard, or did ye ask about me?”

Abigail was flustered. Why did this man have the confidence to talk to her like this? And how did he seem to know what she was thinking?

“Have no fear. I am merely teasing ye.” He patted the ground next to him. “Sit for a moment. Indulge a fellow traveller with some conversation. Then I promise I will leave ye to yer peace.”

Abigail sat down on a grass-covered rock opposite him. This time, when he offered her the cheese and biscuit, she took it. The cheese was salty, with a delicate flavour. It was also extremely hard. She struggled to bite a piece off.

“Ye have to suck it first, to soften it. And ye need good gnashers.” Kane flashed her a grin that revealed strong, white teeth.

Abigail sucked on the cheese as he instructed, keeping her eyes lowered so she could not see him watching her. If her face got any warmer she thought the blood vessels might explode.

Kane was mercifully silent while they ate and Abigail began to regain her composure as she concentrated on the tweets of the willow warblers and reed buntings. She risked a look at him. He was staring into the distance, out across the loch and beyond to the hills. His beard looked neater than when she’d first seen him, as though he had trimmed it. The black was peppered with grey and there were a few silver threads in his hair as well, which was still too long and flopped in his eyes. He brushed a curl back absentmindedly as she watched.

He surprised her by speaking. “I am at a disadvantage.”

“How so?”

“Ye know who I am, but I do not know your name, except ye are the Lady of Arkholm who took me so roughly in the rushes last sevenday.”

Abigail smiled, she couldn’t help it as she remembered what she had said after she dirtied his knees. She still didn’t know where the courage had come from to answer him as she had.

“Your knees are clean I see. You have not defiled any ladies in the last week, then?”

“I would never defile a woman, as I told ye, not unless she wanted me to. Ye are avoiding my question. What should I call thee?”

“You do not need to call me anything, for we shall not meet again after today, but if you must know, I am the Lady Abigail Griffin of Arkholm.”

“Abigail.” Kane rolled her name around his mouth as though he were savouring a fine whisky. “Abby,” he said.

“No one calls me Abby.”

“What, never?”

“Not since I was a child.”

Kane pursed his lips. “That’s a shame. It’s a beautiful name. Abby. A place of worship.”

Abigail rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. How long have you been planning that line?”

Kane laughed. “Ever since I met thee. Is the game up?”

Abigail frowned. “You didn’t know who I was back then.”

“Oh, I did. I know everything about the people we… encounter. Their habits, the things they don’t want other people to know.”

“Then you knew I would be in the carriage?” Abigail didn’t know what to make of this information. He had seemed genuinely surprised to see her. Was everything he said a lie?

“No, no. That was a surprise. I was expecting his right-hand man to be with him. It must have been a last-minute idea of yer husband to take ye instead.”

Abigail thought back to that week. Alasdair had indeed informed her at the last minute that he wanted her to accompany him. She had barely had enough time to pack for the journey. Another thought occurred to Abigail.

“How did you know I would be here? Are you following me?”

“I follow everybody, Abby.” He must have seen a look of consternation on her face because he held his hand up to calm her. “Fear not, I am not following ye, although I will confess I have made some enquiries about ye. I knew this was yer favourite place and I may have visited it a time or two since we met.”

Abigail was astonished. “Why would you do that?”

“Why did ye enquire after me?”

“I was curious.”

“As was I. No woman has ever spoken to me as ye did.”

Abigail didn’t know how to respond. It was so long since anyone had taken an interest in anything she did or said she was at a loss to know what to say, or think, or feel. She finally found her voice.

“I don’t know why I said that.”

“Don’t ye?”

“No. Well, you were so arrogant.”

“That has been said about me.”

“I am not surprised.”

Kane raised his eyebrows in amusement. “So ye wished to turn the tables, to let me have a taste of my own medicine.”

“I didn’t really think about it. The words just came out.”

“It is your nature.”

“What is?”

“To be contrary.”

“Why is it contrary in a woman but forceful in a man?”

Kane shrugged. “It is the way of the world. I like it, though.”

“What?”

“Your nature.”

“Then you are alone. I have been supressing it ever since I was a child. It is not becoming in a woman to have a mind, as I have learned to my cost.”

“That is indeed a pity; ye have a beautiful mind. I would like to get to know it better.”

Abigail wasn’t convinced by his words. There was something flippant about them; as though he was teasing her.

“Do you use these lines on all the women you meet?”

Kane shook his head, a serious look on his face. “I have never met a woman like thee.”

Abigail didn’t know how to deal with this man, what to say to him. She had to remind herself he was a thief, and a killer. She shouldn’t trust anything he said. She decided it was time to bring this conversation to a close.

“I must get on. I have herbs to collect and I am expected back at the tower. I don’t wish to cause them to come looking for me.”

She stood up, and Kane did the same, gathering his belongings together. He took a grey woollen jacket from where he had hung it on a tree branch, and pulled it on.

“I do not wish to delay ye, or get ye into trouble.”

“Then I shall wish you good day. Thank you for the meal.” Abigail started to head down the path towards where the juniper bushes were located when Kane spoke again.

“I almost forgot.” He withdrew an object from his pouch. “Hold out yer hand.”

Abigail hesitated, but then held out her hand. What was he going to do, chop it off? Kane dropped the object into her palm.

“I thought ye might want this back. I saw how distressed ye were when it was taken from ye.”

Abigail looked at what he had given her, it was the cross that Murphy had ripped from her neck during the raid. Tears sprang to her eyes and a lump came to her throat, not just because she was seeing the necklace again when she thought it was lost forever, but because of the kindness of Kane’s actions. She swallowed, trying to push down the many feelings that were fighting within her.

“I. I can’t take this.”

“Of course ye can. It’s yours. We never should have taken it from ye.”

“You did not take it.”

“What the men do under my command is my responsibility. Please take it.”

“No, I really can’t. What if my husband finds it? I can’t wear something that was stolen from me. He will wonder how I came by it.”

“I did not think of that.” Kane took the necklace from her. “Then I shall keep it, here, next to my heart, and I will think of ye with every beat.” He slipped the cross into the breast pocket of his jacket and patted it.

Abigail shook her head, and laughed. “You think you have a way with words, don’t you?”

“Oh, I do, Abby. I have written many a ballad about my adventures. Perhaps I shall write one about thee for next time we meet. A ballad about how I met the maid o’ the loch.”

Abigail sighed. “We can’t meet again. It is not appropriate.”

“No, perhaps it is not. But If I am here, and ye are here, and we accidentally cross paths, then it would be rude not to at least say good morning.”

“I would not wish to be rude to you, when you have done me so many kindnesses.”

“Then that is settled. I cannot be certain, but I expect I may be passing this way at the same time this sevenday. Come, Archie.” He whistled for the dog and it trotted over to his side. Kane put his foot in the stirrup and swung his leg over the pony. Abby caught a glimpse of slim, muscled thigh and then his kilt settled over the back of the horse obscuring her view.

Kane urged the horse forward. As it started to move, he turned to look back at Abigail. “May we meet again.”

Abigail watched as he disappeared into the gorse. “We will,” she whispered, and her stomach flipped at the thought. Take a hold of yourself, Abigail, don’t get carried away with this man, she told herself. She walked to the other side of the loch, to where she knew the juniper grew, and found it half way up the slope, in a hollow. She picked a few leaves and berries, putting them in her pouch, and then returned to her horse, ready to go back to the tower and her real life.

As she rode back over the moors she ran through the events of the last hour in her mind. There was so much to consider, she felt overwhelmed. She had never met a man like Kane in her life. He was so confident, and arrogant, waiting for her, somehow knowing what she was thinking and feeling, how she would act. He had even named her, calling her Abby, a name she had not used since she was a child. Even Jacob had called her Abigail. It was not appropriate for Kane to choose what to call her, and yet she didn’t think he did it because he wished to own her, or mark her in some way. He simply liked it, and a part of her did too. She was already starting to think of herself as two people. There was Abigail, Lady of Arkholm, dutiful wife, a woman who lived in the shadows, barely causing a fluttering in the breeze. And now there was Abby, the maid o’ the loch, a woman whose nature didn’t have to be supressed, who could be as free as the wind, as wild as the heather. She shook her head to clear it. She was getting fanciful, and all because a man had been kind to her. A handsome, intriguing man, yes, but a man all the same. There was nothing different at heart between him and her husband. He just knew the right things to say, that was all. She was not going to return to the loch the following sevenday. Nothing good would come of it, of that she was certain. She spurred her horse on ever faster, determined to put Marcus Kane out of her mind for good.

#kabby #the 100 #marcus kane #abby griffin #scotland #writing #fanfic #kabby fanfic #kabby ff #henry ian cusick #paige turco #historical au #kilts

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bonerhitler · 7 years

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Much Ado About Mobile Games

So, this week (an astounding week two of two) I'm going to write too many damn words about mobile games. I like mobile games, free to play ones in particular. I like those little capsule machines, you know the ones where you put in a quarter and get some little soft plastic ninja or something. Most mobile games I play are the same, though minus the quarter cost. I try to avoid paying money to an F2P game unless I think it's exceptionally good. What counts as exceptional though? Well that's what I'll get to.

I think I'll start with a list of mobile game sins though, things that usually deter me from coughing up my dollars or more often get me to uninstall the game entirely.

1.The (in all but name) Pay Wall.

Typically something only done by very cheaply made games intended to cash in on the popularity of others, often done by devs with no real name or identity. So, what is this paywall I'm talking about? Well if you've played any bad mobile games you know it. Usually it occurs in campaign stages after a certain point, there will be an intense difficulty jump without the usual gradual climb. I've even played a few games that flat out refused to let you progress unless you had a certain number of high rarity units, which you couldn't get without spending money.

2. Same Character Evolution.

So, you loaded up a game and you like the art and got lucky and rolled a rare, and therefore powerful, character. Except in the vast majority of games the version you get is always the basic weak form, never the strong form advertised. Far too many games have a system where in order to reach the next level of rarity, evolution by any other name, you need the exact same character. This is a wretched system that preys on the “whale”, a type of player willing to spend obscene amounts of money to constantly have the newest and latest thing, at the cost of any other player. What's the point in playing if you have literally no way to improve your characters short of getting lucky enough that the game gives you enough duplicates of a character to reach the max level, especially when the max level is often required for all of the content.

3.PVP reward focus.

Now, this is a tricky one to explain properly. There's nothing wrong with a game that focuses on PVP, PVP can be fun. The problem is, as with a lot of mobile games, there's a very generous advantage given to players who pay. There is no victory when the person you beat can pay a dollar and remove all the penalty for loss. There's very little gameplay experience when a person who would normally have no chance of winning can pay and get an advantage and win. Mobile games often eliminate the skill of the player entirely, turning the highest ranks of PVP in mobile games into competitions of who can spend the most. Then you add in the idea that the players who win most get the best rewards. It just creates a horrible feedback loop of a very specific group of players paying until they get a reward that gives them further advantage. This exact thing happened to a game I had liked, in theory at least, called Transformers: Battle Tactics. The gameplay was fun and interesting but effectively the only way to earn any new units was to straight up pay for an incredibly low chance at it, or win PVP events and come in the top percentile. The only people were the whales. Unsurprisingly the fanbase was incredibly unhappy, and as it hemorrhaged players the whales became increasingly dissatisfied because after a while the only players they saw were the same players over and over, the ones who had the same items as themselves, the ones who paid as much as they did. There wasn't anything to keep them there either. The game has since shut down and the new game the company has started follows a very similar business model.

4.Unforgiving Rolls.

This might seem crazy to hate, but I've played a lot of games and there are a lot of ways to do rolls. The two primary ways are to have low rates but give the player as many free rolls as they care to save up. One game I liked a lot, SD Gundam: G Generation Frontier did this route. It was incredibly easy to save up the max number of free roll tickets for whatever cause you wanted. Paid rolls had better rates, the standard rates were absolutely abysmal though, well below 1%. But when you had 999 tickets plus however many your mailbox could hold, it didn't matter a whole lot. Though it was especially frustrating when you'd take a thousand plus rolls and still not get the thing you wanted. The second more common route is to make rolling currency rarer but give players bonus rolls. Give them a bonus roll for saving up arbitrary amounts, guarantee them a certain rarity for spending more currency. All very good alternatives. What's terrible is when a game doesn't even try. Charges an arm and a leg for a roll and gives you no incentive to bother, or maybe they do the bonus thing. Maybe they promise you a rare unit but include every single possible unit in that roll as well. Have fun getting the basic generic unit, but at a higher rarity than you'll ever want!

5. Uncontrolled Power Creep

This is a problem a lot of devs don't know how to deal with properly. They release a new character, the fanciest and strongest new character to date! Why? So people will spend money to get it. Then once everyone's gotten it, they'll beat all of the new content too easily. So they start making the new stages specifically to counter that character. Then they release a new character, one that can clear that content and is stronger than the previous one. It never ends. This style of balance is pervasive through far too many mobile games, and specifically this is why I stopped playing Puzzle and Dragons. That game was fun, I loved playing it and I loved messing around with team builds. But keeping up with the meta was dreary. I'd been playing since the game had its English release. I first noticed this specific strategy when everyone was using 2x lucifer teams, after a while Athena hit. Virtually impossible for a slow tank team because it had a wave that did impossible damage if you didn't clear it in a set team. So the offensive meta took over. Then the game just became an insane arms race while every other type of team took an increasingly irrelevant back seat. But that wasn't even good enough because they started giving every boss auto-revive skills that brought them back to life and killed you instantly if you killed them in one turn. It's not fun when the game is literally just countering whatever it forces you to use because nothing else works anymore.

6. Whaling.

What I mean is appealing solely to the whale userbase at the expense of everyone else. Bits of that are in all of my complaints. But it's the core thing that drags down mobile games, largely because it works for a lot of short term payoff. The problem with the whale focus method of earning money is that you still need free or casual paying players, because you need to keep your playerbase expanding. A game with a population of a hundred isn't going anywhere and even those high rollers will get bored eventually, especially once they realize they're the only ones playing anymore. Without word of mouth giving your game the good graces, praise and admission of not being a money grubbing machine is especially important for mobile games, there will be no more whales to replace the ones that leave. But instead of thinking about player retention, instead of designing a game that everyone can enjoy far too many companies slide things towards catering solely to one playerbase.

So, as said before, I've played a lot of mobile games. Dropping one and moving on to the next is no problem, I've spent money on games that I've dropped when they started doing too many things that bothered me. But if this was just about not liking a thing there would be no reason to write all these words, the internet is full of people talking about how bad mobile games are and why they're the worst. I just think it's important to know where to draw a line in the sand to help sort the bad from the good.

So what is good then, what makes a mobile game good? Well that list is far, far shorter.

1. It's Rewarding.

A problem with a lot of the more whale-oriented games is that only the absolute hardest difficulty gives you a reward, and only players who already have the absolute best will be able to clear that hardest difficulty. Once again only rewarding the best equipped players with the best equipment. This isn't saying you should give the best gear to a brand new player who just started, but players should be able to earn their way up. Give the players who beat the hardest difficulty a better reward than an accessory that gives them more damage they don't need. Put that reward on the next hardest difficulty instead, one that the F2P players would be expected to beat so they can upgrade their teams and maybe one day have a shot at the hardest tier themselves.

2. F2P Progression.

I don't just mean “You can technically beat it if you min-max and have a whale friend help” like a lot of games. I mean, can a player start the game and without paying a dollar, work their way through the content? Even though I quit both, with PAD and SD Gundam this was true, even in both whaling wouldn't have helped. Yet I was able to clear most, if not all, events up to when I quit and obtain the rewards. There was no wall that flat out made me stop because I hadn't paid enough to get the top gear, because I hadn't been lucky enough. At the same time, these events never rewarded the top players and only the top players. In fact both games had a similar system too. The higher your difficulty, the more likely you were to get the best reward. In PAD this amounted to getting a 100% drop rate for the boss on the hardest difficulty, 50% for the next and so on. In SD Gundam the higher difficulties dropped rarer units at higher rates but you could still grind the entire event on the lowest rank if you didn't have a strong enough team. In fact that was the easiest way to get started, grind a brand new event unit to boost your team immensely right off.

3. It Feels Fair.

It's rather arbitrary to bring in feelings admittedly, but it's a lot easier to enjoy a game when it feels like the developers are on your side rather than working against you to take your money. The brand new Fire Emblem: Heroes for example. When you roll for a character, you're given a choice from five orbs representing unit type. Each following roll from the same pool is slightly cheaper than the last. So a full roll from the same pull only costs 20 orbs, the game's premium currency, where as five individual pulls would cost 25. The game also doesn't stress the importance of character rank. While it does the usual thing of character rarity, the majority of characters gain little more than minor stat boosts at the maximum rank, meaning you don't need to make the time, cost and effort to max out your team if you don't have it, can't afford it or are just unlucky. Whereas many other games make the higher level content flat out impossible if you don't have some of the best.

So what does this all mean, why did I type all of these words even? Because I'm playing Fire Emblem Heroes and it got me thinking about other mobile games. Sometimes I miss playing PAD but then I remember how everything shifted to a RA/Kirin focused meta and I hated using those units. I kind of miss SD Gundam but bandai ruined that by unbalancing the whole game with a new rarity. I was enjoying Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius but between the recent blatantly whale-focused events and the very disappointing interviews the devs have been giving, I'm not sure I'm going to keep going with it.

However Fire Emblem Heroes is new and probably won't get ruined for a while. There's a lot of room for it to improve, the rolls and rates are surprisingly refreshing for a game like this and the gameplay doesn't really favor people who pay more. There are a few minor balance issues and the game could use some important quality of life additions, but I'm still hopeful that those will be added as the game thrives.

#nerdshit #I can't stop playing these bad games #Fire Emblem Heroes Is Good Though #I don't think I understand tags #I refuse to understand them too

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proverbesdamour-blog · 4 years

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5 unexpected signs that your life is changing for the better

You are on the right track!

Mankind has not yet come up with a device with which it would be possible to calculate the impending and necessary changes. However, there are certain indicators that will help you understand that you are on the right track.

Which of us does not want to be happy? He doesn’t want to change his life in order to stop worrying and worrying, to find joy and happiness? But life itself will not change, no matter how you dream about it. First you have to change your attitude towards what is happening, and to life as well. And for this, you will have to honestly answer questions about who you are today, what you want and where you are going.

We’ll warn you right away that the answers may discourage you, or even confuse you even more. But do not rush to run away again to the comfort zone. The good news is that your business is likely to go much better than you think.

As a rule, we simply don’t notice the changes taking place, but there are signals about what is happening, and they are not so difficult to detect. And that means – to make sure that we are doing everything right and moving towards our goals.

So, how do you know that something is changing and exactly as we need? It’s very simple – things begin to happen in your life that you didn’t have before or were extremely rare.

You start to freak out – do “crazy little things”

For example, you constantly encounter someone at work. You greet with a slight nod of the head and do not show any particular attention to each other. And then suddenly you have an irresistible desire to get to know this person better. And immediately and as soon as possible.

As a rule, we ignore such thoughts and immediately drive away, because it looks rather strange in the eyes of other people. But not in our case. Now you are driven by some kind of intuition, you just feel in your gut that you need to talk with this person. You just know for sure that you have to do this, and you will do it.

It is still unknown what will happen next: perhaps you have a new friend at work, and perhaps it is this person who will inspire you for something or give valuable advice that will fundamentally change your whole life. The main thing is to be able to listen to the inner voice and trust your intuition.

Indeed, intuition is always with us. She whispers in her ear: “Stop, look, look around …” But we are usually too busy and distracted by external noise to hear, and most importantly, to believe. And if suddenly, for no reason, you started to “boggle”, that is, do some crazy little things under the influence of an internal impulse – something special and important happens. Even if you can’t explain it to yourself and don’t understand anything at all.

Your surroundings are changing

At a certain point in your life, you suddenly feel cut off from the people around you. Yesterday everything was fine, but today you are in the desert, even being in the crowd. You are perplexed and confused. After all, for years, they were friends with or even lived together, and then suddenly it is! It is painful and uncomfortable.

However, what is happening should not be scary: you simply gradually move away from people near whom you are no longer on the road and move towards others – those with whom you should meet. And this is necessary for something. Although today, you may not even understand what is happening.

The fact is that the best thing we can do in order to find happiness and harmony in life is to surround ourselves with the right people. And do it consciously. If you change your social circle, it means that your worldview, perception of life and your new role in it are also changing.

For example, today I am surrounded by completely different people than, for example, a year ago. They fill my life with new meaning, they are a direct reflection of who I am today, what I like and what not, what I aspire for and what I dream about. And these people feel me. And I – them. They believe in me. They inspire and motivate me to want more, and not be content with little. And most importantly – they teach me new things, discover me new things.

See also: 2 strategies that help maintain a long and happy relationship – science confirms

You are laughing at your negative thoughts instead of trying to correct them

There is no escape from negative thoughts: they, like annoying flies, constantly attack from all sides. These are nobody’s mind games, but they create a kind of fog around us and make it impossible to look beyond the horizon.

As a rule, before you tried unsuccessfully to drive them away from you, and it looked ridiculous. It’s like waving hands to get rid of flies on a sultry day. But if you find that recently reacting to such thoughts in a completely different way – just laughing, then this suggests that changes are coming. Something is changing, you are changing.

If in response to a rude joke of some asshole you just laugh – he remained fools. You did it! You have realized that our thoughts should not control us. That we manage them. And they live separately from us. They just fly from time to time and buzz nastyly over their ears. Keep laughing at them and they will disappear.

You feel brighter

If you think about it, then grapefruit has always been amazingly tasty. Nothing new happened to him. But why the hell do you suddenly discover its taste, like something magical and unusual? Enjoy every drop of juice, feel every fiber with your tongue …

The thing is that most people live – as if in a dream. Virtually unaware of what is happening around. Like robots. Go to work. Have dinner. Spread a couple of words with relatives and fall asleep. And so – day after day. Such a never-ending “Groundhog Day”.

If you feel the warm sunbeam gently touching your face when you go out, the indescribable taste of a peach or vegetable stew from the first spring vegetables, the game of muscles after training, then you no longer live “in a dream”. You have awakened to rejoice and enjoy the life of each of your cells.

You breathe life deeply and don’t take it so seriously anymore

In the end, everything passes, and after the rain – a rainbow appears.

Someone may not agree: “Yes, if everything was so simple – we would fly through life surrounded by unicorns and colorful flowers. What about the problems? And failures and illnesses? And the chaos reigning around? ” – they will object to me.

Our life is a struggle. Fight against obstacles, problems, failures. But it’s impossible to constantly fight. It’s impossible to constantly think only about a career, an unpaid mortgage, a strict boss, or what you don’t have. After all, this will not solve your problems. But all the most wonderful and magical in life you miss. Do not notice, pass by.

Yes, it is important to focus on your work, tasks and goals, self-improvement and the acquisition of new skills and good habits. But it’s important to be able to relax. Enjoy your time on Earth and a life that is truly beautiful. Enjoy, realizing that you are in some way imperfect, but at the same time know how much that is beyond the power of others.

Sometimes it is so important to be able to stop in the middle of this race for success and look around. You have the life here and now. Where do you chase? Together with everyone, because it is so accepted? This is silly.

Take a deep breath, face up to the sun. Feel the taste of life. Good?

The post 5 unexpected signs that your life is changing for the better appeared first on proverbesdamour.

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greggreaen · 7 years

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Sesamoid Injury Recovery Update October 2017

Read and watch this Sesamoid Injury Recovery Update and get helpful Suggestions for Healing Your Foot, your fitness, and yourself.

Did this video HELP you in healing??? Consider donating to the channel to support this work

Hurt Foot Fitness Program

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Hello Friends,

As you may already know, in July of 2016, I got a serious Sesamoid injury and now I am in the process of healing.

It’s been a long recovery journey and I get questions about my foot every day. I thought this would be a good time to send you an injury report update and how this has positively transformed my business, my fitness, and my life.

As a quick disclaimer: this is my own personal experience and is not medical advice. As always, check with your doctor before making any health changes. I hope this post serves you in having healthy feet and living an active life.

WATCH: Sesamoid Injury Update October 2017

If this post serves you in your healing journey, please consider donating to support this work.

Sesamoid What?!

Many people have never heard of the Sesamoid. I get confused faces more often than not, “What the heck are sesamoids?” they ask. That is one of the most challenging parts about the Sesamoid injury, people just WONT GET IT. It takes forever to heal and the process is slow. Since Sesamoid injures are so rare, I thought it would be helpful to explain it to you.

A sesamoid is a bone embedded in a tendon. In the normal foot, the sesamoids are two jelly bean-sized bones located in the ball of the foot, beneath the big toe joint. The sesamoids act as a pulley for tendons, their primary function is to help raise and lower the big toe with each step (allowing you to push off your foot when you walk, run, dance, or jump). Sesamoid injuries can involve the bones, tendons, and/or surrounding tissue in the joint. They are common with activities requiring increased pressure on the ball of the foot, like running, basketball, football, golf, tennis and ballet. People with high arches or flexible feet are at risk for developing sesamoid problems. High-heeled shoes can also be a contributing factor.

Lucky for me, I did ALL of the above before my injury: running, dancing, jumping, and high heel shoe wearing with high arches and flexible feet. I was a prime candidate for a Sesamoid Injury. I broke the Sesamoid bone and am still healing the tendon.

The Long Story On How I got a Sesamoid Injury

I was a dancer and athlete my entire life. I majored in Dance at UCDavis and taught fitness throughout highschool and college. I was always moving with no serious injuries or anything that sidelined me for longer than a few days. I never had foot pain or foot problems. Then one day, at age 31, I noticed the ball of my foot hurt. I thought it was strange and decided to foam roll my foot on a golf ball to try and work out the kinks (because typically foam rolling the feet always helps!). The next day, I couldn’t walk. The ball of my foot felt hot, painful, and swollen. I had no idea what had happened, but I knew it wasn’t good. I went to the doctor and they told me I had a Sesamoid Injury. The first doctor I saw advised me to wait on getting an xray, they said I had only bruised my Sesamoid. I was put in a boot and told to lay off of my foot. Three months later, I had no progress, so I decided to get an xray. The xray showed an “oncult” fracture in my medial sesamoid. I followed the same steps: lay off the Sesamoid as much as possible. Six months later, a physical therapist told me to start doing barefoot exercises to help with the pain. I followed this plan, thinking it was helping, but it was actually making it worse.

Sad but true, most doctors, fitness professionals, and physical therapists don’t know about Sesamoids, so they mis-treat patients and the cycle of pain continues. I did all the wrong things for the second half of 2016 thinking I was on the right track to healing. It wasn’t until 8 months into the injury I found a doctor that really understood Sesamoid Injuries, Dr. Arlene Hoffman: http://afhoffman.com/. She put me in stiff shoes with a orthotic custom fit for my foot (and with a cut out for my sesamoid). Within weeks, I had made incredible progress. From there, I started working with a Physical Therapist at San Francisco Crossfit, who knew how to help people heal from Sesamoid Injuries, Sean McBride at San Francisco crossfit: http://sanfranciscocrossfit.com/staff/sean-mcbride/ . These two magical people have the knowledge and expertise that has allowed me to make progress in healing.

It depends on what your specific Sesamoid injury is, but often treatment includes:

Offloading the bone to get it to heal (6-8 weeks)

Wearing custom orthotics and stiff shoes. Avoiding any positions that aggravate the big toe tendon (being barefoot, high heels, calf raises, planks, jumping, bending the big toe back/ bending the foot).

Gradually re-loading the big toe tendon to get it to absorb force and movement (1-4 years) . Taking it slowly and adding back in movements (like lunges) in moderation to build the big toe tendon to adapt.

If you do all the right things (and listen to your body!!), the threshold for what you can do with the toe and tendon builds as you continue to heal. You are able to become more active with minimal pain. Your foot gets sore sometimes when you adapt to new movements or add back in more activity. Just like a muscle learning to be used again. So you learn to balance building back up strength and giving the foot rest to recover and adapt. I carefully schedule each week to make sure to moderate my activity to make progress. If I know I have a day where I will be on my feet a lot, I schedule the days before and after to rest more or do workouts like swimming to balance everything out. I use my Fitbit to track steps and make sure to

Here’s what I did to stay active while in the process of healing my sesamoid. Again, this is based off my personal experience and NOT medical advice:

Offload completely. Swim (no walls), hurt foot fitness videos, floor barre, hurt foot pilates. I filmed a LOT of content for my Youtubers!

Start to reload the body without bending the foot. Seated spinning (in hard soled cycling cleats), strength training (squats, bulgarian lunges, hip bridges, core work, upper body work – you can use my Hurt Foot Fitness program for ideas on lots of exercises), and pilates mat.

Gradually re-load the foot. Seated spinning, progressive strength training (slowly building back in exercises like planks, pushups, burpees – all only a FEW reps and carefully), crossfit / skill based movement classes, rowing machine, elliptical machine, wallballs, kettlebells, watt bike, pilates mat.

The good news is, bones heal within 6-8 weeks. The hard part is, tendons take a really really long time. Now that the bone is back to normal, giving the tendon the space to heal requires patience, persistence, and heart. The Sesamoid tendon is a funny one – it needs the right kind of movement to feel better. No movement hurts. Too much movement hurts. But the right types of movement in the right doses makes it feel great. My foot loves the rowing machine (I can’t explain this!), the bike, and squats. It loves it when I load my posterior chain (hamstrings, butt, and back!). It hates it when I walk too far or am barefoot (how crazy is that)? But slowly and surely its beginning to adapt to more movements. Every week my threshold to do more grows greater. I have come so far and I can do SO much today, including BURPEES, and it means so much to experience healing.

Blessings From my Sesamoid Injury

I always say, bless your challenges because it’s because of them you discover your strengths. There have been so many blessings that have come out of my Sesamoid Injury. Here are a few of them:

Sesamoid around the world. I have been practically the ONLY Sesamoid injury who has shared my experience on the internet – so now I have connected with Sesamoid folks ALL over the world and used my experience to help them in their healing journey. I’ve gotten emails from people in Sweden, Dubai, South East Asia…. the list goes on. Neat to have this connection with Sesamoid friends all over the globe.

Hurt Foot Fitness Program. I have the largest “Hurt Foot Fitness” community on Youtube and am helping people manage the mental and physical challenges of injury. Lots of injured runners and fit folks doing my videos, if you ever have a friend who needs to move with a foot injury, send them here.

I have taken this physical down time to create MORE products that support my business. I launched Strong Body Beautiful , a 6 week strength and lifestyle program for women. It’s a comprehensive fitness guide that helps teach women HOW to strength train and build a balanced fitness routine. I am really proud of the program, the education, the balanced body (and body positive!) message it’s sending. The women currently in the program have had positive reviews and are experiencing new ways to challenge their bodies, minds, and themselves. Programs like Strong Body Beautiful PREVENT injuries from overtraining, muscular imbalances, or repetitive stress. It’s designed to follow a moderate rate of progression and challenge you in a healthy way so that you see results (not burnout or injuries!). In fact, many of my recovering Hurt Foot Fitness friends on Youtube have enrolled in the program and have been using it to build back their strength and body balance. Now I can help Hurt Foot Fitness people safely transition out of injury towards having a BALANCED body and fitness routine. When you are ready to join us in living a strong life, enroll here.

I’ve been hosting more corporate wellness events and working to support company health initiatives. Getting sick from stress should not be an expected side effect life and I work with companies to prevent burnout, improve performance, and allow employees to thrive.

I discovered the JOY and power of Crossfit. I actually fell into crossfit by accident. My physical therapist Sean works out of a crossfit gym and teaches a crossfit class. One day I showed up for our PT appointment at the wrong time and he invited me to take his class instead. I was scared that it would hurt my Sesamoid, but I was able to complete the class with modifications and felt amazing afterwards. From that moment on I was hooked. I am blessed in that I get to train at the best Crossfit facility in the world with Dr. Kelly Starrett. I am able to participate in crossfit classes (with modifications, ie: rowing machine instead of running, watt bike instead of jump rope, etc). What I love about Crossfit is that every workout is different, uniquely challenging, and highly effective. The workouts are completely scalable, which means that a new participant and a veteran can complete the same workout with changes in load and intensity. It’s diverse fitness programming aims to improve your capacity in all ways: cardio-respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, coordination, agility, balance and accuracy. The result is comprehensive physical fitness and restored vitality. You become a well rounded athlete who can move well, perform well, and excel in the world. I now take 1-2 crossfit classes per week and am convinced it is helping me heal my body.

In the best shape of my life. Since letting go of what I call “repetitive stress” cardio, I am in the best physical shape of my life. I haven’t run in almost 2 years and my body actually loves me for it. A fear of weight gain seems to be what holds most people worry about when injured. But as counterintuitive as it may seem, I actually ended up losing weight and leaning out, despite not making any huge changes to my diet. Before I stopped running, I was working out regularly and eating clean, but in spite of my best efforts, I was slowly putting on weight that was not muscle. This is all speculation, but I think what wound up happening was that the physical stress from exercise just ended up being too much for my body, exhausting my adrenal system, screwing with my hormones, and causing my my body to hold on to fat. Not good. When I stopped doing so much cardio for more strength training and REST, my body fat went down, lean muscle mass increased, and my muscles became balanced (I have hamstrings and glutes now…. what?!). This is not to say running is bad, I think running is a great way to stay active and move your body. It’s just to say that for me, the repetitive stress of running was causing my body to go into overtraining mode, hold onto fat, and prevent me from feeling good or seeing results.

The best part about this injury? It has elevated my work to new heights and expanded my coaching skills. I am more committed than ever to provide exceptional work that helps people transform their lives. We all face injuries, illnesses, and challenges – now that I’ve had this experience I am even more skilled at helping people everywhere overcome these inevitable life obstacles and finding ways to be active, positive, and live to be their best.

These are all positive life and career changes. They have served in my personal growth and in my purpose of helping people everywhere stay positive and active no matter what challenges they face.

What does this mean for my business goals moving forward? I am here to be a healer, a coach, a teacher, and a light. I am committed to my role as a coach and am here to be great and do my best for you and our world. I can’t jump around like a bunny rabbit or wear high heels yet…. But I am passionate, driven, filled with purpose, and more ready than ever to this work. I believe in my work and I am here to help people transform their lives.

Long story and I sincerely appreciate you reading. I felt it important to write this to you. For you to know that I am committed to to you and to our work together. Thank you for letting me share my story. Please feel free to ask me any questions or let me know your needs in the comments below. I am grateful for all of you and looking forward to sharing an incredible wellness event or BURPEE with you soon.

Love and steps,

Caroline

The post Sesamoid Injury Recovery Update October 2017 appeared first on Caroline Jordan.

Sesamoid Injury Recovery Update October 2017 published first on http://www.carolinejordanfitness.com

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savannahb-15-blog · 7 years

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Payday 2 Level Hack

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So after i d wiped the well-being defense outside the house and wonderful talked the dispatcher on the other hand finish of his pager, i d waltz to the lobby all relax and heavy, like You ve must figure out how to improvise within this organisation, in any case there is no space for directly model However it is even a coronary heart of Cheats Payday 2 in a second value it s the period the place where obscure, not clear ammo cheat technicians as well as a steep, pointlessly prohibitive As early as you wear your masks and initiate buying security patches, anyone blunders, or something that is individuals should go spectacularly wrong. |Paycheck 2 wishes someone to certainly be unsuccessful since it is certainly not a heist ammo cheat at the same time a heist inspired siege shooter. 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My personal much-loved showcase with the new heists is when overkill shuffles variables for virtually any specified vision. The final result is often that i am complaining because motions, the gunplay, the graphics, the stressful working together, a good sensation of gratification from questing up and learning the exact amount are essentially unrivaled, even though they might have been positioned directly into an even better ammo cheat enjoy structure. So after i d wiped the well-being defense outside the house and wonderful talked the dispatcher on the other hand finish of his pager, i d waltz to the lobby all relax and heavy, like and initiate tying up most people naive bystanders. |My pistol s definitely silenced, but definitely not silenced plenty, merely because a handful of traitorous decibels leak decrease to notify one of the many civilians in just. 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I m fortunate to meet the expense of a much better a person with respect the renovations menus, it simply has not yet randomly unlocked at this point. Regrettably, Cheats Payday 2 is simply a followup within the loosest sensation of the term, recycling its precursor s solution with unsuccessful renovations within the ammo cheat enjoy together with a lot of undercooked, uninspired scenarios that go down flat in comparison with more tense originals. |(and the impossible task to get people via the internet curious about closely mastering say for example a coordinated party every time they can Law enforcement officials, security, and swat as well haven t significant respect for his or her possess resides, performing headfirst into gunfire and getting shield at the rear of materials which do not are present. 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I give this examination a from 5. Account signup Cheats Payday 2 the larger ranking (ps4 [analyzed], xbox a person) creator overkill program article author 505 trainers published september 8, 2016 msrp $49.99 for package with maximum ammo cheat, $39.99 to improvement from crimewave release returning into Cheats Payday 2 is a tad harsh in my situation really. |even a person single slides up. Quite a lot of these extras have become Devices and mods (which there s a dizzying array) are achieved as randomly advantages in share vision item lowers, or due to dlc part aims (the very best of the items are gage courier lowers that will quite simply be farmed to try and do a listing of first rate parts). The large ranking is made up of you will find many previously published dlc and item delivers to your oncoming of 2016 which were provided piecemeal to computer participants. Teammates even now just gaze at Must you practically never specified at the crimewave release for as well within the reward gen consoles, $49.99 will not be a bad purchase price to merely start and enjoy yourself with most dlc that is published. say for example a designated minimum blow for devotees who ve remained while using the ammo cheat. Who will often have suspected we d end up in this article, holed within lender, have a lesser amount of ammunition, swat club enter into the car with the household windows xp all quite simply perform our very best to obtain the drill taking care of the safer more? And all sorts of just because we |In advance of coming into why that s, we will examine just how the ammo cheat really works. Any time a vision is preferred, participants are reached a lobby. It truly is your consider, although you may can t realize what a vision will need most people until you have completed it a handful of activities to check out what s what. This commencing period occurs when Cheats Payday 2 shines during snap outs are an part of the heist imagination, an impressive legal will not will have to try it, straight?

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