Tumgik
#lake lillian
onehikeaweek · 2 months
Text
0 notes
gatutor · 1 year
Text
Tumblr media
Lillian Gish-Veronica Lake "Pensión histórica" (Miss Susie slagle´s) 1946, de John Berry.
23 notes · View notes
kylewon-kenobi · 4 months
Text
Tumblr media
3 notes · View notes
lunar-goodness · 2 years
Text
Gonna take a moment to rave about my favorite monster romance authors at the moment. Lillian Lark and C.M. Nascosta! Pretty sure they lace their books with crack cause I can’t get enough of them! The romance is perfect, there’s fluff and filth, angst, action, sweetness and plenty of smut. And the monsters!!!!!! So many monsters! Kraken, witches, harpies, demons, lake monsters, werewolves, mothmen, minotaurs, elves, orcs, shadow kind, gargoyles, krampus, arachnes… it’s just…
Tumblr media
36 notes · View notes
thesmutgoblin · 2 years
Text
Tumblr media
I need everyone to know about Found by the Lake Monster by Lillian Lark-
I didn't expect to get so emotionally invested in the slightly over 100 pages this novella is but I am thrilled that I read it- the couple is adorable and the entire thing is delightful and there are EGGS
I did not know I was into eggs. I am into eggs.
You should go find out if you are into eggs.
11 notes · View notes
joellesolo · 2 years
Photo
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Today there was a wind advisory so we went to Starbucks and the pool instead. We ended up at the playground and the beach for about five minutes but the wind had both girls heading for the hills 😂 no one has napped and pretty much no one has slept, so I think we’re all a bit ready to head home tomorrow. (Lily was half asleep in the pool; I just rocked her whispering “sleepy baby” and she kept repeating “sleepy, sleepy,” pretty positive she thought she was hallucinating 😂) ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ #charlotterose #lilliangabriel #summervibes #laketahoe #secrettom (at South Lake Tahoe, California) https://www.instagram.com/p/Ce45tU1Lijb/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
2 notes · View notes
qt-kt · 2 years
Note
In honor of the new TDH single, what’s your top 5 TDH songs?
Oooomg wait this is so hard LMAO there's so many good ones to choose from. Uhh UHHH okay If I gotta pick it'd probably be
5. Mustard Gas
4. The Bitter Suite IV and V
3. The Moon/Awake
2. Lillian
1. The Lake and The River
What are yours tho bro 👀👀👀
4 notes · View notes
blkgrlsread2 · 4 months
Text
When something unexplainable happens, something so out of the realm of ordinary, lean in. Be brave. Life is an adventure if you put yourself out there.
Lillian Lark, Found by the Lake Monster
0 notes
Text
Research Sources for Historians
Finding reliable research sources is probably the number one problem for most historians. We strive to get the most authentic sources of information we can but there are lots of things against us. The most prevalent one is, of course, time itself. Primary source documents will not be available for anyone if they are not taken care of over the years. Most of them end up in our local dumps because…
Tumblr media
View On WordPress
0 notes
shesamreads · 1 year
Text
Tumblr media
I love that this book immediately starts with the 'missing' witch from Found by the Lake Monster!
1 note · View note
bitterkarella · 7 months
Text
JK Rowling: hello children Rowling: i want you to sssay hello to Rowling: graham lineham Lineham: [wearing foil hat] free masons run the country Rowling: he'sss got sssome great ideasss you should hear
Poe: joanne you don't need to bring him here Poe: like, you really don't Rowling: he hass thingsss to sssay and you're ALL going to hear them Poe: this is really kind of off topic for us here Rowling: EVERYONE will hear them
Rowling: ssssee, yearsss ago i disssmisssed graham lineham'ssss babble as the bad opticsss ravingsss of a lunatic Rowling: but now that the overton window hass sshifted Rowling: i'm proud to sssay thessse bad opticsss ravingsss are quite good actually!
Rowling: go ahead, graham, tell them what you told me Lineham: trans people produce no great films, no music, no art Lineham: they're incapable of doing this basic human thing because they're subhuman Lineham: untermensch, if you will Rowling: isssn't he great?
Lineham: trans books are always universally panned because of their incoherence Billy Martin: Hailey Piper: Eve Harms: Gretchen Felker-Martin: Joe Koch: M. Lopes da Silva: Arden Powell: Lor Gislason: Julya Oui: LC von Hessen: GE Woods: Michelle Belanger: Rain Corbyn: SA Chant:
FT Catulla: Viktor Athelstan: Meagan Hotz: Ziggy Schutz: Rose Sable: WN Derring-Judith: Charles Maria Tor: Devaki Devay: Dayna Ingram: Ori Jay: Ai Burton: Gabriel Valentine: Cosmin-Mihai Birsan: Jei D Marcade: Rhiannon Rasmussen: Max Turner: Taylor J Pitts: Vincent Endwell:
Bri Crozier: Theo Hendrie: Derek des Anges: Briar Ripley Page: Winter Holmes: gaast: Maya Deane: Charles-Elizabeth Boyles: Layne van Rensburg: Amanda M Blake: May Leitz: Alison Rumfitt: Rivers Solomon: Lillian Boyd: Torrey Peters: Taliesin Neith: Daniel M. Lavery: Joss Lake: Aubrey Wood: Jonah Wu:
Daphne du Maurier: Patricia Highsmith: Franz Kafka: Kafka: wait Kafka: why did the camera pan to me
Barker: oh you know why haha Poe: clive Kafka: why Kafka: [hugging blåhaj] i don't know what you mean
325 notes · View notes
peloblancophoto · 7 months
Text
Tumblr media
Lake Lillian
213 notes · View notes
chwlb · 8 months
Text
Jily. (Im not Ready for October)
James grew his hair out for Lily, and she’d always put little French braids in it before bed so he’d have curly hair in the morning (he went around telling people that he took a potion his father made that magically made his hair curly (remus didn’t let that rumor last long before dunking James’s head into water and let everyone watch as his hair dried curl-less))
When James and Lily got married Sirius asked to be a flower girl at their wedding as a joke and to his surprise Lily was the one who said yes (not James because he wanted Sirius to be best man) so then remus got elected best man and they let Sirius walk down the Isle with Fabian’s daughter Alleen.
——
When the preacher said “speak now or forever hold your peace” remus activity stared down everyone of their friends knowing damn well they’d try that shit as a joke, just for Lily to say “Well… Remus is pretty fit” and obviously that causes a uproar (jokingly) and Remus laughing alongside the rest of them just for James to pop up with “I know right, Almost went for him in 4th year” which left everyone bursting in laughter but him. Which led him to say “kiss your god damn wife potter”
And James bantering back
“Oh please moony, I will. All. Night. Long.”
*insert kissy kiss*
When Wiloa was little they would sneak away with their uncles to OOTP meetings and Lily would always find them, so they’d have to pull them off and lecture them about how they can’t hide away here because they could get hurt. But after a while, gave in and let them stay. Soon enough James found them and he’d always sneak them off and back home because he understood what it was like to be curious at a young age and how dangerous curiosity could be. But basically Wiloa was Jily’s practice child.
Lily would always show James muggle things. When they moved in together he stood flicking the ceiling fan on and off for about 30 minutes (while Lily recorded him like he was a cat) James had 100% become accustomed to muggle life, and at some points entirely forgot he was a wizard. (He got really excited when he remembered he was magic and could turn into a fucking deer)
James tried helping Lily become an Animagus but she couldn’t keep the leaf in her mouth past two days so she eventually just spit it out and told James “look I give up, as long as you don’t turn into a fucking elk while we’re fucking I’m good” and james’s only response was “I’m a DEAR darling get it right” in a posh mid-Atlantic accent.
When James proposed Lily made a joke about him preposing before she KNEW he was proposing so it went something like this
*at a lake during a very pretty sunset*
“Lillian, I really need to ask you something” James asked with a cherishing smile
“James, darling you can ask me anything as long as you don’t propose” She joked
She then turned around to see the look of utter shock and hurt in his eyes. And realized. He was going to propose.
“No, no, no. I didn’t say anything, what were you asking? I’ll turn back around!”
She then turned back around with a static giggle bouncing through her bones. He knew she loved him.
“Lillian,” he said while grabbing her arm and turning her around gently “My darling, you’ve made me the happiest man on earth. And I know it’s the most cliche thing to say, but my words have never heard more truth than this. I can’t bare the thought of life without the light of your eyes shining in mine. I can’t stand mornings after without your sweet touch curled next to mine. And I’ll never see another gorgeous evening like this again if your gracing beauty isn’t touching it. So Please, Lillian Jane Evans, Will you marry me? And be my wife, and I’ll be yours”
The first thing she could do was fall into his arms, and his warm gentle kiss. Tears flowed down her eyes and he placed the ring on her finger.
“Shit!” James Said unexpectedly “I forgot to get down on one fucking knee”
Lily giggle at her new found fiancé, he could be a stupid man, but he was HER stupid man.
“So, you’ll be my wife” Lily said excitedly
“What?!” James burst out laughing
“Well you said ‘be my wife, and I’ll be yours’ so I assume you’ll be my wife, correct?”
And with those words, James knew he chose the right woman.
63 notes · View notes
Text
Siblings in Sports : A Docuseries
Jack Hughes x OC, Luke Hughes x Best Friend OC
"Hello all, this is Donna St.James with another Siblings in Sports interview, this time with the current hockey obsessions of girls 15 to 30 in the US and Canada." "Boys, thank you for inviting us 'round to ask some questions," The interviewer thanks, sitting across from the three Hughes brothers on the couch of their lake house.
"It's really no problem, we're happy to answer almost anything," Quinn assures as the eldest, making sure to emphasize almost, knowing their coaches would have their asses.
"Oh, really?" The interviewer asks, chucking. "Well then let's get down to business."
—————————
"So, we've covered the season, what it's like for Luke and Jack to be playing together, the Devils in playoffs, and everything else sports related. Now for the fun stuff," The interviewer prompts, a smirk rising to her face. "And something all the girls want to know: are there any ladies in your lives?"
Luke chuckles, elbowing Jack at the question, something that doesn't go unnoticed by the woman in front of them.
"Q and I don't have any ladies," Luke is the one to answer, shrugging. "Now Jack on the other hand..."
"Have someone special?" The question is directed at said boy, who chuckles awkwardly, a blush rising to his cheeks.
"I do have a girlfriend," He admits, seeming hesitant. "For almost 3 years now."
"Almost 3 years? And how does no one know about this girl!" The interviewer asks, eyes wide. "And when can we meet her?"
"Sissy is just in town at a cafe," Luke chimes in before the other two can.
"Sissy?"
"Jack's girlfriend has known our family for a while, she's become like an older sister to Luke and a younger one to me," Quinn chimes in before anything can be assumed. "Her name is Lillian though."
"I can ask her to come home? For the sake of the, uh, docuseries?" Jack offers, already pulling out his phone, the screensaver now visible as a photo of him and presumably Lillian kissing while he's in his hockey gear.
"Ooh, please!"
—————————
"Um, hi," The brunette greets the woman who sits in front of her and Jack, glancing at the camera behind her.
Jack takes her hand, running his thumb over the back of it to calm her. She's not the typical hockey girlfriend. Brunette, not blonde, curvy, and seemingly entirely too sweet to be in the sports world.
"Hi, I'm Donna," The woman in front of the Hughes brothers and girl greets, a smile on her face in an attempt to calm the obviously anxious 20 year old.
"Lillian," she returns, smiling despite the anxiety. "Although everyone calls me Lili, and I'm happy to answer any questions you have," she assures, smiling a small smile as Luke gasps from the side Jack isn't on, his arm around Lillian's shoulder.
"Okay Lili, tell us about how you met the Hughes and how you started dating Jack," She asks, glancing between the four.
"Well," the girl begins with a giggle, obviously feeling more comfortable at the current topic. "I met Luke first in 2017 when we were freshmen and the boys had just moved to town. He and I immediately bonded and became best friends, and it was a week later that I went over to their house and met the other two."
"Jack was immediately in love with her," Quinn comments, rolling his eyes jokingly at his brother.
"And Lils was just as bad," Luke adds, eyeing his best friend.
"I asked her out a month later," Jack chimes in now, smiling down at the girl beside him.
"He was super cheesy about it to," She remembers, sharing the smile. "I read every day for about a half hour, and most of the time he sits with me just playing video games," Lillian explains. "That day I had been reading and got to the end of the book and there was this note, this long thing in Jack's chicken scratch about how he had been nervous to ask out his little brother's best friend, and so he put the note in my book for me to find. And it was one of those hockey star falling for whoever books which made it all the more cheesy." "You loved it, don't act like you didn't," Luke jests. "Ignore him," Lili requests jokingly, elbowing the youngest Hughes. "But yeah, that's how I met the Hughes and started dating Jack." "And that's how she became an honorary Hughes," Quinn adds, a large smile on his face as he watches Jack kiss Lillian's head. The interview continued on, not on the topics of hockey or sports that you all are interested in, so we'll end it here, but if you're interested, see below for my favorite from Lillian's Instagram (that is private, however I now am friends with her on).
Photo (Jack's homescreen one to be exact) from Lillian's Instagram, where the couple shares their relationship with friends and family:
Lillian.M
Tumblr media
Liked by elblue9, Jackhughes, and 247 others
Lillian.M Always my favorite player
Tagged: Jackhughes
Jackhughes Always my favorite fan
Lillian.M I love you
Jackhughes I love you more
Lhughes_06 excuse you?
Lillian.M ... I love you too Lukey?
Lhughes_06 apology accepted
66 notes · View notes
lovepotionnumber5 · 1 year
Text
inside out
[5k, supercorp-y, his dark materials meets supergirl, basically. or a daemon au. i had fun w this, might continue it! I guess rated t for luthor fam creepiness]
Supergirl is a woman apart.
She swoops regal and steadfast above the city she’s sworn to protect, her cape flapping with a quality that’s somehow just over the line of not-from-this-earth. Her gaze scans through crowds, buildings, the very sidewalk beneath National City’s feet. The heat of her eyes is too bright to be looked at directly, the force of her muscles so great that she seems perpetually gentle in all her interactions.
She is beautiful. Her hair glints golden in the sunlight, and she offers help with no expectation of thanks or reward. On days when the streets are quiet and calm, she cleans out the gutters of an older woman’s house, or plays a game of basketball with a lonely teenager in his step-dad’s driveway. She can change the weather with a breath, the surliest citizen’s day with a smile.
If she seems super-human, that’s because she is; she’s beyond humanity, but still close enough to touch. Always within reach, holding out a hand, asking if you need help.
And, of course, she doesn’t have a daemon.
//
Kieran settles fourteen days after they arrive at Luthor Manor, exactly one day before Lena’s fifth birthday. She wakes in an unfamiliar bed (and room, and house, and city, and country—) and she just knows. Something inside her that was malleable and questioning has turned to stone as she slept.
Kieran sits on the unused pillow on the other side of Lena’s new, too-big bed. She reaches out and slips a few fingers through his ink-black feathers, soft as silk.
“You’re very pretty,” she whispers, “as a raven.”
They’re all over Luthor Manor, the ravens, always driving the groundskeeper mad by lining up on the eaves. Lena’s spent two weeks watching them, listening to them caw to each other, sitting on her hands and trying not to cry as Greza prowls back and forth below them.
“I’m going to fly us away from here, Lena,” Kieran promises. “Up into the sky.”
Lena thinks of Eoghan’s rust colored plumage, the black and white tips of his wings, the way he had dissolved into dust in midair and drifted like snow down onto the lake her mother had disappeared into.
“Okay,” Lena agrees. She’s still whispering. “Fly us away, Kieran.”
When Tantox slithers down Lillian’s arm and flicks his tongue at them, Kieran digs his talons into Lena’s shoulder. Sometimes, on nights when the stars twinkle the brightest, he circles the Manor with powerful flaps of his wings. He’s always by Lena’s side when she finally drifts off to sleep.
Some nights, when Greza stalks them down the carpeted halls all afternoon, when she hears the quiet, occasional tap of Lex’s oxfords against the hardwood where he missteps in pursuit of his daemon, Lena finds her bedroom door locked from the outside. 
It’s only when she returns to the Manor for holidays as a teenager that the cage appears in her bedroom. It’s brass, large and beautiful, and the aesthetic curves of the metal match the new bars outside of her window. Lex’s smile is different, and he had greeted her car at the end of the driveway without Greza anywhere in sight. 
“We’ve tightened up security,” Lillian tells her, waving the hand that doesn’t have Tantox wrapped around it towards the foot of her bed, where one of the butlers places Lena’s trunk. “Let’s not make a fuss about it, hm?”
There’s an ugly wound, stark red against Tantox’s white scales, only visible in flashes when Lillian moves and her shirt sleeve rides up. Lena, thirteen and surly, with a daemon settled for nearly a decade, bites down hard on her tongue to keep from fighting back.
That night, Kieran cautiously hops onto the perch in the cage. 
“It’s only for a week,” Lena promises. “Then we’ll be back at school.”
“Keep me close,” Kieran pleads. “I haven’t seen Greza yet. I don’t know where she could be.”
Lena sits on the edge of her bed and crams her hands under her thighs. “Lex is here, so she can’t be far. Maybe she spent the day napping on the patio. There’s that sunspot she likes.”
Kieran fluffs his wings. He doesn’t have to say anything—Lena knows it’s a weak suggestion.
Only a decade later, fresh from testifying against her brother in a crowded courtroom, will Lena wonder if it was him who locked her bedroom door, or if the click-clack she heard against the hardwood outside had been her mother’s heels all along.
//
“Don’t look at people’s daemons,” Alex tells her. “Or ask about them. And never even think about touching them.”
“You touch Q,” Kara points out, still confused. She doesn’t know what Q is short for, because Alex gets mad whenever she asks. “And Eliza touches Wrenott.” 
Alex makes a kind of growl-scream noise of frustration. “That’s because Q is mine,” she seethes, “and I’m Q’s, and it’s the same for Mom and Wrenott.”
Q, who is currently a frog and peeking out of the breast pocket of Alex’s t-shirt, says something that Kara can’t hear.
She frowns. There’s a pod of dolphins around three miles off the coast that she can pick out just fine, but Alex’s daemon manages to sneak something past her newly sensitive ears from only a foot or so away. She tries to hear his heartbeat and finds that she can’t—just Alex’s and her own, and Jeremiah’s downstairs. 
“But we need to figure something out,” Alex begrudgingly agrees. 
Q wiggles his way out of Alex’s pocket and transforms into a sparrow right before gravity takes him down. He flits around the room, Kara’s eyes tracking him despite Alex’s warning.
“Q has an idea,” her sister says. “Since he hasn’t settled yet, we can fake it. You like wearing long sleeves better, right?”
Kara shrugs, focusing her attention back on Alex’s severe expression. “The sunlight makes my skin tingle.”
“Right, well, if you wore—I don’t know, a hoodie? Yeah, with the hood pulled up—then Q could sit on your shoulder in English. I’ll be right next door in AP Calc, and you’re young enough to have an unsettled daemon, and everybody knows about me.” She nods jerkily. “Alright, let’s try it out. Just on the edge of your shoulder, over your shirt. Q?”
“Wait,” Kara says. 
Alex’s arms are crossed, her shoulders hunched in. Kara opens her mouth, then closes it, not sure what she should say. 
“This feels wrong,” is what she settles on. “Are you sure?”
“It was Q’s idea,” Alex says, now chewing on her bottom lip.
“But is it alright with you?” Kara asks.
Q zips right over Kara’s shoulder and shifts into a lemur right before he collides with Alex, wrapping himself around her shoulders, his striped tail curled protectively under her chin. Alex’s posture relaxes with one big exhale.
“We’ll figure something else out,” Kara decides. “I’m supposed to blend in, right? My daemon will just be…shy.” She thinks of Q. “He hides in my pocket.” 
The week before Kara finally starts school, she befriends a whip-quick, only slightly mangy cat in the backyard. Streaky follows her everywhere, and loves more than anything to sit on Kara’s shoulders or take a quick nap on top of her thighs. Some days, he comes to school with her, and she focuses on making sure he doesn’t try and brush up against anyone else instead of on the math equations she was doing before she was five revolutions old.
Years. On Earth, they call them years, and they wander around with their souls outside of their bodies.
Kal-El has a rescued African Gray Parrot he calls Jane. Jane never makes a sound, bird-caw or mimicked words, and stays perched on his shoulder whenever he’s his true self.
Whenever he’s Superman, he flies alone.
//
Lena builds Kieran a special perch with a vacuum seal base that can attach to any flat surface. She brings it with her to class, glares her best Lillian-glare at any classmates who open their mouths to complain. 
He’s big, if the looks that linger on him for longer than is polite indicate anything. Lena always bites back remarks like you’re probably thinking of crows—ravens are larger and quite a bit smarter, actually. It’s rude to talk about someone’s daemon, but that never seems to stop people from staring at hers. The one time she hadn’t watched what she said, it had been to the daughter of some business partner of Luthor Corp, and the amount of time they both spent cooped up in Luthor Manor because of it—
Well. Lena bites her tongue, and counts the minutes until class lets out, reading college level calculus textbooks under her desk. All of the athletic girls are on sports teams and are excused from P.E.—Lena never joins the other girls in trying to get out of participating, never feigns cramps or pretends she has a migraine. She never goes faster than a stroll on the track loop either, but she never sits out. Kieran soars over her head, a black smear against perfect blue, and Lena swears she can feel the stretch of his wings in her own shoulders.
“How does it feel to have settled?” Andrea asks one hot Wednesday, walking at Lena’s same glacial pace around the track. Her voice is toeing the line of timidness. About four paces behind them is her daemon, currently in the form of a sleek fox. 
“I’m not sure,” Lena answers. “It’s all I remember.”
She’s not sure it’s the truth. She thinks, maybe, there’s a memory of her sitting on the shore of a lake, dust in the wind, Kieran in the form of a golden retriever puppy and splashing in the water. But if she talks about that, then she’ll have to think about how even with fish and dolphins and whales and cephalopods at her disposal, Kieran had shifted to a spiky ball of a hedgehog and trembled in her lap. 
//
Q follows Alex into the cemetery the day of Jeremiah’s funeral in the form of a German Shepherd and never shifts into a different animal again.
Sometimes, Streaky curls up with him on the couch, tucks his dark little head under Q’s chin. For the first time, Kara wishes that she also had part of herself wandering about in the world. She settles for wrapping Alex in carefully gentle hugs, cries with her on the roof outside their bedroom window, and makes sure she never spends too long looking at Q’s adorable dog face. 
Sometimes, Wrenott will rub at Q’s cheeks with his little sea otter hands that Kara always tries really hard not to squeal over. Kara watches carefully at the way Alex’s shoulders droop, then stiffen back up again too quickly. Q always jerks away at the same moment. When Alex rushes out of the room, Eliza sighs so deeply Kara’s ears hurt. 
//
“They’re composed of Dust, Lena, I’ve been telling you—it’s like your head is always in the clouds with Kieran.”
Lena’s skin prickles like it does whenever Lex says her daemon’s name. “My head is on this game of chess,” she counters, moving her bishop to d5 and claiming his rook. “Unlike you.”
He huffs. With a movement that’s too forced to be casual, he moves his pawn out of the line of fire of her knight.
The monologues that Lex delivers over games of chess become less tethered to reality each time. Lena usually tries to focus on the chessboard between them, but Lex doesn’t always let her. 
“Dust is impermanent by nature. Shifting daemons when we’re young, sure, but not just that. Look at Superman.” He spins his Luthor heirloom signet ring around his pinky finger, his eyes suddenly very far away. “No daemon.”
“That we know of,” Lena points out, moving her own pawn to try and trap his queen. 
Lex rolls his eyes. “Okay, that we know of. But we can’t ignore the implications.” He takes her pawn with his bishop, falling right into her trap. 
“Implications?” She asks a little too innocently. 
Lex is too focused on his lecture to hear it, parroting her pawn movement with one of his own. “We’re not the only species out there, Lee-loo. There’s an expanding universe of potential, and we’re the only ones who have daemons.” He says it like it’s the winning argument of a national debate competition. 
Lena moves her own queen, lightning quick, forcing eye contact and tilting her head in confusion. Kieran hides his face by the nape of her neck, chortling softly. “So?” She asks. 
“So?” Lex echoes incredulously. “Are you even listening?” He moves his knight to f3. “We’ve been operating under the assumption that daemons are necessary to intelligent life for thousands of years. Clearly, that’s not true. It changes everything, Lena.”
Lena strikes. Her pawn takes his queen with one smooth movement, her fingers curling around ink-black crown on the piece’s head. “Check,” she says. “Checkmate in four.”
Lex opens his mouth, then closes it. He scowls at the board. With a huff, he knocks his king over. 
Lena grins at him. 
“Don’t be smug,” he says. “It’s why you don’t have any friends at school.”
Kieran tugs at a group of hairs at the base of her neck. “Lex,” Lena says, her smile fading. “Where’s Greza?” 
“None of your business.” He gets up and adjusts the sleeves of his sports jacket. “Mother says we’re having dinner as a family tonight. Don’t be late.”
That night, Kieran hops to his perch in the cage without Lena having to utter a coaxing word. 
//
Alex sits with her on the roof in silence. Q rests his face on the windowsill behind them, his dark eyes focused on the stars above just like Kara’s are. 
Alex looks at her sister instead of the cosmos. Her fingers tap at her knees as she struggles to find the right words. She wishes that Q could sit on the roof with her, that his paws—now permanently paws—didn’t slip against the shingles. 
“He was a good cat,” Alex finally says, more than a little awkwardly, patting Kara on the shoulder. Streaky wasn’t Kara’s daemon, but Alex knows just how much her sister had come to lean on his presence. 
Kara only nods in response. Her throat aches—she isn’t sure she’s able to speak. 
“Have you thought about…”
“Yeah. Not many mute African Gray Parrots out there.”
“True.” 
Kara leans her head against Alex’s shoulder, the pressure of it so light that Alex can barely feel her weight at all. 
“What about a snake?” Alex asks. “A little one.”
“I like snakes.”
“You like every animal. And every animal likes you,” Alex adds, only a little bitterly. It’s like her sister’s a Disney princess. “You could carry one around your arm, wear long sleeves on days the snake isn’t into it.”
“I could carry him around in a little fanny pack with a hand warmer,” Kara suggests, sounding perkier than she has in days. 
Alex doesn’t bother hiding her smile. “Yeah,” she agrees. “You could carry him around in a fanny pack with a hand warmer.”
//
It’s only when Lena’s school comes into view at the end of the impossibly long, manicured driveway that Kieran’s stubborn eye contact compels her to speak. 
“Mother,” Lena begins quietly. 
“Speak up, Lena,” Lillian says, not taking her eyes off of the medical journal in her lap. She’s spent the whole drive like that, just like every drive to and from school. Lena doesn’t know why she bothers to come. 
Lena’s hands twist her in her lap. Kieran’s head nudges under them and they relax. 
“Something’s wrong with Lex,” she forces herself to say. Then, quieter again, “with Greza.”
Mr. Bates, her mother’s driver, pulls up to the drop off point. The inside of the car stays quiet while he gets out and retrieves Lena’s luggage from the trunk.
“I’ll see you in the spring,” her mother says. She’s looking at her medical journal. “Bring that B+ in Physical Education up to an A.”
“I don’t even know why you bother coming,” Lena spits out, suddenly furious. “It’s not like everyone else’s mom drops them off at the start of term.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lillian says airily. “When else am I going to get two hours of quiet to myself?” 
Lena opens the door with the goal of slamming it behind her, but Kieran has a different idea. He stays in Lena’s seat, then hops the tiniest bit closer. 
Tantox slithers out to meet him, tongue flickering as he goes. When Kieran tilts his head, Tantox blinks his albino-red eyes in response. 
It only lasts a second; Kieran is flying out ahead of her in the next breath. Lillian is frozen, her hands still against the pages in her lap.
“And make some friends,” she says before Lena can shut the door. “Dr. Perth says you could be stunting your own growth.”
Lena glares, then slams the car door shut. 
//
“Is your boss’s daemon still freaking you out?” Alex asks at sister night, stroking Streaky Jr.’s head where he’s curled up in her lap.
“Yes,” Kara sulks. “What’s his problem with my handsome baby sweetie-pie? It’s so insulting. So what if he’s a little shy? He doesn’t have to prowl around us. Stupid panther types.”
“Maybe he’s got some sort of weird daemon radar. It’s Cat Grant. I’d believe it.” She looks over at Q. “What’s the report on Streaks, huh?”
“He’s a snake,” Q says, completely deadpan.
Kara rolls her eyes. “You’re not funny,” she says.
Q puts his head on his paws and looks up at her. Kara points at him. “Enough of that.” She turns to her sister and gestures for her snake. “And enough for you, come on.”
“No,” Alex protests, her pout almost matching her daemon’s. “You just gave him to me, you come on.”
“It’s been seventeen minutes,” Kara says. “Your measly human body temperature isn’t high enough to handle him for more than twenty, it’s not safe.”
Alex hands Streaky Jr. over with a huff. He curls around Kara’s arm immediately, naturally seeking out the extra warmth in her skin.”You’re such a snake hog.”
“Get your own fake daemon.”
“I would, except I know he’d like you better, you weird animal magnet.”
Kara reaches for the little spray bottle she keeps on the coffee table and gives Streaky Jr. a few spritzes. “Stay jealous.” 
//
“If you could tell the court what you saw upon entering Luthor Corp sub basement 3 lab on July 23rd, please, Ms. Luthor.”
Lena leans in a little, to make sure the microphone will pick up everything she says. “I saw my brother and his daemon inside the DIC.” She winces, then clarifies, “the Dust Isolation Chamber.”
“Dust Isolation Chamber,” the prosecutor repeats. “Can you explain what that is to the court, please?”
“One of my brother’s inventions.” Lena’s fingers twitch towards the outsides of her thighs, but she resists the urge to sit on them. “It sends certain wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum through a confined space with the hope of further studying Dust as a scientific phenomenon. It…wasn’t made for people to be inside of it. Or daemons.”
The prosecutor nods. He has perpetually narrowed eyes and an opossum daemon, neither of which really give Lena any sort of ease answering his questions, even though they had prepped for days beforehand. “What form did the defendant’s daemon take, Ms. Luthor?”
“A leopard,” Lena croaks. 
The prosecutor turns in a circle, pageantry for the jury and the courtroom, since it’s quite clear that there’s no leopard sitting by Lex. “I don’t see a leopard.”
Lex’s lawyer—Colton, from their family’s usual legal team—stands. “Objection. Argumentative, your honor.”
The judge nods. “Sustained,” she says. To the prosecutor: “ask your question.”
“What happened to your brother’s daemon on July 23rd, Ms. Luthor?”
“He—” Lena clears her throat. Kieran, who has been calmly perched on the side of the witness stand through her testimony, puffs up his feathers a little. “He attempted to sever himself from her. It didn’t really—I’m not sure what his goal was, exactly, but he didn’t manage to do it all the way. If he had, he’d be catatonic.”
Lex, dressed in one of his finest suits and a sharp purple tie, smiles at her from across the room like they’re only playing a game of chess.
“Was this out of character for your brother?”
“No,” Lena admits. “He’s been training himself to be apart from his daemon for years now.”
“Did the time he began that—‘training,’ you said?—did that happen to coincide with the appearance of Superman.”
The smile on Lex’s face disappears. 
Lena swallows hard. “Yes,” she says.
//
“If you could talk,” Kara says to Streaky Jr.’s little face, “would you give me as much sass as Q gives Alex? I don’t think you would.”
Streaky Jr. keeps lapping at the water bowl in his terrarium. 
“Would you even be a snake?” She rests her chin on her hands, close enough to the glass that her breath fogs it up a little. “Alex says my daemon would be a bald eagle. Or a naked mole rat.” She wrinkles her nose. “It depends on how recently I’ve ignored her advice in the field.”
Streaky Jr. blinks slowly at her. His body curls together a little more.
“But I don’t think you’d be a bird. Maybe you’d be a h’raka. Or a rondor. A zuurt, even.”
Streaky Jr. leaves his water dish behind, retreating into his cave in the corner.
“Yeah,” Kara whispers. “Probably not.”
//
“Stop picking at it,” Lena says absent-mindedly, mostly focusing on the email she’s writing about that quarter’s budget reports. 
“It itches,” Kieran complains. It’s his first molt since they came to National City, and it seems to be taking all summer. It always leaves them both irritable. 
“I’ll take a look later,” she promises, “but not while we’re at work.”
The intercom on her office phone buzzes. Kieran falls quiet; Lena reaches out and hits the button.
“I have Dr. Ketterman up from R&D, Miss Luthor,” Jess says.
Kieran flies from his perch on top of the bookcase to come land on her shoulder. He settles there, nuzzles his head down by the nape of her neck, as though that makes the big black bulk of him out of sight.
“Send him in,” Lena tells Jess.
//
What Lena first sees when Kara Danvers sits down for their interview is her smile, her eyes, the kind curiosity that bursts both. 
The second thing she sees is the small red head of a snake peeking out from her collar before disappearing again. Only a few moments later, that same head appears at the cuff of her sleeve, slithering right into the open fanny pack around her waist. Lena is so befuddled that the tension that had bunched up her muscles at the sight of him begins to dissipate. 
“He’s shy,” Kara says when she catches Lena staring, her face pink. “Um, he likes to—I keep a hand warmer wrapped in cloth in there? He prefers it to, um, having to—”
“Kara,” Lena interrupts gently, the tension in her shoulders entirely gone. “I get it.”
Kieran is sitting out on the balcony, doing his best to fit in with a group of pigeons instead of standing somewhere Kara could look directly at him. Lena can’t exactly start throwing stones from within her very glass house. 
Probably sensing the way Lena is thinking about him, Kieran flies in from the balcony, through the window that Lena keeps open for him. It’s a lot easier than it was in Metropolis, when Lena had to bundle up in her office all throughout the winter. 
“He’s beautiful,” Kara breathes out. She blinks rapidly once she does, her face going pink again, this time even worse than before. “Oh, gosh. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“So is he,” Lena says, her eyes flicking to Kara’s fanny pack, now nearly overflowing with red scales.
“He’s a corn snake,” Kara says a little too quickly. “Um. Did you know that while the general collective noun for snakes is den, some snake species have their own? Like, it’s a generation of vipers. Or a rhumba of rattlesnakes.”
“Is that so?” Lena asks, too befuddled to say anything else.
“Is it ravens that have the collective noun of murder?” Kara asks. “Or is that crows?”
“Crows,” Lena says, more confident with a question she knows the answer to. “It’s an unkindness of ravens, technically.” She shrugs. “Most people just use flock.”
“That’s not right,” Kara says in that gentle way she has, the one that makes Lena feel like her chest is one touch away from shattering. “Your daemon isn’t unkind.”
Lena’s lip quirks into something similar to a smile. “That’s because we’re alone,” she says. 
Kara opens her mouth like she wants to say something else that will be psychologically damaging to Lena’s afternoon. Lena jumps in before she gets the chance.
“So, where would you like to begin? L-Corp’s rebrand?”
Kara deflates slightly, but nods. She reaches for her notepad, flicks to an open page, and looks up with those big blue eyes her glasses don’t do a good job of hiding. “Yeah, that’s—that’s a great place to start. When did you decide on a full rebrand along with the relocation?”
//
Kieran loops languidly around the sky above her balcony, a blur of ink against the royal blue of the early evening. Supergirl stands next to her, watching him. It makes Lena feel far too exposed, but given the way Supergirl’s made a habit of saving her life from the very start of their relationship, she tries not to be too offended. After all, dealing with daemon manners when you don’t have a daemon can’t be easy.
“You look like you’ve hardly ever seen one before,” Lena finally observes.
Supergirl shoots her a tiny smile. “Maybe he’s just particularly striking.” Her fingers tap against the railing. “When my parents sent me here, they told me of your daemons,” she adds. “They didn’t have much time, but…my mother, she called them your nahv-shesur.” 
“And what does that translate to?” Lena asked, curious how anyone who did not know the touch of their own daemon could try to define it.
Supergirl’s head tilts to the side as she considers that. “Made up of your soul,” she finally says, “but on Krypton we had two ways of saying that. My mother used the conceptual version instead of the spacial one. I still don’t know if she knew daemons were tangible.”
Lena shudders at the thought, and Kieran swoops down in response, perching himself on her shoulder.
“Not tangible,” Supergirl rushes to correct herself. “Of course, I don’t mean—well, you know what I mean, don’t you? They’re real.” She rubs a frustrated hand across her forehead. “I never manage to say it right when I talk about them. Even after all this time, they’re still foreign to me.”
Kieran nips at the top of Lena’s ear. He’s always quiet when there’s company, but they developed their own silent language well before Lena’s tenth birthday. Reassure her, he’s saying. Now. What’s taking so long? 
“Daemons aren’t foreign to you,” Lena finds herself saying.
Supergirl blinks. “What?”
“Just because you can’t see your daemon, doesn’t mean they’re not there,” Lena says. “Did you have Dust on Krypton?”
With a movement so fast Lena’s eyes can’t catch it, Supergirl looks away, leaving Lena only able to see the curve of her jaw and cheek. When she speaks, her voice is rough. “Yes,” she says. “Khir.” 
“Your khir,” Lena says, hopefully with an only slightly terrible accent, “could you see it?”
“Under the right circumstances.” 
There’s a creaking noise, and when Lena looks down to try and locate it, she sees Supergirl’s hands move from the railing to reveal imprints of her grip. 
“Sorry,” she says. “We could see Khir under certain light spectrums. Especially in low orbit, when Rao’s Light came through the atmosphere and—sorry, I’m getting carried away.” She laughs a wet little sound and then clears her throat. When she faces Lena again, her eyes are rimmed with red. 
“Did you ever see it?” Lena asks.
Supergirl’s eyelids slip closed. “It was the last thing I saw,” she whispers. “Khir rising up to meet Rao in the atmosphere. While Krypton still had an atmosphere.”
Kieran’s claws maul Lena’s shoulder until she reaches out and puts a hand on top of Supergirl’s. 
“There’s Dust everywhere,” Lena tells her, then repeats: “Just because you can’t see your daemon, doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”
73 notes · View notes
joellesolo · 2 years
Photo
Tumblr media
Lots of lake fun today! We actually all went in together (so no pics of that) but here’s the girls making sand castles ☺️ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ #charlotterose #lilliangabriel #summervibes #laketahoe (at South Lake Tahoe, California) https://www.instagram.com/p/Ce2WNcRLc7E/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
3 notes · View notes