#pretty good location for public transport

[becca-e-barnes]

Hey lovely! I love your work so much honestly you’re absolutely amazing! I was just wondering if you’d ever write anything for sbf!bucky again? I re read your work about him all the time and I’m a little bit of a whore for him 😅 no pressure whatsoever, it’s just that sweet baby has my heart 🥺

Sbf!Bucky has been really heavily requested recently and now I feel like I've been neglecting him 😩 I really enjoy writing him and it lets me dabble in my dream of being a milf some day

But I feel like he has a real sweet tooth. He's a dessert guy, 110%. Not like your husband or your son.

From the very first Sunday that your son brought Bucky over for dinner, he's been so into your desserts because a good dessert is something he's really missed during his last couple of years at college. It doesn't even really matter what you make, every week he tells you it's even better than whatever you made the Sunday before.

The store bought, dry cakes he sometimes treats himself to don't even come close to the fluffy sponges you make for him. He tells you your lemon meringue is better than the one his aunt used to make and your pies are probably a cure for sadness. He exaggerates but at least he sounds sincere.

And it's nice. It's nice that he appreciates your effort. It's nice that your desserts actually get eaten and enjoyed. It's nice that you're not sitting at the dinner table alone after lunch. Company is nice. Compliments are nice.

"I know it's late but I don't want you to think I'd forgotten." You made yourself busy in the kitchen, talking a little louder so Bucky could still hear you in the dining room. He usually helped you plate up dessert but not today.

"What are you talking about?" Bless him, he sounded so confused. "I can give you a hand if you like?"

"No, it's okay. Close your eyes." You thought your instruction was clear enough but Bucky still protested.

"Just close your eyes, Buck." You could've sworn you felt him raise his eyebrows but he did as he was told anyway.

You set the plate in front of him and laid a little dessert fork above his placemat. "I know your birthday was last Tuesday but I thought we could still celebrate it today. You're only 24 once." Bucky opened his eyes to the most mouth watering slice of chocolate cake he swore he'd ever seen in his life.

Two thick layers of moist chocolate sponge with a rich chocolate icing in between. The cake must have been heated for a couple of minutes, making the icing warm enough to make the layers slide slightly. Thick, warm chocolate sauce rolled down the sides, taking with it a light dusting of powdered sugar, almost washing away the single lit birthday candle. The plate was decorated with a perfect scoop of cool vanilla ice cream and some fresh strawberries, left overnight in a teaspoonful of sugar to draw out their juice.

"You didn't need to make a whole cake just for me!" His genuine excitement was heartwarming, quickly blowing out his candle before wax melted onto his dessert.

"Sweetheart, I make a whole cake just for you every week. Happy birthday." You lifted the little dessert fork, slicing through the sponge with it, making sure to add a little ice cream and a slice of strawberry before raising it to his lips.

You could swear he actually moans when the cake passes his lips. He makes the same noise at dessert every Sunday and you swear you never get tired of hearing it. It's so close to the noise he makes when he first sinks inside you and God, that sound is beautiful.

Your foot grazes his leg, gently but deliberately and there's a battle going on behind those eyes when he takes the fork from his own mouth. On one hand, your husband is in the next room, sitting beside your son, Bucky's best friend. On the other hand, Bucky needs you to know how much he appreciates this. Appreciates you. And if he's honest with himself, your husband and son being so close has never stopped him before.

"Fuck, you've ruined me." He groans, pressing his lips to yours in a hurry. Somehow you manage to stifle your surprise, catching up when he presses you back onto the dining room table.

"You and those fucking desserts. It's not fair. You get me half hard during dinner and then you feed me the best chocolate cake I've ever had? Do you know how unfair that is?" His hands are all over you, pulling your skirt up in between frantic kisses.

The chocolate cake is all but forgotten, the ice-cream left to melt while Bucky kisses your neck before he tugs your panties off, tucking them into the back pocket of his jeans.

#asks answered <3 #anon #becca writes spice #sbf!bucky #son's best friend!bucky #I am not a dessert girlie at all #I haven't reread my own sbf!bucky stuff in months I should do that #he's so fun to write for #for anyone following the 'becca buys a house' saga #I went to see the house I liked last week and it's not for me #the street was kind of noisy and I just know it would freak me out 😭 #I have a viewing booked for a house on Wednesday night #it's in a really quiet area a bit closer to home but I'm not sure I love the property #and it's probably not likely to increase much in value #might cancel that viewing tbh #because I found one this afternoon that I'm really excited about #I love the area #I'm going to book a viewing on Monday but it looks like I could walk straight into it #loads of potential too #pretty good location for public transport #off street parking for my car #the kitchen has a cute little built in wine cooler 🥺 #and the most exciting part imo: THE BACK GARDEN IS FAKE GRASS #I'D NEVER NEED TO CUT THE GRASS #I don't know why that excited me so much but it really did #fingers crossed it's not like the last one!! #tw: food #tw: food mention #tw: cheating

[cookinguptales]

You know... I had an experience about two months ago that I didn't talk about publicly, but I've been turning it over and over in my mind lately and I guess I'm finally able to put my unease into words.

So there's a podcast I'd been enjoying and right after I got caught up, they announced that they were planning on doing a live show. It's gonna be near me and on the day before my birthday and I thought -- hey, it's fate.

But... as many of you know, I'm disabled. For me, getting to a show like that has a lot of steps. One of those steps involved emailing the podcasters to ask about accessibility for the venue.

The response I got back was very quick and very brief. Essentially, it told me to contact the venue because they had no idea if it was accessible or not.

It was a bucket of cold water, and I had a hard time articulating at the time quite why it was so disheartening, but... I think I get it a little more now.

This is a podcast that has loudly spoken about inclusivity and diversity and all that jazz, but... I mean, it's easy to say that, isn't it? But just talking the talk without walking the walk isn't enough. That's like saying "sure, we will happily welcome you in our house -- if you can figure out how to unlock the door."

And friends, my lock-picking set is pretty good by this point. I've been scouting out locations for decades. I've had to research every goddamn classroom, field trip, and assigned bookstore that I've ever had in an academic setting. I've had to research every movie theater, theme park, and menu for every outing with friends or dates. I spend a long time painstakingly charting out accessible public transportation and potential places to sit down every time I leave the house.

Because when I was in college, my professors never made sure their lesson plans were accessible. (And I often had to argue with them to get the subpar accommodations I got.) Because my friends don't always know to get movie tickets for the accessible rows. Because my dates sometimes leave me on fucking read when I ask if we can go to a restaurant that doesn't keep its restrooms down a flight of stairs.

I had one professor who ever did research to see if I could do all the coursework she had planned, and who came up with alternate plans when she realized that I could not. Only one. It was a medical history and ethics class, and my professor sounded bewildered as she realized how difficult it is to plan your life when you're disabled.

This woman was straight-up one of the most thoughtful, philosophical, and ethical professors I've ever had, one who was incredibly devoted to diversity and inclusion -- and she'd never thought about it before, that the hospital archives she wanted us to visit were up a flight of stairs. That the medical museum full of disabled bodies she wanted us to visit only had a code-locked back entrance and an old freight elevator for their disabled guests who were still breathing.

And that's the crux of it, isn't it? It's easy to theoretically accept the existence of people who aren't like you. It's a lot harder to actively create a space in which they can exist by your side.

Because here's what I did before I contacted the podcasters. I googled the venue. I researched the neighborhood and contacted a friend who lives in the area to help me figure out if there were any accessible public transportation routes near there. (There aren't.) I planned for over an hour to figure out how close I could get before I had to shell out for an uber for the last leg of the trip.

Then I read through the venue's website. I looked through their main pages, through their FAQs to see if there was any mention of accessibility. No dice. I download their packet for clients and find out that, while the base building is accessible, the way that chairs/tables are set up for individual functions can make it inaccessible. So it's really up to who's hosting the show there.

So then and only then I contacted the podcasters. I asked if the floor plan was accessible. I asked if all the seats were accessible, or only some, and whether it was open seating or not. Would I need to show up early to get an accessible seat, or maybe make a reservation?

And... well, I got the one-sentence reply back that I described above. And that... god, it was really disheartening. I realized that they never even asked if their venues were accessible when they were booking the shows. I realized that they were unwilling to put in the work to learn the answers to questions that disabled attendees might have. I realized that they didn't care to find out if the building was accessible.

They didn't know and they didn't care. That, I think, is what took the wind out of my sails when they emailed me back. It's what made me decide that... yeah, I didn't really want to go through the trouble of finding an accessible route to the venue. I didn't want to have to pay an arm and a leg to hire a car to take me the last part of the journey. I didn't want to make myself frantic trying to figure out if I could do all that and still make the last train home.

If they didn't care, I guess I didn't either.

If they'd apologized and said that the only venue they could get was inaccessible, I actually would have understood. I know that small shows don't always get their pick of venues. I get it. I even would have understood if they'd been like "oh dang, I actually don't know -- but I'll find out."

But to be told that they didn't know and didn't intend to find out... oof. That one stung.

Because.... this is the thing. This is the thing. I may be good at it by now, but I'm so tired of picking locks. I'm tired of doing all the legwork because no one ever thinks to help me. I'm tired of feeling like an afterthought at best, or at worst utterly unwelcome.

If you truly want to be inclusive, you need to stop telling people that you're happy to have them -- if they can manage to unlock the door. You need to fucking open it yourself and welcome them in.

What brought all this back to me now, you may be asking? Well... I guess it's just what I was thinking to myself as I was tidying up my phone.

Today I'm deleting podcasts.

#I guess it did save me a lot of money #I'll still probably go up to nyc to visit with friends for my bday but I won't go all the way out to brooklyn for the show #and I probably won't need to get the hotel room #and I DEFINITELY won't be supporting their patreon like I was planning lmao #I'll buy myself a new tarot deck for my birthday instead #cw: #disability #ableism

[tossawary]

I've been watching my way through Tom Scott's videos on YouTube (reverse chronological order, I'm like 2 years in) and they're really fun! (EDIT: he basically goes around the world looking at neat things and talking to people about sometimes pretty niche subjects.) It's cool to get bite-sized insights into interesting historical locations and the ingenious technological solutions going on in the world, especially unusual attractions and careers and behind-the-scenes industry operations that don't make it into mainstream consciousness.

(The videos are also generally between 5-10 minutes long if you're worried about time commitment. They are totally built for the average person. They remind me a lot of Mythbusters and other older Discovery Channel shows. This is the kind of thing that I wish Curiosity Stream had more of, tbh, and more in-depth. They make me want to go read a bunch of nonfiction books and go to museums and travel.)

On a more fannish note: a lot of these videos are SO GOOD for sci-fi and fantasy logistics and technology inspiration. Especially for Transformers stuff; like, giving a glimpse into how a world run by robots for robots might actually work in day-to-day life, in a way that's totally different from the traditional human idea of a living space or a work space or public transportation.

I'm trying to make a note to myself here to come back with a selection of videos that are my favorites so far and which videos that I think could make for some kickass Cybertronian (or even SVSSS or other fantasy) worldbuilding. "How many robots does it take to run a grocery store?" and "This library has every book ever published. (there are giant robots)" are definitely going to be on those lists.

#tossawary transformers #worldbuilding #tossawary tv

[kinodraws]

Your tattoos are SICK why are you in Indiana 🫠

honestly?

Indiana is a nice state to live in, I've not felt more at home anywhere else. My partner and I bought a house here 2 years ago, the cost of living is cheap/affordable, I live in a very queer-positive city, there's a lot to see and do here!

We have great restaurants, we're a very diverse city, we're centrally located to most of the other midwestern major metro areas (chicago/detroit/cincy/lexington/toledo), we've got pretty good public transport, we've got a huge queer community, we run and help support queer markets...

WHAT ELSE... Let me ask roach.

He says nice parks, great green spaces, a conservatory, a great zoo, great art events, we have a maker space, we even have an art museum that had an alphonse mucha exhibit a while back!

If you like a healthy blend of nature and city with a lot of queer diverse flavor thrown in, fort wayne is really the place to be.

EDIT: Oh yeah I forgot to say, we have some of the best and most comprehensive and easy-to-get medicaid (state health insurance) in the country.

It's how I got my top surgery covered with no cost to me :)

#genuinely so tired of people trying to dunk on the midwest #if i didn't like it here i wouldn't be here

[swampgh0stt]

here's the tag for my AU (x) art by @stardustrobin

Harry & Peter are married! Childhood friends that (much to Norman's excitement) got married young. They have a son together (Normie)

Harry is trans (FtM) & started transitioning after he had Normie. However, he socially transitioned when he was younger.

Together, they run the Emily-May foundation. Peter still manages to do Spider-Man work on the side, as Harry is well aware of his husbands "other job." This sometimes causes issues between them when Peter gets a little too involved in Spider-Man duties.

But that's okay, bc these two have a Third in their relationship: a now mostly reformed Quentin Beck. Harry likes to bring him into the "Spider-Man" arguments to help get Peter's shit together

Info dump below the cut for our AU

Harry Osborn:

standing at 5'10, black hair & lilac eyes (Norman also has lilac eyes. might be something to do with their illness? hmm... )

He has a pet wolf named Lyra, who he & Quentin stole from a local dog-fighting ring that Mysterio interrupted (thanks to Harry's begging). Harry is rarely ever seen without her

Harry & Norman both have a genetic, terminal illness they hide from the public.

Harry is biracial-- his mother originally from a Reservation in Montana. She is Lakota. However, she is no longer with Norman & no one knows why she left

Harry speaks Lakota fluently. He often talks shit with Quentin

Harry is the secret donor behind Quentin's Mysteriums that have been popping up around the city. He, Quentin, & Peter all frequent the locations for dates, which lead to these Mysteriums being a huge success

active on social media, with successful insta & tiktok pages. He also shares a Youtube page with Quetin, but Quentin usually runs it & comes up with projects for the page

Harry is an abuse survivor, but only Quentin & Peter are privy to the extent of what he's endured from Norman through his life. He has a strained relationship with Norman, but can't completely separate himself

Harry used to have a relationship with MJ, but it was short-lived. They're still very close. Normie loves his Auntie MJ too

despite Harry & Norman's condition -- Normie didn't seem to get the same illness. odd...

Harry has some goblin tech he worked on for himself. he calls his persona the Hobgoblin & will sometimes join Peter on patrols, but not often. This persona has also been seen with Mysterio, but never for any villainous activities

Peter Parker:

tall and lanky with some decent lean muscle; boy is topped off at around 6’3”

fluffy chocolate brown hair

dark hazel eyes; lots of nice deep greens mixed with some browns and ambers

freckles only on his cheeks and across the bridge of his nose; also has a few on his shoulders

aside from web-slinging his main modes of transportation are a skateboard, a bike, a scooter, and getting rides from Harry

his board, bike, and scooter are all second hand, he got the board from the pawnshop and the bike and the scooter from alleyway dumpsters

he’s fixed up the bike and scooter himself, the board was already in pretty good condition

Uncle Ben did teach him how to drive, but it's just easier and quicker for him to board where he needs to be

he and Aunt May did keep Ben’s old truck in case they need it to drive around town

100% Jewish

like in your face about it, he and Aunt May celebrate every holiday

used to go Synagogue all the time with Uncle Ben and Aunt May; now it more or less every so often when he has or can make the free time-- Aunt May goes to Synagogue often and catches Peter up on what he misses

he knows how to speak and write Hebrew; Uncle Ben was his primary teacher and then Aunt May helped out

doesn’t always stick 100% to Kosher-- oops don’t tell Aunt May

will absolutely throw in Yiddish into his speech-- Aunt May is 100% to blame

has only ever dated Harry Osborn and Gwen Stacy-- doesn’t date MJ in my books

however he does get a bit of a crush but quickly loses interest but they become really close friends

doesn’t like taking handouts, prefers to work and earn his own money/things

does get visibly uncomfortable when people offer/give him money and/or handouts

Harry Osborn was his first crush and first love

Gwen is also his first girlfriend

Peter is bi

he really loves taking pictures and he’s good at it, once he started working for the Daily Bugle he started to get more serious in his photography

pretty much all his photography gear is second hand, he does have a few new things that he’s saved up for and bought for himself

doesn’t leave his Aunt May, he makes sure to stay with her so he can help her out with what she needs

doesn’t really buy a lotta new stuff for himself, most of his things do come second hand

his gadgets are mainly made from scraps and spare parts he finds, but he does buy what he needs 

after the spider bite he doesn’t really need to wear his glasses anymore, but he does wear them/keep them on her person out of habit-- he’s changed the prescription glass to just regular plastics

May let Peter keep Ben’s wedding band, he keeps it on his Star of David necklace that he keeps tucked in his shirt for luck and inspiration

Aunt May totally knows that he’s Spider-Man, he just doesn’t know she knows

after becoming Spider-Man he started to teach himself how to fight better, some of his moves in the beginning of hero came from his spidey sense, instinct, and reflex-- he chose to hone those skills to become better and not get himself or others hurt

has a pet opossum named Gizmo that he rescued from a dumpster and he thought she was a cat

Lyra & Gizmo are very close, surprisingly. You can often find Gizmo hanging on to Lyra, traveling & sharing food together.

when Spider-Man & Hobgoblin go out, they call themselves the "Spider-Pals," which started as a joke but stuck

#harry osborn #peter parker #parksborn #marvel #spiderman comics #spiderman never alone #hobgoblin

[transgenderteensurvivalguide]

Hi! What is the average recovery timeline for top surgery? One of my best friends is getting married a couple weeks after my surgery date (17 days to be exact) and I'm invited to the wedding! He's also had top surgery and said from his experience I should be okay after 2 weeks. I'll have to fly, but my partner will be with me just in case I can't lift my bags or anything. But any advice? I'll be flying out there pretty much 15 days after my surgery date. Thanks!!!

Lee says:

I had my top surgery when I was 18 and bounced back pretty quickly, but my younger age, lack of physical disabilities or chronic illnesses, and relatively good health (semi-athletic, non-smoker) made it easier for me to recover than many.

For context, I had inverted-T incision top surgery (double incision plus two extra incisions) and drains.

I was exploring the city I had my top surgery in within the first 2 weeks post-op and going to libraries, museums, candy factories, etc and taking public transportation for all of it.

You'll need to speak with your surgeon about what they expect your recovery timeline to be like as it can vary depending on your medical conditions, and whether you develop post-op complications (something that can't always be predicted when you're still pre-op).

That being said, if you are in good health and a young adult, it's likely that you would be able to go to a wedding 17 days post-op, especially because it's an event that's important to you (one of your best friends) and you'll have the support you need (a partner who can do all of the heavy luggage lifting). You'll probably be more tired than usual, but it's probably worth it to you to be present for the wedding.

This is what my top surgeon told me about post-top surgery general activity limitations:

5-7 days: may engage in ADL’s (“activities of daily living”; light housework, etc, provided not lifting more than 20-30 pounds)

7-10 days: may consider RTW (“return to work”, again with the above lifting limitations x 4-6 weeks)

2-4 weeks: may engage in light exercise/extra activity (dog-walking, etc)

4-6 weeks: may engage in moderate exercise (bicycle or treadmill, but no full exertion)

6+ weeks: full activity (including heavy lifting/jogging) generally OK

Generally, most people are back to their normal routine by 2-4 weeks. Overall, it generally takes 3 months for significant swelling to go down and 6-12 months for scars to mature/fade.

Whatever you decide to do regarding the wedding is ultimately up to you (after you have your surgeon's clearance to attend); it's valid if you don't feel comfortable going because you're concerned about being away from your surgeon and developing a possible complication.

But people do travel for gender-affirming surgeries, and it's pretty common to only stay in the area for ~2 weeks after top surgery before flying home, which is what I did.

So if you do not develop any major complications early on, it likely would be fine to leave the town that your surgeon is located in and take a flight to the wedding at ~2 weeks post-op.

Good luck with the surgery!

Followers, any additional advice or personal experiences to share with anon?

Followers say:

sequintial said: I was NOT ready to do anything like a wedding 2 weeks after top surgery. I had double incision and I'm fat, so I had a much larger area to heal, and one that interfered more with my mobility

bdw531 said: I basically slept all day for the first 1.5 weeks and couldn't even lift a glass of water to my face. Went back to work after 2 weeks. At 4 weeks, I hiked 75 miles of the PCT and at 6 weeks I was bouldering again. As with any surgery, everyone heals differently. I probably would have been up for attending a laid-back wedding ~17 days so long as I could sit and didn't dance.

happysadyoyo said: I was 29 when I had top surgery, and it took me about two weeks to stop sleeping so much. I was able to move around and do things, but especially when I had the drains in I pretty much did nothing but sleep and watch TV. The drains I feel are the most limiting factor. If you still have them, they're gonna be annoying, but even with them, so long as you're able to pace yourself (and at a wedding it should be fine) and there's no major complications, it should be fine.

#Lee says #top surgery recovery #top surgery #surgery

[thosearentcrimes]

Read The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro. Very good book, worth a read, no wonder it won a Pulitzer.

One of the things about The Power Broker is that the whole way through you marvel at Caro's ability to locate information, to extract what are basically confessions, and so on. But it's only at the end of the book, once you reach the notes, that you realize just how exhaustive the reporting is, and how well-founded. And that's just the research that made it into the book in some form.

As far as the subject matter goes, there's too many interesting nuggets to list them out. Here's one though, only one among an endless number of questions raised or implied by the book.

In the 50s and 60s Americans were universally in the business of ruining their cities by running highways through them. Nowhere were they more in the business of doing this than in New York City, where it basically all occurred under the aegis of Robert Moses, Power Broker.

Now, the thing about running highways through cities is that it is consistently billed as a solution to devastating traffic problems, and is never actually a solution to these problems. The reasons for this are mildly complex and quite well-known these days, but fundamentally boil down to the fact that basic logistic features of the automobile make it non-viable as the primary form of transportation in anything that can remotely be called a city.

In the 50s and 60s, this was only slowly becoming apparent as the demand for automobiles turned out to be bounded only by road capacity, but surely the people in charge of highway planning would have been able to notice induced demand early? Like, they would have had to have seen eventually that they were constantly saying the next highway would solve traffic and that it never did? Did they, though? Moses' projections consistently underestimated future traffic on his bridges, for decades. Was he low-balling statistics that could be sold as demand for or interest in the bridge? If so, why?

The book doesn't say, and in fact doesn't particularly indicate that Robert Moses ever became aware of induced demand, but there are a handful of plausible reasons for him to notice and to then conceal it.

Obviously, the first explanation is that making the phenomenon of induced demand public would have reduced political interest in road construction. This would free Moses to explain the phenomenon to car companies, construction firms and unions, and bankers underwriting his bond issues privately to secure their continued support, without endangering municipal, state, and federal contributions. Perhaps.

Here's another one. Let's say Robert Moses puts together a correct projection of the number of cars going on a planned future bridge of his, and he goes up to federal authorities asking for a substantial contribution to build it. If they continue to believe it's worth building even though it'll obviously be a permanent traffic jam, they might still say "well with these projections, you could take on a significantly larger part of the costs with bond issues and still pay them down pretty quick from tolls".

Even if they hadn't responded that way, Robert Moses' power lied largely in his big pot of unregulated cash. That cash consisted of unexpected revenues from toll bridges, leveraged to the moon as new bonds. If he had accounted for those revenues during planning, he would have to pre-leverage them, and even if he didn't have to spend those new bonds on the bridge and hid them somehow, it would have probably made restructuring the bonds a lot less convenient. His money supply would have been irregular, maybe.

I dunno.

Anyway, car bad, damn near everything other than car good purely by comparison (except probably horse-carriage those seem worse). Public-private partnership is an exciting method of maximizing the rate of corruption involved in a given project. New York City is just absolutely dogshit at electing mayors, holy shit, what is wrong with these people.

#The Power Broker #Robert Caro #book report

[adiffident]

I am once again reading fics from recommendation lists and honestly no shade to the writers but if your writing about other cultures don't you do your research?? because it's very painful reading ships were one person is supposed to be german-ish or multilingual and you just have to put it down because it's painfully inaccurate

public transportation in Germany is generally pretty shitty, nothing's on time and trains also just sometimes don't arrive

Honestly if your character is a professor from a german university town he will not praise the efficiency of the U-Bahn in comparison to the New York subway because his city doesn't have a U-Bahn??

Some people think germany is digital heaven but that is not the case. It's very far behind in internet speed and digital equipment in schools and unis

Your professor cannot complain about blackboards 😭, especially if he teaches poetry. No, white boards are not more common. Like I'm a comp sci major and we have white boards in our building but all other lecture halls have blackboards and if I have my classes in the humanities or math department there's just blackboards??

Of course the equipment of the schools and unis is also dependent on state funding, donations and location but come on

People speak English, good English. Pretty much every non-British/American/Canadian/Australian etc. person speaks English, so keep up

Sometimes I try to force myself to keep reading because of the time period but no, making someone practically infantile while speaking English is fucking weird

Also just writing accents into the words is fucking weird and the way in which they're written doesn't make sense

(I also read a fic where the "Russian" accent just was german?? Google translate is free?? And also as a slavic person: what the fuck? There is a difference between da/ja and @ the people thinking slavic languages and german are equally harsh gibberish my relatives think my accent is "harsh" because I have a german one)

Also @ people incorporating german snippets into fics don't use the formal "you". I guess Americans don't learn different languages but formal pronouns are actually pretty common in most languages

Dirty talk in german is not sexy. It just isn't

Writing a modern AU with a German jew is very funny(but also very much not) because there are so few few jews in Germany today.. ever heard of the holocaust? Yeah european jews faced genocide and not just the German ones. I guess as an American it's pretty common to meet jews but that literally has a reason(!!!)

German people are also as a majority atheists or just christian-ish. Making someone fanatically catholic is weird (but more accurate if they're from Bavaria). Generally evangelism is more common

If you make someone speak another language *like so* using English idioms doesn't make sense (I always translate in my head and it doesn't work)

And accidentally "switching languages" like in fics doesn't happen or just if you are in an environment where you have to constantly switch between and translate multiple languages and are very tired but you realize mostly immediately

Knowing all vocabulary isn't realistic. Your vocabulary is dependent on the context for which you use those languages, so you can translate some stuff immediately but I mostly know the meaning of vocabulary separately but can't translate on the spot

...

Yeah I just can't read most fics ... :/

#erik lehnsherr #magneto #kurt wagner #nightcrawler #neil josten #nicky hemmick #aftg #andreil #andrew minyard #andrew minyard/neil josten #nicky hemmick/erik klose #nicky hemmick x erik klose #cherik #erik lehnsherr x charles xavier #nightangel #kurt wagner x warren worthington the third #fics #fanfiction #fanfics #ao3

[oletus-writer]

Nsfw alphabet with Yidhra please with a fem reader? 👉👈

If you saw my rules, I don’t write fem reader, because that is not what I align with. It will be, as all my nsfw alphabets are, with a gender neutral reader.

Yidhra NSFW Alphabet

Warnings: nsfw

A = Aftercare (what they're like after sex)

Similar to Hastur, she does not understand the need for aftercare, and will, at most, wipe you down, and, if you ask, take care of any injuries sustained. Perhaps, if you ask, she’ll give a few praises, and then be off.

B = Body part (their favourite body part of theirs and also their partner's)

She is quite into her ears being touched, but her favourite body part is, evidently, her waist. There’s nothing particularly she liked about it before having intercourse with you, until you began kissing it and marking it. She likes your neck - long and elegant, ready for her taking.

C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

Her cum is sweet. Her favourite places to cum is your face, if you’re giving her oral, and inside you, if she is fucking you with a penis.

D = Dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

There aren’t many secrets that she’d keep from you when it comes to her sexual preferences, because she finds it pointless to keep them from you. However, she is curious what type of offspring a god and a mortal would produce.

E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they're doing?)

Now, I’m not the most well-versed in HP Lovecraft and his works, but I do believe that Yidhra has an offspring. It was brought to my attention that it is most likely that the Great Old Ones reproduced asexually, as Lovecraft was repulsed by sex. Since Yidhra was created by Walter C DeBill Junior, I am safe to assume she and her mate, Yig, had the offspring through sexual intercourse. What I am getting at is, like Hastur, Yidhra does not have sexual experience with humans.

F = Favourite position (this goes without saying)

She enjoys being splayed out underneath you, while you finger her cloaca and bite her ears. If she is fucking you, she likes to be propped up, so something like cowgirl, the chairman, etc.

G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

She won’t make jokes, but will laugh at any that you make. She’s a free-spirited kind of god, and adores anything you do.

H = Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes?)

What carpet? Yidhra has a snake-like lower body, covered in scales, and therefore has no public hair. Her body hair is indeed black, and she does not shave, for she finds no reason to. In her human form, her public hair is black and curly. For the same reason, she doesn’t mind how well groomed her partner is.

I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? are they romantic?)

Intimate is not what I would call her teasing, overstimulating, and degrading, but she may say that it is romantic, in her own way. She’ll tell you how good if a slut you’re being, and call that praise, and she’s most likely to show you more of her soul which having sex. So yes, one may say that she is intimate.

J = Jack off (masturbation headcannon)

She strikes me as the type of person to either sit out her sexual desires, or use the most elaborate toys to satisfy herself.

K = Kink (one or more of their kinks)

Degradation, overstimulation, you’ll hear these words again. She loves to feel in control, like what she’s doing to you is a favour fucking you dumb like this.

L = Location (favourite places to have sex)

(Finally I’ve written someone who’s location is not the bedroom) Yidhra’s favourite location to have sex is in her dream world - she’ll wrap the shadows around the two of you, transporting you both into a private, endless world, where everything is under her control and there is no need to fear interruption. This, however, causes her to be a bit more tired after sex, and she may lie in the bed for a few moments before leaving.

M = Motivation (what turns them on?)

While she does not have the highest libido, she will indulge any of your needs. Yidhra gets turned on when you express your submissiveness to her.

N = No (what turns them off?)

A rather hard question. Call her a dirty whore? She’ll demand you say it again. Say she’s not worthy to be a god? She’ll have you begging like a slut. Perhaps don’t bring up other people in the moment - it’s an intimate, private act, and she wants you only thinking about her.

O = Oral (do they prefer giving or receiving? how skilled are they?)

She has quite the long tongue, so she would be skilled at giving oral, regardless of her experience. She prefers to give oral, since the feeling of someone’s tongue in her cloaca is a new, uncomfortable feeling that brings embarrassing noises from her mouth.

P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual?)

Her pace changes with her mood - one moment, she’ll be gentle and sensual, and the next, she’ll be rough and merciless, without any prompting. She’ll adjust herself according to your preferences, if she’s feeling it.

Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies)

She’ll happily do it, even suggest it if you’re feeling horny in public. The risk, the time limit, everything about it is arousing to her.

R = Risk (are they experimental? do they take risks?)

While she isn’t the most experimental being, she is willing to try things out when it comes to you. Being in her dream world, the risks are minimised, although still there.

S = Stamina (how long do they last?)

Forever, if she feels like it. She’ll go for five or so rounds, overstimulating you when you’re exhausted, and then decide that’s enough. If you can keep up with her, all the better. She knows that she shouldn’t spend all day having sex with you, but she might as well.

T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them?)

If her own powers was a toy, then yes, she uses toys. She would speed up time in the dream world, so that you did not experience your orgasm, but ride the wave that came after it. Bondage, gags, and strap-ons would be made out of nothing.

U = Unfair (how much do they like to tease?)

Teasing is her hobby. She’ll whisper words into you ears during a match, run her fingers along your thighs, and laugh when you’re flustered. All this work is to make the sex feel better than before - she’ll be itching to get along with it, but foreplay is a must.

V = Volume (how loud are they?)

She moans a normal amount, but she is quiet and her voice sweet. While there is not much communication, she’ll let you know if anything feels bad, or if she’s unwilling to continue.

W = Wild card (a random headcannon for the character)

She does not like to trim her fingernails, and will not do so until you put long fingernails inside her cloaca to give her a taste of her own medicine. Then, she will trim them before inserting her fingers into you.

X = X-ray (let's see what's going on under those clothes)

The bottom half of Yidhra looks as if it is from a snake, so she would have a cloaca. There’s not much going on underneath her clothes, although, with her being a god, she is able to procure a penis is she’d like.

Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

While she doesn’t have much of a sex drive, she doesn’t mind indulging you with whatever desires that you have.

Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

Sleep is for the mortals, and Yidhra is no mortal. She may lie beside you, watching you sleep, but will not do so herself.

#identity v #identity v x reader #idv x reader #idv yidhra #idv yidhra x reader

[kebriones]

hi do you have any athens insight?

for someone 20 moving in for some time

thanks:)

Yup!

Assuming you mean moving in to like, live here, and also assuming you're not greek:

-Check the area you'll be living in. Some areas can feel unsafe for someone who lives alone/isn't from here. Very few areas are actually unsafe but especially if you're not from here it's better to have your peace of mind.

-I recently heard of someone from another country who came to live in athens and at first lived in apartments that were in very bad condition. There are descent places to live in and you should not be putting up with bad situations, especially if those have to do with safety and health. If you can avoid living in the city center, do it. also avoid ground-level appartments at all costs. I've known of several great ones, but most of the time safety is a concern and the closest you are to the ground the more certain you can be you'll have a cockroach problem.

-Make local friends if you can. This is generally easier if you come here with like a student program or something.

-Never get taxis randomly on the street/from outside stations. always use an app (there's a couple different ones including uber) to get a taxi. it's a lot safer and you're less likely to get scammed and/or have a horrible experience.

-learn the ins and outs of the public transport system. It will take you literally anywhere in the city you want to go. Google maps usually has you covered as to what buses/metros you should take. get the public transport app on your phone to check bus locations and timetables.

-if you happen to stay in a non-flat area, make sure you have shoes with good soles. Streets and pavements can be extremely slippery especially when it rains. This might seem like a small thing but when you see some of the streets we have you'll understand.

-If you want to go to a store, especially a smaller one, check their open times on google maps. not everything is open the same time as everything else. google maps times might also not be reliable but it's a start :')

-tap water is fully drinkable.

-you will often hear that you shouldn't toss toilet paper in the toilet. this isn't true. unless there's something very wrong with your flushing thingy and it doesn't let out enough water, tossing a small amount of toilet paper in the toilet is perfectly fine.

-Hymettus is a mountain very easily/quickly accessible for someone who lives in athens, and it has a ton of nice easy trails to go on walks/hikes. it's generally pretty safe too. if you find company to go there with that's even better.

-there are always all sorts of events going on in athens. keep your eyes open and you'll never be short of things to do. there are also wayy more museums than you might think

-this might be controversial but my personal opinion is that you should absolutely not drive bikes and scooters around the vast majority of areas in athens. it's very very unsafe.

-when using public transport be as mindful of your stuff as possible.

-if you can't drive but want to go on a trip, "ktel" are buses that can take you from athens literally to almost every last god forsaken little village.

-if you can drive and you decide to drive here, good luck.

-If you're interested in bars, clubs night life/parties in general, i am afraid I can't say anything about it, I don't have any experience/knowledge of that field.

-oh I almost forgot: don't eat the oranges on the street. they are not edible. they are bitter oranges and they are only meant to be decorations, not food

annd I think that's all I have for now? if you have any more specific questions I'm always happy to help!!

[sam-glade]

hey sam, happy STS!

you have a lot of really good worldbuilding resources and do a lot for your stories - do you have a go-to strategy when it comes to research (especially for something you haven't looked into before), or is it a bit different every time?

my own strategies atm are very uhhh scattershot tbh TT_TT

(--@space-writes)

Hi Space! Happy STS💜

Now that I've created two (and a half) settings - two worlds, one of which has two stories set in different eras - I'd say I have a consistent strategy, and sure, I'm happy to share it, but I make no promises it'll work for anyone else😅 'Scattershot' is a pretty good description.

I usually start with some elements of the setting that make me want to put a story in it. In Days of Dusk it's the metaphysics, with the superpowered weapons and long lifespan. In The Fulcrum, it's the larger than life structures inhabited by a sentient species that couldn't have possibly built it. I treat these ideas as axioms, and take them as given. I only need a handful of those, and the rest is exploring the consequences.

There are three parts to it:

Trust your intuition

Tl;dr: put down whatever comes to mind, explain it later, if needed.

It starts with how I draft stories. I'll come up with a location or two and describe it in detail in the first few chapters. As I draft them, I try to avoid the notes in square brackets to fill in the details later. Instead, I trust my intuition and put down the first thing that comes to mind that would make this particular place and scene unique. If I'm really unsure about it, I might make an editing note for later to check it, but 9 out of 10 times, it sticks.

I'm talking about the little, localised things that make the place/character/ritual distinct and memorable. Accents, talismans, decorative vessels on the shelves in the house, etc. Basically, whenever a description starts sounding too bland and generic, I'll come up with something - anything - on the spot. It's a first draft, it doesn't have to be perfect.

I'll use Gifts of Fate as an example. The first scene-setting description is this:

The downpour started when they were half way to Beetletun. The ground turned to mud, and the leaves of the bushes that crawled up the sides of the causeway drooped heavy with water. No wonder that there was nobody else in sight, on the road or in the orchards and fields stretching to either side of it.

For the plot, I needed it to be on an empty road and with rain, but otherwise, it could have been just fields - that's boring. Ok, fields and copses of trees to break the monotony? Still not distinctive enough to stick in the reader's memory. So, on a whim I arrived at orchards.

So now Aritia, the region where Lissan's from, is known for its orchards; they're an ubiquitous element of the landscape.

Causes and Consequences

I've come up with a detail, now I'd like to explain it, so that it's consistent with adjacent elements. I usually do that when I'm passing time irl, e.g. in a queue or on public transport, not looking at the document. I'll pick at a detail and keep asking why it is this way and what else it affects.

This is loosely based on the Five Whys method though quite often I won't go as deep with the questioning, and expand in the direction of consequences.

To take the orchards from the previous section, what does it entail? Quite a few of Lissan's neighbours work in the orchards. Let's weave this in then - a person Lissan runs into in the pub is a son of one of the local apple growers. Also, there's plenty of apples to go around, so in the beginning of the second book, Lissan and Marta (his sister) talk at home as they do chores - turning what's left of the late apple harvest after winter into jam.

At no point I'spell out that apples are the primary goods produced in this region.

This is also where going down research rabbit holes and chains of Wikipedia articles comes in handy. I'll look up especially the technologies that I put in on a whim, to make sure what are the prerequisites for them and that they're reasonable with the level of development of the society. I'm not talking about modelling how science and technology developed in your setting on history, but rather understanding why it happened IRL and translating it to the priorities and values of your setting.

For example, in the setting of Days of Dusk, people turn to ash in the moment of their death. That's one of the rules of the setting which I don't want to change. As a consequence, you can't perform autopsies, and that stunts the development of medical sciences. Ouch.

Another example: I wanted lamps lighting the streets in the main city featured in the story. Ok, so what sort of fuel was used in early gas lamps? Where did it come from? Coal is one of the options. Ok, so let's say this region is coal-rich, and there are mines. Why are they mining it extensively in the first place? What are they using it up for? Factories - so let's say we're at the very beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Let's add a factory to the cityscape.

Of course this could have gone in a different direction - gas can be obtained from other sources, like wood or peat, and each option would have different consequences. E.g. on the landscape - wood comes from forests, peat from moors.

Either way, if the overall appearance of the setting was pre-modern, I'd have much more trouble explaining it, but it's still doable! Are they fuelled by magic? Where does the magical energy come from? And so on.

You can keep asking these questions forever, but the last part is:

Be lazy

It's very easy to go too far with following the threads of cause and effect, and I'm afraid it's one of the cases where your mileage may vary. Most people won't notice or at least won't be pulled out of the story by anachronisms, some will. How egregious they need to be to break immersion, will vary.

My rule of thumb is to pick one main thing about the location and add no more than 2-3 relevant details per scene in which it features. Hence, Aritia is Lissan's home and we return there quite often, so it's a lot more fleshed out than a village where Lissan stays for two chapters, recuperating, and doesn't really leave his host's house. In the latter, I've no idea who the local lord is or what's the main export of this area. It doesn't matter.

I only come up with the details when they're needed. A very obvious example would be hypothetical methods of space travel which the society will reach in a millennium, when right now it's an early-modern setting.

I didn't name the lord to whom Lissan's home village belongs until 2/3 of the way through the book, when Marta was talking about the lord at length, filling Lissan in on what he'd missed. I vaguely knew that there are the five princedoms, but only two of the princes feature in Gifts of Fate, so I didn't even come up with the names of the others until I reached a scene in the later books, when they all make an appearance.

I also don't put the names of the cities, rivers, or regions on the map until they come up in the story. Then and only then I note them down so that they'll be consistent.

Finally, you'll see extensive worldbuilding questions lists, which are overwhelming and frankly, I find them incredibly unhelpful. They're usually divided into sections like climate, government, religion, culture, etc., and sure, it's good to be aware that these aspects of the setting are a thing, but I don't believe that they're all important in every story. Most of the categories can be described in vague terms, and adjusted as needed.

So, e.g. in Gifts of Fate, there's a conspiracy within the army and the plot relies on military technology being misused, so I'm exploring the magic system in detail, as well as the military. There's a single chapter of courtly intrigue (I couldn't resist a ball), so I completely skipped etiquette and customs among the upper class, only describing fancy outfits. Also, there's nothing about political factions and tensions between the different princedoms. It's not relevant. The religion also is a very background thing, so a couple of rites are mentioned in vague terms, but at no point I mention a pantheon of gods (there isn't one) or a creation myth.

I hope that helps😊

#writeblr #writing advice #worldbuilding #sts #ask and i shall answer #days of dusk

[andivmg]

recommendations for “local” spots in PR? im going over springbreak and im so excited!!! (anything fun do/ explore besides el yunque and san juan?)

omg i love this questionnnn!!!!

so if you get the chance: RENT. A. CAR. There are so many amazing spots in PR but because the public transportation system here might as well be nonexistent, you need a car to get to most of them. so here is the list of my personal fave spots that you need a car for: (dw i will include another list of things that are more local to san juan and also one more thing)

- Playa Sucia, Cabo Rojo: gorgeous beach, i spent a lot of time there in college. you have to walk a bit to get to the actual beach but it’s so worth it. you can also hike up the cliffs surrounding the beach which is so fun and beautiful. and you can go up to the lighthouse which has the most amazing view.

- Crash Boat beach, Aguadilla: another beach, another college me spot. it’s just really cool, people are always playing music, there’s a big ol pier. just very awesome.

- Toro Verde Adventure Park: ZIPLINE. VERY BIG ZIPLINE THAT TAKES YOU 95 MPH. I believe it’s the longest in the US and the third longest in the entire world. the view while you’re on it is unlike anything i have ever seen before 10/10, taking my bf there this weekend.

- Surfing: my fave surf spots are Domes Beach in Rincon. Jobos Beach in Isabela. and La Punta in San Juan. You can search up surf lessons in these beaches and you’ll get a bunch of instructors.

-La Parguera: Bioluminescent bay. It’s so gorgeous and so worth it

- Piñones: Long strip of road with different spots you can get out in and go to the beach in. It’s littered with a bunch of typical puertorican food stands like fried shit that we love. if you want the real PR experience, go on a weekend

Now for some more local San Juan area things to do:

- Again, Surfing: literally just google surf lessons in san juan and a bunch will pop up

- Distrito T-Mobile: Has a bunch of restaurants and live music, definitely a good spot to just kinda hang out in. There’s a huge arcade there as well as one of my fav restaurants: La Central by Mario Pagan (get the truffle butter on the steak)

-La Placita: Drinks. Legal age is 18 here so if you want to PARTY, go here.

-Calle Loiza: same as la placita but more locals go here methinks

-The Place: my fav burger place ever, it’s in Condado. Build your own burger w really good ingredients 10/10

-Pirilo: amazing pizza place. it’s in old san juan so this might be a bit of a cop out but it’s really good regardless.

-Casa Bacardi: Rum factory, you can take a tour and it’s pretty cool

-Paddle Boarding: you can go paddle boarding in Condado Lagoon, if you’re lucky you might even get to see manatees or turtles!!!

- Metropol: my favorite restaurant. they have a bunch of locations but you can’t go wrong with any of them. typical puertorican and cuban food. fucking delicious i can never get enough. (get the sorullitos you won’t regret it.)

Now for the something extra:

-Culebra and Vieques: You can either take a plane or a ferry to either of these islands. They are the most beautiful islands i have ever seen. Very remote so little to no cell service but genuinely so so so worth it because the stars look so amazing at night it’s like nothing i have ever seen before. also Vieques has a bioluminescent beach as well :)

ik some of these are kind of touristy things and not necessarily local but they are genuinely some of my favorite things to do and i will always always always recommend to do at least one of them.

If you google Discover Puerto Rico, that website is amazing and gives you like a million things to do 10/10

here’s a link to my fav youtuber’s vlog where she went to PR and imo she did an amazing job of immersing herself in the culture i adore her: https://youtu.be/KPzqRP0T3ew?si=_sFNg_5kg6N5SGQg

#andianswers #puerto rico

[salvadorbonaparte]

Hi! I go to UMass Amherst! I'm in my third year of undergrad so take all of this with the consideration that my experience will be quite different than a grad student's, but I have certainly got some things to say about public transportation and the area :)

Main thing: despite the fact that public transport /exists/, it's.... not great honestly. People make it work but a car will make your life 10 times easier.

As a UMass student you'd get free access to the PVTA buses run by UMass transit, which can generally get you around campus, most places in Amherst itself, and some surrounding towns like Sunderland (more residential) and Hadley (quite a few grocery stores/chain restaurants). UMass Transit don't ask to see ID, either. You just hop on and go. However, this means that buses are often really crowded at rush times and especially so during rainy or snowy weather. These buses also do not consistently run on time, so you would not want to rely on the scheduled times; instead, look at the tracking apps. I have a few friends who live off campus without cars and they make it work, but it does often mean planning classes/work around the busses. It's certainly not CONVENIENT.

During the academic year you would also be able to get to Northampton and Springfield free with your student ID. They do charge fares over school breaks. The bus to Northampton leaves hourly and is much more consistent with timing than the UMass transit busses. The bus to Springfield, the closest "bigger" city, runs (I think) every two hours. All these busses are run by the PVTA as well, but not under the UMass transit umbrella.

From Springfield, you can catch Amtrak trains -- the Northeast Regional runs there, as does the Vermonter, and I'm sure I'm forgetting some. Springfield is also the home base for Peter Pan buses which operate frequent buses to NYC, Boston, Hartford, and other locations in the general Northeast.

There is a bus to Worcester, where you can catch an Amtrak or connect to the Boston commuter rail to get to Boston pretty cheap, but it is /crappy/. Due to PVTA driver shortages they usually run it as a van, not a full bus, and frequently passengers will be left behind even after people squeeze onto the floor of the van and sit in the back or in the aisle for the 2-hour ride. It costs about $9 to go from UMass's transit hub to Worcester. Once I got stranded in Worcester and had to uber back to Amherst because that van only runs about 3 times a day and not every day of the week, last departure around 4 pm.

The Amherst area has a housing crisis right now as UMass consistently admits increasingly more undergrads than it can house, and therefore once those undergrads finish their first year and are no longer guaranteed on-campus accommodations many of them move off-campus to Amherst and its surrounding towns. The best, cheapest, and most convenient housing is usually locked down by returning students the winter before an August move-in for the fall semester. This pushes many new grad students to the surrounding towns like Sunderland, South Deerfield, etc, where buses are a bit of a crapshoot and campus is no longer within reasonable walking distance. Housing's also pretty expensive for the semi-rural location. I'm looking at off-campus housing for next year and will be happy if I can find a place where I'll pay less than $1000 a month (usually, this covers a room in a shared apartment or house).

All this said, the area itself is beautiful, and I've had a great experience with the academics here. I have heard really good things about the translation and linguistics programs and I'm sure you'd be able to find a great niche. You'll also be in close proximity to 4 other great schools (Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, Amherst College, and Hampshire College) and have the ability to take classes, work with profs, etc from those schools through the 5 college exchange program. I don't know what PhD program you're thinking of applying to but I'm in the comparative literature undergrad program (complit encompasses a lot of our translation classes, undergrad and grad level) and have nothing but good things to say about the faculty, the grad student instructors I've had, and the program as a whole.

Feel free to reach out for more information if you'd like!!

Thank you for the info!

Unfortunately I can't drive (never learned) so I'd have to rely on buses. The bus system in Ireland was surprisingly bad (almost daily delays and I lived an hour away from campus) and in Spain I lived on a mountain in the middle of nowhere so grocery shopping took up to 5h but minimum 3h so by now my standards are pretty low. I'd love to travel a little while I'm there (Boston, Salem, Maine, Buffalo etc) so I'm just glad there's buses and trains at all. A free bus system that's kinda crappy is still better than one that doesn't exist or one that's crappy and expensive (shout out to Ireland's 2€ bus fares and Hannover's 8€ metro tickets)

The housing situation is a little worrying but I'm not above a flatshare and I'd get a scholarship so I'm sure I'd find something?? But I'll start looking as soon as soon as I know where I'm moving to because the housing situation is bad in those cities too.

I know something who went to Smith and someone who went to Mount Holyoke so I heard good things about the general region and landscape etc.

The professors I talked to (German Department) were really nice and it sounds like a really cool phd program. Even though Amherst is not as prestigious as two of the other unis I'm applying to it's a very good school and I'd be happy to go there if that's the one I get accepted by/the one I pick.

#Asks

[thenavysealkie]

Charging Station|| Luci & Marcus

Timing: Current-ish, later at night

Location: On the street in front of Like A Charm

Parties: @thenavysealkie @luci-in-the-stars

Triggers: None

Hungry. Marcus’s pelt had finally grown hungry. While it could go long periods of time without  being fed magic, that also meant it took more magic to fill it up completely. He took no pleasure in robbing magic users of their abilities, if only temporarily, but what else could he do? The time had come for him to go hunting again for the first time in about a year. And he knew the perfect spot to stake out. 

Like a Charm was a busy place for real magic users and edgy “wiccan” girls alike. It sold a variety of actual magical items as well as some more novelty pieces for the unpowered. Determining who was a real magic user and who was cosplaying as one was generally pretty easy, so all Marcus had to do was wait outside in his car until he sensed somebody who was powerful and alone. 

After several groups of teenagers came and left, he was worried he’d strike out tonight. But just then, he saw a girl leaving the store, and he could sense real power within her. She was also alone, so he would be able to follow behind and try and sap her power discreetly. A pit formed in his stomach, as he didn’t enjoy doing this. Yet, all the same, he left his car and conspicuously followed behind the girl just a few steps behind. 

__

Luci stretched slightly as she waved to Vera telling the owner that she was heading out, brain focused mostly on her latest circle. She got a “yeah kid, good work,” as she left, her mind still puzzling out the circle the other had given her. While Vera was - odd with most of the customers she was somewhat caring to the young Alchemist and wanted to help her. So she had taken to given Luci circles that she could work back from and tell her in the next shift what they were for. 

Still, while she used to be able to sit on public transport and work on things and get home - Luci couldn’t do that anymore instead walking most places in Wicked’s Rest. So instead she sighed and put her trusty pen behind her ear wanting to get back to the apartment as quickly as possible. “Yeah - I think the C is for sure carbon -,” she muttered under her breath noting it as she moved, not realizing the steps behind her and instead focusing on the problem. “Or maybe it’s a K again - I need to check when I get home that it hasn’t moved again.” 

Her footsteps slowed for a moment, thinking of checking the paper before she heard something that wasn’t her feet behind her. “Oh sorry - Don’t mean to block the sidewalk,” Luci said moving to the side for the other as she went to grab the paper to confirm. 

__

As he followed, Marcus fumbled with his pelt, trying to get it out and ready to steal away some of the girl’s magic. He found that taking little bits at a time was helpful to ensure that they didn’t lose too much of their powers for too long. The pelt was hungry, and could easily overfeed and leave a magic user completely powerless permanently. Marcus was intent on not allowing that to happen tonight. 

While he was fumbling around with his pelt, the woman in front of him suddenly stopped, causing his long legs to close the distance between them quickly. She turned around and acknowledged him, confirming that his cover was now completely blown. 

Ever quick with charm, Marcus smiled broadly and nodded towards the woman. “No problem at all, ma’am. You look like you’re deep in thought about something. Just be careful stopping out on the sidewalk at this time of night. You never know who’s out there.” 

Guys like him, for instance. No, there were plenty worse than him. He’d be so subtle she probably wouldn’t even notice that much of a difference. At least, that’s what he’d continue to tell himself as time went on. Regardless, he needed to keep her attention and also try and keep his pelt out of view as much as he could. 

“Late night trip to the magic shop, eh? Never really got interested in all that kind of stuff myself.” 

Luci was half distracted, her mind still on her puzzle as she realized the other was talking to her. Looking up she raised an eyebrow at the idea that she was in trouble. It was something she had heard a lot, and sure she should be more cautious especially after the caves, but she had made the walk quite a few times. 

“Oh - Yes I was. Still, I shouldn’t block the road. It’s not too late is it?” Luci said her mind was wondering how late it might have been looking at her phone lightly to see it was later then she had realized. Vera normally did have to scoot her out of the place, probably because she wanted to close the shop. In anycase, the other didn’t seem particularly dangerous or frightening. He seemed rather normal, although Luci was hardly a great judge of any of that. 

“Oh It is late. That’s no good. My brother’s probably already worried. - Oh no I work here,” Luci said at the question with a little chuckle. “I just got off my shift. And no? I mean that’s understandable but I do like it there.” She did love magic after all, even if hers was broken. 

As Marcus listened to the woman talk, he finally got his pelt in a workable yet conspicuous position. 

“A bit late, but not extremely late by any means. Otherwise I’d already be home in bed.” 

He could sense his pelt attempting to drain the woman but…something was off. It was almost as if nothing was happening at all. 

“You work here? Oh that’s great, I’m assuming you know a lot about these sorts of things then. How long have you worked there for?” Marcus continued, trying to figure out what the issue was. Had he clocked her incorrectly? Was she just a normal human? 

“Either way, I’m glad you like it. I tend to the lighthouse over on Hanging Rock, always been drawn to the see so it works for me too. Always do what you love, that’s what my dad always taught me” He officially gave up on trying to troubleshoot his pelt. He’d simply need a different target. 

“So…do you believe in any of that stuff? Have you personally seen anyone there show off anything magical?”

Luci nodded at the thought wondering if she should call Milo. Chances were he was still out and about though. While she tended to go to bed fairly early she wasn’t sure what he did anymore. Still, she also knew that she had some studying to do as well. 

At the series of questions Luci was pulled back to the present looking at the man and not thinking about what she was about to do. “Oh yes. I mean not all of it works obviously some of it is just nonsense. If you ever come in I can show you. Last semester really, I got the job right before school started.” The other seemed nice after all, and while she finally put her notebook into her back she nodded. 

“Oh, that must be a lot of fun the lighthouse seems like a great place to see - although shouldn’t you be going back then? To watch the light?” She wasn’t very good at knowing what they all did, but surely when it was dark he should be there. 

At the question Luci’s eyebrow raised a little bit caught off guard. “Oh. I mean magic is just science that isn’t explained. Isn’t that what someone said? So yes I do.” Still she wondered now why the man was asking it like that. Why she felt a tug at her magic. It made her feel off as she saw a purple spark on her hand. 

Was it just a trick of being tired? Her magic didn’t normally do that, and her eyes widened realizing that the brokenness might be getting worse. She hoped the other didn’t see it as she moved back the sparks concentrating in her hand where she had been holding the equation she had. It was like it was trying to channel through that and she needed to go. She hoped he didn’t see her hand as she put it behind her back hoping the sparks faded. 

“Uh - well I should probably be going. It was nice to meet you,” Luci said nicely with a nod. 

____________________________________________________________________________

While Marcus normally watched the seas during the night, it wasn’t exactly a requirement for his job description. Just as long as the light was working properly to guide the ships toward safety, the lighthouse was considered kept. It wasn’t like there were many swimmers out at this time of year, although he did admit he should probably keep an eye out for any shipwrecks. The icy chill in the ocean air didn’t serve as any deterrent to the fishermen or merchant ships sailing through the frigid waters, and there was still always the chance of a wreck. 

Marcus was about to say something about Luci’s statement regarding magic. He was going to say that many things in life were more than they seemed, and that he liked her outlook on magic just being a form of science that hasn’t been explored. He was going to say that. Until he saw a crackle of amethyst energy leap right from her hand. He had had her pegged correctly after all, she had magic. And by the looks of it, a rich amount of it as well. 

Casually, and covertly as possible, he managed to successfully move his pelt to the front of his body, hopefully close enough for the pelt to siphon whatever magic flowed from the girl in front of him. 

“I’m sorry…here I am talking your ear off in the dead of night. If you want I can walk with you until you get home, make sure you get back safe.” 

God, he really did feel like a sleaze. A predator in every sense of the word. Even know his pelt may be sapping this poor girl of her magic, and he was trying to paint himself as some sort of protector. It was a messy part of being what he was, and he’d of course move the pelt away before draining her completely. A few days where her powers are “dull” or “funky” is something he could live with. Robbing her of them completely was not. 

Luci didn’t know what was happening, as she tried to move her sparking hand away from the notes. Normally she didn’t worry about it, if she wasn’t intentionally flowing magic through the circles they shouldn’t glow with magic - but with how odd her magic was lately she wasn’t sure it wouldn’t catch the careful drawn lines of the circles. 

A circle she hadn’t fully studied. One that could easily be very dangerous. The rest of her notebook was fairly mundane but that may not be. 

It could be a disaster. She could end up hurting the man. For a moment panic kept her feet still as she thought about what she could do. Maybe Vera was still in the shop and could help her through the sparks. 

“Oh uh - no I don’t think you need too,” Luci said thinking she should move as she saw a spark jump towards her bag she instinctively threw it to her side away from her freezing for a moment as she did before calming down when she realized that the spark didn’t get to it. It was a fast movement, almost violent. She was just lucky she didn’t have her laptop or phone in her bag. That would have been bad. It was lucky that Vera hated laptops. 

Then she realized how weird she was now acting and  said quickly and not at all afraid, “Oh - thought there was a spider. I’m deathly scared of them. You should go in case there is a spider.” Gripping her right hand she was trying to stop the sparks coming out, knowing at this point the other might see them too. 

__

At this point, it was clear to Marcus what was happening. The pelt was already draining it’s prey of her magic. Right now, it seemed as if the magic was draining far more quickly than Marcus would have liked. At this rate, he may do serious long lasting harm in a matter of minutes. Like a dog owner pulling their pet away from a dead animal, Marcus quickly reared his pelt back away from Luci, hoping his sudden movement hadn’t raised any suspicion. 

“Sorry. Thought I might have felt it crawling on me. You’re right, I should probably get back to the lighthouse” he said, now feeling like the awkward one. “It was nice meeting you! Please be careful going home.” 

Marcus could see the distress on her face. She was clearly confused as to what was happening to her. And afraid. Now he could only hope that he hadn’t done any long lasting damage. He really did wish there was a more ethical and reliable source of magic for his pelt charging. In the meantime, though, he’d just have to make whatever he got tonight last as long as he could.

__

Luci looked at her bag her left hand shaking into a fist hoping to stop the magic. It wasn’t right, something was wrong. Was she getting worse? She had been so careful but it seemed like the wrongness of her was building. 

She noticed a movement, looking at the other after a moment and wondering if he was seeing what was happening and when he said he had seen a spider she stilled. “Oh -uh yeah. Have a good night. Hope nothing crashes - you know into the rocks.” She started to move the sparks stilling as she tried to take back the bag. Maybe it had just been temporary - something new she would have to work out with Vera about her ‘special magical circumstances’. Still that scary as she tried to right herself. 

Maybe she should tell Milo? - The thought quickly went away sighing as she checked the time again. Luci needed to figure this new worry alone, after all it wasn’t really surprising she was getting worse even if she wished she wasn’t. Feeling oddly tired she walked away hoping that some rest would help.

___ 

After achieving something that some may consider success, Marcus walked away from the encounter with a pit in his stomach. It wasn’t the first time he had done something like this, and he knew it wouldn’t be the last. Even when he fed his pelt in a way that he deemed “harmless”, it very plainly left the other person in clear distress. He didn’t want to be the cause of that kind of feeling for anybody. 

With a simple nod of his head, eyes glued to the ground in below him, Marcus tucked his hands into his pockets and moved back towards home before any more damage could be done. One silver lining to William being alive was he didn’t have to do any of this dirty work himself. Now, he was on his own again. Survival of the fittest, as they say. 

He remembered the encounter he had with Cass in the cave, and what a long lasting impact he had left on her life from one encounter. He could only hope that this girl wouldn’t be as affected, that she’d chalk it up to some weird glitch with her powers that will blow over in a few days. Either way, he was already dreading the time that he’d have to do this again.

#wickedswriting #luci in the stars #thenavysealkie #Thank you Addie #Charging Station

[youre-only-gay-once]

hi sorry in your public transport post by "bus station" do you mean a bus stop? I'm not american but idk why you'd need a whole station?

Bus stop is technically the name of it, but that location is more of an station since the buses there are only long distance and not city transport. In 2020 they actually replaced the city bus system in wilson with a on demand micro-transit fleet so there really aren't bus stops at all right now. These articles talk about it and honestly it seems like a pretty good idea, especially for more rural areas

#ask #anon

[stainedglasstruth]

TIMING: November 2022 LOCATION: Scribes Headquarters PARTIES: @phoenixleah & @stainedglasstruth SUMMARY: While at the Scribes Headquarters, Leah is surprised to run into her old friend Arden. CONTENT WARNINGS: Mentions of parental death

Most people that knew Leah knew that she was always writing things down.  It was a habit she’d picked up from her grandfather, one that had lent itself to their respective scribe notebooks long before they made it into the official journals over at Scribe HQ.  Any time she even suspected something supernatural, Leah’s notebook was out, jotting observations and studying her surroundings.  She would never admit it was too much writing; the thought wouldn’t even cross her mind, at least not until she forced herself to spend hours in the headquarters, categorizing pages and pages of scribbles; figuring out which notes fit where, or if her observations matched those before her.  It was fascinating work, but with a high volume of notes, it was time consuming.  

That day she had been integrating her notes for a particularly long time, which is why she didn’t look up right away when someone was introducing a newcomer to their group.  It wasn’t until she heard a name that her head shot up.  “Arden?” she called, standing up from her table.  She couldn’t believe it.  One of her good friends from high school, someone she hadn’t seen in years, was here in person in Scribe HQ!  She leaned forward to get a better look, her grin widening.  “Is that you?  How long have you been back in town?  And what are you doing…here?”  The questions were pouring out of her almost as fast as the excitement was, and by the time she finished talking, she and Arden were face to face.

–

To say that Arden was anxious would have been a bit of an understatement. She hid it well– she always had– and after several years spent working in her field of study she had become even more skilled at putting up a facade. Still, she wasn’t sure how well she was masking her emotions at that moment. 

After about six years away, she had finally returned to Wicked’s Rest only a few days ago. She’d spent most of that time dealing with all the logistics of moving into a new place from out of state, unpacking, and getting Hobbes settled. She had also met her boss and gotten a tour of the Something Wicked offices. What she had not done during that time, however, was see her mother. 

If she were to be honest with herself, she had been putting it off. But that truth made her feel sick to her stomach with guilt and shame, and honesty was a virtue that both Arden and her mother had a tenuous relationship with anyway. So, she tried her best to ignore the thoughts of how she was a terrible daughter and a terrible human being in general, steeled herself, and headed down to the Scribe Headquarters. She could have waited for a time she was sure her mother would be at home, but she needed to stop by there to let them know she was back in town anyway. Or something. She wasn’t entirely sure about the protocol vis-à-vis moving away and coming back.

Thankfully, whatever protocol there was tended to be much more lax with legacy members like her, not to mention having someone working at the paper to keep the public from learning the truth and stay informed on what was going on in town was pretty beneficial to the organization. So, after a chat with one of the stewards, she was led into the main area, where she was hit with the familiar smell of old paper. 

She took a deep breath, the smell transporting her back to countless days spent curled up in a corner pouring over tome after tome. Of all the things she had missed after leaving town, the Scribes archive was at the top. She was an awful daughter.

Speaking of, she had begun to glance around nervously as the steward introduced her when she heard her name. Arden looked over to find a woman standing up from her seat. A rather familiar looking woman who was coming toward her. 

“Leah?” she asked, surprised but delighted to see the other. “Oh my god, hi!” She grinned, pulling the woman into a quick hug. “I just got back a few days ago, I wanted to see if my mom was here.” 

Leah’s words had taken a moment to fully sink in, but Arden paused as they did. “Wait, what are you doing here? You’re a Scribe?”

–

Leah wasn’t going to stop herself from giving Arden a hug, so she was pleased and filled with glee when her friend pulled into one of her own, squeezing tight before pulling away quickly.  She held Arden at arms length grinning as she looked her over.  “God, it’s been ages!”, she said, pulling her into another hug for good measure.  As she pulled back for a second time, she tried to read Arden’s face- unable to pick up a specific emotion there.  She couldn’t remember if it was Arden or another of her friends who had had an iffy relationship with their mother, and she thought it was far too early into their reunion to pry.  At least on relationship statuses.  “Any luck there?”, she queried, hopeful that it might give her at least some insight.

She chuckled, leaning back a little bit and held her arms out with a shrug.  “I was invited a few years ago, after… I don’t know if you remember all those notes I used to take, back in high school?”  She pulled a small notepad out of her pocket for good measure, waving it a bit before putting it back as she continued to explain.  “A habit I picked up from my grandfather, I suppose, but the notes I was taking were way less to do with people watching than I let everyone assume.  Much more supernatural watching.”  

“But what about you”, Leah started, intrigued.  “Were you involved with the Scribes before you left?”

–

A surge of warmth flooded her chest as Arden let herself be pulled into another hug. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been hugged. Since her ex maybe? And that had been a short relationship. She quashed down the ache of disappointment and longing when Leah pulled back once again. 

Shaking her head, she brought herself back to the moment– standing in front of an old friend in the middle of the secret headquarters of her secret society. An old friend she hadn’t spoken to in years and had actively pushed away, along with anyone else she had been remotely close to, before ultimately leaving town. She’d been so caught up in the moment, she had momentarily forgotten herself. And yet, Leah still seemed happy to see her, was hugging her and asking her about her mother. 

Swallowing down another wave of emotions that had amassed in her throat, Arden gave her a faint smile. “Seems like I should’ve checked the house first. I know the organization is happy to see me, at least. Especially now that I’m a useful asset and not just a mess of a teenager ransacking their archives.” 

She blinked at the woman’s explanation, head tilting to the side. “No shit?” Now that she mentioned it, she did recall Leah’s note-taking habits, but she had just assumed the girl was writing things she noticed about the people around her. She figured the other had been teaching herself to read people better or practice her writing skills or something, but, no, apparently all that time, she’d been taking note of the abnormal aspects of their town. 

“So, wait, you knew about all of this back then? Or did you figure it out through the people watching? Was it something you found out about because of your grandfather?” The questions seeped out of her, her mind whirring with this new information. Could she have been discussing the supernatural with Leah this whole time? Could she have had a friend to confide in with all the bullshit secrets that she had struggled to keep to herself? The entire time???

She realized she was throwing a lot at Leah, though. “Sorry, I know that’s a lot of questions, I just had no idea you were aware of any of this. But, I imagine you’re probably feeling the same,” she added at the other’s question. “Yeah, I was… sort of.” Arden shrugged. “My parents were– or I guess are?– members. They were doing research on all of the-” She waved her hand, searching for a way to say it that wasn’t ‘supernatural bullshit.’ “-odd creatures here in Wicked’s Rest. I never got all the specifics, though I know my dad was slightly more into the field work aspect– he was a biologist, he loved plants and animals and all that– while my mom was, or is, I suppose, more into math/lab work kind of stuff. Not that I found out about any of this or even knew about the supernatural until after my dad died.” 

She ran a hand through her hair, pushing it to one side, before realizing what she was doing and shoved her hands in the pockets of her pants. Stupid anxious habits. “I got legacied into the club, and basically lived in the library for a while,” she grinned. “Kept everyone up to date on whatever weird shit was going on at UMWR while I was doing the student paper.”

–

Leah wasn’t sure if it was their time apart or if Arden presented herself differently as an adult, but there were waves of emotion playing on her friend’s face that Leah couldn’t quite place.  She wished she could freeze time or jot down a note to come back later; an effective way to study the supernatural, but maybe not the most polite way to go about figuring out what your friend was feeling.  For the time being, she decided to chalk it up to a mix of nerves and emotion about being back in Wicked’s Rest.  If they were teenagers before Arden closed herself off, Leah would have pressed, but she was worried about the fragility of the situation, and so instead she did her best to keep her own expression neutral.  “God, I would have destroyed this place as a teenager”, she exclaimed, thinking back to her excitement when she first came.  “I almost did on my first visit, honestly”.

Arden had presented Leah with a sort of ‘chicken or the egg question’, and she hesitated before answering.  What came first?  Her knowledge of her own status as supernatural, or her hyperfixation on the subject altogether?  She wasn’t sure she could answer, because either possibility was entirely true.  Abuelo, her role model, with all his quirks and oddness, had lit her up with the flame and joys of research, so clearly she was interested, right?  Or, was she interested solely because learning more about the supernatural opened the door to learning more about herself?   She didn’t know.  She didn’t know if she cared to know, either.  

But Arden gave her an out with her follow-up question, and she jumped on it.  “Before I was adopted, most of my family assumed my grandfather was off his rocker, but for some reason his bedtime stories were more fascinating than anyone else’s to me, and the obsession just sort of… stuck.  But I saw how much he was ridiculed about it, you know?  So I sort of kept that knowledge to myself, mostly.  He had been keeping some journals of his own, just based on his own observations, which is where I picked up the habit myself”, she explained, a wistful grin playing on her lips.  It wasn’t a lie, but there was a flicker of guilt playing in her belly at the omission of her being a siren and a phoenix- the one fact that had convinced her family her grandfather hadn’t been crazy after all.  

“No kidding!” she said, trying her best to picture what her parents looked like.  She remembered the devastation when Arden’s father had passed, never quite knowing the truth behind his mysterious death.  But at the time, it felt like so many other deaths in Wicked’s Rest- quick, mysterious, and rapidly forgotten about.  If he was a scribe, maybe there was an explanation for his death after all.  

“That is so cool”, she said earnestly, wondering what the odds were of them both ending up there.  Suddenly, she realized something from earlier.  “So that’s why you thought you’d find your mom here, I understand!  Does she… not know you’re back?”

–

“Oh, trust me, I know. I did destroy it,” Arden laughed. “There was one librarian– archivist?– who got so sick of me because I just wanted to read everything, so I’d end up pulling out huge stacks of books whenever I came in, and I’d take up a whole table just surrounding myself in books while I took notes.” She shook her head, smiling at the memory. “What an absolute menace.”

Leah did seem a little overwhelmed by the barrage of questions. There was something in her expression that made Arden feel like she shouldn’t have asked, though her response was sweet. It was clear how much Leah had cared for her grandfather. It made her think of her father.  He had loved to talk about fantasy and cryptids, had grown up regaling her with stories of magic and adventure. She just hadn’t realized at the time that he had actually believed, had known that a lot of it was real. She’d never given it a lot of thought, the research he had been working on. It was something her mother hadn’t elaborated on, and she had been too caught up in grief and her thirst for knowledge. Maybe he had notebooks of his own? He must have… 

She pressed pause of that line of thought, looking to her friend with a smile. “I feel like your grandpa and my dad would’ve gotten along really well. That must’ve been so fascinating and exciting to discover.” It was sad to hear that he had been ridiculed. It made sense that Leah would’ve learned to keep everything a secret; it did still make her feel just a little insane to talk about the supernatural, and she had known the truth for over a decade now. 

It had always been endearing to see Leah get excited about nerdy things, even more so because they had similar tastes, so she usually mirrored her enthusiasm, just less outwardly. It reminded her of old times, made her wonder if she should broach the topic of how she had left things. Eventually, she would have to– she felt too guilty not to. She needed to apologize, she just didn’t want to make things weird between them. Not right now, when it felt so good to be speaking again. 

Arden knew she was scared, she was always scared. Scared to talk about it, scared Leah would be angry or hurt or disappointed in her, scared to potentially lose her again before they could even have the opportunity to rekindle a friendship. And, god, that idea scared her, too. Friendship. She was terrified of letting anyone in, of hurting anyone else. She had ruined all of her relationships out of fear and grief, and she had had to live with her guilt and shame and misery for years. At this point, she wasn’t even sure she could let herself be entirely vulnerable with anyone, but a small part of her begged for her to try. It whispered in the back of her mind, told her things could be different, especially now that Leah knew. There wouldn’t have to be secrets anymore, she didn’t have to be alone anymore.

She opened her mouth, not sure what she was going to say, when Leah spoke. 

Does she… not know you’re back? 

Ah, shit, right. Her mom. Arden grimaced. “Not exactly, no.” She felt incredibly guilty admitting to it. She was a terrible daughter. “I figured it’d just be easier to tell her once I got here.” The last thing she had wanted was her mother trying to get involved, being judgy and questioning her choices at every step of the process. She could get passive-aggressive about the fact that she hadn’t been informed, but all the important shit was already taken care of. Arden had a job and a place to live, and she had taken care of the move, it was done. 

–

“That sounds endearing, not annoying”, Leah quipped with a grin, relating to Arden’s experience even more than she realized she would.  “Maybe that archivist had a misplaced distrust of passion.”  Her own first days in the Library felt like a whirlwind; like it had been both just the day before and decades ago at the same time.  “I would spend whole days in here, thinking only a few hours passed.  It was wild- but now I sort of miss when it all felt new, you know?  Well… as new as a bunch of dusty books can feel, anyway”.

The thought that their families could have been good friends sent a surge of warmth through Leah.  “Hey, there’s always a chance they knew each other, somehow.  It’s a small town- and we’re proof that nerds tend to gravitate toward each other.  Like weird nerd magnets. “ 

At her question, a blanket of guilt washed over Arden’s features, gentle and longing and incredibly sad.  It was odd, sure, that she had come back without notifying her mother but Leah knew there was so much she wasn’t aware of.  And hell, most days in Wicked’s Rest, Leah had seen things twice as odd before breakfast.  It wasn’t her job to pass judgment on a family situation, all though the gossip in her was dying to know more details and dig.  Perhaps in due time she would feel more comfortable doing just as much, but for then, Leah pressed her lips together gently.  “You’re probably right.  She’ll be thrilled to see you either way, I bet.  Most people love surprises!”

Inwardly, Leah chided herself, wondering if she had spoiled it and made their interaction awkward.  She sighed, looking down at her shoes and back up toward Arden.  “Do you think maybe she could wait a little longer?  I’m just about ready for lunch-  and I’ve been desperate for a lunch buddy these days.  I could show you everything around town that’s changed, if you’d like?”

_

She laughed at the other coming to the defense of her dorky 15 year old self. “He was just a grump.” She couldn’t help but smile as Leah basically described a feeling she was all too familiar. The thought of her sitting in the archives, pouring over the same books Arden had years earlier, made something bittersweet bloom in her chest. “I definitely get that feeling.” It had been so exciting and invigorating, learning so much back then. She wished it hadn’t been so intrinsically linked to one of the worst periods of her life. It had certainly helped get her through that time, but she hadn’t been able to fully enjoy anything back then. 

Weird nerd magnets also got a laugh out of her. “Yeah, maybe they did.” She hoped they did. 

She had been caught off guard by Leah asking about her mom, and hadn’t exactly tempered her reaction, but she doubted it would’ve helped even if she had. Leah had always been an observant person, good at reading people. It was clear from her expression that she was curious– that was something they had always shared, that hunger for knowledge– but Arden was grateful that she was willing to drop it. “Yeah,” she smiled, hoping she sounded convincing. Her mother had never been a fan of surprises. 

At Leah’s invitation, she did perk up. The fact that she wanted to get lunch with her and show her around had a wave of emotions crashing against her chest. Since making the decision to move, Arden had been going back and forth, wondering whether it was a good idea or if she would just regret it all in the end. There was a reason she had left after all, this town had taken a lot from her. Not everything, though. 

Maybe this time things could be different. She would make sure that things would be different, and she would repair the bridges she had tried to burn on her way out. 

Arden smiled at her old friend, a warm feeling in her chest. “Yeah, that sounds really nice.”

#parental death tw #phoenixleah #wr leah #writing #wickedswriting #collab