#really just wanted to go ham drawing flowers

[citrispace]

Sunflower season 🌻

#digital art #sunflower #sunflowers #really just wanted to go ham drawing flowers #sunflowers are my favorite and it is the perfect time of year for it #so sunflowers!

[canmom]

The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere: 013-032

Previously: 000-012, spinoff post about entropy [all Flower posts]

Time for more flower...

...no, not that flower!

Unless...?

Welcome back to my liveblog of sorts for web novel The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere by @lurinatftbn! Shout out to the Flower discord for giving me such a kind welcome. You're making me want to go all out on this liveblog, but, I musn't...! So I'm going to try to just comment on things that jumped out as especially noteworthy rather than write down everything that went down.

Especially since... a lot happened in these chapters. We have a perfect androgyne tree thing! Magical duels! Questionable student/teacher relationships! Steamed hams! Intense political arguments at dinner! Metafictional assurance of fair play! Prosognostic events! Transgender AIs! And of course........

a murder!!!!!

...ok that one was kinda obvious. But the first body has hit the floor! I don't feel like I have nearly enough information yet to start speculating about who might have dunnit.

That's a lie. It was definitely Kinzo Ushiromiya. That bastard.

So, from the top!

We're introduced to a few of the members of the Order, with by far the most screen time going to Su's mentor and ah, kinda-girlfriend? Neferuaten. And like, damn, lot going on there!

Before I get into the meat of that - first the bit where I search a character's name on Wikipedia. Neferuaten's name is most likely a reference to an Egyptian female king/pharaoh (a rank that's apparently distinct, conceptually, from a queen) variously called Ankhkheperure-Merit-Neferkheperure, Waenre, and Aten Neferneferuaten. Most often shortened to just Neferneferuaten.

Her exact historical identity seems to be a little unclear - she may or may not be the same person as Nefertiti for example. Whoever she was, she apparently reigned for a couple of years around 1334–1332 BCE, and was then succeeded by the famous child king Tutankhamun. Or maybe Smenkhkare came in between them? Seems to be a matter of some debate. Girl really needed to leave a few more vast and trunkless legs of stone so we can figure this stuff out.

In any case, this version of Neferuaten goes way back with Su. Her introduction is to launch a magical attack on our poor girl while she's contemplating the 'everblossom'. One of those classic 'master surprise attacks the student to see how much they've learned' deals. This servers as a fine exposition for the exact mechanics of magical duels.

Zettai! Ummei! Mokushiroku!

Let's briefly note how magical duels and magic works here, since it seems like it will be very relevant later.

The more we learn about magic, the more explicit is that this system is not some natural property of the universe, but something that's designed by the mysterious Ironworkers. It seems like it's kind of an API to the Ironworker admin console. The Ironworkers wanted to make it difficult to do magic on human bodies, and therefore they designed a system for detecting what is 'human', based on three heuristics - anatomical, motion and neurological.

Humans, being the freaky little hackers that we are, of course set about figuring out how to bypass this system, and created standardised means, consisting of three spells, termed [x]-beguiling arcana. In a sense the three criteria are something like three 'hitpoints': the primary way to win a duel is to get all three spells off, thus making your opponent vulnerable to magic.

To achieve this, you can either speak the words of a spell or sign them by drawing them with your fingers - i.e. one way or the other express the appropriate string of symbols. This is risky because if you're interrupted at the wrong time, your spell can backfire and blow up, and getting a spell right requires precise pronunciation and also rapid mental maths. So the general 'gameplay' of magical duels involves attempting to disrupt the opponent's focus and aim, while fast-casting the spells that are most familiar to you.

We're introduced to a few spells that could be useful in battle, such as

Matter-Shifting (telekinesis spell with a geometric bent, used to move a cube of dirt to act as a smokescreen),

Matter-Annihilating (deletes stuff),

Entropy-Denying (essentially a shield that freezes objects and fluids in relative motion),

Air-Thrusting (creates a shockwave air blast),

Light-Warping (fucks up the light for visual cover),

World-Deafening (mutes all sound, which can interrupt casts)

Entropy-Accelerating (disrupts coherency, causing rapid aging-like effects - can be used on a 'higher plane' to disrupt all magic in an area)

Entropy-Reversing (rewinds matter along its path of motion - reference to entropy here seems a tad dubious but w/e)

It's clearly a pretty carefully thought out system - I appreciate that it's approached from the point of view of someone trying to exploit the shit out of the system and figure out what the real meta would be. It does kinda seem like if you got the drop on a wizard and shot them with a sniper rifle they'd be toast, but we'll see later that much more powerful weapons than mere chemical firearms exist in this world, and presumably in a combat situation everyone would have entropy-denying (or equivalent) shields up, so maybe that's a moot point.

Anyway, we are later informed by the closest thing to authorial voice that everything we're told here about magic can be assumed to be axiomatically true, similar to the red text in Umineko. Which pretty heavily foreshadows that this is going to be on the test, if you like!

the magical metaphysics

With apologies to Neferuaten, who will get more detailed comments shortly, there are some other big revelations about magic and the nature of this world that I should talk about while we're on the subject of magic!

In the last post I wondered whether casting magic is an innate quality or a 'skill issue' situation. It turns out the answer is sorta 'neither'. In fact, it's something that has to be unlocked, using special equipment and a particular ritual. The cost of this ritual is not yet entirely spelled out, but we definitely get an inkling. It's rather ominously implied by this exchange in chapter 22:

"We're supposed to want to save people, to make the world better. To defend a bunch of people who practically committed murder--" "You're a murderer too, dour girl." I stopped, and blinked. It took me some moments to process the words. They'd come from Lilith, who now seemed to have finished with her dessert. Now she was just slowly swirling her spoon around in the last remnants of the chocolate sludge on the plate and, occasionally, dipping a finger into her cream bowl and licking little bits of it up. Her expression was irritated, but disconnected. "All arcanists are," she said. "It's how it happens. So having fights over moral high ground like this is very stupid and annoying. Please stop."

In the same chapter, Su uses something called an 'acclimation log', in which she records her 'association' with a series of diary entries from her childhood self. It all suggests that Su's present consciousness has somehow taken over the body of another character, who we could maybe call original!Su.

A few chapters later, we find out what's the deal with prosognostic events. In fact we get a pretty extensive exposition. It turns out that iron is magical in this universe, providing access to higher dimensions, FTL and all sorts of shit. However, because the Mimikos and other worlds are running on a 'substrate' of iron - sort of like a simulation - we are told this is why they can't recursively include iron within. And since the human body includes a certain amount of iron (most notably, in the haemoglobin protein in red blood cells), it is not possible to fully realise the human body inside these artificial worlds.

a self-referential quibble

Here's how Su puts it:

A substrate cannot exist within itself. That sounds awkward when I put it so directly, but it's not too hard to understand if you think about it in abstract-- A foundation obviously can't support another foundation of equal weight and nature, because… Well, it would make nonsense of the whole premise. A book is a device for storing information, but it cannot contain within its letters everything about itself and what it contains, because that is already more than it contains. A box cannot hold another box of equal size, unless it is bent or otherwise changed. A mind cannot hold another mind…

On the face of it, this seems on the face of it... not entirely true, at least in some domains? You can run a virtual machine program on a computer, representing any particular combination of hardware and software, which is from the perspective of software 'on the inside', essentially indistinguishable from a computer running on 'bare metal' hardware. The only real difference is that operating the virtual machine has some computational overhead, so it will be slower. The more virtual machines you nest, the slower it gets.

But 'from the inside', the only way to tell which layer of virtual machine you're on would be to refer to some kind of external clock signal (which can trivially be spoofed) and notice that it's running slower than it should!

We could also mention here the subject of quines, which are programs which print their own source code.

Let's consider Su's examples. The book that completely describes its contents might be able to get around this problem in a similar fashion to a quine, by exploiting redundancy and self-reference.

For example, let's try creating a string that completely describes its own content, using a quine-style technique.

This string begins with a sentence followed by its quotation, and then 100 letter ws; the sentence is: "This string begins with a sentence followed by its quotation, and then 100 letter ws; the sentence is: " wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

In fact the '100 letter ws' could literally be the entire string that follows. Suppose the length of the 'real content' of the book is S, and the length of the rest of the 'metadata sentence' describing properties of the book is M; then the total length of the book is 2M+3S.

You can add as much additional information to the 'metadata' string as you like, provided you quote it again afterwards. If you don't like having a book be three times the length it needs to be, you could compress the 'real content' string using an algorithm like DEFLATE, and include instructions in the 'metadata' on how to decompress it. (Text tends to compress really well.) This is where we run up into notions probably all too familiar to rats, or indeed anyone who recently read Seth Dickinson's new novel Exordia, such as Kolmogorov complexity.

But... I think this might well be intentional. Given how common notions like 'stacks of simulations' and 'self-reference' are in rat space, I suspect we may be being misled! The 'rules' of the game - more on that in a moment - say that Su won't deliberately lie to us, and won't withold information without saying so, but her perceptions could be mistaken. Maybe she's been given a false explanation of why the world works the way it does.

It's also totally possible that while the general point (you can't contain a thing in itself) may have some edge cases, the specific instance - you can't build a universe on a giant higher-dimensional iron spike and still have that universe contain iron - may still be true. We don't know the first thing about building universes using magic iron after all.

anyway... the Deal with Prosognisia!

The Ironworkers had a hacky workaround to the 'no iron' rule: they had a few tens of thousands of preserved human bodies on board their Tower of Asphodel. Asphodel, incidentally, is a genus of flower, said to carpet the Asphodel Meadows, one of the three divisions of the realm of Hades. (In their game, Supergiant decided to convert it into a lava zone.) It looks rather pretty actually!

So, they were able to instantiate these bodies in their rebuilt worlds by sort of making them into a reference to one of these stored human bodies. Here's Su again, chapter 26:

Some human bodies, or at least the impression of them and the iron within, had been preserved as part of the Tower, frozen in a timeless place. And because of that, it was eventually discovered it was possible for them to exist in the artificed planes as a sort of stable paradox. After all, while a book can't exist within itself, it can still reference other stuff it does contain internally, even if it makes for somewhat awkward reading. A few tweaks and workarounds solved the problem of the iron associated with that human body staying a part of it, and just like that, human beings were walking something at least akin to the earth once again. However, this only permitted replicas of those bodies within the Tower to exist. The creation of new ones remained impossible, and births not incubated by anima taken by the same mechanism would inevitably fail. And there were far fewer preserved bodies than minds; scarcely more than ten thousand or so for each party.

So every human born in the Mimikos is forked from one of these human bodies. For... mysterious reasons, if you recognise that someone nearby is forked from the same body as you, you both straight up die. If you touch such a person (a 'contact paradox') it's even worse, and all the iron in your body disappears, leaving behind a 'greenish sludge', which seems to be a severe enough disaster to cause deaths of nearby people as well.

(This is a little surprising given that the iron in the human body is only about 60 parts per million by mass, but it would kinda destroy your blood's ability to carry oxygen, so it would definitely be pretty fatal.)

The 'distinction treatment' we heard about is able to mitigate the risks somewhat - with quick medical intervention and time magic, it's possible to allow the people involved to make a full recovery. An interesting wrinkle is that it's implied either Ophelia or new character Balthazar is trans, because normally people of the same gender can't share an upstream body.

That definitely leads to a very fascinating fucked up medical emergency scene, but the reason I'm discussing it now is because it's got bearing on this big-deal question of 'what's so fucked up about arcanists anyway'...

so what's so fucked up about arcanists anyway?

Having finally answered one of the major questions, we can start zeroing in on another. In a flashback scene in chapter 30, we learn that the 'original' bodies have innate access to the magic API, but when you're given a distinct identity at birth you quickly lose it. To have your sv_cheats 1 restored, you have to go through a process that, it would seem, downloads a new mind into your head from one of those original bodies...

The man sat back a little in his chair, crossing his legs idly. "It's intimidating in concept, but please do understand that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, there are no observable effects whatsoever. Around half of the individuals who go through it don't even lose consciousness, and of the other, four out of five don't report any abnormalities when they reawaken. And even of the remaining 10%, the symptoms are negligible for nine out of ten-- Fleeting false memories, minor alterations in temperament that self correct, usually in under a day..." "And the others?" I inquired. "The remaining one percent." He considered this question for a few moments, obviously choosing his words carefully. "The technical term for the rare cases where confusion persists in the longer term is pneumaic assimilation failure. We have a program for treatment, using a combination of various phychological and medical means. It's time-tested. It brings people back to themselves quickly, usually within only only a few months at most." 'Confusion.' 'Brings people back to themselves.' I wasn't feeling fond of the way he couched everything in euphemism. It wasn't helping. "What do you mean by 'it brings people back to themselves'..?" I furrowed my brow. "They just... Forget everything?" "Not immediately," he said. "But they lose a sense of association with... Well, with anything that shouldn't be there, and that leads those memories and feelings to fade over time." He smiled. "The human mind is very adept at excising anything it judges to be out of place. All it needs is a push in the right direction."

The new mind tends to rapidly adjust to its new context, connecting to the memories stored in the body and assuming continuity of identity. But in rare cases it fails! Nuts! And we can infer poor Su appears to be one such case.

Presumably this is what Lilith is referring to when she says that all arcanists are murderers. It's not clear if there is continuity of consciousness when you get /mode +o'd - since you (usually) inherit the memories it is perhaps hard to say whether such a thing is meaningful.

In any case, Su's mega-guilt complex, the reason she seems to want to visit the mysterious egomancer Samium, seems to be at least partly that she's evicted the previous consciousness to inhabit this body. I don't think that's the whole story though! Her grandad seems to be involved somehow too. I don't think Su is literally the reincarnation of her grandad, because it seems unlikely that he'd be motivated to carry out ego suicide like this.

introducing teacher mommy

All those major revelations aside, let's get back to the subject of Neferuaten, aka 'Grandmaster', Su's old mentor in entropic thanatomancy. She quickly establishes herself as one of the most likeable of the inner circle of the Order - she's funny, understanding, generally affable and a little self-effacing. Su definitely puts her on a massive pedestal - though other characters such as Ran find her a little more sussy.

I gotta say, the author is really good at writing old academics. Each one of them comes across as strongly believable, distinctive, motivated and flawed characters. I'll talk a bit about the others in a bit but first let's talk age gap yuri! lmao

Anyway, at the end of chapter 20 we get this:

Then she leaned over and, in an impulsive, almost casual gesture, kissed me on the lips. Before turning, heading to the exit.

'Huh!' thinks the reader. 'That sure is an unusual thing for someone's teacher to do.'

It is quite a few chapters later before Su gets round to telling us a bit more about what's going on...

After that, we met outside of the university more and more often, her becoming sort of a source of emotional support. At some point, I became aware that what was happening was probably quite inappropriate. It's not like I was underage, having turned 25 two years prior, but she was my professor. But I'd been bad at making friends in both of... Well, in both my past contexts, and I'd felt so lonely living in Tem-Aphat, away from Ran and any reminders of the resolutions we'd made. And it all somehow felt so natural. Things got out of hand. One day, I'd had a fight with my father over the logic bridge, and had got a little drunk when I was due to see her. I don't know exactly what I was thinking, but I did something uncharacteristic of me. Inappropriate. But she didn't respond in the way I'd expected. To my shock, she didn't act like it was inappropriate at all. It wasn't as if we ended up dating. That would never have worked, and I was pretty sure she was past wanting that sort of thing anyway. On some levels, she always kept her distance. But it became something we did together, an avenue of private expression that became part of her support for me - and mine, eventually for her.

Su then expresses a bunch of guilt over the whole thing. (Not least because it's a 'selfish' thing she's doing in a body that, implicitly, she doesn't think of as hers.)

The issue of age here is interesting lol. Definitely my gut reaction, and probably the one the story is aiming to elicit, is to be a bit 'wuh oh' by all this, maybe think of Makima wrapping Denji round her finger. That said, by vastly expanding the range of human ages, it's definitely poking pretty hard at our intuitions about what's 'appropriate'. The vibes are like... the students are constantly referred to as 'the kids' by the hundreds-year-old wizards. I don't think we're told Su's current age, but if she was 27 in this flashback, and in the present she says a 29 year old computer is close in age to her, so I would guess currently early 30s. Neferuaten's age is not stated at this point but given her position she's def a few hundred years up there.

The vibe though is that Su is infatuated with someone who has vastly more emotional maturity and experience of the world, not to mention social power over her, and that person is all too happy to encourage it.

The way Su tells it, it sounds like this fling went pretty ok for them? But I definitely feel like things are probably not gonna stay ok, given how clearly the 'inappropriate' nature of this relationship has been foregrounded!

Dark yuri is literally one of the things I'm here for, so I'm looking forward to the fireworks lmao.

Anyway, besides that, we get a bit of a sense of Neferuaten's ideology. She actually shares a lot of Su's skepticism about the viability of the whole immortality project. She makes a big point of making sure the gang get a sense of the order's culture and rituals, apparently viewing this as a chance for their project to be judged by outsiders for the first time. On a personal level, she raises the issue of if the project might be able to save only the young - whether they might be the last humans to not become immortal. Nef's attitude seems to be that she'd be good with that - something she clashes with Kam over.

Otherwise, she's kinda... world-weary, I suppose you could say. She seems to look at the firey youngsters with an attitude along the lines of 'wish I still had that'. She does love to perform to an audience, asking leading questions to set up some lesson or another.

She's a fun character, I enjoy reading her a lot.

Also she seems to have made a sapient AI in the basement! Only everyone says it's definitely not sapient - it is in some sense not agentic, it can't change its motivation, allegedly. Still, it definitely has a 'passing the Turing test' sorta vibe.

don't mention the war

Besides Nef, we get introduced to a few of the remaining members of the class, and also the masters of the Order. Of note is Bardiya, the former revolutionary. He's a very 'speak his mind without preamble' sort of character, which can land him in hot water.

So, returning to Chapter 22, we have a really juicy scene in which a dinner conversation gets very heated after Bardiya mentions his role in the war, provoking a political row with Durvasa, a member of the order. It's a really well observed social dynamics scene - the characters dancing around the topic and the way a row is almost avoided, and then it isn't - Bard's determination, Kam's brown-nosing, Su getting drawn in against her better judgement in a deeply relatable way.

Thanks to this convo, we get a sense of the events of the revolution! So, as @nightpool helpfully informed me, I actually got things a bit mixed up in my rough timeline last time. The 'gerontocrats' were not a feature of the distant-past imperial era - rather it's a figure identified as an oppressor class by a very recent movement, still within living memory for even the youngsters.

The events broadly seem to reflect something like the Paris Commune. There was a famine under the hand of a 'Meritist' city council, killing thousands, which led to a popular uprising let by a 'paritist' movement. The paritists executed a handful of people and redistributed property based primarily on age, intending to break the power of the 'gerontocrats' who had neglected the 'younger generations' by hoarding resources. The Administration overseeing the whole world alliance then cracked down hard - deploying a poison gas that, though it was intended to be nonlethal, turned out to have unexpected lethal side effects.

In the aftermath of the revolution, it seems many reforms were made - besides relaxing the rules on what magic is banned, they changed the equation of scarcity so that food could be replicated more readily? Little unclear on this part. Su mentions that the situation is different now than it was when the Alliance was built, with the material scarcity mostly gone, but clearly there was a famine in recent memory.

Anyway, there is naturally a big generational divide over this. The older generations lived through some pretty fucked-up sounding wars, called things like the 'Great Interplanar War', and in the aftermath built a political system that was supposed to secure peace. (c.f. League of Nations, UN). Although she broadly sympathises with the revolutionaries, Su seems to extends the older generation a fair bit of understanding for having built this system and fearing what would happen if it were destroyed. Though the most relativist view comes from the mouth of Neferuaten:

"I think a common problem with inter-generational communication is an inability to really convey context and scope," Neferuaten said. I noted she didn't actually convey if Kam's understanding of what her point had been was correct or not. "Someone who lived through the Interluminary Strife might tell a young person from the modern day that they have no understanding of hunger, only for the latter to stubbornly retort that they lived through that Ikaryonic famine that preluded the civil dispute… Except that one was a catastrophe that lasted decades and killed tens of millions, while the other slew less than a thousand." She sighed. "People try to relate the experiences of others to their own lives in order to contextualize their understanding of the world and how it might be bettered, but those second-hand experiences inevitably become caricatures, conveying no useful truths. It makes me wonder if human beings, both young and old, are capable of learning from history at all."

Around here is raised the question of a person's political development - the arc from a young person's anger at the state of the world and determination to tear it aside for something better, against the resignation of an older person who fears losing what is already there, however flawed. (We might note of course that there exist young conservatives and old radicals. Circumstances have a lot to do with it.)

Of course, with this whole 'gerontocrat' business at stake already, the mission of the Order hoping to achieve immortality is naturally cast in a dubious light. Fun conflict. On the one hand we have 'can immortality be achieved, and what will it cost', on the other 'who will benefit from it, if it is'! So much narrative force is obtained by politicising this, attaching it to characters with personal motivations and histories, instead of leaving it up to an abstract 'living forever good/bad'.

But it's not all political debates and shagging your teacher...

Over the course of these chapters we get a sense of what the order's been up to!

Let's talk flowers. Just prior to the meeting with Nef, Su comes across an enormous freaky plantlike thing. This turns out to be an experiment to create a being that can survive in even the most extreme environments, like the bottom of the ocean - an attempt to demonstrate that immortality is possible at least in principle. This lifeform is termed the Nittaimalaru or 'Everblossom'. It seems like a pretty good candidate for being the story's eponymous Flower - symbolically, the underwater immortality-granting plant that appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

It's worth noting here that 'indefinite lifespan' is actually not entirely impossible in our natural world. I was talking about this with a friend who raised some interesting points:

reading the first post i wanna bring up that while the concept of cancer is fundamental to any multicellular organism the presence of cancer as a problem is actually pretty niche. same with telomere degradation, which is a purposeful anti-cancer measurement. like pretty much all perennial plant life is capable of absolute immortality. while the lobster grows forever until it can no longer use its legs to push its great weight along the sand towards food, if a tree overshoots its growth it's more than happy to break off its unnecessaries, though with both of them at a certain point it's always good to have help after a while. as mammals we're very obsessed with the concept of like ending death as this sort of ultimate goal, prime directive, whatever, when that shit was deliberately turned on in the first place (assigning intent to evolution sue me), because in terms of cost benefit it gave us something in return that we as students of medicine or biology are still not fully grasping.

After a little more discussion:

@play-now-my-lord wrote:

even if humans weren't causing climate change, climactic fluctuations over centuries upend a lot of what is normal in specific areas. if the people on a farmstead in bronze age sweden lived 500 years, the methods and habits they internalized when they were young would habitually be incorrect for the conditions as they existed, the weather, the soil

other friend:

that's how most trees die in the end the root system operates as a weak parallel to the tree's neurons, with a more physiological bent than say our chemical one. patterns around balance, nutrient access, hydrology, and wind are ingrained and learned over centuries and the more regular/consistent that cycle is the more a root will grow. if a tree's roots are built around buttressing from a wind tunnel due to forest conditions and the trees around it fall for whatever reason, it has to relearn what used to be a hundred year old certainty that it needs to lean against the westerly gale every winter, etc. - this is generally a pretty brittle process altogether when it comes to the base of the plant n stuff

some caveats:

should be noted i overlooked a lot of nuance about perennial mortality, like, some plants are more used to investing into survival than others i'm thinking of like how beech bark disease doesn't affect the roots of the beech, so the trunk dies but new shoots continue to grow out and eventually catch the disease and repeat, so the plant is essentially still immortal but forced into a perpetual state of adolescence. but i think for a great number of trees if the tree falls it just goes "eh the rot consumes us all " and dies

Among mammals, we could also note the cancer resistance of the naked mole rat, which loves to defy all sorts of generalisations (also one of the only non-arthropod eusocial animals). They're not exactly immortal, living around 37 years on average, but their chance of dying at any given year is pretty much flat rather than increasing with age.

Of course, longevity and resilience are different things. Nef mentions the resilience of tardigrades as an inspiration. As far as their experiment goes, the 'everblossom' is not an entirely successful experiment, requiring twice-yearly maintenance to address an imbalance.

Given how prominently it features, and the invocation of Gilgamesh, it seems pretty damn likely that the everblossom will in fact be a key to immortality, or something like it.

Religion exists after all!

Other parts of the facility are also pretty funky. We learn that it was patterned after the old headquarters of the Order, which was destroyed when they got found out; that headquarters was built in an old church compound. What sort of thing does a church worship in this world? Actually it's kinda goffic as fuck. Makes Catholicism look downright tame. It's a polytheistic religion and the deities involved are figures like this...

In the center of the circle was a statue, about 8 feet high, and of the kind of ornate-but-formulaic design that characterized art from the Second Resurrection. It depicted a tall, skinny woman, though her two sides, left and right, were very different in nature. The left was beautiful and youthful in a generic, almost ethnicity-less way, dressed in the most delicate of silk peploi, with long and unrealistically tidy curls falling elegantly over her shoulders. Her lip was curled into a gentle half-smile, kind but slightly mysterious, teasing. Her right... Well, her right, to say the least, was very different. On that side, she appeared to be skinless, although it was hard to tell with a statue; I recalled it being a matter of hot debate among the boys in my class back in secondary school. It was possible she was simply incredibly emaciated, or that there were supposed to be growths - like scales - erupting from her flesh. Her hair was made up of hateful, eyeless wyrms, biting and hissing at each other, and her flesh, which was naked save for a tasteful rag covering one area in particular, was covered in numerous stab wounds, bleeding openly. As for her face, it was grim and wide eyed. Mournful and contemptful both. I recognized the figure depicted at once; I passed one of her temples whenever I went to the distribution hall to pick up groceries. This was Phui, Dying Goddess of Love Given Way To Anguish, one of the eleven deities of the now largely defunct Ysaran-Inotian Pantheon.

In the stories, Phui was the third-to-last of the gods to fall during the end of the world, who attempted to take her own life after the death of her lover. But the breaking of the heavens had left her unable to die, meaning that no matter how she much she cut into her flesh, how much she starved herself of food and drink, reprieve would never come. Only relentless, unceasing pain, and grief for that which she had lost.

Metal album cover ass-religion, I'm into it.

The mysterious Ironworkers seem to have really drummed into the population of their new Mimikos that there was a very nice world once, and they'd better be damn sad about what happened to it. However, religion has waned in the present day, and it seems most characters are atheists of some sort.

What did happen to it, anyway? It's referred to as 'the collapse' with a lowercase c; I noticed an author's comment where the author says it's not a case of just a name for the apocalypse. A few people in the comments started speculating about false vacuum collapse. This is a physics thing. Basically, a remote possibility exists in the standard model of particle physics that the existence of matter in our universe could be in a kind of local energy minimum, but it would be possible for it to locally fall into a true minimum, creating a kind of bubble that expands at the speed of light and just deletes everything. We're pretty sure that isn't true though. If it did happen we literally would not be able to do anything... at least in a universe without FTL.

(Curiously, Su mentions special relativity at one point. With all the funky cosmology stuff I kinda wondered if special relativity is still real, but apparently it is! Electromagnetism has been mentioned as still being a thing a couple of times now, so rather than being totally absent it seems like the physics is a bit different, with an electric shock being sufficient to cause radiation poisoning.)

The fair play interlude

In between chapters 22 and 24 we get a curious little interlude called Intermission ∞ 1. The introduction presents it as something that is happening on one of the 'higher planes', translated into terms we can understand, which is grounds for it to get metafictional.

Two entities, calling themselves the Playwright and the Director, discuss the direction of the story so far before laying out the version of fair-play mystery rules this story will be operating under. They are as follows:

THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE PROTAGONIST IS ALWAYS TRUTHFUL

ALL EVENTS FOLLOW THE RULES OF CONVENTIONAL REALITY, UNLESS INDICATED OTHERWISE

ALL SYSTEMS INTRODUCED CANNOT BREAK THEIR OWN RULES AS DEFINED WITHIN THE NARRATIVE, UNLESS INDICATED OTHERWISE

I made them red because it feels like they would be red in Umineko.

Further clarifications and caveats allow that Su can withold information (for dramatic tension or whatever I guess) but she'll always tell us when she does, and an example of 'system introduced' is the magic duel sequence: the characters know accurately how magic duels work.

The two entities are performing this story for some sort of audience, and during their double-act credit themselves with control over the direction of the scenario, sometimes disagreeing. (Another one, the chorus, enters at the end.) Probably best not to think too hard about what that implies for our characters on the 'main' level of the story being 'real', it's probably just a cute bit to take the audience aside without completely breaking the fourth wall. Then again... who knows!

What this means is that my concerns about professed liar Su being an unreliable narrator are unfounded. It's still a limited POV, so Su could fail to notice things or be deceived, but she's not trying to pull one over on us.

I bring this up because...

There's been a mordah!

So, in the last chapter I read - strictly the beginning of a new arc - we find someone dead!

Well, this was kinda foreshadowed earlier. The chef disappeared, the assistant chef was knocked out by magic, and some kinda crazy time magic happened in the pantry - with the heavy implication that someone was trapped in some kinda hyperbolic time pantry for many years. At least they'd have plenty to eat..? The characters don't pick up on the implication of the tally marks and write it off as a stasis field malfunction.

So, it was natural to suspect the cook is dead. Indeed they are: Su finds a mysterious note in the book given to her by an academic at the school as a parting gift, warning her not to trust the inner council - inexplicably written two years prior and warning her to check the archive in a certain position. Investigating this, she and Kam find a secret armoury room. In there is a tunnel, and at the bottom, the cook appears to have committed suicide, leaving a suicide note vaguely implying the Order is up to some seriously sussy shit.

Of course, Kam and Su immediately suspect foul play. But they also both have ulterior motives for coming to this conference, so they agree to keep it hush-hush. This is definitely a great idea that won't get everyone killed by Beatrice... I mean uh. Whoever the murderer is.

The obvious question is, who dunnit? And why? Unfortunately, we don't really have alibis for most of the characters. Many of the inner circle haven't even shown up on screen yet. So there's a lot of people who it might have been.

More suspects! More suspects!

I haven't even mentioned several of the characters. We also have Sacnicte, steward of the house - she's an arcanist, and Su is kinda insanely horny for her aesthetically appreciative, in a way that the other characters notice and are literally like 'I don't see it'... which makes me wonder if we have a situation where someone has fucked with her perceptions. She's very down to earth and casual.

Her name is probably a reference to the Maya princess Sac Nicté, meaning 'white flower', who according to legend was involved in the migration of the Itza people from the Chichen Itza. Mind you the article I'm getting this from is kinda horrendous; the sole source is in Spanish and appears to be some random website from 2004.

Among the older generation, we have Theo's dad, Linos. He is a generally affable chap, kinda socially awkward (he's responsible for prolonging the political discussion by a botched apology) but otherwise not particularly standing out among the Order members.

Linos or Linus is another Greek name with a few referents.

The Order member who really does stand out is Anna, or in full, Amtu-hedu-anna. She's the one who's properly old, having dodged many of the 'kills people around 500' bullets of this setting, and not especially inclined to make nice. Very 'straight to the point' kinda lady. We meet her fairly briefly - Ran seems to have landed in her good books.

This one really took some digging! It seems to be based on Enheduanna, who was a Sumerian high priestess of Nanna and the oldest named author in history, credited for tablets like The Exaltation of Inanna, although it seems there's some debate over whether she definitely wrote them. Her rank in Sumerian was Entu, and I could fully believe 'amtu hedu anna' is a different transliteration of 'Entu Hedu Anna'.

As mentioned above, we're introduced to two logic engines, Sekhmet and Eshmun, built respectively by Neferuaten and (the as yet unseen) Hamilcar. Sekhmet has more biological components and wants to be a human. She wants to be human, and she's also expressed a distinct pronoun preference and gender id, which I suppose makes her trans. Eshmun is a more traditional logic engine with a lot of cogs; Sekhmet calls him 'big brother', so I guess he gets he pronouns from that.

Sekhmet is of course named for the Egyptian lion-headed warrior/medicine goddess. Eshmun is a Phoenician god of healing. Hamilcar was a name used by a number of Carthaginians, mostly generals.

Ezekiel is another one of the student gang. We haven't seen much of him yet, so I don't have a lot to say about him. Abrahamic prophet.

Balthazar is a student from another school - another thanatomancer in fact. He's something like the protégé of Zeno, and his presence is Zeno's condition for having this whole affair go ahead. He's got the same eyes as Ophelia, and Zeno failing to do his paperwork and allowing to happen is a big deal. But Zeno's kind of a bigshot so it might not come to anything. Anyway, Su is kind of suspicious towards Balthazar, but he takes it all in good humour.

Balthazar was one of the three magi in Christian mythology. There were a few Zenos, but the best known is surely Zeno of Elea, who came up with his famous "we need to invent calculus to solve this" paradoxes around infinite sums.

Yantho is a member of the Order staff, who was cooking when whoever did shenanigans in the kitchen... did shenanigans in the kitchen. His roast was ruined, but sadly he was too unconscious to order fast food and pass it off as his cooking. He can't speak and communicates by writing on his tablet.

The name crops up as an obscure Maya deity, part of a trio of brothers with Usukun and Uyitzin, but I can't find any source that seems particularly definitive.

Samium is an old egomancer, whose presence is a secret that only Su and Ran are in on. Su wants to speak to him, for reasons that are probably to do with finding out if he can restore 'original!Su' into her body, or maybe resurrecting her grandfather, or something?

...is that everyone? I think that's everyone. At some point I probably need to make an Umineko-style character screen lol.

can we solve anything yet?

Since this chapter is the beginning of the arc, I suspect there's more info to divulge before we can think about trying to solve this one. And, given the Umineko inspo, the problem to solve probably isn't simply 'whodunnit' but something more fundamental to the nature of this world.

Still, it seems all but spelled out explicitly that current!Su failed to properly assimilate into her body after she became an arcanist. Her grandfather's final 'kindness' is less clear. Her intentions with Samium... I've mentioned the obvious theories about already. She's mega guilty about overwriting this poor girl and has decided the only course of action is to try and restore the mind that inhabited her body originally. But I don't think we have the whole picture just yet, because I still can't figure out what her granddad did.

Given her discussion of 'dragon' vs 'phoenix' resurrection, and of how her meeting with Samium might change the order, I also theorised - before I really twigged the arcanist thing - that she was here to resurrect her grandfather in her own body. Body-hopping is like, the classic immortality strat after all. But... I'm less convinced of that one now? It doesn't seem like Su particularly liked the old man, she definitely doesn't want to follow in his footsteps, and 'saw him die unexpectedly during the revolution' does not seem like it would inspire the same sort of guilt.

Still, he surely did something to her, she's definitely cryptically alluded to that enough times.

Besides that?

Obviously really digging this story! Honestly, this one rules. It helps that the author is clearly into a lot of the same shit I am. All the long discussions and beat by beat narration could potentially feel a little dry, but honestly, I'm pretty hooked, it's definitely pulling me forwards. It's a fascinating, conflict-rich setting, that raises all sorts of interesting concepts. It's confident in knowing what it wants to be. Umineko is a hell of a tough act to follow, but this one has a distinct identity of its own. Can't wait to see what happens now the mystery seems to be about to kick off for real.

With that in mind, I'm sure it won't be long until the next one of these. I may have to dial back the detail a bit, this is kinda having a bad effect on my work right now. There's just so many fascinating corners to follow up ^^'

Anyway, I realise these posts are kinda massive for tumblr, so I'm gonna start copying them over to canmom.art soon. <See you next time>.

#the flower that bloomed nowhere #tftbn #sff #novels #fiction

[chrisgates]

TIMING: September LOCATION: Wilks Mill Farm PARTIES: @honeysmokedham & @chrisgates SUMMARY: Chris thinks his interaction with the weird, bear girl is just a dream and Nora thinks the sad, werewolf man is delusional. She tries to help him out anyway. CONTENT WARNINGS: None

Today was a day of exploration. Normally Nora spent her days split between terrorizing townsfolk and hanging out in the forest. Today she was tired of those activities. She wanted to discover something new. As a bear. A Bear because it was funny when people saw a polar bear walking around town. They made faces, called 911, some of them even screamed. Nora lived for that shit. 

Nora vaguely wondered if people thought she might be an albino black bear. Her fur was all white, but her eyes were red. Wasn’t that a sign of albinism? She wasn’t sure. She never got through reading the Wikipedia article on the account of the writing being so boring. Only nerds could read wikipedia articles. Anyway, the albino black bear ended up in the farmlands of the area. It was very idyllic. Just like something out of a hallmark movie and postcard. She was going to need to come out here more often to ruin that.

The sight of a beautifully abandoned mill was what she started walking towards. She stopped walking when a pond caught her eye. She could go for a dip, Nora thought to herself, shuffling towards the water. The water looked beautifully undisturbed, and for a moment Nora thought she might like to just enjoy the moment. Staring deep within the flowing waters. She stood there for a while, thinking to herself exactly how she would draw each and every ripple of the water. She was so lost in the moment that she almost didn’t notice something. Was there someone down there looking at her? Nora blinked. It blinked. But it wasn’t her reflection blinking. Nora lifted a paw, trying to rub her eyes to see if she was making it up. She wasn’t. For some odd reason, Nora thought the face looked hungry. She could quite put her paw on it, but it was like staring at a kindred spirit. Ravenous with hunger. She was going to need to bring ham to this lake. Could she afford to waste a ham?

Through the viewfinder, a tall, thin stalk with wide ribbon-like leaves swayed lazily. Atop the organic tower sat a brilliant, blue bulb. Though it hadn’t bloomed, it was still beautiful. Sitting on one of the pairs of leaves was what looked like a ladybug, but it was... Different. The shutter clicked. It was a weird little insect without a doubt, but Chris didn’t think too deeply into it. Variations within a species happened often, maybe not to this extent, but he wasn’t worried — it and the flower photographed well. He was glad he made the decision to wander further from the safety of the Pines; the expansive farmland was beautiful even if the locals’ warnings were a bit odd. Still, he followed them to the letter — getting into trouble was not on the agenda. 

And yet trouble seemed to incessantly find him.

Just at the other end of the pond, a good distance from where Chris lay belly down among the tall wild flowers, was a bear. That would have been alarming enough given how open the field was — there really wasn’t anywhere to hide — but what made it so much worse, confusingly so, was that it looked like a polar bear. A polar bear. “What the..,” he whispered to himself and to the tiny yellow flower that lay beneath his chin. With his attention glued to the large creature, Chris tried to press himself further into the grass and blend in; he couldn’t have been luckier to have such a neutral color palette in his wardrobe. While the green was definitely a good few shades darker than the grass and the brown of his jacket didn’t seem to fit with the foliage, it was better than something loud and patterned. Maybe he could get out of this unscathed.

Chris’ heart pounded against the inside of his chest; he could hear it in his ears. How was he going to get out of this? There wasn’t anywhere to hide, there wasn’t anywhere to really run, nowhere close by. The bear would surely catch up with him if he tried to escape. It looked like he needed to lay low for now — but he couldn’t shake the rippling anxiety that crawled up his spine. Not now, he thought, please... not now.

Whatever stared back at Nora within that lake could have held her attention for eternity. The only thing that caught her attention was her own hunger being satiated. The scent of cedarwood mixed with blood and anger drifted toward her on the gentle breeze. A fear scent. A tasty little surprise snack. She took a deep breath, enjoying the meal being offered to her without question. What was there to question? She was a bear in human territory. Humans are always scared of what they don't understand. Now that her concentration on the lake’s surface was broken, the face she’d been staring at disappeared. Nora looked back for a bit, trying to determine what happened to it, but after no movement within the lake, she gave up on it. There was something more interesting to hunt down now anyhow. 

Nose to the ground, like every cartoon of hunting dogs Nora had ever seen, she began the hunt. It wasn’t that hard. The scent of fear was flowing from one singular location. However, Nora is nothing if not a true showman. She wanted to put on a show for the lone scared human hiding in the grass. Leaving humans with paralyzing questions running through their minds was pure comedy. Would they be safe laying there? Should they run? Would the bear discover them and kill them? These were all the possibilities that she knew were making their fear double in this situation. Nora made slow lazy circles around the position she knew the human to be in. She was trying to play it off as if she knew he was in the area but she couldn’t quite pinpoint it. After all, hope was a powerful drug for humans. They did stupid things like remaining still when they hoped they wouldn’t be discovered.

Each game needed to come to an end. And just like that, Nora was standing over a human male, nose pressed to the ground in front of him, eyes staring right at him. Nora stood there for a second, before lifting up her head and letting out a yodeling bear scream. That, Nora thought to herself, should be the real killer. The war cry of a bear right before the attack. She hoped he would pee himself. It was always funnier when humans peed themselves. 

This wasn’t Chris’ first run-in with a bear given his career as a nature photographer, but this was the first time he actually felt like he was in danger. Distance and a really good zoom were essential in capturing bears safely; he’d be the biggest idiot, otherwise. Even though this definitely wasn’t a fault of his own — he would always check his surroundings before disappearing behind his camera’s viewfinder — he still felt like an idiot. He wasn’t even out there for bears anyway, so the fact that he was now face to face with one really cemented his fear. 

What added to the terror of the situation was confusion. Where had the bear even come from? Wouldn’t he have seen it, considering how large and stark white its fur was. Was it a polar bear? If it was, what the hell was it doing in Maine? Did it escape from a zoo? Or was this an albino bear? The creature drew close enough that Chris could make out the flickering of red pigment in the animals’ eyes through the foliage he hid within. It could be albino, and that made a lot more sense to him, so he chose to stick with it. The assumption was safer than the idea of a polar bear loose in New England, even though he wasn’t physically safe in the slightest.

As the bear drew nearer still, clearly intent on finding whatever scent it picked up on, he had half a mind to just get up now and make a beeline for the nearest — well, for the nearest anything. Anything to get away from the sniffling and searching. Instead he sat and waited. Sat and listened. Sat and began to panic more and more as the bear continued to circle and enclose. His ears rang, his throat dried, his skin felt prickly, itchy and generally uncomfortable. It felt like a too wiry wool sweater he needed to rip off.

The moment would’ve been comical if it wasn’t paralyzing. He watched as the bear snuffled closer in a direct line that headed straight for him. He watched its large, white shoulders over the swaying tops of the grass until he could see nothing but its face in his face. This was what cartoons were made of, but Chris couldn’t appreciate the humor. He was too far inside his own head to really tell what was happening, but then he heard the roar and disappeared completely. 

The chances of getting out of this unharmed were astronomically small — they knew. 

They knew the moment they’d picked up on the bear and now they needed to protect themselves. That was the only way. So they tore through flesh and rearranged their bones, painful still but urgent, desperate. This needed to be quick. They needed to get out. Clothing ripped, giving way to fur and claws. It felt good to be out, but this bear — it would be a problem.

A defensive growl was returned in kind. A warning.

If Nora had a dime for every time someone turned into a wolf after she turned into a bear to scare them she would have two dimes. Which wasn't a lot of dimes, but it was strange that it kept happening. Nora watched as the photographer in the grass, overwhelmed with fear, shifted. It was fascinating to watch his bones distort, twisting, elongating into something new. The animal within him. Nora took notes. Was this how she looked when she turned into the bear? The cracking of the bones, the growth of the fur, the teeth jutting out and becoming sharp points. God, it was cool as fuck. As Nora watched the transformation she felt pride in what she was. It was heavy metal to force your body into a gross transformation process that left you different. And they did it often. Humans could never. They would piss themselves or scream or something. Nora wasn't sure what exactly. She had never shifted in front of a human because the people she kept shifting in front of ended up being wolves. 

A growl trickled from the wolf as the fear she'd been feasting on dissolved. Shame. Nora had been enjoying her meal, but this new oddity made up for it. Another wolf! She wondered if he would know the rich man who had broken into her crypt and stolen her sleeping bag. Nora backed away from the growling wolf, giving space and adapting to a non-threatening stance. It occurred to her that this was a fear response. People did desperate things while they were scared. The man in front of her had transformed into a wolf because he'd thought she was going to eat him. Well she was, and had been, just not in the conventional way.

Would being attacked by a wolf hurt? The bear tilted its head as it considered the question. Nora had never gotten in a fight as a bear before, so she was unsure if she would be able to keep up. She also didn't have a desire to fight. Fighting was cheap. Scaring people was the fun part. Plus, Nora considered, she didn't have health care. If she ended up at the hospital because of wolf injuries people would ask questions. Those questions would sound like "Who are you?" and "How did you get those wolf injuries?" When she didn't answer those it would lead to other things. Those things could include being turned in. Being in hiding meant a strict no-hospital rule. 

Nora was unsure what it said about her that she was willing to tussle with a wolf as long as it meant no hospital. That was a question for later Nora. Right now Nora was shifting back into a human. Hair disappearing into her flesh, flesh shifting around bones, bones shortening and stacking. Then there was Nora. Just Nora. Standing naked in an open field, hands raised up staring down a wolf. "What giant teeth you have Grandma." Nora's voice was filled with a light chatter as the loss of fur reminded her just how cold it was. "How long have you been a werewolf?" Nora had no doubt this would work. It worked with the last wolf. When this werewolf saw another human standing in front of him he'd chill down and they'd become best friends. Maybe Nora could grab him and the other werewolf she met and start a pack. That was a thing, right? Bugbears were welcome in wolfpacks, right? Probably. Nora wasn't going to question it. 

Just as quickly as the bear appeared, it vanished. That was weird. A human woman stood in its place, exposed completely. She didn’t look bothered by that fact or the snarling teeth in her face — or by anything, really. It took him completely by surprise. The wolf backed away slightly, startled; its ears fell back, though it remained on the defensive. Was this a trick? An illusion? What was she playing at? Would the bear return? Where did it even go? The wolf’s attention darted to the surrounding area, then back to the girl, then to the area again. No, there was no sign of it and there certainly wasn’t a hole to fall into…

How could a bear turn into a person? They supposed it could be the same as for them. It certainly looked the same but there was no screaming, no painful cries that danced on the cusp of animal and human as the body twisted and changed. It looked easy for her. Envy sprouted quickly, but curiosity held the reins.

Her voice came in softly, questioning. It was a far cry from the usual responses to the wolf — sounds of terror rang loudly through their recalled scattered memories. How long have you been a werewolf? The question was something they were wholly familiar with — Chris? Not so much. The nasty father knew, the hunter who tormented them knew, but he, the one they were stuck with, tethered to forever more, did not and that frustrated the wolf to no end. How stupid! He refused and refused even with the blood in his mouth, he still refused! Even now, he would refuse if the wolf pushed him out.

That could be dangerous. But this meeting already felt different — she smelled different. There was no fear there. Nothing but her question and outstretched hands. They supposed they could always come back for protection if she did indeed turn violent…

No. No! NO! No no no no no no no! Soft words were lies, they had to be. This was a trick. It had to be. They would just be drawn in and trapped again, wouldn’t they? The animal smell could be a trick, too. They couldn’t do it again, couldn’t let it happen. They didn’t want to be in a cage!! The wolf started to back away more. Its mouth was part way open, teeth still exposed, though their snarls were softer and filled with confusion. It shook its head as it did so, curious and wanting, but still fearful of what might happen.

This wasn’t the same as the encounter in the crypt. As Nora shifted back into a human, the wolf didn’t calm down. A snarl kept his lips pulled tight, eyes fixed on her as if she was a threat. Well. Nora was a threat. Nora knew she was always a threat. The biggest monster in the room. Was her bear bigger than the wolf in front of her? Nora’s eyes swept over the wolf a few times as she tried to decide. Slowly, so the wolf could see her moving slowly, Nora raised her hands up, palms facing him. That was the universal sign of I’m not a threat right? “My bad for scaring you earlier.” Nora’s voice was its normal monotone. Despite staring down a giant wolf in front of her, there wasn’t an ounce of fear licking at her emotion. Self preservation who? Nora knew without a doubt that she would be fine. 

“I thought you were a human.” Nora explained, hands still in the air. “I just learned recently, I’m a bugbear.” This was a lot of words, but Nora was proud. Nora was proud to know what she was, and proud to be part of a community. She hoped that the wolf in front of her was also proud of that community. “I feed off of fear. That’s why I was fucking with you. I thought you were a human that I could scare.” Nora got tired of holding her hands up, she let them drop back to her side. “We’re chill right? Like I said, my b on scaring you. I just thought you’d be a tasty meal. Now that I know we’re basically pack mates it won’t happen again…” Nora let the statement trail off. “Maybe.” 

It was a big ask to have her promise not to scare someone. Nora had already promised not to scare one person, she didn’t want to see her pool of people she could scare dwindling. The thought was confining. 

Nora looked down at the discarded camera in front of the wolf, then back at the wolf’s big paws. “Careful where you step.” She said while pointing down. “What are you taking pictures of out here?” Nora turned her back to the wolf, looking around at the beautiful landscape. Picturesque. Probably the kind of thing you could put on a postcard. “Can I see your photos? Did you get any good ones of me?” 

She just kept talking.

It was unusual and confusing — they didn’t know what to do. She was completely nonplussed by the situation. This had never happened before, at least not with the wolf. Chris was better received whenever people came across him after shifting, but the wolf? They either tried to kill it or they ran away and got someone else to kill it. Both were terrible options, neither of which seemed to be present with this supposed ‘bugbear’. A what? What on earth was that? They knew what they were and that was it, nothing else. They didn’t know what this ‘bugbear’ was, but if it was that white bear they’d encountered moments ago, where does the ‘bug’ part come in? It looked like a normal bear to them, albeit a different color. Better for Chris to ask all of these questions.

I feed off fear… I just thought… a tasty meal… pack mates…

What did she think they were? ‘Werewolf’; that was it. They’ve heard that term thrown around and taped to their back, but Chris kept peeling it right off. He kept ignoring it, like it didn’t happen to him - like it wasn’t happening to him. She knew what they were just by looking at them. 

She’d turned her back to them, then, her words continuing to flow. Her injury was apparent; maybe she wasn’t in much of a fighting condition? Their safety potential went up, but they were still wary. It was now or never. The pain would be excruciating if the wolf came back so soon after shifting back - unfortunately, they were Chris’ only defensive. This potential ‘pack mate’ situation and answers was worth the gamble.

Transforming from wolf to man or vice versa left them uncomfortably vulnerable. They couldn’t defend themselves while their bones and muscles contorted and stretched. They couldn’t do anything but try to get through the entire process in one piece. It was quite the struggle, and the snapping of bones and blend of creature sounds was a stark contrast to the serene beauty of the nature around them. 

Did you get any good ones of me?

That was the last thing the wolf heard and that was the first thing to follow when Chris came to. His clothing lay in torn tatters around him; the cuffs from his flannel remained around his wrists. The first thing he noticed was the pounding in his head - and then the young woman, who looked like she was also nude. His cheeks flushed before he realized how sore his entire body felt. Chris pressed the butt of his palm to his forehead as he tried to sit up. His other hand fumbled with any piece of torn clothing large enough to cover his lap. He blinked at his company, vision still blurry and shivered.

“... Wh..What just happened..? Who are.. you?” Why did you do this to me?, he thought.

When Nora turned around again the wolf was gone, replaced by the mans he’d seen before. This time naked. Scars covered his rightside, coverging around his shoulder and neck. Nora was about to complement them, ask him how he got such sick scars when he spoke. The man’s voice sounded weak, pathetic even. It was a shaky mess with no confidence. Worst of all it appeared he had no memory of his transformation and decided to put all the blame on Nora. This was new behavior. Alan had known who he was after shifting. The two of them had had talks about their various shifting side. How did Nora deal with someone who appeared to not believe her?

“What did I do to you?” Nora gestured down at herself. Naked. Five foot one. An wound still healing on her right side that pained her when she did too much. A knife cut down her left arm also still healing. As a human she was a decoy. The picture of complete innocence. How could someone small and sweet looking be a terrible apex predator such as herself. That was the fun in the illusion. But today she wasn’t using this a trap. Just a tool to calm. Fear radiated off of him at extreme levels. She wasn’t even trying to scare him anymore. She wanted to be part of his pack. 

Then they could talk about more scaring.

“You don’t remember turning into a wolf?” Nora asked. Nora bent over picking up his camera. It took a moment to figure out how to work it, but she was a zoomer. Technology was in their blood. Nora pulled up the gallery, instantly finding a photo she was looking for. The polar bear in the field, looking into the lake. Nora handed it to the sad shaking little man. “That’s me. When I’m not human.” She told him. At no times she was human. That was still weird to come to terms with. At all times she was bugbear, but at no times was she human. Even though she looked like them, lived with them and was always among them.

“I scared you, remember?” Nora took a seat on the grass, easing into the position to keep her wound from screaming too much. “You turned into a wolf. I didn’t do that. You did.” Nora wished she’d taken a picture of the wolf. Maybe the guy would believe her. Why else would they both be sitting naked in the field if not for a sudden transformation? “Do you always forget when you transform?”

Chris knew very well that he couldn’t put any of the blame on her — not all of it, anyway. He’d been dealing with some version of this shit for years, whatever it was. Wolf. There it was again, that word. Was that what it was? Too many people found him associated with it, like an invisible target painted brightly on his back where he couldn’t see but he felt the thick, sticky paint dry into his skin. It became him. It was him. 

And she could see it plainly, like a neon sign flashing in her face. Chris didn’t know whether to feel relieved or even more worried. He settled on the usual blanket of confusion instead and its partner in crime, embarrassment, was not too far behind. Even if he wanted to believe her (the evidence was overwhelming, not to mention the eye witnesses), he didn’t know where to start (or even if he could). He took things one day at a time — sometimes to the hour, sometimes to the minute. He couldn’t think that far ahead.

Her questioning continued, which did help to keep his attention on her rather than his own discomfort. You don’t remember turning into a wolf? Chris shook his head automatically — he didn’t even know he could (could he?), in all honesty, not before Wicked’s Rest. It would make sense, if it were true. The missing nights, the irritability, the hunger. Chris felt his stomach somersault.

Despite the situation and ever swirling uncertainty, Chris turned his gaze to his camera’s viewfinder. A white bear. A white bear. Its large, pale silhouette stood stark against the green field. There was no mistaking it. And she said that was her? When she’s not human? What the fuck? Was he high? Was this some sort of chemical warfare? Did he eat something poisonous? Maybe he was dreaming — that had to be it, right?

Chris covered his face with one of his hands and squeezed the bridge of his nose. He shook his head in the hopes that this would go away like one would clear an Etch A Sketch, but there they sat, naked and in the grass, with talks of bears and wolves. 

“This isn’t happening…” He mumbled into his hand and shook his head again. “This is a dream or I’m.. I’m fucking hallucinating.. Am I on something??” The grass felt real. The air smelled real. She looked real. Chris wiped at his eyes and gave a cursory glance around him again — same field, same farm, same girl.

Do you always forget when you transform? Chris had to wonder if he was being Punk’d. “Wha-just.. What are you talking about?”

This was sad. Nora tilted her head to the side as she watched this strange adult man sit and wallow in his own confusion. The only words coming out of his mouth were ones of denial. Nora bit her lip, doing her best to remain civil. The feral beast inside her wanted to rear its head. It smelled the blood of the weak and it longed to bare its teeth and sink deep into the man's flesh, using words to hurt him. But she couldn't do that. There had been a time in her life where she was the reflection of this sad, confused man. A time where she had to work it out herself. Sure, she was born that way, but Alan had told her wolves weren't born. They were made. 

"When were you bit?" Nora asked. She tried to make her voice gentle and caring, instead it came out as a softer monotone. The trained bite of indifference lingering in the edge of her tone, a constant companion to her demeanor. "I was born like this." Nora tapped a hand to her chest. "I'm sure it's a shock. To be human and then not human. But who wants to be human?" Nora was trying her hardest to be kind and compassionate. This was not her natural state of being. "You're not hallucinating or dreaming. I'll prove it. Don't get scared." Don't get scared, as if it was easy as that. To Nora, who was never scared, it was. Which made it impossible to comprehend how to this man, it probably wasn't that easy.

Nora took a step back, ensuring there was enough space between them. "Don't get scared." Nora repeated. The transformation rippled over her body, ripping her skin, breaking her bones, twisting her muscles. As quickly as her body broke into pieces, it repaired itself. Flesh stretching across the bones as they elongated and grew. White fur around. Her nose elongating and turning into a muzzle with sharp teeth. Hands forming into paws ending in sharp claws. Nora let out a loud yodel of a roar at the end of the transformation. 

The polar bear turned around in a circle, being sure to take its time. Look at me, it seemed to say. Every now and then she would stop and strike a pose. She was putting on a whole performance. At the end of her prance around, Nora got closer, dropping down onto the ground next to the man. Her head lowered in passiveness. The polar bear was close enough to touch. And she would let him touch her cute bear ears, once. Any more would be too much. After all, all her power was stored in those cute little ears. This should be just enough to convince him this is all real. 

When were you bit? The question immediately brought forward a memory he wanted so desperately to forget. There had been a handful of animal attacks in Chris’ life. Most, if not all, of them, he managed to get out with a few scrapes and bruises. They were more scared of him, after all. But there was one, all those years before, that nearly took his life — and part of him wished that it had. Flashes of that day buried itself. Teeth, blood, fur, those eyes. He was bit then. He was bitten everywhere. He couldn’t recall the pain — it all happened too fast. The ripping of his skin was the main attraction and the scars along his right side were a constant reminder. But the pain eluded him.

Is that what she meant? Did he get bitten and effectively cursed like the fictitious wolfman? The wolf who had so graciously and permanently marred him all those years ago didn’t look questionable — at least, not in a fantasy type of way. It was big, scary, especially to a teenage boy, but he couldn’t remember much else. He didn’t want to. He didn’t believe in werewolves (or anything else that went bump in the night), but could there be something to it? His life had been abundantly shitty before that wolf attacked him thanks to dear old dad, but there was no recollection of sleepwalking or memory lapse or waking up covered in blood and scratches before the attack. He couldn’t recall the memories of body aches and dislocations — because there were none.

There were a few movies that played with the idea that being a werewolf was a curse, something generational. Magic, even. And there were others that suggested it was more like an infection or parasite. Now, Chris didn’t believe in magic or fairy tales, but an infection was much more plausible. It made sense for something body ravaging to be passed on through blood — or by saliva through a bite. Right? It was too much for him to think about right now, especially as she continued on, calm and easy as she could. He did appreciate that — the situation was an unusual one, but he was certain there would have been much more confusion and irritation if she would have been anyone else. He valued her for not making this worse.

“I don’t…? I am human…” came his next words, but they held a strong uncertainty that started to creep in the longer he sat out there with her. “I… How? I can’t be anything else…” If he was, then maybe his dad was right. Don’t get scared. Chris felt his heart start to thump harder. Prove it? “Wh…What are you going to do?” Prove that she really was a giant bear and that he really was some kind of wolf monster? Sure. His disbelief superseded any thought that may have favored the idea, thinking instead that she would only prove that they were indeed hallucinating (or maybe even dreaming!).

Don’t get scared, came her mantra again, but it did little to prepare him for what he would see. While coming face to face with an immense bear, a near perfect killing machine, would be enough to bridle him with absolute terror, seeing a human woman transform into one was a whole other story. Was it fear that he felt? Horror? Disgust? All of the above? Chris did his best to back away without actually getting up; he didn’t think he could. Her body breaking and shuffling into a new arrangement was like watching disaster unfold — he couldn’t look away despite the sheer fright that welled up within him.

Chris had lowered himself closer to the tall grass, as if that would help to hide him in case this went south. An instinct, one that stretched out and prohibited him from running. If the bear — if she — were aggressive, he didn’t stand a chance anyway. Freezing was probably the best thing he could do. He watched tensely as the immense creature turned about, as if she were showing off her new form. That funny little thought, paired with the gentle behavior, helped to ease some of his anxiety. He sat worried and unmoving as the bear lowered itself closer but that slight spike of fear waned when she didn’t do anything. Nothing but sit there and look expectant. It would have been comical if Chris wasn’t still confused — and scared shitless.

He did look around, one last time, hoping that this was somehow a prank. No hidden camera crew, no enthusiastic host, no one pointing and laughing at his misery — nothing. Chris’ throat was so dry. “What the fuck…” he whispered more to himself, though he was pretty sure the bear could hear it anyway. How was any of this real? Despite everything in him telling him that it would be a really bad idea — the Animal Planet had receipts, after all — he needed to know. He ignored everything else about their weird ass situation and hesitantly reached towards the bear’s head. Honestly, if this was some long con just to eat him, he could at least cross ‘pet a bear’ off of his bucket list. 

A single finger found its way to the soft fur along the top of one of her ears; he didn’t move anything but his breath and that finger. Chris drew back stiffly and whispered again, “what… how..?” This had to be a dream, right? It felt real. 

The man was a wealth of fear. It dripped off him with every moment. It was a cloud of emotion that wrapped tightly around him. How did it not consume him? Nora took a deep breath, allowing herself the joy of his offered feast. Humans were scared, Nora knew, but she’d thought werewolves would be braver. Except, this werewolf had no clue he was a werewolf. “Human?” Nora repeated the word, chewing on it as if it was a curiosity and not a norm. There was an unfamiliar feeling deep in the pit of Nora’s stomach. It twisted itself around. Was this, Nora bit her lip. Was it pity? No. Nora had pitied people before. People were not her; they were scared little creatures. This was kind of like pity, but it was sadder. It was more understanding. There was a word for it, and she hunted for it. Going through years of vocabulary worksheets that she knew she should remember. Compassion. Compassion?

A few moments of thought. Nora let herself mull over this sensation of compassion. Was it because there was a reality where this could have been Nora? Refusing to accept the bear inside her, never finding out she was a bugbear, always living in fear and confusion? Probably not as much fear. But she had feared herself that first day. How could she not. Her first transformation had been a shock. Nora studied the man a bit longer. Compassion. She could work with compassion. “You can be something else.” Nora answered. It wasn’t unkind, but her monotone never allowed for much emotion. He would have to interpret it the way he wanted to. “I’m something else.” Nora added that last bit as if it was an after-thought. It was never an after-thought. These past few months had made her difference clear. She had been forced to confront herself in ways she’d imagined before. Her tremulous identity was always at her forethoughts.

After the transformation, Nora was treated to a fresh wave of delicious new fear. She devoured it hungrily, as if she’d never eaten before. Because to Nora, all fear was a delicious treat that she relished. Even if it came from the sad man who Nora genuinely felt bad for. She could attempt to help him, while helping herself. Right? There was nothing against that in the rule book. If there was, well, no one had ever given her the rule book so they could fuck off with it anyway.

Nora let the man get adjusted to her new form. She let him fall back, panic, then eventually come over. She felt the soft brush of a finger against her ear. Honestly? That was a good choice. All bear ears held a magical appeal that Nora couldn’t deny. Nora was even kind enough to keep her mouth closed. Normally, she’d think it would be so funny to let out a startling yell. Bear yells sounded like yodels. And Nora could yodel so loud. But that would wreck an already broken man. Where was the fun in that? Nora maintained the bear for a bit. She wanted him to have enough time to come to terms with its realness. Then she shifted back into her human.

Her human was often mistaken as less scary than her bear. But Nora knew the truth. The human was a murderer, and the bear was just a bear. But she figured it would soothe the man into calming down again. Besides, bears were not good at talking to humans. “How.” Nora repeated the word so that he would remember he’d said that before answering. “I…” Nora bit her lip, working it in her teeth as she tried to come up with the answer. “I want to be a bear. Or. I just think about being the bear. It's just.” Nora shrugged. “It just happens. I’m a bugbear. I was born like this.” Nora was forthcoming with information, because she always wished that others had been forthcoming with information when it came to her. Nora wrapped an arm around herself as she kept trying to talk. It wasn’t the nudity of the situation that felt weird, despite the two of them standing naked as the day they were born. It was an open conversation about the bear. A conversation where she was trying to be helpful and open. It made her feel vulnerable in a way that was unfamiliar to her.

“I’ve never been anything else.” Nora added. “I don’t know if werewolves are born, all the werewolves I’ve met were made. It must be jarring. To be one thing, and then another.” Nora’s fingers tapped awkwardly against her arm. This was the place where she was supposed to say it gets better. And maybe try her hand at some comforting words. But Nora was barely proficient at conversation. Comforting words were hard to find. She didn’t know if it got better. The werewolves she had met had complicated relationships to their wolves. Nora had a complicated relationship with her bear, but her bear had never taken away her humanity. Her humanity just hadn’t existed.

“Isn’t it hard?” Nora asked, pausing for a second before continuing. “To pretend you’re someone you’re not? Human. I mean. I don’t know when you got bit. Maybe recently. But isn’t it hard to pretend you’re human? Lying to other people is one thing, you know. But lying to yourself?” Nora shrugged a shoulder, a habit she’d picked up recently. “That seems harder.” 

No!

No, this couldn’t be real. 

People couldn’t change into animals. They just — they couldn’t. If they could, then what did that mean? That there really was a bear just a breath away from his palm. That her words and observations were true. That he too could turn into something, into an animal, like her. A wolf, in generality. Werewolf, to be specific. A creature, a monster, forced to turn in the moonlight, bloodthirsty and hungry. It seemed like a horrible way to live. Chris couldn’t see himself in that way, living like that. He ran, sure, but that was for completely unrelated circumstances. He wasn’t a werewolf. He couldn’t be. He failed to see the hammer hit the nail on the head.

So this had to be a dream. If he wasn’t a werewolf and she wasn’t a bugbear and there were no cameras or crowds to be seen, then this wasn’t real. That was the only logical solution left, the only thing that saved him from having to face his life and the horrors he’d both endured and unleashed. His heart felt so heavy in his chest and the baby soft fur that lined the tippy tops of the bear’s ear felt so real — the brain was amazing, wasn’t it? One moment, he was surrounded by absolute fear from meeting a bear face to face and the next? He was having a conversation with a young woman, who just so happened to also be that same bear. Yep. This definitely had to be a dream. How did he not see it sooner?

Normally it was a nightmare that took hold. Chris lost count of how many times he’d woken in a cold sweat, debilitated by the terror that gripped him. While this had started sort of the same, very unassuming in nature, it turned into something different. It wanted to follow the same nightmare path that they all took, but then the woman appeared and everything changed. Her words, though to the point, were soothing. Knowing that he wouldn’t be harmed did help, whether by her admission or assuming that this was nothing but a figment of his sleep deprived imagination. That made it easier to at least answer her thought provoking questions and take in everything she gave him. It made it easier to sit still instead of wanting to run.

He wondered if her admission and willingness to answer came from himself, or maybe he just mentally reiterated some movie he watched a few nights back. The brain was a sponge after all. He had to wonder if he’d watched this scene play out before. “You…” Regardless of the dream, Chris’ throat still felt incredibly dry. The way his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth as he opened felt palpable. This was only a dream. “So you’ve always been able to just… be a bear? Whenever you want?” She seemed like she liked it, like she was proud of what she was. He wished he could feel the same. Or maybe he did but he wasn’t aware. That’s what therapists were for, but the last one he had, well — he’d rather forget it.

It must be jarring. To be one thing, and then another. Chris instantly thought back to his childhood, having to be both child and a regret. It was exhausting. He felt a pang of familiarity in her words, and a pang of sadness. They hit him hard, truths too painful for him to even think about, let alone to utter out loud. He closed himself off more from her, both for modesty and protection. This was only a dream. Of course the target was hit; of course his brain knew him better than anyone else did, including himself. Lying to other people is one thing, you know. But lying to yourself? That seems harder. He felt that familiar heaviness that settled thickly in his chest and throat, threatening to choke him of his words and push forward tears. He forced them back, but knowing they were there, even in dream land, made it harder to respond.

“I don’t know what else to do….” Chris admitted, finally. “I don’t… I can’t face the truth.” He didn’t want to. It was too terrible, even for a metaphor. Even for a dream.

This man was delusional. Nora had been able to work that out pretty fast. Denial ran deeper than him then it did across Egypt. Still Nora found her heart bursting as she watched a parade of emotions dance over the man’s face as he struggled with whatever realizations Nora was forcing him to confront. Doubt began filling her. Maybe she should have let it be. As a bear, she should have walked away the moment he’d turn into a wolf. Or after when they were human again, she should have let it be. Who was she to force someone to confront their truth? Not the person who could help fix it. Not when she could only see a sad broken man shutting down in front of her, naked and afraid.

Nora let out a heavy breath, sprawling out on the grass and staring up at the sky above them. They both needed a moment. A moment to breathe and relax and embrace the moment. Nora didn’t know what this man was thinking, other than it was a lot. An all consuming a lot of thinking that appeared to be ravaging his internal monologue. Was it too late now to back down? Nora didn’t know the answer. What she knew is that she wished someone in her life had told her the truth sooner. That there had been someone in her life that knew and helped, instead of having to deal with the bugbear of it all by herself. Honesty was the only thing she could offer him, even if it hurt.

“I am a bear and a human.” Nora answered. The bright blue sky of day shone down at them, hurting her eyes. “I don’t think I understand werewolves.” Nora admitted. “I don’t know if it’s the same for you, but I was born like this. I can be human or I can be a bear but at all times I am both. And no matter which form I am in, it's still me.”Nora was slowly learning that it wasn’t the same for werewolves. That their wolves and their humans were separate entities. It must be confusing, two minds sharing one personage. They didn’t even share the same form. What could they have in common to hold them together?

A silence drifted between them again. Nora did her best to let him go through it by himself. To let him have the privacy to face the inner demons she's released upon him until he spoke again. A fresh wave of sadness rippled over Nora with the words. I can’t face the truth. “Okay.” Nora moved into a sitting position, looking carefully at the man in front of her, naked and exposed more than physically. She had inadvertently ripped open his biggest wound, it would appear, she wasn’t going to ask him to face it too. “I think that’s your choice.” Nora got to her feet, stretching out her limbs. “When you’re ready, feel free to find me. I’m on that website this town is obsessed with. Honeysmokedham.” Nora looked away, eyes surveying the empty field. “You’re not alone, and you never will be alone. Not if you don’t want to be. I don’t know much, but when you’re ready, find me. I’ll help you anyway I can.” Because really, that was the only thing she’d ever wished for. Someone who could help her understand. She could do this for him. She wanted to do this for him.

“I’ll see you around. When you’re ready.” Her body broke. It shattered. It folded. It grew. It reformed. The polar bear walked away from the delusional wolf, without glancing back. The polar bear wouldn’t go far, it would walk as far away as it could, before coming back as a human. The human would watch over the sad broken man and make sure he got home safe before going her own way. It just seemed easier this way. Better to help silently, then keeping herself in his line of sight, and shattering her world views repeatedly. Nora thought it was the least she could do. 

I can be human or I can be a bear but at all times I am both. And no matter which form I am in, it's still me.

He didn’t want this pep talk or inner therapy session or whatever it was — whatever his mind was trying to do, he didn’t want it. But maybe he needed it. No. No, there was no maybe. He knew he needed this and yet he continued to fight it, fight against it. And he knew why. He was scared. He was chicken shit, a worm too low in the dirt to see the light. He was safer in the dirt, so he thought, despite the plagues of nightmares and constant upheaval of life and home. Outside of the dirt, he was gross, weird and destructive. He was an animal, a disease and annoyance and a thorn in the side.

How much easier would it be if he just gave in to it? To absorb her words and to live by them? Would he learn to live with the monster inside, the one that was fabricated — his ‘werewolf’? He was too cowardly for that. All his years of running and lying was evidence of that. But he could change, couldn’t he? He could try. But trying got people hurt. Chris hugged his knees. What was he supposed to do?

“I don’t know, either..” he started, entirely uncertain if he even wanted to run down that hypothetical route. He thought maybe he’d been born like that — a monster. Metaphorically, it would make sense if he thought about his father’s words. But the scarring he touched absently in thought made him doubt. Werewolves. Were not. Real. Hypertrichosis, sure. Being raised by wolves, maybe. But a full blooded turn into a wolf-human hybrid by moonlight kind of werewolf? Chris didn’t think so. Because then it meant that is what attacked him all those years ago in the woods, what had almost killed him if it hadn’t been for his sister. It didn’t explain his father’s hatred for him, but it would explain everything else.

Was that the answer? Was that it, given so freely to him by a rather strange figment of his dream? Why a younger woman? And why did she look the way she did? Why a bear, and why a polar bear of all things? What was wrong with him? Maybe if he posted his dream online, someone might be able to decipher it — but he was also scared of what they might say. Photographs were so much easier to deal with, and people weren’t as scary through a lens.

I think that’s your choice. His choice to suffer, but she was right. He chose to remain in the dark rather than deal with this head on, like she so easily could do. But she was born with it, isn’t that what she said? She had always been a bear. Was that supposed to mean something? If she were a figment, then his inner self had always been what it was. And it was fine with that, happy even. They didn’t know anything else. And then there was Chris, or his dream version (he was still convinced he was dreaming) who still seemed to have trouble — the werewolf, unable to change when he wanted to, a slave to the moon, to his feelings…

Oh what the fuck?

Her words tore him from the spiral that threatened to pull him down, grounding him back to their bare picnic in the field. This was such a weird dream. Website? Honeysmoked.. Ham? His look of confusion didn’t last long, not when she kept going, offering her help further. Her kindness and hell, even her patience, was enough to sting his eyes with emotion. There had been a handful of people that had helped him throughout his years, only a few who had shown the kind of compassion this… hallucination showed him. Whether it was real or not, he was touched. The back of one of his hands went to press against his now running nose as he mumbled out a ‘thank you’; a genuine expression, one that was muddled with tears he urged to keep from falling.

And then she was off to leave him in the little divot in the field. Well, the bear did — the transformation was just as startling as it had been before, but at least he knew she wasn’t going to hurt him, as weird as a bugbear might be; or rather, as weird as his imagination might be. Regardless, he was left feeling loved in some strange and unusual way. With a sniffle, Chris sat there for a moment longer, and picked up the remnants of his clothes and his camera. He did what he could to be decent, in both action and his physical form, as he traversed the field to head back to the small, motel room. He didn’t see his dream angel, didn't see where she went off to or how she kept an eye on him, to make sure he was safe. But he felt hopeful, regardless.

#thread #tr: [ sister bear ] #tr: nora p

[abimee]

hi i never send asks but i need to tell you how much your art means to me. i remember seeing it years ago when u were drawing ut/dr stuff and i loved it back then, but to come back years later and see youre into ffxiv is like, miraculous. i absolutely ADORE the way u stylize the characters, their stories seem so interesting, and its such a breath of fresh air to me, like straight up inspirational it makes me wanna go ham drawing my guys the way i want bc ive felt so self concious since most fanart i see sticks pretty close to the source. anyways keep doing what ur doing im /cheerjump'ing at you from the distance 💖

NO IM THE SAME WAY REAL getting into FFXIV after being into UT/DR had a long period of like embarassment following it because i wasnt used to being surrounded by artists who stayed pretty on model and like, didn't ''mess'' with the designs of both like specific characters and just general overall character types like m'iqote. Coming from UT/DR where the art style and the general ''theyre monsters'' gave me a lot of leeway to do stuff like anteater dreemmurs and draw frisk in a frilly flower pattern skirt, so coming over to draw ff14 art and never see people even like, give a character a haircut or draw elezen eyes slightly differently made me feel.... not scared, but i felt ambarassed that people wouldnt like my art or not recognize the characters, or find my art incoherent like a few people used to mock me for back in UT/DR days.

I eventually got over it but i still someyimes feel that shame, especially when the art isn't particularly well recieved, mostly with stuff like my butch menphina or how i draw hades, and i begin to wonder if my art would ''do better'' if i stuck closer to the style/design of the FF14 game down to the eye shape and exact clothing patterns

this isnt smthn i think about too often though thankfully, and i feel like a swell of love whenever people do react positively to how i interpret characters into my art :,] ive noticed a few people respond to really liking how i draw Zero even though i never considered her to differ far from her original design, but looking at it side by side i think i sometimes cant tell when im fucking with a design myself until i stare at them next to each other LOL

BUT GO FOR IT!!! there really is nobody stopping you from messing with the designs in the game, FF14 is a million dollar successful MMO ran by one of the biggest gaming companies in the industry so unless yoshida sends a cease and desist directly to our doors there is NOTHING stopping you from taking characters into your own hands and molding them to your liking. Draw Miqote looking even more like cats than people, draw vieras more anthro than humanoid, make your wol part sahagin and give them funny fish gills, give your favorite character a fatter head or a buzz cut, there is an endless possibility as vast as the people in the world are!!!! \o/

#cheerwaving and flower showering you anon i hope youre enjoying the game and having a lot of fun #:] its also really funny how many people from UT/DR days are now into ff14.... gravitate towards the funny mmo

[kaylans-imagines]

eddie munson and tulip hopper: best unconventional friends

synopsis: in which y/n 'tulip' hopper teaches her kids to drive and gets roped into a competition with steve.

disclaimer: this can be read as a standalone, but the character 'tulip' is part of the mini series i may or may not be writing :) there will be other parts to this (they arent connected but yk) also petal is the moms nickname, not her actual name.

warnings: cursing. a lot of it was written by my bbg @farfromharry and also eddie gets called some names. several time skips and eddies d*ath erasure

word count: 15k (my bbg went ham)

~*~

1971

The circumstances under which Y/N Tulip Hopper and Edward ‘Eddie’ Munson were cliche. It was the classic tale of the underdog being bullied by the popular kids when an unlikely hero steps in and puts an end to it. In retellings, the boy is always the one who becomes the savior, and the girl the damsel in distress. But in the story of Y/N and Eddie, it was the opposite. She had been the one to save him from relentless jibes and teasing. Stepping in front of the asshole kids in corduroy overalls and a green undershirt, her hair managed into two different colored scrunchies, and a scowl on her face. To five year old Eddie, she looked like a superhero. 

She hadn’t needed to intervene. All Eddie had wanted was some chalk, just to join the kids who were drawing on the scratchy concrete of the playground. But on his way to grab some, he’d been intercepted, George O and George P–with their puppy dog Steve Harrington trailing behind them, had told him trailer park kids like him weren’t allowed to use their fancy chalk. 

He had visibly deflated, but upon not wanting to go home with a black eye, he didn’t protest. But she did. 

Little Tulip Hopper had stepped in front of him, shielding him from the big mean bullies who had been just, no more than five minutes ago, happily drawing beside her. She made a big threat about how those chalks were hers, bought by her step-dad, and if they didn’t want their parents to find out about their mean ways, then they needed to back off. 

At first he was scared she had only made it worse. Despite being five year olds, the more aggressive two of the three sent him looks of fury, ones that would scare a grown man, he thought, (realistically, no they wouldn’t, but they had Eddie trembling in his worn down Converse.) But then they actually backed off, apologized to her and not him–but he didn’t care about that– and then left. He was amazed at her power. 

With all that just happened, too much for his small brain, he took a seat on the ground, staring up at the little girl in awe still. 

Once she was sure the bullies were gone, she turned to him. “Hi,” Eddie blinked, brown eyes staring at the little girl with two buns on her head, “I’m sorry for what those boys did.”

“You’re not gonna do that too, right?” he asked wearily, fearing her assumed meanness. After what he had just witnessed, he was scared she would turn on him too. 

“No,” she denied, taking a seat next to him and handing him a piece of green chalk, “I just wanted to tell you that I’ll totally steal their desserts. I know what their lunchboxes look like.”

“Are they your friends?” Eddie asked, taking it from her. 

“Not mine,” she sighed, “but I hang out with them because my family knows their families. They suck.”

“Oh,” was his response. He looked down at the chalk drawing he was absentmindedly coloring in, “does your family suck?”

Y/N let out a breath, shaking her head and cringing at the flower she thought she was doodling. “No, my mommy’s really nice, and my step-dads pretty cool. But not everyone in our neighborhood is like that.” 

“Oh,” was his response. His uncle had warned him about getting caught up with the rich folk of Hawkins–they had so much control and power over the small town and if he were to get accused of something by them…well, they couldn’t afford to dispute it. And the little girl next to him was definitely affluent, if the nice shoes on her feet and prim clothes on her person were any indication. 

“What’s your name?” she asked, looking at him with wide eyes, curiosity swimming in the irises. 

“Eddie,” he stuttered. He flinched when she thrust her hand out, giving him a gapped-tooth smile.

“I’m Y/N,” she introduced, taking his hand in hers, “but you can call me Tulip.”

“That’s a weird name,” Eddie panicked when he saw her frown. He had said the wrong thing. And any potential of making a friend would be wasted, all because he spoke before he could think. 

In her hand she held a chocolate ding dong, offering it to him with a mischievous smile. Eddie was reluctant to take it, but Y/N was persistent, going as far as to shoving it in his hands. The two sat in silence, relishing in the privacy being distanced from the other kids on the playground granted them. Eddie wasn’t good at making friends. He’d been labeled an outcast for things outside of his control, like being all but an orphan and living in a trailer park. He didn’t mind either of those things, but the rich kids liked to scrutinize him for it. So, he did what any other socially awkward kid would do and faked a heart attack. It would either make the little girl next to him laugh OR it would make her never want to speak to him again. 

“Are you done?” she asked after a couple minutes of his dramatic display, “I didn’t poison your ding dong, you ding dong.” 

Eddie let out a rebellious chuckle, and from the corner of his eye, he could see the crooked smile on her face. His laughter died down when he caught sight of her chalk drawing, confusion evident on his face with a little bit of horror. It just didn’t look right. 

“What is that supposed to be?” he asked her, genuinely wondering. Y/N closed her eyes and snorted. 

“Well, I started doing a flower, a periwinkle, but then I realized it looked nothing like it,” she grimaced, “so I tried to fix it by making it into a bird. Obviously it didn’t work if you’re asking me what it is.”

“I say this as nicely as I can,” he started, eyes locked on the atrocity decorating the pavement, “but you’re not very good at drawing. Like, at all.” 

Y/N pouted, “I thought it looked pretty decent.”

“Yeah,” he couldn’t help but chuckle, “if you close your eyes.” 

The little girl laughed, secretly agreeing with him. Despite her mom's many attempts to get her to ‘unleash her artistic side’ Y/N was not the best artist. She doubted she had any artistic blood in her body. And even if she did, it wouldn’t have been anything like the little boys’ talent. But of course, she was petulant. She was not about to tell the little boy she admired his drawing skills. 

“Well, what’s yours supposed to be?” It was obvious, but she was bitter. 

Eddie only stared at her, wondering if she was being ignorant on purpose or if she was being genuine. “It’s a dog.” To him it was blatantly clear, whether that was because he had drawn it, or because he just had some artistic ability. He didn’t know what she was–or wasn’t, he guessed, seeing. 

She was grumbling under her breath, mocking him, “It’s a dog,” she muttered. He was finding it extremely amusing that she was taking his prior comment so personally. So, she wasn’t a Da Vinci when it came to chalk drawings. They were pushing six, she had time to improve if she was that desperate.

He wasn’t trying to hurt her feelings, that wasn’t his intention at all, and he was scared he might have. Wayne had told him before that he wasn’t the greatest when it came to socializing, and he often said things that wounded others. Usually he tried to get around apologizing for it by lightening the mood. A little joking around never caused more damage, right? 

“You’re just jealous,” he teased, nudging her ever so lightly with his elbow. 

She huffed, trying to hide the smile that she so desperately wanted to show to him. “Am not. My blind Uncle could draw better than you.” 

As the two laughed loudly in the secluded area of the playground to their own teasing, they both realized they had just made a friend. Neither of them knew just how important they would come to be to one another, or how time together would become cherished as they got older. But the day Tulip Hopper saved Eddie Munson from a trio of rich bullies, was the day they became lifelong best pals. 

1971

The very day Eddie met his best friend, he was eager to tell anyone who would listen. Right as he got home he pestered his mother to listen, but as usual she didn’t care. She mindlessly hummed along as he went on a long, exuberant kid rant, however not a single bit of information was heard. She didn’t care if he'd made a friend, or he was happy–he’d have to tell someone that was actually concerned about him. So, he waited until the next time Wayne came over. 

His foot was barely in the house before Eddie was basically tackling him. “Uncle Wayne, guess what!” 

The child-like excitement filled his heart with joy. It didn’t matter that he’d had a long day, a bad one, his nephew was dying to tell himself and he would be damned if he didn’t listen to every word. “What, big guy?” 

“I made a friend today! Well, she saved me from some bullies. She’s so cool.” He was happy to hear that. It wasn’t news to him that Eddie had had a difficult start to his schooling years, always coming home with bruises or scrapes from various fights he’d gotten into. Though he claimed he never started them. This was possibly his first friend, Wayne wanted to hear all about her. 

He planned to take him to the couch at first, but then he caught sight of the woman he called his sister-in-law and took a detour to Eddie’s room instead. It was safe to say he didn’t get along with Judy Munson, even if she had given him the person he loved most in the world. 

The kid’s room was small, but it was his own space, filled with various things Wayne had purchased when he had the extra money, or stuff he found around the trailer park– sometimes even in the woods. It was cool, screamed Eddie right from when you stepped in. It was the boy’s safespace, the place he could hide out when his parents were being strange. 

“So, tell me all about her.”

That quick sentence had the boy delving into a detailed, overdramatic and wild story about how she saved him. He even compared her to Superman at one point– then changed his mind and decided she was more like Batman. She did sound pretty perfect from what the older man was hearing and he was over the moon the kid finally had someone to look out for him when he wasn’t around. It helped him relax a bit. Usually when he was sent off to school, Wayne had to wait and see what kind of injury he would return with, but now that would no longer be the case. “What’s her name?”

“Tulip– Well, she told me to call her Tulip. Her actual name is Y/N Hopper,” he explained. The man paused. Back in high school he had known a Hopper, Jim to be exact. They weren’t close, he was a year or so older, left for Vietnam as soon as he graduated. But his girlfriend, his girlfriend was the one that always caught Wayne’s eye. 

Just like Hop, she was older, popular, a complete spectacle to someone like him. She was way out of his league, even if she was single at all in high school– which Jim made sure she wasn’t– he wouldn’t have stood a chance. Now, he didn’t know entirely what occurred with them after they graduated, he tried to stop thinking about her when that happened. So, he didn’t know if they’d wound up having a kid together, but he did know that now Petal was some fancy, rich lawyer. All while Jim was working his way up to Chief of police. He couldn’t imagine anything good could come from the trailer park boy sniffing around some Hawkins, rich girl, princess. “I knew a Hopper, back in high school. Wonder if that’s her dad.”

The look on the kid’s face was not one that was amused. “I don’t know, but Uncle Wayne, stop interrupting.”

With a quick apology, he didn’t open his mouth again the entire time the little boy was talking. There was a stupid grin on his face as he listened though. He just loved the way his eyes lit up. Not a single part of him understood how the woman Eddie called his mother couldn’t care to look at him when he got like this.

It was casually thrown in there at some point that Tulip had asked Eddie to come over to meet her mother, so now that was another thing on Wayne’s mind that made him nervous. It wasn’t like his brother or sister-in-law would take him to such a thing. They didn't care if he had friends or not. 

The first time Wayne was supposed to meet Tulip Hopper, he was scared to death. He felt like he was holding his breath the entire time. He had asked around a little at work, found out she was in fact Jim Hopper’s kid with Petal, though the two weren’t together now. He wondered if either of them even remembered him. Back in high school he was quiet, didn’t have a lot of friends, but he got through by not being noticed.

The plan was that he take Eddie over to the large house on the other side of Hawkins, the side of the city where only the rich lived. It was a little horrifying, considering someone like him was treated like shit by those exact people. There was a fear in him that his nephew would end up being treated the same way, and his little heart would break. Wayne didn’t know if he could stand that. Sure they could ridicule him all they wanted, he was a grown man he could take it, but not his innocent five year old boy–he’d had enough hurt already.

His truck certainly didn’t fit in with the fancy cars around, he stuck out like a sore thumb and he hated it. But he was doing this for Eddie. Who, speaking of, was pretty much bouncing in his seat.

The house was just as enormous as he expected. He had never seen a home so big, barely even a building so large despite something like the school. He made Eddie hold his hand during the trip from the car to the front door, even though it was only a short distance, he didn’t like the thought of being in a place like this where they were definitely unwelcome. 

As he knocked, Eddie couldn’t stop telling his uncle that he was going to positively adore his new best friend. Wayne hoped he would too, if not he was going to be very torn about what to do. In his head he was praying she wasn’t going to be a snobby little girl, that she truly was as kind as Eddie had said and he wasn’t just being naive. 

The red colored door was pulled open to a familiar face. The sight of Petal standing in front of him, not looking like she’d changed a bit in the last seven years, felt like a dream. He wasn’t honestly entirely convinced he wasn’t dreaming. He would have to pinch himself when he got back in his truck. “Hi, you must be Eddie.”

He nodded, his hair which was getting far too long, bobbing with him. Like the little gentleman he was, he held out his hand for the woman to shake. With a quiet huff of amusement, she took it, greeting him like ‘proper adults do’ as he said. When Tulip caught sight of Eddie, she was instantly dragging him away from the adults, insisting they had things to do. Petal just laughed, a sound the man opposite her loved to hear. At that very moment, she decided she would do anything for that little boy. Whereas Wayne couldn’t get an opinion on Tulip considering she hadn’t stayed long. 

“You can come and get him in a few hours. Or I can drop him off for you, if you’d like.”

Immediately he shook his head. Someone like Petal would surely start to think less of him and less of her daughter’s friend if she saw where they lived. For Eddie’s sake, he wanted to keep that a secret as long as possible. “I-I can get him, don’t worry.”

She nodded. “Yeah that sounds good…” she trailed off as she waited for him to give her his name, though what he said next hadn’t been what she was expecting at all. 

“I don’t know if you remember,” he chuckled, feeling shy to admit to her that he knew her from way back when. “We actually went to high school together. I think we talked a couple times.” 

Her brows furrowed, just as he expected. He was embarrassed now, of course she wouldn’t remember someone as plain and boring as him. “We did?” 

“You really don’t remember?”

She shook her head. “Sorry. I-”

He was quick to let her know it wasn’t that big of a deal, waving his hands to brush it off like some crazy person. “I wouldn’t remember me either. It’s okay.” It looked like she wanted to, Petal had never been mean to him, or anyone really, so he couldn’t imagine she was being this way on purpose. “This one time, you had a fight with Hopper, right before graduation, I think. You ran into me in the woods, we talked, you cried. It was weirdly nice.” 

A sudden look of realization crossed her features, one that made his heart skip a beat. “I do remember. How could I forget you, Wayne Munson?” He hadn’t expected his name to come out of her mouth, not without him having to introduce himself. “You were doing drugs, offered me a blunt, and I said no,” she recalled. “I didn’t tell you, but I thought I was pregnant. That’s why I said no–turns out I was.” She laughed to herself. She definitely was pregnant then if she now had a five year old running around with his nephew.

“You looked so different back then,” she added. His cheeks were flushing much against his will. All he could think was that she noticed him, and she carried that memory with her all these years later. 

He hummed. “Well, my hair was buzzed. Certainly looked a lot younger considering I wasn’t taking care of that kid in there.” 

At the mention of Eddie, she seemed confused and like she wanted to ask something. A couple of times she opened her mouth, but would close it again a second or so later when nothing came out. Until eventually, she went for it. “Is he yours?” She was only asking because never once had seen him with a woman–not that she was paying around the clock attention to him. 

“No, uh, he’s my brother’s kid. But he’s a deadbeat, mom’s no better,” he shrugged. Those words made Petal sad. Her encounter with Eddie had only been short, but he seemed sweet. If he was anything like Wayne, then he probably was. She didn’t think the kid deserved such a lack of love in his life, definitely not from his own parents of all people. 

“Well, old friend, he’s welcome here any time.”

At the mention of him, he seemed to come running, confused why his uncle was still hovering by the front door. Surely he should have left like, hours ago, even if it’d only actually been minutes since they had arrived. “What are you still doing here?” he asked, not in a rude way, just curious. 

He couldn’t even explain himself, his blush coming back in full force as he looked between the young mother and the kid. With the smile on her face, he was convinced she knew exactly why he was still there. But she let him keep his pride. 

March 1972

It wasn’t often that Eddie went hungry at school, but when he did, he knew to keep quiet about it. His uncle was the sole provider in their trailer, and sometimes, keeping the lights on and the air on took priority. He needed shoes and clothes that weren’t holey and too small for him more than he did a small lunch. His dad was too busy committing petty crimes to care about his son and his well-being. 

Usually, it was fine, no one asked or noticed really. It was easy to sneak it past teachers and your peers that you weren’t having lunch sometimes four or five days a week, when they didn’t care all that much that you were even there. No one tended to notice Eddie Munson. But Tulip did, she was observant. He was her best friend, the person she paid the most attention to in the world. So, when he abruptly stopped bringing his lunchbox to school one spring day, she asked him about it. Her mother had raised her to be the type of person who held concern for others; Eating in front of him when he had nothing, made her feel bad. 

“Where’s your lunch?” Y/N asked, biting into half of her sandwich. Eddie blinked, trying to come up with a lie Y/N wouldn’t be able to see through. 

“I left it in the classroom.” He lied, “my lunchbox. I left it in the classroom.”

That was how Y/N knew he wasn’t being truthful. When Eddie lied, he tended to repeat himself more than he should have. Y/N narrowed her eyes, unbelieving of him before passing him the other slice of her sandwich. Eddie refused, not wanting to admit that he was hungry. 

“Take it, Eddie,” she demanded, “I’ll pretend to believe you if you do.” 

So he did. And in his hunger, it was the best damn sandwich he’d ever eaten. He could never tell Tulip Hopper how grateful he was for her generosity at that moment. 

The very next day, he was surprised that she’d remembered. Everything flashed by as normal throughout the morning, their usual classes and conversations– Nothing felt different. But when lunch rolled around, it seemed as though the girl had already thought ahead. Carrying not only her lunch, but another alongside it. 

“Here,” Y/N said, stretching out her hand and the metal lunchbox she had. He looked at it wearily before taking it at her insistence. She looked satisfied. “Good, now my mom can rest happy. She was worried about you.” 

Those words echoed in his head. She was worried about him. He wasn’t mad that Tulip had told her mom, he knew she told her pretty much everything– they were close like that. But that didn’t prevent the looming dread that something as serious as being unable to feed a child could get him taken away from Wayne. That was only if her mom said something though. In the back of his brain, where the logical part was buried, he knew Petal wouldn’t do that. She may be a powerful woman, but she was caring and understanding all the same. 

As the two took seats on the usual bench they ate at, under the large oak tree, he was tentative to dig in. Tulip let him do his own thing, eager to start on her own food as soon as she could. When he did finally push all the overbearing thoughts out of the front of his mind, he lifted the lid of the new Scooby-doo lunchbox, and caught sight of a piece of paper placed delicately over the top of his sandwich. With a confused glance to the little girl opposite him, who wasn’t paying attention– just happily swinging her legs and munching on her peanut butter and jelly sandwich, he picked it up to read. 

Hi!

I hope you don’t mind, but I wanted to pack you lunch today–I fear I made too much for Tulip :(. Don’t tell her, but she doesn’t appreciate my cooking. She always brings back leftovers. I also wanted you to have the lunchbox, Tulip didn’t want it (again, why is my daughter so unappreciative?) Anyway, Teddy, have a great day, and please, make sure Tulip doesn’t get in trouble. I can’t have another call from the school. 

Love you loads. 

Mrs Petal.  

Ever so lightly he traced the shiny, smiley face sticker that was placed in the right hand corner. It did its job of bringing a smile to his face, one that Tulip got curious and asked him about. “What did she do this time?” She emphasized her words with a small eye roll, like she was embarrassed that her sweetheart mother had put so much effort into her friend’s lunch. 

He held up the colored paper for her to see, “She gave me a sticker.” 

Tulip had never seen someone get so excited over a simple piece of laminated, sticky paper. But seeing the way Eddie’s eyes sparkled, made her envious that she hadn’t gotten one. There was the possibility that her mother forgot, or maybe it was intentional that she didn’t put one on there. Either way, it upset her a little. “She didn’t give me a sticker,” she grumbled, crossing her arms over her chest as a frown spread across her face. 

“‘Cause I’m better than you,” he stated. This was the Eddie she knew, not the one who had been too shy and embarrassed to come out of his shell the past couple days. It all stemmed back to his nightmare that he would be taken away from the only relative of his that had ever cared to try for him. To love him. But he was confident now that Tulip’s mother would never allow such a thing. 

Tulip scoffed, but she couldn’t fight the grin creeping onto her face to replace her grumpy frown. “You wish, Munson.” Just like that, her best friend was back. 

Both the notes and the lunches continued as time went on. His gratitude was still impossible to express. Every day he watched Tulip go home with that Scooby-doo lunch box and a poorly scribbled ‘Thank you :)’ from him on some random scrap of paper he found (or on the back of Tulip’s note from her mom, while his was tucked safely away in his pocket.) Then she would return the next morning with it refilled. 

He was always excited to see what Petal had to say. Sometimes it could be the highlight of his day, though he would never admit that out loud for the sake of hurting Wayne’s feelings. He didn’t have time to do stuff like that for the boy, although he would like to, he didn’t need to be reminded that he was slacking in the affection department. 

Like every other day for the past couple weeks, when the pair of kids sat down on their regular bench, he was practically bouncing in his seat to read what she wrote. 

Good day!

I was thinking about you last night–we went to see Psycho and it made me think of you. Tully was telling me that you liked it. We can make a day out of it this weekend if you like. Anyway, dear, enjoy this beautiful day. I’ll see you when you get home. Remember you are going to change the world. 

I love you so much.  

Mom. 

“Lippy,” he called after reading the note. His best friend turned to him, raised eyebrows asking him what he wanted. His brow was drawn tight together as he outstretched his hand her way. “I think this is yours.” 

She looked at the green notecard in his hand before lifting her pale yellow one, “nope. This one’s mine. That one’s yours.” 

“But it says ‘I love you so much. Mom.’” He quoted. 

Y/N sighed, shaking her head slightly. “Um, mine always just say ‘mom’ so I guess my mom adopted you too. You can’t really fight it, just accept it.” It’s not like he wanted to. Eddie had always been envious about Y/N’s mom and the relationship the two had. He had never had one with his mom, unable to bond before she left recently. Judy Munson preferred cigarettes and alcohol to her son. But Y/N’s mom was always there for her daughter, laughing at inside jokes and buying her whatever she wanted. He had always yearned for that, and now he got it. 

Though he was positive it was different when it was your own mother, and he would have loved it to have been the woman that gave birth to him. Motherly love was motherly love, it didn’t matter which mom you got it from. Petal was more than happy to share her love around; there was plenty for all the kids that needed some. “Oh.” 

He didn’t know what else to say at first, so he just didn’t. In his eyes it was better to ask his questions once he had thought them through, or at least processed the information first. Tulip’s mom loved him like her own kid, that was crazy. If only Judy Munson could see him now, loved by a mother that wasn’t even his. It made him feel wanted in a way she never had, a way that only his Uncle had before. 

While he took it all in, he dug into the food she had provided for him. Another little thing she tended to do was give the kids different lunches day by day. On different days of the week she liked to switch it up, or maybe she’d sneak in something they had never tried before, even if it was just an option on the side in case they wanted to add it to their sandwich. For Eddie, that was a lot of stuff. Not having a lot of money and barely any food meant he and Wayne ate blandly pretty much everyday. There wasn’t a lot of choice, and he was okay with that–he understood, but it was nice finding new foods he liked. 

Today's new food was pickles. The green vegetable seemed intimidating at first, with the strong smell and intense color. But he was content to give it a shot anyway. Tulip couldn’t say enough good things about them, “they’re my favorite,” she kept reminding him, happily munching away. 

Now, Eddie had never known himself to be allergic to anything. He always thought that that was something only a few people had. Never in a million years would he have guessed he was allergic to his best friend's favorite snack. He never had a reason to eat them, they were always just something neither he or his uncle cared for. Besides, they were often too expensive, so they didn’t fall under the category of attainable. 

Now here he was, having the unfortunate, and scarring, experience of finding out he couldn’t eat the vegetable without his throat closing up and his skin breaking out in painful, itchy hives. The seven year old was justifiably terrified as his best friend leaped into action to guide him to the nurse’s office. Despite the guilt bubbling in the back of her throat, she pushed down her desire to cry and focused solely on Eddie and the frightening way he was breathing. 

Once inside the office, the older woman looked at the child with such pity. Unlike Tulip, the boy wasn’t afraid of letting anyone see when he was upset, and right now there was fear in his chest and tears welling in his eyes.

To him, that woman was a superhero. He didn’t know how to settle a reaction like the one his body was having to the pickles, but she worked her magic as best she could. In no time, his symptoms had certainly relaxed, but not vanished entirely. He could breathe a little better, to the point he no longer thought he was going to die if he wasn’t gasping for air. But he still didn’t really understand what was going on, nor did the scared Tulip holding his hand. All he knew was that he could no longer eat pickles and the nurse insisted he call one of his parents to come get him, which in this case would actually be his beloved Uncle. 

He was ever so glad he memorized the number to the plant where he worked. 

A teary Eddie held the phone in his slightly puffy red hand, sniffling while it rang. A stranger answered first, being asked by the timid six year old if he could speak to Wayne. After a few minutes his Uncle’s voice filtered through, confused as to why anyone was calling him when he was working. Eddie couldn’t help but feel relief; he was finally going to get a bit of comfort. “Wayne?” 

He recognised the voice instantly. “Eddie,” his uncle breathed, “what’s wrong, big guy?” 

“I don’t know,” he wheezed, “I can’t breathe. Why can’t I breathe?” 

The words sent him into a panic, “What d’you mean, Kid?”

Eddie explained briefly that he’d eaten something and then all of a sudden, thought he was going to die. Not actually exaggerating for once in his very short life. Even though, at first, he was in a panic thinking the child was unsafe, he quickly pieced it together that he must be having an allergic reaction. Wayne’s heart broke in that moment, clenching at the thought of his son nephew scared and crying because of that fear. He knew he wouldn’t be able to leave work, and deep down Eddie knew that too, but he wanted nothing more than to leave for the school and be there to comfort him. But he really couldn’t afford to lose his job. He was already pushing his luck by taking a personal call. 

“I’m scared, Wayne,” The older Munson frowned, closing his eyes as he fought back a couple tears at the tone of his voice. How he wished he could be with him. Just to tell him everything was okay. 

“I’m sorry, Eds,” and he truly was. Eddie was used to people not being there, mainly the adults in his life, but this time it was different. He knew Wayne wanted to be, would have been in a heartbeat, but it was a sticky situation. The real person he should be mad at was his dad. That man was no doubt passed out on the floor of the trailer, drunk at twelve pm on a Tuesday. 

“I know,” the younger boy sniffed, craving the comfort of someone familiar. “It’s okay.”

He shouldn’t have been comforting his uncle, it should’ve been the other way around, but he would do anything for Wayne. Never did he want the man to think Eddie was upset with him or let down. He tried more than anyone else. 

Before the call even ended, Tulip took it that it hadn’t gone well, and her chest ached for him. He deserved to have hundreds of relatives ready to drop anything for him, just like she had. She hated how unfair life could be to sweethearts like Eddie Munson. A little boy who just warranted the world. 

She began to scheme. 

Already in the nurse's office, it was easy to get her attention and whine that the little girl had developed a stomach ache. Eddie was confused as she was fine no less than two minutes ago. Part of him was worried she could be having a reaction too, but the wink she sent his way when the older woman wasn’t looking, told him otherwise. 

She used her ruse as a means to phone her mom. She too was at work, in a meeting no less, but that didn’t matter to her the second Tulip told Petal what was going on with Eddie. Not only was the motherly instinct kicking in, but also the guilt at the fact she had been the one to provide him with the pickles. Oh, she felt terrible. If the sad little boy had known the woman walked out of a meeting just to help him, he would have been shocked, but he also understood she could afford to do that. 

In no time she was waltzing into the room with urgency. Her eyes scanned the room frantically before they landed on the boy whose skin had become a speckled red shade as a result of the side effects. 

“Teddy,” the lawyer breathed, wanting to take him into her arms and make all his woes disappear. She smiled at her daughter. Y/N had dutifully been by his side the moment the symptoms kicked in, allowing him to seek solace in her. 

“Mommy,” Eddie cried without thinking. The weight of his words would sink into him later, and he would apologize profusely then. But now. Now he just needed her. (And when he did apologize, she would wave them off with a kiss on his forehead and a promise that she’d always be a mother to him; even if she didn’t have the pleasure of giving him life.) 

The mother couldn’t help but take his head in her arms, especially after the title had been uttered from his trembling lips, cradling him to her chest and rubbing his back. She didn’t know that her actions would incite his tears, but it wasn’t long after she had taken him in her arms that he started sobbing. The older woman didn’t mind that her blouse was getting stained or that she was missing work. Her kid needed her, and there was no other place she’d want to be. 

“I’m signing him and Y/N out, Lorraine,” she informed, digging into her bag for her pen. The nurse nodded, motioning to the clipboard on her desk and allowing her to do so. When she finished, she turned to her daughter and son. “Tully, I’m gonna go with Teddy to his classroom. Think you’ll be okay going to yours?” 

Her daughter nodded, running off in the direction of her classroom to grab her stuff. Petal knew Eddie wouldn’t ask for more comfort than she’d already provided, but she also knew that he needed to be placated even more. To keep from overstepping a boundary between them, she offered him her hand, waiting for him to either take it or deny it. When he did, she squeezed it and walked with him to his classroom. 

He was clinging onto her for dear life as they traveled to get his coat and bag, Petal doing the honors of carrying them for him, (not for her daughter though, she didn’t almost die.) That was all they needed before they met up with Tulip and headed off on their way. 

There was a mandatory stop for ice cream, obviously. Though the mother-daughter duo were almost floored to hear Eddie had never had the pleasure of trying the dessert. It was all the more reason why they were determined to get him some, any flavor–or flavors, he wanted. 

“You mean, I can pick more than one?” The childlike amazement in his eyes was heartwarming, but at the same time made the older woman sad. Why would anyone rob such a precious child– any child for that matter–of this kind of joy? She didn’t verbally answer his question, only nodded and encouraged him to do so. 

In the end, he decided on raspberry and cotton candy. Tulip got mint chocolate chip, her favorite. And Petal, for herself, landed on Strawberry.

The mother was headed to pay when Eddie tugged on the sleeve of her coat to get her attention. “C-Can we get one for Wayne too?” he asked, shyly. His voice was almost so quiet that Petal didn’t hear him, but luckily she did, and his thoughtfulness made her heart swell. She reached a hand down to ruffle his hair, grinning at him. “Of course, we can.”

Together they settled on pistachio. The lawyer paid for the four ice creams and then ushered the two children out of the small shop. Eddie was surprised they were allowed to eat such a messy food in her expensive car, his dad would never let him do such a thing– but it was Petal’s belief that a car could be cleaned, crucial childhood memories couldn’t wait. 

Driving home was filled with much laughter and Tulip’s horrid singing along to the radio. Eddie had complained a couple times about the screeching in his ear, but she always just took it in her stride and raised her voice louder. It was a lovely moment for the mother to witness, happy that her daughter and pseudo-son were getting along so well. 

By the time they made it back to the large, fancy home, the three’s desserts had been eaten, Wayne’s slowly melting in Eddie’s hand, and the incident concerning the little boy had been almost forgotten (at least visibly anyway.) It was a rush to get it into the fridge once inside, but the mother was convinced it would be fine; still edible at least, even if it was a weird mush. To pass the time until Eddie was picked up by his Uncle, the two kids played on Tulip’s new Nintendo, a console that had only recently been released. 

It was almost eight when the man showed up at the door of the Providence residence. He was jittery, understandably so after what he had experienced over the phone earlier on. It was hard for him to think this door was going to open and there his nephew would be, completely okay. Wayne had only been taking care of Eddie, practically full time, since the beginning of the year. In reality the dad was supposed to be caring for his son, but Chet Munson was no father. He couldn’t believe in the couple months he’d been in his care, he had already almost died. 

Knocking was nerve-wracking. He even thought he might be sweating as he stood on the step and painstakingly waited for someone to open up. 

When they did, he was greeted with Petal’s friendly face. “Hi, Wayne. He fell asleep, come on in.” 

She led him inside, over to the couch where the small boy resided peacefully. He almost felt bad waking him. For a little longer he let him sleep, just long enough that he could talk to the matriarch about what had happened. But that was going to have to be put off for a few minutes while his nephew’s best friend welcomed him. 

“Wayne!” Tulip cheered, rushing over to him to give him a hug. Her tiny arms wrapped around his waist where she could reach. His hug back wasn’t quite as enthusiastic. It was a head rub more than anything really, but she didn’t mind. Their interaction was short, the little girl being diverted by her mother to elsewhere. 

The older woman turned to her daughter. “Tully, why don’t you go and get Eddie’s stuff?”

There was no hesitation or protest, she just did it. Now that the pair were alone, aside from the unconscious child, they could talk like adults. “Thank you for helping him. He needed someone today,” he began. “I’m glad you were there.”

It didn’t take a genius to figure out that he was feeling bad. It was a mix of things, the fact he couldn’t be there even though he would have loved more than anything to have been, but Petal could. And that his nephew had almost died and he wouldn’t have even been there. She also seemed to know just the right thing to say. 

“Don’t feel bad, he’s okay. He’s the happiest kid and that’s all because of you, you’re doing your best.” Her words did reassure him. He never knew that a singular person could make him feel so comforted or relaxed, but apparently Petal had a strong way with words–obviously, she’s a lawyer. This helped him understand why Eddie felt so comfortable in her presence. Even with what she said though, there was still brief uncertainty in his eyes that came along with the fact he had yet to hear the kid’s voice. “Go wake him, I can tell you want to.”

The man thanked her again, nodding his head. He was by Eddie’s side in seconds, trying to rouse him from his sleep in a way that wouldn’t startle him. It only took a little whispering and a single nudge for him to see those puppy eyes fluttering open, immediate relief spreading throughout his entire body. Now he could be a hundred percent sure he was okay. “Hi, sleepyhead.” The boy stretched, and like his usual clumsy self, almost fell off of the couch.

“Please never let me eat pickles again, Wayne.” The words prompted a chuckle from him, glad that even through such a terrifying experience, Eddie could have a sense of humor. 

“Never again.”

As Tulip brought the kid’s stuff, not much more conversation was made. There were lots of thank you’s from both Munsons, and Wayne finally got his ice cream, before the pair headed on their way. It was almost the five-year-old's bedtime, and after the day he’d had, he must've been exhausted. The man left the house with the sleepy boy in his arms, his head on his shoulders as he fought to keep awake. Wayne’s large hand brushed over the expanse of his back, his erratic heart finally slowing down now that Eddie was safe and unharmed in his arms. “You scared me, big guy.”

That made the boy frown. He felt bad for doing that, it was never his intention. “I’m sorry.”

“Hey,” Wayne placated, running his hand over his hair, “it’s not your fault.” 

The two talked about it while he buckled him into the back seat of his truck, sharing smiles and simple promises. Stuff like Wayne would keep him away from the food, and Eddie would never scare him like that again. It was what they both desperately needed to hear. 

1972

When Eddie had proposed a playdate, he hadn’t expected her to suggest his house. After all, why would a rich kid from the richest neighborhood in Hawkins want to play in the trailer park. But he couldn’t say no, after all, it had been his idea. He knew Y/N wasn’t like the other pretentious and snobby well-off kids in Hawkins, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t be the littlest bit judgemental when she sees his trailer home and compares it to her mansion. Little did he know she only suggested it because she was sick of her own house. 

Upon her first time seeing the trailer, she didn’t seem automatically repulsed, which was good in his eyes. She was actually pretty intrigued by it all, it was the complete opposite to her home, and at six years old she had never seen anything like it. The entire place was a mystery to her, but she was obsessed from the second she stepped foot inside. 

“Can you show me around?” she quizzed, bouncing on her feet in anticipation. She couldn’t wait for him to open the door fully. 

“Yeah. Um, follow me,” he instructed. The two started in the small, but cozy, living room. Then there was the kitchen, the one that was usually empty. And then all that was left were the two tiny bedrooms and the bathroom. “And well, this is it. It’s short but, um, there’s not a lot here.” He was nervous about her reaction, but the one he got definitely wasn’t what he had been expecting. It actually surpassed all his expectations of her.

“I love it,” she gushed, eyes widening as she took in the distance between the rooms. “You’re right next to your uncle? I sleep so far away from my mom.” 

He didn’t know how she managed to make such positivity out of his situation, but it was exactly what he needed to hear. It wasn’t pity, it was genuine excitement that just so happened to make him feel better. She was never one to judge, but Eddie hated to assume the best in people only to be let down in the end almost ninety percent of the time. No one could blame him. Really, what were the odds of a rich girl like the Hopper kid being content with a home like this when she had everything she could ever ask for? Luckily for him, the odds were in his favor. 

After she had seen the inside and what little the place had to offer, not that she was thinking that–Eddie was–the two ventured outside with a quick unnecessary apology from him. “Sorry, I don’t have cool stuff like you do. But we could go outside, ride bikes or something.” 

That was the moment he found out Tulip Hopper didn’t know how to ride a bike, nor was she up to learning after she skinned her knee the last time when her dad tried to teach her. He did find out she could skateboard though, that was a fun little piece of information that he could do nothing with. 

It was all going well for a while, the neighbor Wayne had gotten to check on them could see well enough from her front window. They had just been innocently playing when the bullies had shown up on their bikes. It was the usual ‘posse’, the two George’s and their puppy dog, the one who never said anything. For whatever reason, they were riding their bikes past the entrance of the park, and by pure luck they had spotted a waft of Tulip’s hair. They called to her, just to check they had the right person, and then the taunting began; ruthlessly. 

It was the usual. They laughed at his home, at him, and questioned why someone like Tulip would ever want to hang out with him. They acted as though he was complete filth. But just like the first time they met, and how she always would, she jumped to his defense. At first he tried to tell her it was pointless, they would only continue harassing him another time when she wasn’t there, but the second the word ‘freak’ tumbled past one of their lips– oh, she’d had it. 

“You can’t call him that,” she huffed, arms crossed over her chest, “he may be a freak, but he’s my freak. Right, Freak?” 

Eddie stared at her. If she was trying to defend him, she had a weird way of going about it. “I mean, I guess.” He rationalized it. Better to have her calling him the mean name without any actual despise behind it, than some rich jerks. 

“Uh, y-yeah.” It was unclear whether this was the right way to go about getting them to stop, but he trusted her and her crazy mind. 

Somehow it did work, the trio looked unsettled and backed off a little bit, but Steve couldn’t keep his mouth shut like the dummy he was. “Are you really blowing us off for this freak, Tulip?”

Anger flashed through her features and Eddie thought if looks could kill, he definitely would have been dead by now. If he was in Steve Harrington’s position right now he would have been terrified, actually the boy probably was. He genuinely thought she might step forward and push the kid off of his bike if he wasn’t careful. “I said, don’t call him that, Steven.”

There was a brief stand-off, where the rich kid looked like he was going to say something back to her, but then found himself defeated. It was truly a sight to watch. The way the boy tried to puff out his chest, seem taller, only to deflate when he realized he was no match for the rage the Hopper child possessed. He clearly grew embarrassed, especially at the sound of Eddie’s quiet laughter. “Get lost,” Tulip snapped. 

They followed just as she said, rushing out of Forest Hills like they’d just seen a ghost, all while the two small children burst into loud laughter. 

That event was long forgotten by the time the adult of the trailer finally got home from his shift, the familiar vehicle pulling into the park. Wayne found the pair playing outside the trailer, the two laughing away like they didn’t have a care in the world. He smiled brightly at the sight as he climbed out of his truck, takeout in hand for himself and the kids. “Food’s here, kids,” he announced. 

He was almost tackled by Eddie as the kid rushed to hug him, whereas Tulip was only concerned with the food in the bag that he was carrying. It wasn’t often she got to have take out at home, her mom didn’t really love her eating such junk, but she wasn’t going to know. Plus it’s not like Wayne could have cooked anything better considering the lack of ingredients in the home. 

When he saw the fascination in her eyes after taking her first bite, his mind immediately jumped to what Petal would think, and he quickly uttered out something to save his ass. “Don’t tell your mom about this, okay kid?”

She just hummed. Tulip liked dinner at the Munson house much more than she liked it at her own home. When she ate there, her mom and step-dad talked about work and adult things, barely even acknowledging she was there. They had to eat at the table too, the one that was much too large for only the three of them. She still didn’t understand why it was so big. But here at the Munsons, they had a ton of fun conversation, joked around, and sometimes watched rented VHS’. It was a whole different kind of environment and she loved it, she wanted to be there all the time. 

The mood changed quickly when Wayne properly glanced at Eddie for the first time since getting home. “What happened to your hair?” the older man asked, suddenly noticing it looked different than usual. Both he and Tulip froze mid-bite. That was not a good sign, but nothing with that kid ever was. He sighed, setting his food down to inspect his nephew’s long hair. At the sight of the pale pink confectionary tangled within the curls he let out a mental groan. That would be hell to remove. “Eddie.. How did this happen?”

“Um, we were playing, a-and I tripped over Tulip’s foot– by accident! And it got stuck,” he explained, shyly. The last thing he wanted to do was get her into trouble, and he hoped that with the way he had worded the story, that hadn’t happened. 

Not a single part of Wayne felt up to spending hours detangling the gum from his hair, so instead, much to the boy’s dismay, he shaved his head. And that was how Eddie Munson ended up with a buzzcut for almost a year of his life. All thanks to his best friend wedging gum in his hair. 

1978

Y/N was Eddie’s first kiss. Eddie was Y/N's first kiss. It was a fond memory for the pair of them, keeping it from their shared group of friends years later, wanting to keep it a secret. It wasn’t that they were scared they’d get mocked for it; for the longest time, Eddie and Y/N were joint to the hip, it was only understandable it would happen. Of course, it meant nothing. The feelings shared between the two were strictly platonic, but they wouldn’t lie and say it wasn’t something they cherished. Everyone wants a great first kiss, and who better to share it with than your best friend? 

It happened when they were twelve. Eddie was going into the seventh grade, Y/N into the sixth. While she may have had a lot of power based on her family’s wealth and her father’s position within the police department, pre-teen girls didn’t care about any of it. They only cared about what was cool, who was part of the ‘in-crowd’, and fashion trends they saw in magazines. And because Y/N didn’t care for any of that, opting to stain her expensive clothes with mud and befriending anyone and everyone she could, they despised her. Her mother had told her it was because they were jealous, but Y/N didn’t think so. They were just evil. 

The twelve year old had been sitting on a bench in the playground when they approached her, malicious smirks decorating their faces. She had greeted them with a smile, eager to have a conversation with the group of girls she had yet to befriend. But as soon as she had, her welcoming smile fell. They were ruthless in their taunting–somehow having found out that the rising sixth grader hadn’t been kissed. 

“It’s because you’re ugly,” one of them spit, “no boy would ever want to kiss an ugly girl.” 

She wanted to retaliate. To defend herself and spew something just as mean, but nothing came out of her mouth. It was as if it’d been glued shut, rendering her unable to talk back. Y/N couldn’t hold back her tears, believing every spiteful word they said and taking it to her. She had always been good at blocking them out, not paying any attention to them, but eventually, they struck her where it hurt. After all, she was only human, and humans are nothing if not sensitive and insecure. She believed every spiteful word that came out of their overly glossed lips. Unwillingly storing them in her heart.

Despite how much she liked to project herself as something other than what she was–a little girl in a big world–she wasn’t superhuman. Y/N wasn’t born with the ability to fly or shoot laser beams from her eyes nor was she experimented on until she was a mutant, able to withstand the harshest of conditions and do unbelievable things. Sometimes she got ahead of herself, believing every fantasy world she created for herself. When reality hit, it hit her hard, threatening to knock her unconscious. This was one of those times when reality was cruel. 

Instead of being the heroine she could have been, she turned heel and ran, leaving them to their mocking laughter and rumors. In her hurry to get away from them, she had forgotten her belongings. The Star Wars comic book–the newest one–her mother had given her was left behind, waiting for someone to take it and claim it as their own. The little girl would have been heartbroken, it was her most prized possession, but she was too hurt to care. Her plan of waiting for either Steve or Eddie to show up disappeared in an instant, wanting nothing more than to be alone. 

She found solace atop a branch, overlooking the grounds. The bark was scratchy on her thighs, digging into them unforgivingly, but she didn’t mind. Y/N sat quietly, trying to hold in the sniffles that threatened to leave her every so often. The tears had brimmed her eyes, occasionally leaking out, but whenever they did, she would wipe them away with her arm. 

The preteen had been lost in her thoughts when her friend joined her, climbing up the tree and sitting beside her, her comic book in his hands. Eddie had smiled at her, wanting to tease her for leaving the expensive object behind despite her mother’s insistence. But the smile he had and his words died out when she didn’t return it, keeping her watery eyes locked on the grass below them. Her bright and youthful eyes brimmed red with dried tear streaks running down her soft skin. The older boy couldn’t help but frown at her appearance. It was as if someone had forgotten to water a bright flower causing it to lose its color. It was unsettling. 

When she finally acknowledged him, she wiped at her runny nose and forced a smile. He didn’t like that. Eddie, always having had a personal space problem, shuffled closer to her. He carefully took in her appearance. Her cheeks were puffy and flushed from the crying and her nose was red from her constant rubbing. She obviously felt her worst, but to Eddie, he saw her at her best, as he always did. “What’s wrong, Lippy?” 

“Do you think I’m ugly?” she whispered. Eddie, in his prepubescent age, reeled back and furrowed his eyebrows. He had never thought of his best friend in that way, and he was sure he never would. He would let her other–less cool–best friend pine over her. 

“Is this a trick question?” he dubiously asked, dark eyes wide in shock. She shuffled away from him with a sniffle. Y/N threw all rational thinking aside when she was upset. Eddie hadn’t said yes; he also hadn’t said she was ugly. But, in her hurt, she took his query as an agreement to her question. It was, to her at least, confirmation that the girls’ words were in fact true. She was unkissable because she was ugly. 

“So you do think I’m ugly,” she accused, moving farther away from him–as much as she could before she fell off the branch. Eddie was bewildered. All he wanted to do was hang out with his best friend, not get roped into an interrogation. 

“No, Y/N, wait,” he sighed, scooching closer to her, “you’re not ugly. In fact, you’re the prettiest girl in all of Hawkins.” It was the truth, at least to him (and to Steve, but he would never admit it. Cause he’s dumb.) Y/N was effortlessly pretty. At twelve years old, she had a smile that blinded and eyes that shined. But that wasn’t her most redeemable quality. It was her personality that drew people in. She was social and warm with an aura of gold around her. It wasn’t a wonder that all the boys wanted to be hers. 

“I am?” how she couldn’t see her beauty was beyond Eddie. 

He nodded, “yeah. I would say the whole state, but–” she pushed him slightly before he could finish his sentence, a glower adorning her face. And just like that, things were back to normal. Eddie laughed, rubbing his shoulder despite it not actually hurting him. 

“What happened?” he asked, wanting to know just what snuffed out his best friend’s sun. Y/N took her book from his hands, fiddling with it while she confessed ever so quietly. The summer breeze was louder than her words, but he knew better than to ask her to speak up. 

“Just, you know how girls can be,” she sighed. Eddie nodded. They were assholes. “They were making fun of me because they had their first kisses, and I haven’t. They said they didn’t know why Steve was my best friend because I’m so ‘ugly’ and he’s not–that I haven’t had my first kiss because of that.” 

Eddie felt a fury he never had before. He wanted them to trip and fall in mud. “You’re not ugly, Lippy. I don’t know why you listen to them; they’re just shallow, jealous girls.” 

“I know, but sometimes, it’s just a little too much,” she responded softly. He looked at her before surging forward and kissing her. The dark haired boy didn’t know what he was thinking, if he was at all, but he couldn’t stop himself. The sound of something so trivial making his best friend upset didn’t settle well with him, and if he could solve her problem for her, he was going to. 

She froze, pushing him away. Y/N stared at him with wide eyes, a heat capturing her cheeks. Eddie and her had never crossed the line from friends to more than that. Neither one liked the other in that way, anything they felt for one another was platonic. A love like that of siblings. So it was peculiar, and unwelcomed, when he kissed her. 

“Why would you do that?” she demanded. He smiled sheepishly with a shrug. 

“Now you can say you had your first kiss,” Eddie stated proudly, “and so can I.” 

“I was your first kiss?” she asked, shocked. It wasn’t that Eddie was the coolest kid in Hawkins with dozens of girls begging for their chance. He was just older than her, and he had a lot more time to experience things with different people than she had. For whatever strange reason, she just thought that her best friend had been kissed before. It made her feel giddy, the knowledge that she got to share a first with him. 

Biting her lip, she cheekily replied to his confession. “I’m so glad it was with you and not Steve.”  

1984

“You know what I do when I’m sad?” the metalhead asked, leaning across the wooden table to look at her with mischief in his eyes.

“What?” Y/N sniffled, wiping away the remnants of her tears from her cheeks. 

“I smoke,” he answered, proudly displaying his tin lunchbox and opening it up. He held up a rolled blunt, moving it through his fingers as he looked at her expectantly. Y/N sighed.

Eddie Munson was the devil in disguise, she was sure of it. She was Hawkins’ Flower; the epitome of innocence and virtue. Or at least she was supposed to be. People often forgot that she was a Hopper first and foremost. With the knowledge of her genetics in mind to appease her, she took the blunt from him and brought it to her lips. She was going to regret it later when her emotions amplified and her sadness bordered depression, but for that moment, she felt weightless.  

“You’re a terrible influence, Freak.” She informed, inhaling the toxin into her lungs before passing it to Eddie. 

“But you love me, Lippy,” she scowled at him. 

“You’re a bastard,” she took the blunt from his hand, “this is mine now.” 

June 1985

Never did Eddie or Tulip think she would be the one graduating first. He was supposed to have accomplished it the year prior, class of ‘84, but of course he failed more than two classes, so it wasn’t possible for him to leave. Tulip told him he’d get it next year, and then the pair would be able to graduate together, but he failed that one too. She didn’t know what he was doing wrong, and she knew he was a little defeated when showing up for her, even if he didn’t say it. But he had promised her he would be there.

Most of her morning had been taken up by Steve, mainly because Eddie hadn’t been around. He’d been pretty MIA and part of her worried he wasn’t going to show at the school with her parents like they had planned. Her mother noticed her qualms, trying to soothe her nerves. She was already uneasy about graduating anyway, she didn’t need to start fussing over Eddie too. “He’ll be there, Tully. He always is.”

The doubt on her daughter’s face was clear, and although the mother would have loved to spend hours reassuring her until she was a hundred percent positive he was going to be there, there wasn’t time. “Are you sure? Cause what if this is the first time he doesn’t come? Like, he just decides to break his promise. Mom, do you think he’ll do that?” 

Petal had to make her next words the most sincere, ones that would really get through to her daughter. “When has he ever broken a promise to you?” she questioned. “That boy would never do anything to purposely upset you. He’s not going to miss this when he knows how much it means to you.”

And of course Petal was never wrong. Just like her mom had said, he was there, standing side by side with Hopper as she was called to the stage. At the sight of him her heart raced, happy he had made it and stuck to his promise. Despite the worry she had presented to Petal before they left the house this morning, deep down in her heart she trusted him enough to be there. 

The first time she got to speak to Eddie after she was handed her diploma, she couldn’t just approach him fairly, of course she had to torment him a little. “I guess this means I’m officially the smarter friend,” she teased, coming to a stop in front of him. Her parents were watching them with amused smiles.

He chuckled. “Sorry, I don’t recall you doing any of your own artwork. You passing art is courtesy of me.” He wasn’t wrong. They’d known since they were small children that Tulip couldn’t draw even basic animals, so she had no hope of passing that class. The first time she had ranted about her misfortune to Eddie, he had offered to help in return for her assistance with Math– her strong suit and arguably his worst. 

“Touché.”

There was a beat of silence before he was lunging forward to pull her into a bone crushing hug. At first she couldn’t breathe, but then she just accepted he wasn’t going to let up and wrapped her arms around his torso. “I’m proud of you, Lippy,” he whispered, squeezing her once more before he pulled away and reached into his pockets. “I actually got you a little something.”

In her hand he placed a small rectangular wrapped gift. It was terribly done, as usual, Eddie was useless when it came to wrapping paper. He also hadn’t had a lot of time. While he was sulking this morning about his younger friend graduating before him, he had gone present hunting, coming back with little time to make it look presentable enough to give to her. 

She didn’t care if it looked bad anyway, she had been receiving terrible looking gifts since the first Christmas they had been friends all the way back in ‘71. The paper was ripped off within seconds, her eyes lighting up at the sight of the cassette in her hands. “Tears for Fears, I’ve wanted this for months. How did you know?”

He rolled his eyes. “Are you kidding? You never shut up about it.”

Obviously she was grateful for the gift, but her go to response was to tell him he hadn’t had to do that. It wasn’t a secret Eddie didn’t have that much money, and she didn’t want him wasting what he did have on gifts for her, gifts that she really didn’t need. “Ed,” she began, but he jumped in to cut her off so quickly, shaking his head as though he already knew what she was going to say. And he did. He knew her too well. “Don’t even think about telling me I didn’t have to. It’s your big day, I wanted to.”

So, instead of protesting, she thanked him over and over, until he was sick of hearing the words coming out of her mouth. 

When their conversation died down, he noticed she wasn’t paying much attention to him anymore. Her eyes were straying off to the boy that stood not too far away. Steve was making weak attempts at conversation with his parents. Usually they didn’t turn up to any event for him, but this was something they deemed their presence necessary at. Tulip wasn’t much of a fan of them, which is why she wasn’t already over there with him. She would much rather spend time with Eddie than the snobby Harrington adults. 

But even he could tell she was dying to go over there. “Don’t let them stop you. Go to him,” he encouraged, noticing the way she and Steve shared longing glances when they thought the other wasn’t looking. He may not have been one of the fellow graduates this year, but Tulip and Steve were, they deserved to celebrate together. She sent him a thankful look, rushing across the room to practically throw herself in her friend’s arms. Even if he now had to stand by himself at a graduation that wasn’t even his, he was glad she was happy. 

1986

There weren't many things that could get Tulip to come back to Hawkins after her dad died. It was one of the hardest times of her entire life, and going back there would surely only remind her of all the bad memories linked with his death. She may have missed her friends and the town and all the good memories she had there, ones she didn’t have in New York– but a Hawkins without Hopper wasn’t a real Hawkins at all. 

However, if there was one person who knew exactly what to say to convince her, it was Dustin Henderson.

Getting a call from him on one random day in March was weird. 

“Please, Y/N, things have only gotten weirder,” he said. That made her curious, though she thought if she asked it could only force her to give in. However, he told her anyway. “Lucas joined the basketball team– which isn’t actually that important, Chrissy Cunningham was killed, Eddie Munson’s even a murder suspect.”

She gasped, her thoughts slowing as she tried to process what Dustin had just told her. Her childhood best friend, the Eddie her mother almost killed with a pickle when they were kids, had somehow been accused of murder. She didn’t know the situation, the kid hadn’t told him what had happened or why, or even if he was innocent. But she knew that he was, of course he was. The Eddie Munson she knew was incapable of ever doing such a thing. 

“Dustin. He didn’t do it, right?��� She didn’t know if she could take being told that he had.

“No, no. It isn’t looking good, though. The police are looking for him, a-and Jason Carver’s on, like, a manhunt.”

It didn’t make any sense how so much could go wrong after she left. She hadn’t even been gone that long, and Steve had been supposed to keep her updated on everything. How could everything have gotten so messed up in such a short amount of time? “I-Is he there?” she asked. 

There was a bit of hesitation before she heard rustling on the other end of the phone. At first she was scared, as was he. Never did she want Eddie to be upset or terrified, but she could only imagine that was the exact headspace he was in. 

“Tulip?” he whispered. 

“Eddie, oh my god. What is going on over there?”

He didn’t answer her question like she thought he would. Instead he began defending himself, hastily, like he couldn’t get the words out quick enough. If Tulip even for a second thought he might be this evil monster, he wouldn’t know how to live with himself. “I didn’t do it, you have to believe me. Lippy, it wasn’t me.”

“I believe you. I know you, Teddy.”

That was all she really needed to say, all that mattered in the long run. She was on his side, and if the kids alone couldn’t prove his innocence, then she knew people that could. Hell, even her mom would do it at the drop of a hat. Eddie wasn’t going down for this, not a chance. 

“Dustin’s telling me I have to go. B-But please, come back, I need you.”

The call ended before she could respond. It left her in a dilemma for no more than a minute. She didn’t need time to think about this, this was Eddie and he needed her help. She had to go home as soon as possible. 

1986 - After 

Time seemed to still the second Tulip caught sight of a crying Dustin, his sobs breaking her heart and having her fear the worst. It turned out, the worst in her head didn’t compare to the actual worst. She would have never guessed Dustin was crying over the pulseless body of Eddie Munson, but it was the reality. The closer she got to him, the more dread she felt. They had won, so why did it feel like she had lost? 

“Eddie,” she whispered, rushing to him in an instant. Despite wanting nothing more than to stay frozen in her place, not wanting to see her best friend as anything other than alive. Breathing and joking around with her. She ran to him, at his side as quickly as she could, fingers immediately searching for a pulse. Her breath caught in her throat in relief, finding the faintest of pulsing.

With tunnel vision, one could only see what they wanted to see, focusing on a single thing. And to Tulip, at that moment, it was her best friend and keeping him from stepping into death’s hold. Without thinking, she softly pushed her younger friend aside, hands instantaneously going to the metalhead’s chest and counting the beats. Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust ironically playing in the back of her mind to stay on count. “Please, Teddy. Please.” 

Her arms were aching and her vision was blurred, but she couldn’t stop. Not until she knew her best friend would be bothering her for the rest of their lives. It was too soon for him to go. Eddie Munson was worth more than an untimely death; he deserved to graduate and live out his dream of finally leaving Hawkins. Tulip didn’t care that her friends were watching her attempts, thinking they were futile. She just wanted him to fucking live. 

“Y/N,” Steve tried, gently tugging at her shoulders in an attempt to pry her off of Eddie’s body. “Y/N, please. He’s gone. I’m sorry.”

Y/N sniffled, hastily wiping off her tears and shrugging him off. She continued her ministrations, humming a song in her head to keep at it. Her heart was splitting in two, but she didn’t allow herself to succumb to the exhaustion. She kept going, attempting to bring her friend back from where he’d been tittering the line between life and death. 

“Y/N, come on,” Steve’s voice sounded far away. She’d subconsciously pushed him to the back of her mind. The only thing that really mattered was her best friend. Every little thing they did as kids floated through her mind. Glimpses of times where she was happy by his side, smoking the day away or simply bickering with one another. 

“Y/N,” this time it was Dustin. Her heart clenched at the sound of his broken voice, and more tears sprang to her eyes. She was doing this for him. Eddie Munson had a knack for nestling his way into everyone’s hearts and staying there. He had done so for her when they were children, sharing chalk on the curb. And he had done it to Dustin, acting as a refuge to him when high school proved to be too much. “Y/N, please. He’s gone.”

No. He can’t be. She thought, it takes a lot more to kill off Eddie Munson. 

She couldn’t hold the sigh of relief upon hearing Eddie’s sharp gasp. He coughed, looking up at her with blurry eyes before giving her a bloody smile. 

“I’m feeling like the Bee Gees right now,” he croaked, voice dry. 

“What?” she questioned, tearfully holding him. 

“I’m stayin’ alive,” Under normal circumstances, she would’ve dropped him off her lap as soon as the words left his mouth. But these weren’t normal circumstances. Her best friend had gone from knocking on death’s door to breathing and alive in the blink of an eye. 

“I thought you were dead,” she confessed, holding back a sob. Eddie frowned, never in his life had he seen her cry as hard as she was. Especially not over him. It was then that he realized the severity of what happened and just how much importance he had on her life. 

He weakly grabbed her hand, uncaring if it was covered in blood–whose he didn’t know. It was probably a mix of his and hers–and brought it to his lips. “I’m alive. I promise.” 

That was all that needed to be said to break the dam. Both of them ended up crying on the floor, holding each other as tightly as they possibly could. Tulip didn’t love to let people see her so vulnerable, even people she cared about, but she had never been so shaken up. The fact all her friends were watching the two of them have this moment, barely even crossed her mind. All that mattered to her was that he wasn’t going anywhere. He had a heartbeat, he was talking, he’d be okay. 

For two and a half months, Eddie had been in the hospital recovering. His injuries had been bad enough to almost kill him, he knew he wasn’t going to be miraculously healed within a couple days. But he hadn’t thought it would take this long, and he had only just made it on the homestretch yet, according to his favorite nurse. His friends had been by his side the whole time, and Wayne. But Tulip was mainly the one who never left his side. 

The two had been there for each other during their worst times, the lowest of the low. Eddie had been her shoulder to cry on back in ‘78 when her sister died, then again when her dad also ‘died’. She had been the person he confided in when his father went to prison almost a decade ago, the one who had her parents practically hold an initiation to welcome him to the family when his mom left. So, of course she was going to be by his side now. Though this wasn’t like anything either of them had ever experienced, it still hadn’t completely set in, but there was no way Tulip would be doing anything but holding his hand through the entire thing.

His graduation was rapidly approaching, but he didn’t want to go. He’d been given the green light, his body was healing well. But he didn’t want to see anyone– or really, have them see him. No longer was he the Eddie he used to be, not completely. People still thought he was a killer, hell the police were barely convinced he wasn’t. Going back to the school wasn’t going to be as easy as he would have liked, so he chose to sit it out. It was ironic, the first time in three years he was on track to successfully make it, and he’s accused of murder, then almost murdered by bats in another dimension. You couldn’t make it up. 

However, just because he wasn’t up to going to his graduation in person, didn’t mean graduation couldn’t come to him instead. Tulip, with a lot of help from her mom and friends, had been scheming. If he didn’t feel up to going to get his diploma, she would have the entire ceremony brought to him in the hospital. 

The only problem that seemed to arise, was that she had to get him from the bed in his room to the corridor where it was going down. “Come on, Munson, you know you have to walk around at least once a day.” This was always hard for her to get him to do. He had gotten so used to the uncomfortable hospital bed, and the specific position in which it caused him no pain to his injuries, that he didn’t like to leave it. If he went on this walk around the floor of the hospital with his best friend, he was going to have to spend the next hour in pain until everything settled again. 

He pouted as she started to tug on his hands. “Don’t want to today, Tulip.” He was already down due to the fact this was another year he wasn’t going to get his diploma. He didn’t even know if the school would give it to him after the whole serial killer scandal– even though that wasn’t his fault. 

“Stop being a little bitch boy,” she demanded. He was taken back at her use of words, eyeing her with a slack jaw as she tried to fight back her laughter. It had sort of slipped out by accident, but she was definitely glad that it did now that she saw the reaction it brought on. 

“What did you just call me?” he asked. 

She was still giggling to herself as she pulled the warm covers off of him, leaving the chilly hospital AC to get to him. “That’s not important. Just get up or I’ll get the nurse.”

With the threat lingering in the air, he sighed, taking the help she offered for him to get out of the bed. It wasn’t as easy as he would have liked, and it definitely hurt, but he eventually managed it. 

A thank you left his lips as she steadied him. He was still a little shaky on his feet, even after all the time he had been spending in recovery, so he walked to the hall with one of his best friend’s arms around his waist. She stopped him just before they reached the doorway though, telling him not to peek as she got a quick surprise ready for him. Although he so desperately wanted to just look, he didn’t disobey her, she was scary when she got angry. 

When she returned, on top of the clothes she had been wearing when she first entered his room, were now a cap and gown, specifically the ones that Hawkins high graduates would wear. He cocked his head in confusion, but she handed a similar material to him, placing the cap on his head for him. “What’re you doing? I’m not going to the graduation, Lippy.” He was putting his foot down on that. 

But she shook her head. “No, you’re not. It’s actually coming to you– just put the gown on.”

After being friends for so long, he knew not to argue with her. He just did as she asked, slowly, painfully, slipping the material over his arms. “Now what?”

Her hands were thrusted out to him again for assistance, but now she showcased a beaming smile. The first sight of all his friends standing down the hallway, off to the sides so a podium could stand in the middle, it had tears springing to his eyes. They all held the biggest smiles on their faces as she helped him limp to them.

It wasn’t a shock that Wayne was crying, as well as Petal who stood beside him. He didn’t know if it was new-same old, crying because he almost died and he was in the hospital, or if it was because he was finally graduating after so so many attempts. He supposed it didn’t really matter which it was, either way he knew they were proud of him. 

Two of the girls stood out from the crowd, Robin and Nancy, who were also in their cap and gowns having just come from their own proper graduation. It seemed as though they’d brought Principal Higgins along too, who looked rather uneasy to see Eddie. There was a large shock surrounding him, for various reasons. He was still weird about seeing him because of the murder suspect thing– but honestly he also never expected the kid would make it. He always thought he’d drop out before he finally passed his final year.

“Munson, Edward,” he called with a grin, holding the piece of paper ready to hand over. 

Tulip was going to help him, but he insisted that he could do it for himself. With some difficulty and a lot of pain in his right leg, he made his way over to the podium. Everyone watched on, some emotional, some just happy he had finally made it. Honestly, Dustin was still on a high at the fact he was even alive. 

When he reached out his hand, the diploma was placed into his palm, a congratulations uttered from the teacher he once hated. A camera flash startled him, his head turning in search of the perpetrator. Steve stared at him with a crooked smile, lifting the camera like it was some awkward nod to him. Of all people to take the picture he didn’t know why it was Harrington, but he also wasn’t aware Tulip had threatened him to do it. If he’d been given that piece of information then it would have made much more sense.

To stay true to his word, the one that he shared with Dustin and Mike what felt like forever ago, even if it wasn’t entirely appropriate, he gave Principal Higgins the finger. He laughed to himself as the man just accepted it, expecting no less from the Munson boy. 

As quickly as he could give his healing injuries, he rushed back to Tulip, gushing about what he had just accomplished. He didn’t notice the way she slipped something in the pocket of his gown, but he would come to find later that it’d been a cassette, specifically of the new Queen album. He had been eyeing it for a few days now, so she thought why not? 

Eddie hadn’t felt this happy in a long time, and it was all thanks to the girl he called his best friend who could not get any more perfect by the sounds of it. “I did it, Tully.” With a quick stolen kiss to her cheek, one that had her gasping, he was shuffling away from her and over to his uncle, prepared to rejoice in his accomplishment. Tulip couldn’t even be mad, she was so proud of it and he really deserved to have his special moment. He’d been to hell and back the last few months, more than anyone in the room could understand; he needed this. 

That morning he woke up as the ‘ex murder suspect turned bedridden bat food’, and now he would end it as Hawkins high graduate, Eddie Munson; class of ‘86.

~*~

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[shadowpeachyuri]

Hiya! Technically health-wise I'm in no condition to be trying but y'know the curse of ao3 writers lmao, still, I wanted to see if I can make a rough skeleton outline of a fic that deals with our corpse flower smelling monkey, as the owner of those banger revived!Macky hcs, you mind if I write about them, w credit obviously :P I've already written one walking corpse fic out of a character, another shouldn't be too hard to try and mimic the suspense of but I want more reaction out of this one so the only tricky part would be the larger cast interaction and coming up w more scenarios over a larger area mostly post-reveal and if we want Macky to be saved in any way 🤔 and if I want to try to fool the audience into not knowing Macky is a revived dying corpse until the sus builds up but if its from his pov, then he's going to know, unless if I try being more tricky with it. the only starting scene I can think of is him trying to brush his fur and how many clumps fall out. we could throw him into a fight that draws no blood, or it can be a simple accident at Pigsy's place. does he need to go to the bathroom. is his heart still beating, maybe only his heart and brain are working. but its like a ticking clock then for true functionality. can we frankenstein him. lots of good quotes in that book I can try to Macify. my patchwork monkey, maybe he's that concept of a "hungry ghost." they say some ppl turn into regular ghosts before dying a second time. just cannot catch a break huh. tfw when you're a character designed for death in everyway. thinking about this makes me excited for S5 what kind of shenanigans will they drag him through to continue his redemption arc. we barely left on the edge of shadowpeach and their silent communication trope there is SO MUCH MORE that could be coming.

anon. grips your shoulders. there are so many things i want to tell you right now. like

1) take care of yourself, your health is the most important thing.

2) i may have thought of them but i do NOT own those headcanons, i posted them BECAUSE i wanted to share them with people!!

3) i still have some dead macaque headcanons floating around from plans of a fic abt it i never wrote if you want to chat abt it!

4) your ideas on it are really cool and i do think the world needs more freaky zombie macaque so PLEASE go ham!!!!!

5) if youre writing it, then it's YOUR story and the mechanics of the walking corpse thing work however the hell you want them to!!

and finally. good luck this sounds sick as hell man

#ask!! #anon ask!! #tbh i lowkey picture it as like. a ghost possessing a corpse type deal? #where lbd's magic allowed the possession to happen and preserved the body mostly intact #but like. she really doesnt give even a little bit of a shit abt macaque's quality of unlife

[fleouriarts]

Hi, buddy! I haven’t seen you post for a while, I’m so pleased to see you. I’m sending 20 and 23 for the art asks. :)

20. a piece from this year that you’re really proud of

ummm ill add a few bc this has been a really bad art year and i need to cheer myself up about it somehow 😭

this one was a birthday gift for my boy best friend based on the flower boy album cover... mostly i just like this one bc i took a long ass time on it. i started it over a month before his bday just cus i was really excited and that meant i had a lot of time to make it look as nice as possible :-3 im also just proud of 1) the crows and 2) managing to make a nice color palette for it since it obviously doesnt use the same palette as the original cover

this one i never posted just cus im a #1 genshin hater and didnt want people following me for it BUT someone in my colleges art club asked people to draw itto and. well i really wanted to bearify him. anyway i just like the colors i used here and drawing it didnt make me want to disintegrate which is nice

this one was also actually fun to draw and i like the shapes i used... thats basically it... daemiel my beloveds

23. what's something you hope people notice when looking at your art

Colors and Shapes. my artstyle is basically just me going ham with those so yeah i sure hope people notice them. but also id like to know things that people notice Outside of that bc its all that people ever say when i ask about my artstyle, which ofc makes sense but I WANNA KNOW MOAR

[from this ask meme]

#ask #wat-the-cur #my art #my friends #fanart #2022 #finished #genshin impact #arataki itto #tagging him just for archives sake. genshin fans please dont expect more fanart from me youre not gonna get it

[albatris]

HI hello i have some OC Questions!! All of these forrrrr Yvonne!!!!! I wanna give Yvonne some love!! :3c

🐀 What would they do if they were locked in a room with a rat?

🕺 Do they dance when they're alone? Are they good at it?

🖌 If they spray-painted a city wall, what would they write / draw?

hiiiii hello!! thank you for the questions!!! n the Yvonne love!!! all the love to sweet lovely Yvonne!! :Dc

🐀 What would they do if they were locked in a room with a rat?

oh, she'd be a little nervous if it was a wild rat, but she'd know that panicking and yelling would just make things worse :P she'd attempt to herd it into a spot where she can capture it in a box or container to take outside! she's not fond of wild rats and mice and such and is a bit jumpy around them, but she'll be fine. if it was simply someone's pet rat that got loose and is scampering about, she'd have no issues! she doesn't really know how to go about befriending someone else's pet rat, so she'd sit on the floor and try to coax it over hehe

🕺 Do they dance when they're alone? Are they good at it?

she loves to dance when she's alone! Yvonne loves her alone time where she can dance and sing and be silly and no one will judge her. whether or not she's any good is of no concern to her whatsoever! she's not bad by any means, but isn't particularly concerned about keeping a rhythm or staying in tune....... she is simply having fun, she's got a lot of energy and has to sit still a lot for both work and uni, so she gets a bit restless. she must Move when she has the chance. she must enter Silly Mode, it's her god-given right

🖌 If they spray-painted a city wall, what would they write / draw?

I'd imagine Yvonne going into this with no plan whatsoever and just wanting to experience the catharsis of going ham and letting loose with a bunch of spray paint, and she'd end up with a big nonsense scribbly blob of sheer incoherent rage. which she would then spray paint some flowers and cute little bugs over the top of because whoops. but also the idea of Yvonne just writing a huge sprawling ranting vent on the wall encompassing her job and the state of public transport and how the economy is fucked and why are there no TREES in this city huh and don't get her started on how expensive cheese is at the moment. bc she's still trying to keep up her cheery carefree persona and doesn't wanna vent At Someone

she's just like "haha I'll just write one little angry 'fuck you' message to no one in particular, I'll indulge in just a LITTLE bit of rage" and then she blinks and there's All That

bless her she's so valid

#a rental car takes a left down rake street and disappears

[thatrosewoodwriter]

girlie can i get some haru dating headcanons?

𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐔𝐊𝐈 𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐈 𝐀𝐒 𝐀 𝐁𝐎𝐘𝐅𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐃

☾ character/s: haruki hinamori

☾ warnings: swearing, a bit of domestic stuffs, fluff, princess ever after spoilers??

☾ notes: thanks for the request! similarly to my julius boyf headcanons, i went overboard, but this time it’s because i feel like i owe haru for shitting on him before princess ever after came out because now i love him :((

he’s a softie

don’t lie to yourselves

sure he’s part of an evil organisation

but, like, he’s soft for you ;v;

you probably have nothing to do with this partizan business

but that’s fine, because he doesn’t really want you involved with that anyway

he met you at a cafe

how cliche

but there were no seats left in the area, so he had to ask you if the seat across from you was taken

and he was ready for you to say no 

but you smiled at him and moved your stuff out of the way for him

you were on your laptop just doing some work and he had brought a book to read while he sipped his coffee and munched on his croissant

ham and cheese if you were wondering

eventually, you glanced at him over the top of your screen at the same time he looked up from his book

and the moment he flashed you that charming little smile of his you were fucking GONE

though haru thought it was really cute how flustered you got

your focus from before wasn’t as strong

he couldn’t say anything though

he read the same paragraph about a hundred times because he was focused on you, not the words-

and you bet your ass that he comes back to that cafe every day just in case you come back

of course you do, it’s your go-to, so he’s heaving a big sigh of relief that he can find you

eventually, you guys subconsciously set up a time to catch up because you guys happened to see each other at the same time every week

how you guys got together was because he gave you a book he annotated for you because you were curious

and he highlighted the words ‘will you be my girlfriend’ as highly important

even though these words were spread over like, 300 pages

you laughed and said yes

the one thing he told you about immediately was his involvement with leviathan

he fully expected you to leave him for that

but instead you caressed his cheek and gave him a soft smile saying it was ok

and he was so grateful for that omg

SO NOW YOU LIVE WITH HIM-

years later, and you live with him in the safe house

because claude ended up really liking you and wanted you to stay

however

the only reason banshee know about you

is because haru was a dumby and forgot food

so you came running in to takeshin gakuen and gave him lunch

that you made for him when you realised he’d forgotten to take it

and he also forgot that the others were there

so he gave you a kiss as thanks as well as a hug

where he goofily sways from side to side and spins y’all in a circle

when you left to go back home everyone was like

‘whomst?’

when he explained it, they all felt like you were too good for him

because you’re so nice n he’s just

leviathan-y

once when you guys went on a date together, he made you a flower crown

he had a picture of it that day

and for your 1 year anniversary

he gifted you that flower crown

but it was like, a genuine piece of jewellery

crystals and all

and that is now on one of those mannequin head thingies in a glass cabinet in your bedroom

you guys often spend the morning together in bed just cuddling

sometimes you guys will talk while you’re half awake

just chattin nonsense

many mornings you’ve woken up to breakfast in bed

and it’s not even a cutesy thing

you just turn on the tv and watch netflix or something while putting your plates on top of the bed and eating like that

if he has to leave early, he’ll get out of bed and make sure not to wake you up, giving you a kiss on the head before leaving

but he always leaves a little origami flower for you to let you know he still loves you ;v;

he purposely leaves a stem on them so you can collect them all and make a bouquet out of them

in return, you often sneak little notes or drawings in his bentos

and he 100% saves them all

also, he’s matched outfits with you on dates before

he thinks it’s funny

but also cute

and shows other people that you’re his

because you cannot convince me he’s not overprotective

he’s shielded you with his body before when he sees others look at you funny

and he kept you behind him just a little bit when you were first introduced to claude

but in public, you’re always in front of him so no one can take you without him knowing

he also gave you a necklace with a button that alerts him if you’re in danger

so

you’re pretty safe with him

haru leaned against the front door to the safe house and sighed heavily, exhausted from that night’s mission. he glanced at his phone and turned it on to check the time, groaning after seeing 3:29 am. pushing off the door, he wandered through the dimly lit building, stopping at the main kitchen to get himself a snack.

opening the fridge, his brows furrowed slightly as he saw a plate with a cover over it, a note on top that read: haru’s dinner <3

a sad smile spread across his lips as he took the plate and put it in the microwave to heat up. as he waited for the soft ringtone from the microwave to signal the end of the cycle, he stared at his lock screen, getting lost in your eyes as you grinned, the original flower crown he made you adorning your head.

‘welcome home,’ a tired voice called from the elevator doors. turning around, his frown deepened, seeing you walk towards him while rubbing your eyes and yawning widely. 

‘i told you not to wait for me, sunshine,’ he said, walking towards you and giving you a warm embrace, kissing your forehead tenderly. ‘you should be in bed.’

‘i couldn’t sleep,’ you mumbled with a small pout. ‘i like it when you’re there to cuddle me.’

haru’s heart melted on the spot and he smiles gently, giving you another kiss on the head. ‘we can cuddle soon, i promise. i’ll just wait for the yummy dinner you made me to finish and we can go to bed.’

‘ok...’

quickly taking the food out of the microwave, he ushered you back into the elevator, rubbing your side softly with one hand while holding the plate of food in the other, relishing in the feeling of your body against his.

waddling over to your shared bedroom, you plopped down on the bed again, patting haru’s side of the bed to convince him to join you, not that you needed to. swiftly getting changed into his pyjamas, he slid in beside you, eating the dinner you’d cooked in content. he noted the way your eyelids fluttered shut every now and then and placed the empty plate on the bedside table to deal with later.

sliding further into the bed, he rested his head on the pillow, opening his arms for you to settle yourself in. draping the covers over you, he reached to turn the night light off and succumbed to the darkness, finding comfort in the closeness of your bodies and the warmth you shared.

#the rosewood chronicles #rwch #haruki hinamori #haru hinamori #the rosewood chronicles x reader #rwch x reader #haruki hinamori x reader #haru hinamori x reader #the rosewood chronicles imagines #rwch iimagines #haruki hinamori imagines #haru hinamori imagines

[comparativetarot]

Temperance. Art by Kim Thompson, from Divine Your Dinner.

AVOID EXTREMES, FIND PEACE IN MODERATION.

Magickal Ingredient: Sweet violet Promotes emotional wellness and energetic balance

Pull in your energy, take a deep breath, and allow yourself a moment of stillness. Moderation doesn’t have to be a chore. When we think of it as focusing our energy on the things that truly matter to us, it becomes a gift. Temperance affects us in a holistic way, drawing everything in so we can maintain our balance. Once we find this stillness, we get to choose how to push our energy back out again, this time in more focused ways.

To help you along, we’ve got a little assignment for you. With sweet violets as the centerpiece, create a party board to serve a curated gathering of people who complement each other most. And go ahead and serve booze. While the Temperance Movement shunned alcohol consumption, the Temperance archetype leaves what you moderate up to you.

ADDITIONAL MAGICKAL INGREDIENTS: HONEY, MUSTARD, OLIVES

PARTY BOARD WITH WILDFLOWERS AND CRYSTALLIZED VIOLETS MAIN/SNACK—SERVES AS MANY AS YOU WANT!

There is no such thing as a bad party board, and no real way to mess this up. In fact, there isn’t even really a recipe for this, just follow the steps here as a guide and make sure to have a good balance of salty and sweet options.

Use this opportunity to get to know the person behind your cheese and deli counter. Ask what they recommend. Taste some options and don’t be afraid to try something new. Get weird. This truly is the most stress-free party “recipe” of all time.

Assemble your board on two actual boards (one for meats and savories and one for cheeses and sweets) or throw layers of parchment paper down directly on the table and arrange everything on that. We prefer the parchment route because you can use a marker to write the names of the charcuterie and cheeses directly on the paper.

HOT TIP: PLAN FOR ROUGHLY 2 TO 3 OUNCES OF MEAT AND 2 TO 3 OUNCES OF CHEESE PER PERSON.

Place three varieties of meats (including spicy and mild) on one large platter or board, and arrange three varieties of cheese (including soft and hard) on a second board. Add at least one type of snack and a spread to each board—savory additions for the meat board and fruity or nutty flavors for the cheese board. Divide the bread or crackers throughout. Don’t forget to have fun.

MEATS: A spicy soppressata or chorizo; mild prosciutto, Ibérico, country ham, or finocchiona; canned fish, rillettes, or pâté (see the Giant Banh Mìs recipe on this page)

CHEESE: Chèvre, Manchego, Brie, etc.

SNACKS: Olives, cornichons, roasted peppers, seasonal fruit, dried fruits, nuts, fresh grapes or berries

SPREADS: Honey, membrillo, jam, Nutella, grainy mustard

BREADS/CRACKERS: Water crackers, thinly sliced baguette, melba toast, or anything that piques your interest at the cracker store

FLOWERS: Garnish with wildflowers and a pile of crystallized violets (see the Magickal Ingredient Pantry on this page) to serve.

#Kim Thompson #Divine Your Dinner #Temperance #Major Arcana #Tarot

[captaiinobvious]

i want a tattoo but i dont really have any one thing i feel strongky enough to be like THAT ONE i want that one ON MY BODY and i need it IMMEDIATELY like my mom1 has 2 or 3 super specific tattoos that mean a lot 2 them they want i just liek the idea of drawing on yrself permanently lol im not the type 2 need meaning. im thinking of going 2 q tattoo place, giving them colors or a vibe, and then saying "go nuts show me yr best design im giving u artistic freedom" cuz then id just have liek. a unique piece of art from someone else the same way u would buy a canvas or something but its on Me. but b4 i do that i have 2 make sure i dont h8 the fuck outta the process so i need something small first. maybe a small piece of fruit or flower or something thats basically just colored lineart so itll b cheap and fast. and if i like it then someday when i have Moneys i will get the sickest tattoo eva probably from like some super cool artist lady w a million piercings or a really cool bald dude with solid sleeves on both arms. and it will b. sick. i kinda wanna do one myself but id either need the patience 2 do stick n poke (nope) or id have 2 BUY A MACHINE (moneys) and liek a bunch of ham or some shit 2 practice on 4 a million years 🙄 maybe i would get liek a perfect copy of cherubs face on my shoulder or something that would b adorable he has the cutest lil face peak oc design right there

[nikethestatue]

Meet Me in the Silence

Elriel Month - Day 5

 Continuation of ‘Forbidden’

Honestly, tooth-rotting fluff, some Nyx, stabbing Cassian with fork, Azriel singing and relationship stuff

Azriel loved Nyx. He didn’t love him because Nyx was cute and pudgy, or because he was his nephew, or because he was a fun, if demanding baby, and not even because spending time with him was a private relief for Azriel. A time to let go, a time where he could spend rolling around on the carpet, helping Nyx with blocks, rattles and the construction of pillow forts, watching Nyx sneeze little whiffs of starry night.

Nyx, unbenounced to him, showed Azriel some truths that Azriel couldn’t face before. The thing with Nyx was that he was a baby and he didn’t care—he didn’t care about Azriel’s scars and his ugly hands, he didn’t care about Azriel’s cruel ways, or the services that he provided to the High Lord. Nyx didn’t care about how many people fell under Truth-Teller’s deadly edge, or what Azriel had to do on the battlefields or during the Blood Rite. Nyx didn’t judge. As an infant, he wanted the same thing from Azriel as he wanted from everyone—warmth and comfort, kindness and love. He wanted to be rocked to sleep, fed, changed and played with. He didn’t care that the bottle was held by the same hand that tortured the Night Court’s enemies, or that the man who held him to his chest did some unforgivable things in his life.

As the last nine months rolled by, Azriel had to do some re-evaluations of his life. He had time on his hand, to be sure. Instead of courting Elain, like he wanted to, he thought. There was nothing much else left for him to do.

He thought that perhaps, despite his internal denials, Elain was much like Nyx—she accepted Azriel for what he was. Scars and all. Her acceptance did not stem from naiveite, though, but love. The realization hit Azriel like a sledgehammer. He crawled towards it, slowly, but surely, rethinking every touch and every smile, recalling every smirk and sparkle of the caramel-brown eyes, all the jokes and jabs, and gentle touches and finger brushes. Recalled the worry on Elain’s face when she knew that he went on his missions—even if they weren’t particularly dangerous. The pain that was etched on her features, when he returned in a particularly foul mood, and she knew that it was because he did things that marred his soul. He remembered her casually handing him a whiskey, which he’d gulped down in one go. Or a cup of tea, with honey and lemon, just like he liked. The gooey caramel cakes that she made—they were his favourite—and they began making a frequent appearance on the dessert menu. The past nine months of their forbidden love—is that what it was?—were the time when Azriel finally felt loved. For the first time in his life. Mor never really loved him, not like he needed to be loved. His brothers—well, they were his brothers, so that was that. Elain loved him. Of that, he was now certain. Elain loved him without touching. Without kissing. Without romance. Without courtship. Without gifts or presents or flowers. Without promises. Without expectations. It’s like she couldn’t help herself, even if she tried. She needed to love him, as much as he needed to be loved by her. All her tiny gestures of comfort and care created a glittering mosaic of love and devotion, which he only now began to piece together. And it pained him that she was not free to express herself as she wanted to, because loving him came with a hefty, unreasonable price.

For her, he’d fight. For her, he’d be the person she deserved. When she began choosing him, it was the first time in his life when someone actively chose him, despite all his shortcoming. And he wanted her to continue choosing him, every day, making the decision to love him.

Azriel had a lot of time to think about it, in silence.

 Azriel was a good cook. One of his may hidden talents. He spent much of his time alone, or in places that were foreign and unfamiliar, or in the army, and necessity being the mother of invention, he had to learn how to cook. And then, he became quite good at it. He had to draw the line at baking, but he could make a steak like nobody’s business, and eggs every way were his specialty. Tonight though, he was tired and distracted. It was the first time in a very, very long time when he and Elain were alone, so he didn’t particularly want to waste it on cooking. What’s more, with Nyx being the raging little monster that he was today, Azriel wanted to put the kid to bed as soon as possible and just relax. For a meticulous planner, tonight, he had no plans at all…and it both excited and frightened him, because it would just be the two of them and they’ll have to figure it out.

“Breakfast for dinner?” he offered, while Elain set Nyx’s food in front of him. He was too quick for her and immediately jammed his whole fist into the vegetable mash, soliciting a groan from her, as he began licking his palm and fingers with gusto.

“Whatever you want to make,” she agreed, as she began wiping the mess that Nyx made, while Azriel smirked, shaking his head. He tossed two slices of ham in the skillet, and allowed it to crisp up and caramelize.

He came behind her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, burying his face in her hair. She smiled, momentarily lost in the sensation of closeness and comfort that he always offered her, so effortlessly too.

“You know,” warned Azriel, using his ‘stern’ voice, looking at Nyx, “for your behavior, you should be sent to an Illyrian training camp. Just so you know what’s what. There, there won’t be 10 people looking for Brute for you, or uncle Cassian swimming with you in the pool, or Elain feeding you lemon cakes, or aunt Nesta reading to you the same book over, and over, and over, and over again. No aunt Mor taking you on a pony, and no Varian building sandcastles with you, only to watch you destroy them.”

Elain, tucked against his chest, was laughing. Especially because Nyx was glaring at Aziel unhappily and suspiciously.

Then, she said, softly, almost to herself, “I am happy that he is happy. That we can give him the childhood that none of us had. Let him be a little bit spoilt, because he is so loved.”

There was longing in her tone. Longing for something that she probably desired for herself. Those conversations have never been had between the two of them. Gods, they’ve never even been together in public, let alone had conversations about the future, and a future that included children. It was never something Azriel even thought of, considering his ‘luck’ in love, and his line of work. But he heard her. So he gave her a little kiss on the cheek and returned to his cooking.

Elain was feeding Nyx the last of his food, when Azriel placed two plates on the table, and poured both of them a glass of ale.

“Beer with breakfast,” she giggled. “I like the way you think, shadowsinger.”

He laughed, loving how easy it all was. How easy the banter came, how relaxed they were together, how there were no pressures at all when it was just the two of them. Well, three.

“Alright, you’ve taken enough of everybody’s time today,” he decided, as he fished Nyx out of the highchair and went to wash his face and hands again. Elain remained seated, watching the two of them, with her chin propped on her hand.

Was it normal to be that enamoured with a man? When he did mundane things? She had to admit—Azriel was indescribably beautiful. That alone would attract anyone. The gargantuan wings, ticked tightly, but not tensely against his back didn’t hurt either. The span of his enormous shoulders, the movement of those thick muscles around the arms, over his back, which moved and bulged as he wrestled with Nyx, who was refusing to get his hands washed, were mesmerizing. She knew that she shouldn’t be so dazzled by his looks, but she couldn’t help herself. But it was more than just admiring the elegant cut of his body, the well-fitted trousers that did very nice things to his thighs and his long legs, or the enticing forearms that were exposed from his haphazardly rolled up sleeves. The tattoos, in fact, snaked lower than she anticipated. She’d never seen him undressed—Cassian, strong, beefy and powerful, and the leaner, thinner Rhysand—plenty of times. But not Azriel. He’s been annoyingly timid. All three were tattooed, but apparently, Azriel’s reached all the way to his scars. She smiled to herself, amazed and bemused. Who would’ve thought that she, Elain, would be so attracted to a winged and tattooed male? What a far cry from the ordinary, plain Greyson.

Azriel plopped Nyx down on the floor, tossed him Brute and some toys and then quickly threw a shield around them, so Nyx was contained and didn’t attempt to wander from the kitchen.

“You should’ve started,” he nodded to her untouched plate, as he sat down.

“Not without you,” she said. “Looks very good!”

“I try,” he said bashfully and they tucked into to the scrambled eggs, ham and vegetables.

“Oh, gods, it’s really good,” she almost moaned.

“Baby, it’s just eggs,” he reminded her, secretly very pleased with her reaction.

“Well, baby likes them!” she giggled, cutting into the ham. Azriel watched her, watched the movement of her hands and she asked, “What?”

He chuckled and said, sipping his ale,

“I recall when you were planning to kill Cassian with a fork.”

Her brow furrowed.

“What?”

“Oh, you don’t remember?” he was laughing softly.

“I don’t think it’s even possible to kill Cassian,” she noted.

“I’d agree. But you were ready and eager.”

“When was I planning to kill Cassian?” she demanded.

“First time we met—at dinner. I remember Nesta…well, being Nesta. And Cassian—Mother save me, the moment he had her eyes on her, he was just dripping with this hideous arousal,”

Elain almost choked, eyes wide.

“What?”

“It was horrible,” he gave an exaggerated shudder. “Rhys and I were traumatized. Those two were going at it, as usual, fighting, sniping…whatever they do, and all we could smell was him getting hotter and hotter. That dinner,” he shook his head at the memory. “It was something else.”

She was laughing, nodding.

“And you?” she asked, at last.

He gave her a long thoughtful look. A tender, loving look that made her throat bob, and suddenly she was hot…much like Cassian.

“Honestly?” he asked quietly, not taking his eyes off her.

“Yes.”

“I thought that I saw the most human and the most beautiful girl in the world. Utterly unattainable. Engaged to another man. But surprisingly unafraid of us,”

“I was very afraid of you!” she argued. Azriel smiled.

“You three were huge!” she cried. “With these enormous wings,”

He raised his brow suggestively and she smacked his arm,

“Oh, shut up,”

“I didn’t even say anything,” he shrugged, “but please, tell me more about our huge wings, and our generally superior size,”

“I am not telling you anything,” she snapped, her cheeks red, and he was delighted.

“But you do admit that you tried to kill Cassian?”

“I didn’t try to kill him. Just defend myself, if there was need,”

“Pretty sure Nesta would’ve unmanned him with her bare hands,”

“Of that, I have no doubt.”

“And me?” he pressed, “you didn’t want to stab me with a fork?”

She gave him a cool look of nonchalance and recalled,

“You suddenly turned into a poet!”

“Did I?” it was his turn to be confused.

“Something about hearing the wind song, or something,”

“I don’t even remember that,” he confessed, a slow blush spreading over his cheeks.

“I do. I guess we remember different things about that evening.” She glanced at him from under her lashes and added, “I just remember thinking that you were the most handsome man—male—I’d ever seen. I didn’t even think that people could be that beautiful,”

Azriel’s blush deepened and Elain secretly enjoyed watching him squirm a little. She was well aware of the fact that he was always uncomfortable when people mentioned his appearance. He knew that he was handsome, almost unnaturally so, but whatever horrible words and deeds he’d experienced in his childhood warped his perception of himself. At times, she wanted to assure him that no one paid much attention to his hands…she certainly didn’t. She always found his hands, the scars on them just as attractive as the rest of him. They were simply a part of him, just as his beauty was. But he struggled. She knew it.

And as she always did, when she wanted to reassure him, she took his hand and brought it to her lips. He stilled. She kissed. Kissed the inside and outside of his palm. Watched him. Watched him tense, but not pull away his hand. Kissed each long, strong finger. Kissed the rough skin. Kissed the pain and the doubt. Not away, but at least temporarily.

Bored and tired, Nyx fell asleep on the floor, sprawled on the rug, clutching Brute.

“We have to take him upstairs,” muttered Elain, releasing Azriel’s hand.

She didn’t know how to deal with the intimacy of their relationship. Her feelings were raw and exposed, and she was painfully aware of her own inexperience. She didn’t know how to be seductive. Had no idea how to play games—wasn’t really looking to learn either. But she wasn’t dazzling or mysterious, and had no inkling of what Azriel expected, of what he wanted. He was so unbearably difficult to read, while she was stupidly, obviously in love with him. She was the Cassian to his Nesta. She was the one dripping with arousal, unable to stifle her need, or dampen her desire. He probably saw her as the fool that she was.

Frustrated, she made to get up from the table, but he caught her wrist and clasped it gently, as always reigning in his terrifying strength.

“Come here,” he murmured and pulled her to him, until she settled on his lap, feeling both awkward and happy. “Lainey,”

“I like baby,” she blurted.

He nodded, and said, “Baby, you don’t need to pretend with me…I…” he swallowed, thinking how to continue. “You might be surprised, but it’s new for me as well. I’ve had,” ugh, he really didn’t want to discuss his past lovers with her, not right now. “I am not inexperienced,” he said diplomatically. No, he wasn’t. “But this,” and he waved his hand between them, “this is new for me as well. I’ve never felt this much…for anyone. Ever,”

“What becomes of us, Az?” she asked softly.

“Whatever you want,” he stated simply.

“But,”

He shrugged, “there will always be obstacles,”

“Rhysand is more than just an ‘obstacle,’” she reminded him.

“Rhysand, frankly, can go and fuck himself,” Azriel said flatly.

The new, Fae Elain wasn’t scandalized by the coarse language. The three brothers, Nesta and Mor cursed like sailors, and Elain found herself throwing an occasional ‘shit’ and ‘dick’ in her speech. So it made her smile when the usually controlled, polite Azriel unleashed his mouth.

“He is your High Lord,” she reminded him.

“He is technically everyone’s High Lord, but it doesn’t mean that he gets free reign on doing whatever he wants. If I am not asking him to give up Feyre—remember how he snuck her out from Tamlin’s clutches—then he doesn’t get to tell us what we ought to do.”

The thing that he’s been carrying in his pocket was burning through him, a constant reminder. He shifted and then looked straight at her and tucked an errant strand of her hair behind her ear. For someone who didn’t crave or enjoy touch, the desire to touch her was constant. He didn’t even need anything sexual at this point, but feeling her skin against him, in whatever way, was beyond satisfying.

“Did you promise him anything?” she inquired, moving even closer to him, loving the heavy warmth of his arms around her.

“Absolutely not!” he spat. “He is completely overstepping, and I’ve been humouring him up until now, but it seems to be that he is a little too comfortable with the status quo,” he looked at her, his voice grave, “I hope you didn’t promise him anything either?”

She shook her head,

“No. I didn’t say anything.”

A whoosh of breath escaped him. “Thank the Cauldron.”

Elain stroked his cheek with the backs of her fingers and said, sharply this time, “Everything’s been taken away from me once already. I wasn’t prepared to give you up. You are the only thing that I want, and Rhysand wasn’t going to take that away from me. From us…” she glanced at him, “if you feel the same…”

“Do you need to ask?”

She smiled.

Azriel exhaled deeply and then cupped her face between his hands. He was going to do it. He needed to do it. She devoured his gaze, the look of intent in his forest-green golden eyes, the determined set of his jaw. He left her, once, waiting…Waiting for him to take the next step, waiting for him to act and he didn’t. Not today.

“Elain,” he swallowed audibly, and she felt that he was nervous. “Will you permit me to court you?”

Azriel wanted to do this properly. Elain deserved it—deserved to be treated with kindness and respect, but he deserved it as well—he wanted to do what so many others took for granted. It never came naturally to him, the normal things, and for once, despite everything, he was going to make this one thing happen.

Nyx moved on the floor, woke up and let out a scream. Confused, he looked around and began babbling tearfully ‘ma, ma, ma’.

Elain slipped off his lap and gently cooed “Shhhh, come…come, my sweet boy,” and picked him up. Azriel watched them, not even upset at the interruption.

Nyx was crying in earnest now, and not even Brute was enough to console him.

“I am going to try to put him to bed,” she whispered, rocking the baby against her chest.

Azriel opened his arms and said, “hand him over.”

“But,”

He carefully took Nyx from her and the move did not result in silence or calm, and Nyx cried just as sadly, looking for his mom. As Azriel made his way down the hall and towards the stairway, with Elain trailing him, he began to sing. In a language that Elain did not know, but understood innately to be Illyrian. The way the sounds rolled off Azriel’s tongue was natural, the melody lulling and sweet. His voice was soothing and pleasant, with a gravelly note that came from the back of his throat. Nyx stilled, blinking at him. As they slowly went up the stairs, Azriel rocked and cuddled Nyx, stretching his wings so they covered them in a dark canopy, the words of the lullaby muffled, but just as beautiful. Elain wished that it didn’t end…There were just a words that she picked up ‘warrior’ and ‘sleep’—something she learned from Cassian, who was teaching Nesta some Illyrain phrases, now that they spent a decent amount of time in their Illyrian bungalow.

In Nyx’s nursery, Azriel put the baby down in the crib and covered him with a blanket, rocking the crib lightly, as he continued his song, quieter now, seeing that Nyx’s eyelids drooped.

Wordlessly, he lifted his arm and Elain slipped to his side, and wrapped her arm around his torso. They never needed words.

Sleep, warrior heart

Sleep and know that you are loved

Sleep, warrior heart and meet me in silence

Find dreams and peaceful slumber, my little warrior heart

 Azriel quietly translated the song, without her prompting. He knew that she’d want to know what the words meant. He, however, did not explain the history of the song and where and how he’d learned it.

“Yes.”

He looked down at her, a silent question on his face.

“The answer is ‘yes’,” she repeated. “You may court me.”

“Thank you,” was all he said.

They left the nursery and stopped in the hallway.

He put his hand on the back of her neck and stroked.

“Then I’d like for you to have this,” he said at last. He took something from his pocket and laid it in her palm. It was a key.

“We will have to meet in silence.”

#elrielmonth #elrielmonth21 #elriel #azriel #elriel fanfic #elain x azriel #azriel and elain #elain archeron #elain #nyx #my writing

[vegalocity]

Peachtea/TripSun could have the moment of Tang pretending to be awestruck by Wukong bc neither of them are ready to have that convo and Wukong's trying not to die at how Tang's hamming it up, even though he's tried hundreds of times to impress him.

Honestly the implications alone for that are hilarious

Like the lot of them just decided to try living as mortals again for whatever reason (except wukong) and that required a lot of rolling with people’s assumptions. 

And So here Tang is, whose supposed to be just some random human scholar, whose written several dissertations on history and the classics because he’s a giant nerd and totally wasn’t present for a few of them what are you talking about, and to keep from blowing the secret wide open on those whom it’s being kept from (Xiaotian and Xiaojiao basically, honestly dropping the façade would ruin absolutely nothing but he’s ALREADY COMMITED TO THIS DAMMIT) He just plays up the excitable nerd angle because... reasons he’s honestly enjoying it he thinks its funny

and then The pilot happens. And Wukong returns but not to see him, or his brothers. He just passes the staff to Xiaotian and doesn’t come into the city except when he thinks he’s being clever and keeping an eye on things by shapeshifting. 

And sure he COULD drop his own disguise and drop in on him on Flower Fruit mountain himself, any of them could have. But Wukong had said very explicitly before vanishing that he’d wanted some alone time and that he’d find them again when he was ready. But... five hundred years? 

And then New Years hits, and they see eachother again, and he knows at one glance Wukong recognizes him. And... Look, even BEFORE he gained immortality Tang was slow to anger. But 500 years is a very long time to simmer, so he sees his monkey again and it’s not even because Wukong sought him out, it was explicitly incidental to helping Xiaotian out with the Spider Queen. And he. Is. Furious. He knows Baije and Wujing had decided to not really keep it a secret, just not draw attention to it either, but- 

Fuck it.

And now Wukong is pulled into this odd little snaggle of half-lies. And it would be troubling if it weren’t so damn funny. Almost like putting on a performance for the kids, or parts in a play. So he’s ‘So quickly besotted with the snarky yet excitable scholar’ and as the ‘so suddenly lovestruck monkey’ that he is CLEARLY that means he’s going to be hanging out at the noodle shop more, despite Baije and Wujing, erm, a-hem, Pigsy and Sandy, also taking a fair bit of his attention as he ‘regales them all with tales of what he’d been up to since vanishing (Read: Catching up)’ He only has eyes for his ‘new crush’...made it easier to pretend that he had actually been ready to re-enter the world but didn’t have a good reason to until he got someone to chase.

And Tang is not ready to drop the guise yet, to drop the guise means having to really confront how much he’d missed his bad monkey, so this is an excuse to finally get that hole in his chest filled before he had to aknowlege hat it was there at all. So of course everything the ‘legendary monkey king’ would do to show off and every story he’d regale that was never written down would be ‘oh so exciting and utterly amazing to behold’ And truth be told all those years ago he was rather impressed with Wukong’s millions of attempts to win his positive attention, but he hadn’t been able to express that out of a worry of his disciple’s arrogance getting even worse than it already was. Now well... he was just some mortal scholar whom had ‘grown up on the tales of his adventures’ after all. 

Something that would incur the Monk Sanzang’s fond grin and perhaps a gentle Acknowledgment of the hard work Wukong must have put in to be able to master this or that skill, the Scholar Tang can ‘oohh and ahh’ at and try valiantly to hold back his laughter at how much Wukong would positively preen under the attention.

There’s something so much more simple about this little play of theirs. It doesn’t have to be big and complicated yet, It will be once one or both of them is ready to will it to be, but for now it’s a playful innocent romance that is only now starting to bloom between a Monkey whose reputation precedes him, and a perfectly normal scholar whose so peculiarly unshakeable when faced with danger yet so enthusiastic to hear the most daring of escapades.

Hard cut to Pigsy and Sandy passing a bucket of popcorn between them.

Pigsy: This is actually disgusting, i might literally vomit.

Sandy: I’m so glad they finally renewed my favorite Telenovela

#writingamongther0ses #letters to vega #Peachtea #Tripsun #ngl i'm only fond of the 'tang is Sanzang in any meaningful sense' thing when its also peachtea #any other ship and i can't get behind it #bc it looses the 'YOU GHOSTED ME FOR 500 YEARS BAD MONKEY' charm

[cheri-translates]

[CN] Love Carnival - Part 4 (Eng Translation)

🍒 Warning: This post contains detailed spoilers for an event which has not been released in English servers! 🍒

There are five parts in total! Brace yourself for tons of fluff :>

Part 3: here

[ LUCIEN ]

Looking around the adorably and warmly decorated cafeteria, and then the little gift that came along with the meal, I’m a little confused.

A few minutes ago, we were thinking about what to have for dinner, and we walked into this warm and adorably decorated small shop.

But we didn’t expect...

MC: I really didn't think it’d be so “hardcore”.

I hold up the little gift, placing it in between Lucien and I.

It’s different from the small ornaments and objects with a feminine aura from my memories.

This cafeteria gives a heart-shaped Burr puzzle to patrons who order the couple set.

MC: The dishes are so delicious that they’re comparable to top-grade restaurants. Even the gifts they provide are just as hardcore. It’s amazing.

Lucien is tickled by my dead serious expression.

Lucien: Looks like the organiser has put in much effort, wanting to leave every visitor with unforgettable and happy memories.

MC: But giving visitors a heart which can’t be unlocked - what’s the owner of the shop thinking...

Without a proper strategy, I play with the Burr puzzle, and can’t help but grumble.

Lucien chuckles, taking this “heart” from my hand.

Lucien: With a little technique, it can be opened easily.

He sits slightly closer to me. Slowing down, he gives me a demonstration while explaining the technique of how to unlock the Burr puzzle.

With the movement of his fingertips and a gentle tug, the wooden lock, which was linked for a very long time, opens, revealing a tiny empty space in the heart which can be used to store things.

MC: Even though you’re already sick of this phrase, I still have to say - Lucien, you’re truly incredible.

Lucien: If I say that I haven’t gotten sick of this phrase, would you be willing to say it to me even more times?

Lucien turns his head over slightly to look at me. In his eyes are the familiar smile and slyness I’m most familiar with.

MC: If I say it, will I get a special prize from Professor Lucien?

After hearing this, Lucien actually ponders over it.

He narrows his eyes slightly, as though he’s facing the most complex, important, and difficult question.

Lucien: If it’s a prize...

All of a sudden, he leans over to my ear. Every gentle word brushes against my outer ear, trickling into my heart.

Lucien: Would an especially happy Lucien be enough?

MC: ...Professor Lucien, that’s called being unreasonable.

Lucien: Is that so? I even thought you’d be very satisfied with it.

Lucien blinks, pretending to be taken aback.

Just when I think of how to best turn the tables, he places the wooden mortise of the Burr puzzle, which is used to store items, in my hand.

Lucien: Want to think of what to put in here? Given its structure, I’m thinking this is a safer place to store tiny keepsakes.

MC: Yes.

I turn towards the staff at the side, asking for a few sheets of post-its and pens, and also to allowing the temperature on my face to dissipate.

After we write on our respective notes for a while, Lucien and I exchange them.

On mine, there’s a simple drawing of a man opening a lock, a handsome smile on his face.

What Lucien hands over is a sketch.

In the simple composition, in the midst of light and shadow, he impressively draws me.

The me in the picture has her head lowered, writing on the post-it note, smiling very sweetly.

MC: Now, we’re doubly satisfied!

-

[ VICTOR ]

We walk and pause, finally ending up before the Pendulum ride.

Pointing at the attraction, where shrill cries can be heard constantly, I think of that children’s day when he had taken the “Time Traveler” ride with me.

And how time had stopped for a few seconds during the descent.

[Note] This is a reference to Fairytale Date!

MC: Want to give this a try?

I turn my head, looking at Victor expectantly.

Victor: No.

As I expected, Victor rejects me.

MC: Victor, could you be scared?

Victor: Of course not.

His expression is stern, and he looks forward.

MC: In that case, ride it with me!

While saying this, I pull him along with me and we sit down.

There’s still some time before the ride begins. The chatter and laughter from people in the queue before us continuously drift over.

Enthusiastic visitor: A friend of mine took the Pendulum before. When it was over, he calmly said that it wasn’t much. In the end, he started puking after taking a few steps.

Happy visitor: Hahahaha, the same thing happened to my colleague. He sat for the ride in another place once, and screamed until his voice was hoarse at work the next day. He had to drink chinese medicine for the entire day.

I’m somewhat tickled by the conversations.

MC: They’re speaking so exaggeratedly. How could that be possible? What do you think?

The criticism I expected doesn’t arrive.

Finding this a little odd, I look at Victor, realising that he’s strapping on his seatbelt seriously, his expression stern.

Oh...?

I really wish I could take out my phone and snap a picture of this Victor before me.

The Pendulum truly lives up to its name.

At first, I even thought it’d be so-so.

But when the Pendulum’s amplitude grows increasingly larger, till it feels like I’m being tossed around, I can’t help but scream.

MC: Ahhhhh--

This! Is! Too! Scary!

Just when I’m forced to sit through these parabolic motions, my left hand is gently held onto by someone.

Bracing against the violent wind, I open my eyes. Victor is sitting straight and quietly in his seat. His posture is tense, yet he looks as though he’s very calm.

Amid the shrill screams, I can vaguely hear his voice.

Victor: Don’t be afraid.

-

Stepping off the Pendulum, I immediately grasp for the railing at the side.

However, when I see Victor’s crooked tie and slightly unkempt hair, I can’t help but burst into laughter.

This time, I don’t let this chance slip by, and keep this dishevelled Victor in my phone.

I make a decision to have this picture printed out to be placed at the bedside.

Victor: ...what are you doing this time?

MC: Nothing, nothing! Oh yes, what do you think of this attraction?

Victor: ...so-so.

MC: If you’re afraid, you can just say so. It’s a normal human reaction, and I won’t laugh at you.

Victor: I’m not afraid.

MC: In that case...

I look at Victor, my smile growing wider.

MC: Let’s ride it again!

Victor: ...

MC: You aren’t going to prove that you aren’t afraid?

Victor: Let’s go then.

MC: Eh?

Victor: Since you’re so enthusiastic about this ride, you’ll definitely experience it together with me. Am I wrong?

Seeing Victor arch his brows slightly, and turning my game against me, I respond with certainty--

MC: I’m sorry! We’ll head to another attraction right now!

-

[ KIRO ]

The cafeterias in the Love Carnival must have gone through a lot of designing in order for moe flowers to appear easily for couples.

Every single themed cafe is packed to the brim. I hurriedly pull Kiro, who is wearing a wig, away from these “danger zones”.

There aren’t many people in the forest right now, leaving only the rustling of leaves.

MC: It’s a good thing I thought of this scenario beforehand.

Kiro: Deng deng deng deng!

When we speak in unison yet again, we retrieve picnic mats from our individual bags, and look at each other blankly. 

MC: ...I made enough for two. Did you also buy two sets?

Kiro: I was worried the cafeterias would be too crowded and we’d be hungry. 

Kiro: But...

His voice grows soft, and I don’t know what he’s struggling with.

In the end, he purses his lips, turning his eyes to me.

Kiro: I didn’t buy them.

MC: ...hm?

He chuckles in embarrassment, spreading the picnic mat smoothly on the ground, and taking out food boxes from the bag.

Seeing these food boxes, I’m left slightly stunned. Based on my memory of how long I’ve known Kiro, it seems that I've never had a taste of his cooking. 

Kiro: I was thinking that since today is such a special day, even if we couldn’t sit in a cafeteria to have a couple set meal, we should at least have something special. I don’t want you to be left with any regrets today, so I was wondering how to make things different for you. 

Kiro: And then... [laughs sheepishly] what you see in front of you happened.

I lift up Kiro’s food box. The rice has been scooped up in a crooked manner. Although the carrots could be said to be in heart-shapes, they look more like the heads of an arrow.

In the messy omelette, the ham seems to have sneaked out secretly. Perhaps it wanted to have a breath of air after being in such an enclosed space.

The octopus sausages are like blooming fireworks, hiding in the gigantic rice ball, too shy to see anyone. Meanwhile, the sandwich looks incredibly full, and it seems to have chicken drumsticks in it.

This looks like a far from perfect bento - shoddy and clumsy.

Kiro: ...what’s in front of you is already the best attempt.

MC: How many times did you make this?!

Kiro: I’ll let it remain an undisclosed secret forever.

He places his palm on his chest, closing his eyes and saying this quietly.

Chuckling, I hand the bento that I've prepared to him. In exchange, he gives me a few minutes’ worth of praises.

MC: This seems to be the first time I’m eating what you made.

Kiro: There shouldn’t be a problem.

He looks at me with certainty. His expression is exceptionally serious, causing me to laugh aloud.

MC: Why didn’t you show this to me before?

Kiro: They weren’t good enough.

MC: Have you met your standards now?

Kiro: Of course not! I just felt... that you’d be happy with this.

His eyes are bright, akin to a sun being hidden by soft clouds which are unable to shroud the light.

This perfectionist is slowly, bit by bit, willing to display the areas he isn’t perfect in before me.

Like the tender belly of a kitten.

MC: I’m especially happy. But if something does happen, you’ll have to take responsibility.

Kiro: Of course I’ll take responsibility! Even if nothing happens, I’ll also take responsibility! [laughs] I’ll take responsibility after eating.

The afternoon sunlight is just right. The quiet forest is reminiscent of a small world, embracing us.

MC: I’ll be digging in now!

-

[ SHAW ]

Ghost masks on sale are hung on the dark red wall. The masks have a sense of antiquity to them, and their bewitching and bizarre appearances look utterly terrifying.

Simply standing at the entrance of the haunted house makes one feel deeply frightened. And the rule of “Only one person can enter at one time” causes several people to shrink away.

Shaw and MC: ...

Shaw: Got the guts?

MC: What’s there to be afraid of?

Shaw: You first, or me?

MC: ...I’ll go first.

With a solemn expression, I prepare to enter. However, my wrist is suddenly gripped by Shaw, and he pulls me back.

Shaw: Wait. I’ll give you something.

I can feel him stuffing something into my hand.

Unfurling my hand, I see a string of Buddhist prayer beads laying quietly in my palm.

MC: ...

Shaw: Have a pleasant journey.

In the pitch-black and narrow pathway, I bite the bullet and move forward at a tortoise’s pace. My hands continuously twist the prayer beads, muttering to myself.

MC: Whether you're a monster, demon, or ghost, don’t come and scare me, don’t come and scare me...

Thud--

Footsteps sound from behind me, and the hair on my body immediately stands on end.

I’m rooted to the spot. After a few seconds, when I muster the courage to turn around, a hand plops onto my left shoulder.

MC: !!!

At this moment, my blood seems to freeze.

I quietly wait for two seconds, but nothing happens. Suddenly, there’s a twinge of hope in my heart--

Maybe it’s Shaw!

Thinking of how he usually likes to play tricks on me, I become even more certain of my guess.

With a deep breath, I give myself some courage and turn my head.

MC: Shaw--

??: Fuu.......

MC: ...

MC: IT’S A GHOST AHHHH--

With a speed which human eyes can’t capture, I huddle and curl into a corner, using my hand to cover my left ear, sensing goosebumps spreading across my entire body.

Along with my heartrending exclamation, a stream of chuckles resound at the same time.

??: It’s me.

Silvery white electricity appears in the darkness.

The person who’s speaking walks over to me. He squats down, a smile hanging on his lips, looking as though his prank has succeeded.

Shaw: Who was the one who made a solemn vow that she wouldn’t be scared?

I glare angrily at the person before me.

MC: I knew it was you! When you deliberately scare someone, of course they’d be scared! It’s an instinctive reaction. Also, you can scare someone to death, you know!

Weakly and helplessly, I hug myself tight. My voice is also trembling slightly.

He seems to be at a slight loss. After a while, he speaks. 

Shaw: ...fine, I was wrong this time.

Perhaps genuinely feeling apologetic, Shaw pauses, his voice also a little more gentle.

Shaw: Hey, want to know a way so you wouldn't be scared?

MC: ...what is it?

I lift my head from my knees in curiosity. 

He offers me a hand, his eyes crinkling slightly, filled with a wilful light. 

Shaw: Follow me and they won’t scare you.

Shaw and I hold hands as we continue down this cramped pathway.

Because he’s by my side, I feel much more composed.

Female ghost: I’m~ Filled~ With~ Hatred...

All of a sudden, a hand plops onto my shoulder. Shaw and I pause in our footsteps.

I subconsciously tighten my grip on Shaw’s hand. In the next moment, I feel him returning the gesture with a squeeze.

Courage fills my heart. With this, Shaw and I turn around together...

??: IT’S A GHOST AHHHH--

Another shrill cry fills the pathway.

This time, however, the cry doesn’t belong to me, but to the “female ghost” with dishevelled hair.

Shaw extinguishes the electricity in his hand. He removes the ghost masks we saw at the entrance earlier, and laughs.

Shaw: If you want to scare me, you’ve got to put in more practise.

-

[ GAVIN ]

MC: What should we go for next?

Gavin and I are walking along the street, searching for our next target. A row of vending machines attract my attention.

The line of vending machines contain all sorts of toy capsules. From keychains to ornaments, there’s everything one could wish for.

Especially that one containing couple keychains. The furry keychains look exceptionally adorable.

I notice that Gavin has paused in front of one vending machine.

It’s a vending machine containing robots.

I vaguely recall watching a cartoon related to it when I was young. However, I wasn’t very interested in it, and never really understood it.

However, this looks like something Gavin would like.

MC: Gavin, there’s one vending machine I’d like to try. Could you wait here for me?

Gavin: Coincidentally, I do too.

I grin, nodding at him.

MC: Let’s split up and get the toy capsules we want, and we’ll meet back here later?

-

When we meet up again, I place the toy capsule in Gavin’s hand with satisfaction.

MC: Open it and take a look? Do you like it?

Gavin twists the toy capsule open, and surprise flashes across his eyes.

Gavin: I like it.

While he speaks, he pieces it together simply, letting the small, monochrome robot stand in his palm.

The little robot is holding a gun in one hand, and a shield in the other. Behind it is a structure resembling a one-sided wing.

On top of its circular head is a yellow antenna. Along with its four short limbs, it looks extremely cute.

Gavin: This is my favourite model.

MC: I got it randomly, and didn’t expect to get the right one.

Gavin: I was lucky too.

Gavin smiles, takes out a toy capsule, and opens it.

It happens to be the furry couple keychains I saw earlier.

One of them has soft and long ears, while the other has straight, sharp ears.

Gavin keeps the one with sharp ears, then carefully attaches the doll with the long ears on my bag. Pleased, he nods.

Gavin: Mm, it suits you.

Gavin keeps the little robot in his pocket, and the keychain swings next to me.

Seeing the gifts we’ve exchanged, sweetness brims from the depths of my heart.

MC: Having been with you for such a long time, I feel that my knowledge has been expanded.

Gavin: I've learnt quite a lot too.

Gavin pauses, then continues confidently.

Gavin: For instance, that the lipstick you're wearing today is the colour of red bean paste. And that you’ve curled your fringe slightly. 

Pleasantly surprised, I blink and want to give him a round of applause for his perfect answer.

MC: What else?

Gavin: Also, that I have to separate the white from the yolk when making fried rice. And that succulents don’t need that much watering.

MC: Then... what are the steps to preparing sliced fish boiled in chilli oil?

Probably not expecting that I’d suddenly pose a question, he ponders it carefully before responding in an exceptionally solemn manner.

Gavin: I can’t explain it right now, but I noted it down in my notes.

After he finishes speaking, we look at each other, then laugh in unison.

MC: Gavin, tell me more about this robot. And about basketball, motorcycles, planes and all the things you like.

Gavin: Okay. I’m hoping that you’d give me more cooking classes too.

The corners of his lips curl upwards slightly, and fragments of sunlight flash in his eyes.

Gavin: I want to have an even better understanding of everything to do with you.

-

Part 5: here

#mlqc #mlqc cn #mlqc spoilers

[rosy-bless]

just some rambly thoughts about allergies, vulnerability, and protectiveness ♡

two movie stars, A and B, on the red carpet for the premiere of their new film where they play each other’s love interest. nobody in hollywood can figure out if they’re actually together or if they’re just very close friends. either way, they’re hamming it up on the red carpet and having a great time with each other, posing for the cameras and giving the tabloids something to talk about. 

what the paparazzi doesn’t know is that B is really quite shy, and draws a lot of their social presence from A’s naturally confident, winsome personality. A has always made sure to take the majority of questions in interviews and subtly lend B their encouragement in public appearances, with a hand on their back or a nudge against their shoulder. at this red carpet, B is having a fun time because A is there to enjoy it with them, and it doesn’t seem so scary with A by their side.

unfortunately, it’s a spring premier, and B doesn’t realize until it’s too late that the flower they’re allergic to is in full bloom. as they go down the red carpet to more flashing cameras and clamoring interviewers, B starts to feel a tickle in their sinuses - they quickly rub their knuckle over the tip of their nose and hope that does the trick, even though they know better. thankfully the crowd is loud enough that a few dry, itchy sniffs go unnoticed, but B knows it’s only a matter of time. their cheeks heat with embarrassment - they really, really don’t like to call attention to themselves, especially about something like this, and the tabloids would have a field day with their allergies.  

B manages to fend off their growing need for a little bit - surreptitiously touching a knuckle against their nose, pressing their tongue to the roof of their mouth - and even A is too occupied trying to talk to interviewers that they don’t notice for a while. what they do notice, however, is when B hides their face against A’s shoulder for a moment. the gesture is photo-op worthy and gains a sudden rise in questions asking if there’s any off-screen romance between them, but A can feel the slight back-and-forth rub of B’s nose against their shoulder and knows something’s not right.

A wants to ask if B is ok, but every word would be caught by the paparazzi, so A settles for giving B’s hand a comforting squeeze. to everyone else, B looks fine, but A knows better. they know how B looks when they’re embarrassed, and B’s slightly pink nose and allergic, teary eyes make A want to find somewhere quiet to make sure B’s ok and give them the privacy they need. but they’re in the middle of the red carpet, and cameras are everywhere, and A doesn’t know what to do to help.

B tries to say they’re fine, but suddenly the tickle becomes too much, and not even their shyness can keep them from giving into the itchy, tickly need that overwhelms them. their breaths are hitching, desperate; without thinking, B grabs A’s arm and ducks behind A’s shoulders, using A to hide from the paparazzi as they give into the tickle with three quick, unsatisfying sneezes. A feels B’s grip tighten with each sneeze, and they know they have to do something, so they do what they do best: they draw the attention of the cameras and interviewers and allow B a few dearly-needed seconds of privacy behind their back.

B knows they’re nowhere near done for the night, but they seem to have gotten it under control for now - still tickly and blushing like mad, B straightens and gives a quiet, miserable apology. A offers an equally quiet “bless you” and takes B’s hand, checking to see if they’re alright. as soon as they can, A whisks B away to someplace quiet, with no paparazzi, where B can finally give into the fit that’s been building. B tries to apologize but has to lean against A as they sneeze again and again; A soothes B as best they can and offers B their handkerchief. 

for the rest of the night, A makes sure the attention is on them to allow B some measure of privacy, and B hides behind A as often as they need to. the next day, the tabloids are full of pictures of A and B from the premier - luckily, the only picture that’s indicative of B’s allergies is a snapshot of B leaning on A’s arm with A’s handkerchief pressed to their face. the tabloid interprets it as an emotional love confession. in their apartment, A reads the story to B as they get B more of their allergy medication and a new box of tissues. B figures it’s not a terrible way for their relationship to come out, and as A offers a sweet “bless you” and a kiss on the tip of their red nose after B’s most recent sneeze, B knows they’re very lucky to have a partner as protective and selfless as A.

#when will god stop my sinful hand #this is so wordy akjnsjbdjhb but i couldn't help myself #it's about partners being lovingly protective over each other #it's about leaning physically and metaphorically on someone #it's about partners being each other's home and safety no matter where they are #it's about a shy blushy sneezy person and their worried loving partner <3 #anyways i'll stop talking now #this is my first original post and by god it's a doozy #snz #snz kink #scenario #snez #allergies #bona fide babbs original

[alternative-approachtochronology]

Happy Anniversary to me!

One year ago I asked @rain-down-knowledge to be my girlfriend and she said yes!

To celebrate (and as part of my gift) I have written this incredibly self indulgent domestic fluff. No plot, no real point, but it was fun to write, enjoy!

Yang nervously shifted the plastic wrapped bouquet in her hands as she walked up to her front door. It had been three years but she still worried Blake wouldn’t like her gifts. She took a deep breath in, reassuring herself that Blake would love it, and exhaled as she opened the door and stepped in.

The empty downstairs greeted Yang as she  placed her keys on the hook by the door, placed the flowers down as she sat on the bench by the door to take off her work boots. As she undid the laces she heard movement upstairs. Smiling, Yang stepped out of her boots, retrieved the flowers, and padded up the stairs.

 “Blake?” Yang gently called at the top of the stairs, announcing her presence. Hearing a responding hum she made her way to the master bath.

 As she walked in, Yang saw Blake, back to her, touching up her makeup in the mirror. Yang slid an arm across her shoulder and gently pulled her into an embrace, moving the flower into her field of vision.

 “Happy anniversary Love” Yang pressed a kiss to Blake’s temple.

 “Mm, happy anniversary to you too Babe. These flowers are beautiful!” Blake took the flowers from Yang and turned to give her a kiss on the lips, “I love you.”

  As Blake turned to stand, Yang took a few steps back to give her room. As they stood face to face Yang was finally able to take in Blake’s outfit.

 “Wow,” Yang’s eyebrows rose as she took her girlfriend in. Blake was wearing a loose floral button up adorned with dark purple flowers with yellow accents that draped from her chest and flared out with her hips, her dark denim pants contrasted the white background of the shirt and made the flowers pop even more. “You look-” Yang paused as she scrambled for an adjective, “so fucking good.”

 “Gee thanks babe.” Blake rolled her eyes but couldn’t suppress the smile that bloomed across her face. Blake walked past Yang and across to their bedroom dresser. “I still have to choose a necklace, and do something with these,” she raised the bouquet in her hand, “ and then I’m ready to go after you get ready.” She placed the flowers down and picked up a simple gold chain. “A little help?”

 “Hm, what time are those reservations again?” Yang walked up behind Blake and draped the chain around the front of her neck and quickly closed the clasp as Blake swept her hair aside in a well practiced maneuver between the two. Instead of backing away, Yang dropped one hand to Blake’s hip, the other brushing the hair back to reveal her neck again and pressed a lingering kiss where her neck sloped into her shoulder. 

 “About an hour.” There was a hint of laughter in Blake’s voice. “Just enough time for you to shower and change out of your greasy shop clothes.” Blake felt the hand on her hip wrap around her stomach and be joined by Yang’s other hand as Yang gently rested her head on Blake’s shoulder.

 “Any way I could convince you to join me in the shower?” Yang’s voice was soft and warm in Blake’s ear. She was tempted to give in, but they had been planning to try this restaurant for weeks.

 “Yang,” Blake was gentle, firm, and a bit teasing as she turned in Yang’s arms to give her a pointed look. “I already showered and got ready. You’ll have to go this alone.” Blake pulled her in for a quick peck on the lips before stepping out of the embrace to collect the flowers from the dresser. “I’m going to go put these in some water.”

  Yang dramatically threw her head back. “Fine,” she huffed, a smile dancing on her face as she lifted her head. “Guess I’ll just have to get ready all on my lonesome,” her voice was teasing as she pulled the collar of her shirt over her head, reliably drawing Blake’s eyes to the plane of her stomach.

 Blake felt her fingers itch with the desire to feel her skin but shook herself out of it. She grinned at her girlfriend’s behavior as she watched Yang stretch exaggeratedly  and turn towards the bathroom as she began to take off her pants, twisting her head to throw Blake a wink on the way to the shower. Blake shook her head, starting down the stairs as the shower stuttered to life. 

 Having cut the flowers and retrieved Yang’s gift from behind the couch Blake settled in with her book as she waited for Yang to get ready. Yang never took too long to get ready, but a long day at the mechanic’s shop typically prompted a longer shower than usual.

  Soon enough Yang was walking down the stairs and it was Blake’s turn to struggle for words. Yang had on a crisp, tailored, white button up, sleeves cuffed to her elbows, tucked into some slim fitting black jeans. Around her neck she was wearing a simple amethyst on a chain, drawing out her beautiful lavender eyes. “Ready to go?” Yang looked up from fidgeting with the leather strap of her watch to see a breathless Blake.

 “Hm? Oh! Yes!” Blake snapped back to attention. “That shirt looks fucking fantastic on you.”

  Yang chuckled, “Thank you, I think you say that everytime I wear it.”

 “It keeps being true!” Blake countered as she stood. “You have everything?”

  Yang hummed in affirmation as she retrieved her things from the entryway. Opening the door, Yang flourished with her hand to cue Blake to go first, “M’Lady,” she did a mock bow and looked to Blake who promptly rolled her eyes.

 “Really? I’ve put up with three years of this?” Blake questioned as she walked through the door.

 “Oh, you love it.” Yang followed behind Blake, locking up behind them.

 “I do.”

  Dinner was a quiet conversation tucked into each other’s sides in a corner booth over a steaming hotpot. Stories from their days, childhood, and dreams were exchanged between bites of fish and sips of broth.

   Afterwards the couple found themselves on a bench at the beach to watch the sunset and exchange gifts.

 “Ooh, a ring box! Babe,” Yang teased as she pulled a small velvet box out of a gift bag.

 “Don’t worry, it’s not that. Not yet.” Blake said with a chuckle. Yang opened the box and immediately put a hand over her mouth. “I was talking to Tai and he mentioned Summer’s earrings and how he didn’t know what to do with them since neither you or Ruby pierced your ears,” Blake rushed through the explanation, worried when she saw tears well in Yang’s eyes. “ I saved one for Ruby too so-”

 “Blake,” Yang’s voice was heavy with the sob she was holding back, “Thank you, I love it.” The hand she was using to cover her mouth stretched out to grab the hand Blake was waving as she spoke.

 “You do?” At Yang’s nod Blake sighed in relief, “Thank the gods. I was worried I’d overstepped.” Yang quickly shook her head and Blake continued, “I know you can’t wear it to work, there’s a chain in the bottom of the box.”

 “You thought of everything, huh?” Yang wiped the tears from her eyes and pulled the ring out of the box. A small ruby was set into a simple silver band. Yang slipped it on her finger and held out her hand to admire it. “I remember these earrings,” she said softly. “I lost one playing dress up once and Mom was so upset. We made cookies when we found them. I think she felt bad about blowing up.” Yang sniffed and Blake wrapped her hand around her wrist in support. “Anywho,” Yang cleared her throat and straightened up, “Your turn! Apparently we both went the jewelry route.” She pulled a larger, more shallow, box from behind her on the bench and handed it to Blake. 

 “Ooh!” Blake hammed it up a bit to try to lighten the mood, but her genuine excitement was betrayed as she eagerly took the box from Yang. She slowly snapped it open to reveal a traditional wooden fish hook necklace from Menagerie with a yellow garnet adorning the eye of the hook. “Oh,” Blake gently ran the pads of her fingers over the intricate engravings on the surface of the wood. “Yang, this is gorgeous! Where did you find it? I’ve never seen any Menagerie shops in Vale!”

 “Um,” Yang blushed at the praise of her gift. “When we were visiting your parents for your birthday, I asked your mom about getting you something traditional.” She fidgeted with the new ring on her hand. “You’ve been doing all that research into your family history. I guess I wanted to give you something to connect you to it.”

 “It’s perfect.” Blake held the pendant in her palm and used her other hand to cup Yang’s cheek and looked her in the eyes, “Thank you.” She leaned in for a kiss, Yang meeting her halfway and bringing a hand to rest on her collarbone.

 The two shared their quiet moment alone together. The orange glow of the sky casting long shadows as the sun set on this beautiful day.

#bumbleby #yang xiao long #blake belladonna