#river boat incident

[worldwide-blackfolk]

Never Forget ✊🏾🤟🏾👍🏾

#never forget #mobile alabama #river boat incident #folding chair #Alabama #blackfolk #black aquaman #2023 #stand your ground #self defense #montgomery alabama #August 5th

[mirkwoodshewolf]

I belong with my One; Fili x Dúnedain reader

*Author's note*

So this took me a few days to finally get finalized and write down so I hope @futuristicyouthvoid I hope you enjoy this fic. For this fic I've put that instead of Kili getting shot by the Morgul arrow, reader gets shot saving him and ends up getting sick.

Warnings: reader poisoned, near-death experience, some angst and some fluff.

Taglist:

@plethora-of-things

@waddles03

@psychosupernatural

@jd-johndeacon-or-jackdaniels

@gay-and-ready-to-cry

@queen-paladin

___________________________________________________________

So much has happened in such little of time.  First Gandalf offers me a proposition for aiding a company of Dwarves, then we’re being pursued by orcs, then get imprisoned by the Elven king Thranduil.  Now we find ourselves at the mercy of the Men of Laketown.

Thankfully another friend of mine Bard was willing to let us stay the night at his house but of course the Dwarves had to screw it all up by going to the armory to steal the weapons and end up getting caught by the Master of the Lake’s guards.  But by some miracle, we were granted the supplies we needed to get us to Erebor to complete the quest before sunset.  Of course I knew it was because of the Master’s greediness that he agreed to help, he never was a good man.

“You do know we’re one short, where’s Bofur?” Bilbo asked.

“If he’s not here, we leave him behind.” Said Thorin.

“We’ll have to, if we’re to find the door before nightfall. We can’t risk no more delays.” Balin agreed grimly as everyone began piling into the boat.  But as I was just halfway over the plank, I felt a hand stop me.

“Not you.” I turned to see Thorin.

“What?”

“We must travel at speed, you’ll only slow us down.” He told me.

“I’m coming with you all to the Mountain. I promised Gandalf that I would.”

“(Y/n), you have been a big help to me and my kin. The first Ranger to truly stand for our cause. But lately you haven’t been up to par on your health. Stay here and rest, rejoin us when you’re healed.” Just because I’ve been feeling a bit sluggish since the river incident, doesn’t mean I’m helpless.

“Thorin—”

“I will say no more on the matter.” Without another word, Thorin went back onto the boat whilst I had no choice but to sit back down on the docks, feeling a chill suddenly come over me.

“I’ll stay with the lass, my duty lies with the wounded.” Oin said as he voluntarily got off the boat and came up to me.

“Uncle, (Y/n) has done more for this company than any other outsider could’ve done for us. You cannot repay her by leaving her behind.” Fili stepped up for me.

“Fili no.” I told him.

“I will carry her if I must!” Fili argued.

“Fili, one day you will be king and you will understand. I cannot risk the fate of this quest for the sake of a Ranger. Even if she were the only one willing to help us.” As Oin began feeling my forehead for a temperature, I soon watched as Fili stormed off the boat but Thorin stopped him.  “Fili, don’t be a fool. Your place is with the company.”

“My place is with her!” he snapped back at his uncle before taking back his arm and came over to me.

“Why did you do that? I thought you always wanted to see Erebor, you told me so yourself.”

“I’ll have plenty of opportunities to see the kingdom in my lifetime, but your wellbeing is more important to me than all the gold in Erebor.” I felt my cheeks grow warm as I softly thanked him.

“And don’t think it’ll just be Fee that’s gonna help you get back on your feet.” We turned to see Kili had also left the boat.

“Kili, you didn’t have to stay behind too.” Fili said.

“Yeah I could’ve gone but it’s my decision too.” He came up to me and stood on my right side.  “You saved my life back in the Woodland realm, I’ll gladly do everything I can to help you now (Y/n).” I smiled and looked at the brothers.

“You guys truly are the best friends I’ve ever had. Thank you.” They both nodded and as the Laketown band played a victorious fanfare to wish our friends luck, a sudden dizziness overcame me. 

My vision was going in and out of focus and as the crowd cheered as the boat with our friends departed from the docks, I suddenly fell forward, the last thing I heard was Fili’s voice calling my name.

*3rd Person POV*

When (Y/n) had passed out on the dock, Fili cried out (Y/n)’s name as Oin came up and began searching over her body for any trace of an infected wound or trace of blood.  Knowing that she had saved Kili from that arrow back when they were trying to escape the orcs on the river, there must’ve been a wound he might’ve missed before they came across Bard.

“OH, did you miss the boat too?” they soon heard the missing Dwarf, Bofur’s voice say.  But the moment he saw (Y/n) passed out, his concern grew as he asked Kili.  “What happened to her?”

“We don’t know. She just—suddenly passed out.”

“Her fever’s spiking lads. We have to get her help right away!” Oin said.

“Kee, help me out here!” together the brothers lifted her up by her arms while Oin and Bofur got her legs and they walked back towards the Master’s manor to ask for help.  After pushing through the guards, Fili cried out. “Please wait! Please, we need your help. Our friend is sick!”

“Sick? Is it infectious?” the Master exclaimed fearfully as he covered his nose with his handkerchief and fearfully cowered behind Alfrid. “Get back! Alfrid, Alfrid don’t let them come any closer!”

“Please. We need medicine.” Oin pleaded.  Alfrid walked closer as he sneered at them.

“Do I look like an apothecary? Haven’t we given you enough? The Master’s a busy man, he hasn’t got time to worry about sick Rangers! Let alone this one right ‘ere. All she’s ever done for this town is ruin the Master’s good name and turn the people against him.”

“She’s helped these people in their hour of need! Are you willing to let her die because of your own selfish needs?!” Kili demanded.

“None of our concern. She’s not a paying citizen here, therefore she’s not our problem. Now off you pop! Less we use more drastic measures.” With that Alfrid and the Master shut the doors and the guards ordered them away.

After being rejected by the Master, they tried going to other people to see if they could help but all of them were either too scared to go against the Master’s wishes, or didn’t have enough supplies to help aid her as well as their own sick family members.

With no other options left, the Dwarves raced back to Bard’s home.  Knowing of their friendship, they’d hope that at least he could help them.  Bofur knocked on the door frantically and as soon as Bard saw them, he sneered.

“No, I’m done with Dwarves. Go away!” he went to shut the door but Bofur stopped him pleading.

“No, no please! Please! No one will help us. (Y/n) is sick.” Bard opened the door further to see his good friend now sickly pale, strands of her hair stuck to her face from the profuse sweating she was doing, and her breathing was now choked gasps.  “She’s very, very sick.” Even with the grievance he had with the Dwarves for risking the safety of not only his children but the entire town of Dragon fire, he didn’t have the heart to turn his dear friend away.

“Bring her in.” Bard stepped aside and the four dwarves quickly piled in while Bard quickly looked around before shutting the door.  “Put her over there. I’ll see what I have.” Bard went to the back of the house as the Dwarves set her down on the nearby couch.  Fili took her hand between his and squeezed it.

“Hang on (Y/n), we’re all here to help you. Just…..don’t go where I cannot follow.” He whispered to her stroking the back of her hand with his thumb.  Kili watched his older brother and knowing of his feelings towards the Ranger, he couldn’t help but feel guilty knowing that it was because of his carelessness that the woman his brother loved got hurt to save him.

As the night overcame the lake, (Y/n)’s health was gradually becoming worse.  Oin did managed to find a small graze just underneath her elbow.  A graze that came from an orc arrow tipped with poison.  Already the wound (even for as small as it was) had already started to become infected and the poison was spreading fast.

(Y/n) was tossing and turning, panting as her body was glistening with sweat.

“Nothing’s working! Can you not do something!?” demanded Fili who was growing more frantic by the second seeing the woman he came to love be in such agony.

“I need herbs! Something to bring down her fever.” Bard soon came in with some more supplies and began listing them off.

“I have nightshade, feverfew…..”

“No, no there no use to me. Do you have any Kingsfoil?” said Oin but Bard told him.

“No. It’s a weed we feed it to the pigs.”

“Pigs? Weed. Right. Don’t move.” Bofur said before leaving the house.  As Kili was continuing to dab a damp, cool cloth across (Y/n)’s face and neck to ease her of her sweating, a rumble was soon heard coming from the mountain.

“Da?” asked one of Bard’s daughters Sigrid.

“It’s coming from the mountain.” Answered Bard’s son, Bain.  Bard had feared the worst, the dwarves had awoken Smaug the Terrible and soon the prophecy would come to pass, the Lake will shine and burn.

“You should leave us.” Fili said as he walked up to Bard. “Take your children, get out of here.”

“And go where? There’s nowhere to go.” Bard told him in defeat.  Little Tilda stepped in front of her siblings and asked her father fearfully.

“Are we going to die Da?” Bard looked at his youngest child and assured her.

“No darling.”

“The dragon, it’s going to kill us.” Bard then turned towards a beam just above the kitchen and gripped a thin but firm piece of what appeared to be black iron.  He pulled it down from the beam to reveal that it was a Black arrow, the very same black arrow that can only be used to kill the dragon.

“Not if I kill it first.” Bard said determinedly.  He then asked his son to come with him while the girls stayed behind with the Dwarves to help take care of their Aunt.

Time passed and (Y/n)’s fever was getting even worse.  Her breathing was sharp and panicked and she was now starting to writhe in agony.

“Durin’s beard where is Balin with that Kingsfoil!?” Fili demanded.

“I have the right mind to go out and look for him myself!” Kili snapped.

“You can’t leave! With the guards on patrol, they’ll arrest you too and aunt (Y/n) will never get better!” Bain said.  “No one is leaving this house understood!?” hearing the young man take a stand against the Dwarves made them both feel shock and admiration.

“Very well laddie. But I don’t know how long (Y/n) has got left, she’s growing weaker by the second.” Oin said to Bain.

“Tilda, Sigrid, come with me to get more rags and water for aunt Hela.” The siblings soon left while Fili gripped (Y/n)’s hand tighter.

“Fi…….li.” she choked out.

“I’m right beside you (Y/n).” he whispered to her.  Slowly opening her eyes she croaked out.

“Fili…..if anything hap-happens to me—”

“Don’t talk like that (Y/n). We’re going to heal you, Bofur’s probably found the Kingsfoil by now, he’s just probably ducking the guards and taking longer. Please don’t give in now.” He squeezed her hand between his.  “Don’t go where I can’t follow.”

Suddenly a scream was heard and next thing everyone knew orcs began dropping down from the rooftop or coming in through the front door.  The dwarves grabbed whatever they could to fight off the orcs but there were too many of them, and with the tightly constricted area the house provided, there was hardly any fighting room.

Kili got the children to duck under the table and fought off any orc that tried to come close to them, while Oin and Fili worked together to fend off any orc that came near (Y/n).  When they thought they were done for, help came from both Legolas and Tauriel who had been tracking down the orcs since they left Mirkwood.

As Fili managed to block an orc’s attack with a kitchen knife, (Y/n) had managed to crawl out of the couch and use a fire-poker to stab the orc through its spine.  But she soon let out a cry of agony as she collapsed to the ground, the poison fully starting to overcome her.  Eventually, all the orcs were either killed off or had begun to retreat from the house.

“You killed them all.” Bain said as he and his sisters got out from under the table after all went quiet in the house.

“There are others, Tauriel.” Legolas ordered but Tauriel was hesitant.  As Oin came down beside (Y/n) and felt around her neck to feel her pulse was slowing down, Fili and Kili came down beside her as Oin said fearfully.

“We’re losing her!”

“Tauriel.” Legolas said to her.  She turned back to her prince and said.

“The Ranger has done no harm to us, is there nothing we can do to help her?”

“She is beyond help. I’m sorry, there’s nothing that can be done for her.” Footsteps could soon be heard racing up the stairs and as the two elves prepared for another battle with orcs, they stopped to see that it was Bofur carrying some Athelas in his hand.

“Athelas,” Tauriel exhaled as she took it from him and admired it. “Athelas.”

“What are you doing?” Bofur asked nervously.  Tauriel looked into the room before looking back at him and said.

“I’m going to save her.” Legolas’ eyes briefly narrowed.

“Tauriel…..”

“You may go if you wish Legolas, but I cannot leave the she-ranger to perish in such agony. Not whilst she still clings to life and that I now have her only salvation.” The young prince took a deep breath then exhaled.

“What would you have me do?” the two elves raced back inside and Tauriel ordered.

“I need water fast. Get her on a solid, stable surface. Lay her flat on her back.” Every in the room reacted quickly.  Tilda gave Tauriel the bowl of water for her to mix the Athelas together, whilst Legolas and the Dwarves worked together to get (Y/n) on the table.

She was screaming and writhing in pure agony, her mouth starting to grow black with the poison.

“Where is the wound?” Legolas asked.

“Underneath her left elbow.” Oin said.  Legolas took hold of her left wrist and raised her arm above.  But when she tried to struggle, he was forced to also grab her forearm to pin it down and there he saw it.  The black graze and he could see the infection had fully spread and blackened her entire elbow.

“Hold her down.” Tauriel said.  Kili and Bofur held down her right leg while Bard’s children held down her left.  Fili held (Y/n) by the shoulders and Oin helped Tauriel brew the medicine.  Once it was brewed, Tauriel cut through the sleeve of (Y/n)’s shirt to get a better access to the wound.

The female ranger appearing like a rapid animal, screaming, grunting and thrashing about trying to free herself.  Tauriel took some of the Athelas and began rubbing it onto her hands as she chanted.

“Menno o nin na hon i eliad annen annin, hon leitho o ngurth.” She then placed her hands over the ranger’s wound and (Y/n) let out an agonizing scream.  Fili softly shushed her stroking through her hair and whispering in her ear all the while Tauriel kept chanting the spell.

Bit by bit, (Y/n)’s animalistic behavior quietened and then she went still.  Her breathing now soft and not as frantic as it had been.  Fili looked down at her worriedly and Kili asked.

“Will she be alright?”

“Athelas has powerful healing properties. With time and rest, she’ll regain her full strength. A few more minutes and she would’ve been beyond even with the aid of the Athelas.” Responded Tauriel.  The dwarves and Bard’s children breathed a sigh of relief.

“Thank you.” Fili said to Tauriel.  She gave him a soft but tight smile as well as a soft nod.  Then both she and Legolas left to deal with the orcs.

After her healing, Fili wrapped up (Y/n)’s wound with some bandages and kept vigil at her side.  Never before had he felt so scared than he had felt at that moment.  Fearing that the woman he had come to become fond of—nay love throughout this quest, he wouldn’t have known what to do had she been lost to him.

“She’ll be alright Fili. She’s strong, she’ll be back on her feet in no time.” His brother tried to assure him.

“I know. But seeing her go through all that pain, all that suffering, and who knows if she even knew she had been hit.”

“Even if she did, she’s got the stubbornness of a Dwarrowdam. Perfect woman for a guy like you.” Fili turned to his brother.  “You may try to have hide it from the others but you can’t hide anything from me Fee. I’ve seen how you’ve been looking at her since Rivendell. You care for her more than just as a friend.” Fili sighed and looked down to her.

“I don’t even know how it happened. But after all that we’ve been through, seeing her in a—domestic way. The way she was with her younger cousin, the way the sunlight seemed to reflect off her hair, and the way her eyes shone like jewels in the dark. Kee……I feel as if she is my One.”

“And you should follow through that brother.”

“But would it work? A dwarf and a human? It’s never been done before?”

“Is that what’s really troubling you? Or is it that you fear she doesn’t feel the same way?” Fili remained quiet.

“This quest has shown me that life is too fragile. And at any moment, any one of us can be taken away by any means. I want to tell her my true feelings but—not now. Not while our lives are still in danger. Perhaps when we reach the mountain, I’ll work up the courage to tell her but I—”

“I understand brother. The turmoil that must’ve been stirring in your heart seeing her on death’s doorstep, if you had confessed your love for her beforehand and it be too late to save her……I can’t imagine the pain that would’ve been.”

“She’s too precious to me.” Fili said as he stroked her cheek with the back of his finger.  “I feel like if she had died tonight, my heart would’ve died with her. My body may have continued to live on but my heart would never be full again.”

“Take comfort now that she’s alive and that she’s recovering. No more darkened thoughts need cloud your mind anymore.” Kili said as he placed a comforting hand on his brother’s shoulder, gently shaking it.  Fili turned to his little brother and nodded giving him a soft smile.

“Thank you Kili. I know I’m supposed to be the older brother here but, I’m glad that you were here to be the one to ease my mind.”

“I’m always here for you brother, and I always will be. Together forever right?” he extended his other hand out.

“Together forever little brother.” Fili clasped his other hand with Fili’s as they pressed their foreheads together, drawing in each other’s strength.

*My POV*

 All I remembered was darkness, as well as a voice reaching out for me.  Then a bright light and soon silence.  I don’t remember much after that but I do remember hearing Fili’s voice along with Kili’s.

“This quest has shown me that life is too fragile. And at any moment, any one of us can be taken away by any means. I want to tell her my true feelings but—not now. Not while our lives are still in danger. Perhaps when we reach the mountain, I’ll work up the courage to tell her but I—”

“I understand brother. The turmoil that must’ve been stirring in your heart seeing her on death’s doorstep, if you had confessed your love for her beforehand and it be too late to save her……I can’t imagine the pain that would’ve been.”

“She’s too precious to me.” I felt something graze my cheek with the most gentlest touch.  “I feel like if she had died tonight, my heart would’ve died with her. My body may have continued to live on but my heart would never be full again.”

So did Fili actually feel the same as I have come to feel for him? Oh Fili, I-I love you too. And I do hope that one day I can say that aloud, but for now I was just too weak to even open my eyes.  I soon passed out once again but it wasn’t until the sound of giant wings flying towards us had me opening my eyes.

Smaug was coming for us. And he was out for blood.

#the hobbit #the hobbit imagine #the hobbit imagines #the hobbit fanfic #the hobbit fanfiction #fili #fili x reader #fili imagine #fili imagines #fili fanfic #fili fanfiction #kili #kili imagine #kili imagines #kili fanfic #kili fanfiction #tolkien fandom #tolkien imagine #fili durin #thorin oakenshield #the hobbit fandom

[blackreaderfics]

My Little Mermaid | Clark Kent x Black!Reader

↳ Pairing : MoS!Clark Kent x Black!AFAB!Reader

↳ Rating :  M (18+)

↳ Summary : a lone fisherman rescues a girl from the water

↳ W.C : ~1.6K

↳ Tags + Warnings: little mermaid motifs, comfortfic, reader is mute, slight dumbification, caretaker!clark, clark bathes her, slight implied age gap (reader is younger but over 18!!), size difference, non-sexual sexual touches, dubious consent, eye contact, ambiguous relationship, no smut

Clark wiped the mist of ocean water from his face as he surveyed the horizon. The sky was dull and gray; the same as it had been for the past three days. He had already gotten his catch for the week; choppy waters before a storm always stirred the life below right into his net. He decided to turn in for the day after his last reel-in.

Boats above a certain size usually required a crew to operate efficiently, but Clark preferred to work by himself. If any of his previous crewmates could see him hefting burdens meant for ten men with ease, they’d probably be afraid of him. He'd never forget the look on his classmate’s face when he’d been seen using his powers. His bully, ironically enough, had been the only one to witness his pushing their sinking bus from out of the river. The mocking and derision he’d gotten so used to seeing was replaced with terror, and Clark realized he’d been the sole cause of that fear.

The incident brought unwanted attention to the Kents and reporters at their front door. Since then, his parents had quietly taken him out of school where he would earn his diploma from home. He was used to being alone now. 

Clark secured the net to the metal rig and lowered it into the water. Tiny droplets of rain dripped from his hood one by one until a steady drizzle began to fall. He tugged at his hood, though it didn't help him much now that he'd already been dampened from the humidity in the air and the sweat on his back. He circled back around the boat, checking for any stray buoys or untied ropes while he waited for the signal to bring his haul back up. 

A heavy clang at the side of the boat called his attention. He hadn’t brought the rig down very deep and he was far from the coast. Did he misalign something when he was setting up? He mentally went over his loading checklist from that morning, but couldn’t come up with anything out of the norm—Clark was a man of routine, and he rarely strayed from it. He frowned up at the clouds, now rolling in, and back down at the roiling waters. It was too early to bring the net back up but even he knew not to tempt fate. 

Clark went back to the helm of the boat and raised a lever to signal the rig’s movement upward. As the steel arm rose, however, it made a creaking noise he’d heard only once before back when he bought the old fisher boat. The guy who had sold it to him ensured he would take care of it, but maybe Clark had been naïve to trust his words.

He set the lever back to its place and stalked out of the cockpit. So much for not using any strength, he thought wryly. He wrapped the rope connected to a pulley once around his hand. A strong pull shot the net through the surface of the water; It hung a few feet above where he stood, filled with silvery bass and something else he couldn’t quite make out in the rain.

“What the—“ That something else looked very… human. Alarmed, he secured the rope he was holding onto the deck and manually worked on the metal arm that held the netted bundle. The faulty rig was already broken, and he had no problem bending the steel back to fold it closer to the main deck. The net ripped apart with a yank of his fingers and he swiftly pulled the human body from the catch.

It was…a girl. It was you. Alive, somehow, but completely bare. He shrugged out of his jacket and wrapped it carefully around your body. Though your eyes were still closed, you had instinctively curled into his arms. He held you, carefully, as though you would break at any moment, and made his way to the shelter of the captain’s pit. The nearest hospital wasn’t too far from the shore. As long as you were still breathing, they’d be able to help you.

Clark laid you down on a cushioned ledge next to the control panels of the cockpit. He started the journey back to shore, but from the corner of his eye, he could see that you had awakened. When he turned to face you, however, your eyes had already squinted shut. 

“You’re awake.” He left the helm to come closer, kneeling by your side to take a closer look at you. He hadn’t taken a proper look at your face yet. He wasn’t a doctor but he knew a bit of first aid; he could check for any head injuries and vital signs that way. When he noticed your body tense up, he thought better of touching you and brought his hand back down. 

“Miss?” He tried again and you peeked out from underneath his jacket. Large doe-like brown eyes stared at him unblinkingly. “I’m not going to hurt you.” He promised, but Clark was beginning to wonder if you could even understand him at all. 

“I want to move your hair.” He spoke slowly, miming the actions with his hands at his own wetted curls. You looked at him as if understanding and slowly sat up. Clark froze as the jacket he’d draped over you shifted to reveal the brown peaks of your nipples. He quickly averted his eyes, only returning them back to yours when you moved suddenly in his periphery. 

You were.. touching him? Or more accurately, touching his hair, copying his movements from earlier. 

“N-no, not my hair.” Clark didn’t know why he was suddenly flustered but he moved now, with purpose, to cover you back up. You sat up, following his eyes as he brushed your long locs back and away from your face. You decided you liked his eyes very much.

Clark sat back on his heels and studied you. Your face looked unmarred, ethereal even, brown skin shimmering faintly as if you generated your own sunlight. You touched him again, this time at an area under his bearded jaw. When your fingers lightly grazed the knob at his neck, he swallowed involuntarily. 

At that moment he saw it. It was imperceptible at first; hard to catch if you weren’t looking hard enough. On the sides of your neck, three thin slashes pulsated like heartbeats, like…gills? He had to get you back into the water. 

Clark sat on the closed lid of the toilet, deep in thought at the strange situation before him. He had pulled you out from the middle of the ocean and you were now sitting in his bathtub, resting your chin on the lip of the tub as he brooded. 

After seeing your gills (at least that was what they looked like) there was no way he could take you to the hospital. And throwing you back into the water just to get caught by another fisherman didn’t seem like the best idea either. 

Finally, as if making up his mind, he rolled up his sleeves and kneeled beside you with a washcloth. Pulling your arm gently towards him, he began to rub small circles of lather into your skin. 

He was always so serious when he looked at you but now he refused to meet your eyes, as if avoiding the glare of the sun. Had you done something wrong? He told you he wouldn’t hurt you. You didn’t understand the exact words, but you understood it from his eyes and you believed him. 

He took your other arm and your eyes followed his movements, but he hesitated for a moment at your chest. After a beat, Clark placed the washcloth in your hands and covered it with his own, guiding your clothed hand across your breasts.

You looked down in awe. His hands looked a lot different than yours; a lot bigger. And behind his hand, yours had completely disappeared. A soft nudge at your shoulder prompted you to turn around, breaking you out of your thoughts of the man in front of you.

Your back was to him now, and you could feel the warmth of his body heat, but you couldn’t see his eyes anymore. It made you uneasy when you couldn’t see them. You turned to face him again and he sat back, startled at your sudden movement. This time, Clark had given up on avoiding looking directly at you, searching your eyes for a hint of what you wanted. 

Before he could retract his hand from you, you clasped another hand over his willing it to stay. He obliged and continued, across your stomach, around your thighs, and down to your feet. After some time cleaning you, Clark wrung out the cloth and stood, pulling you to stand with him. You wondered why he seemed to ignore the area between your legs. You reached for the cloth but he took a step back. 

“N-no! That’s not—,” He looked away again, the tips of his ears tinged in pink. Clark looked around his bathroom for any kind of method of escape but found none. You weren't completely clean yet, but he knew he wouldn't get anywhere trying to explain to you why. He resigned himself to his fate and moved to find a basin.

You gazed up from under him. He was much bigger than you were. Just like with his hands, you noted his body could wholly cover yours; perhaps he could make you disappear under him just the same.

Not too long after, he presented you with a basin of fresh water and cupped his hand under yours. You let the water pool and leak through the gaps in your fingers. After a few tries you were able to hold a good amount of water in the crater of your palm. 

He demonstrated with you first, bringing your joined hands in between your thighs. Up from underneath your hand he helped you gently press apart your folds. He guided your fingers each time you’d collected your water, bringing it to your mound again and languidly rubbing until you felt his hand drift away. 

Clark watched you copy the movements he’d had taught you earlier. He could tell you were searching his eyes for confirmation, so he made sure to nod in assurance each time you looked at him.

When you stepped out of the bath he draped a warm towel around your shoulders, making sure to avoid the slits at your neck. He was staring intently at you now. The look in his eyes told you that he would keep you safe, and you believed him.

©️ blackreaderfics // credit to cafekitsune for the dividers

#inspired by the new little mermaid #I’ve only seen the first half of MoS tbh #but we love Henry cavill so…! #clark kent x black!reader #x black reader #clark kent x reader #henry cavill x reader #brfwrites

[aconflagrationofmyown]

A Whole Man Is Hard Find || chapter 15

An Elvis Presley riverboat AU

Warnings: the typical universe warnings apply but with a significant raise in this particular chapter with mentions of and repeated talks of past rape, exploitation, drugging, prostitution, mentions of suicide and contemplating suicide

Word Count: 21k 🤭

Note from the gremlin author: thank y’all so much for your patience and continued interest in this sprawling AU, your messages and comments and screaming are what I live for and truly ensure each next part ever seeing the light of day. I love you all and thank you for being so good to me on here, makin’ E so proud with your warmth, I do believe. Warning, this chapter has only been edited by my exhausted eyes. Xoxo Marina🌹

Previous chapter link -because lord knows I take so long between updates y’all probably don’t recall where we are at

“I dreamed a dream in time gone by, when hope was high and life worth living, I dreamed that love would never die, I dreamed that God would be forgiving”

Rosey thought the announcement went rather well, though some credit was no doubt owed to the whiskey passed around by Jerry first.

Due to the pouring rain the crew meeting was moved from the deck and instead took place in the grand ballroom. There beneath unlit chandeliers, Captain Presley took a stand atop a billiards table and managed, not without severe bouts of emotion, to relay to his friends and crew that they’d be dumped on the river bank this evening for the interim of a month. That they would go with ample remuneration hardly seemed to worry most, it was assumed.

When one was fired by Captain Presley, one knew it. The men Captain Presley had fired before were either shot, pitched over the side or else so viscerally cut down to size in a vocal harangue as to alter their bearings and stature for the rest of their lives. When one got fired by Captain Presley, one apologized for fucking up and took the bullet. He was a fair man, his temper an instrument of justice, and it earned him a loyal crew.

This was no firing. And after the incident at table this morning, his crew had the good sense to take it in the vein it was presented. Choiceless, on his part and theirs.

Those occasional crew members who had in the past chosen to leave the Proud Marie on good terms, had been subjected to bouts of sullen pouting by their superior officer, but they’d never been allowed ashore without ample funds and gifts, momentos and embraces by their erstwhile captain.

For this particular development, Rosey knew the Captain found it hardest to tell them of their abandonment and yet be forced to not divulge that his triumphant return was no sure thing. He had argued heatedly in the office that they deserved to know he was most likely sunk, that they should not spend their ample severance pay on rent and provisions waiting for his return, when that awaited return did not guarantee a resumption of their jobs. Which point, Scotty and Rosey both argued against, from different angles.

Scotty made the decent point that despite Elvis’ childlike trust for his crew, telling them of his rebellion against the Colonel was the quickest way to stamp out their daring endeavor -news of it would be wired to the Colonel by one of them before nightfall.

On her part, Rosey pointed out that he very well might win at this dare, in which case it was hasty to command them not to wait for his return and a resumption of the life they enjoyed and thrived in.

“Don’t you ever get tired of placin’ your bets on a lame horse?” he had teased her.

“I’ll tell Beans you’re maligning him.” she had threatened him in return, lips trembling in a giggle that the haughty set of her brows could not disguise.

He was near unbearably fond of that expression of hers, he’d seen it often enough since she boarded his boat and snippily ordered his life for the better. That grinning giggle had talked him into heaven and a heap of trouble, but one way or another he was no longer stagnant, and tiring as walking through hell turned out to be, it was better than purgatory.

And so he had jumped up on that billiard table and announced it, choking down his warnings and his apologies and everything he wanted to say to folks who’d followed and trusted him for ten years, during times of lean and fat, times when he felt capable and times when he had courted death it seemed so appealing.

The family he had made when he came home and found none waiting for him, found that he’d been buried and mourned and replaced in their hearts. So he had set himself out to become irreplaceable, and maybe Sister Rosetta was right, this current helplessness was his judgment, playing at god had landed him in a Devine fix where he was left powerless to defend what was his beyond shoving money and thanks into the hands of his beloved dependmants. Comending them to the care of the One who could do more.

Upon the conclusion of the Captain’s announcement -speech, lullaby, eulogy, it seemed- a mournful murmur bubbled through the gathered crew and they rushed him to say their goodbyes and swear their lifetime loyalty. One of them went to Rosey instead, her bronze cheeks wet with tears but her face a strong mask of composure.

“Oh, Miss B.” her melting creole patois washed over Rosey.

Etta’s name had been on the list of crew to be dispensed of, pretty maids a liability on a boat full of desperate soldiers. Her hand now gripped Rosey’s firm and warm, her dark eyed shining with emotion, and belatedly Rosey realized with heart stopping regret that she had both made and was now losing a friend. The first true friend she’d had since she lost Maddy. It was silly and selfish but with Etta gone, Rosey felt that she’d finally be well and truly alone with Elvis, the Elvis that only women who laid beneath him and gentled him awake knew -and she felt scared by that.

“Be good to him.” Etta stroked Rosey’s fair cheek and it made her realize she had shed a tear herself, though her own chest did not heave nor her lips tremble, too focused on the last touches of a friend, “Be strong, be gentle, and teach him to forgive himself.” she whispered, “You could start by example, ya know.” she teased, then let out a gasp as Rosey abandoned all decorum and flung her arms about Etta’s pretty neck, her exotic necklaces making a cold and familiar rattle against her cheek as she squeezed her tight, a silent thanks for teaching her not to be scared of womanhood. Etta squeezed back.

“I've told her, you both, to be gentle with each other.” Etta commissioned someone over Rosey’s shoulder, not letting up with the embrace, “And for the love of the saints, don’t you dare put a child in this sweet girl until you’re headed back down river, ain’t nothin I can do against her flushing a babe or pukin her life out when I’m hundreds of miles away.”

Oh Etta, Rosey thought to say as they hugged beneath Elvis’ gaze, he wishes to marry me even as he learned today he cannot love me. What of that? Is there a herb or a spell or a potion for that ache? Nothing but a child would love or cure her, nothing but her own child could she fashion to adore her for her provision and her use. But he wouldn’t give her that, not now he knew her, she knew he wouldn’t.

“We won’t, we ain’t… oh Etta,” Elvis voice landed close and rich in Rosey’s ear and suddenly his chest was to Rosey’s back and his arms wrapped round them both, joining their embrace, his hands sweeping up Etta’s back like he was trying to confirm his memory of her topography one last time. “Etta’darlin, I’m sorry, I’m so damn sorry.” he couldn’t keep the tears out of his voice and Rosey felt his chest heave against her back, lying to Etta a useless thing, and an honest goodbye was due between such friends. “I’ve tried but it’s no use, I’m so sorry it’s ended like this”

“Now hush up.” Etta’s head reared back with loving ferocity, “That’s exactly the sort of nonsensical idiot talk Rosey and I have decreed banned on this boat.”

“Have ya now?” he chuckled in Rosey’s ear.

“Yes, we have, haven’t we?”

“Yes, we have.” Rosey confirmed, grinning at her friend, eyes sparkling under tear soaked lashes.

“Well, go on, tell him.” Etta prodded, “You’d best get your method down while I’m here, girl. Go on.”

“No more.” Rosey attempted sternness.

“Hmm, weak.” Etta declared, pulling back a little so she could both observe them and allow Rosey room to maneuver and look up at the besotted fool currently gazing down at her with love-sick compliance. “Try flippancy.”

“None of that! .” Rosey attempted to tut at him with breeziness.

“Hmm, stern again.”

“None of that!”

Elvis just kept grinning, a lazy smirk and his fingers loosely holding onto his neglected cigar.

“Let’s try pleading.” Etta suggested.

“Enough of that.” Rosey attempted a good beg and he remained unmoved.

“Hmm, teasing.” Etta ordered next.

“We’ll have none of that, sir!” Rosey fought her giggle, out of amusement or embarrassment of this exercise Elvis didn’t know, but either way, there was that slyly fought grin of hers and-

“Oh, oh teasing it is then.” Etta crowed gleefully as Elvis melted and spluttered, and in an attempt to save face, shoved his cigar back into his smiling mouth.

“B.B. get over here and curtail your woman, hug me while you’re at it.” Elvis demanded of his approaching friend and a fourth body was added to the embrace, all limbs entangled and chins in shoulders, patting hands moving to each other and watery laughs exchanged as the tears were fully banished by pure willpower alone.

“Say King, you’ll have made Etta an honest woman by the time I see you both again?” Elvis raised his brows in significance at B.B. who grinned back just as enthusiastically.

“Yes sir, E.P,” he grinned, “reckon we’ll hitch ourselves at a chapel here, grab ourselves a minister so it’s proper like. Make our way south as a married couple. Ain’t that right, sunshine?”

“That’s right.” Etta grinned back.

“What a darling idea.” Rosey murmured, heartsick.

“I’d best be godfather to your child,” Elvis demanded with a wavering smile, “whether I’m dead or alive, that’s my right.” he tried to tease.

“That would be funnier if you weren’t goin’ up to where they scalp pretty heads like yours.” B.B. drolled, giving Elvis one last pat in farewell.

Etta and B.B. went to depart, her hand on his arm before he paused, nealey to the deck doors and looked back at his captain, standing amidst the superfluous finery of his once glittering amphitheater of entertainment,

“Presley,” King’s voice carried low but earnest, “if either of you find yourselves in need of a place to, to -hunker down- you make your way to Na’Lens, come call on us. The both or either of ya.” he reiterated with an extra nod to Rosey, as if he suspected she might not think herself welcome without the captain, which made her think of the very strong likelihood of returning without him. Which made her gut twist and her hand heavy as they gave them a last wave of farewell.

Ada Overton stepped up next, a strange look on her face as she worried a small book round and round in her wrinkled hands, nervously perhaps, though her worn and painted face was devoid of sentiment. They faced off against each other, the lady cold and almost combative in her stance, and the Captain viewing her with a strange revulsion he could hardly reconcile. It was as if beginning to let go of this life, even just the first slip of it from his fingers gave him a vantage point to view it for what it was -a business that ate one’s soul. ‘You’ll get used to it’ Ada had told him back in New York as she painted his face, she’d been at it since a child. Elvis never gotten used to it. Or he feared he finally had, till Rosey jolted him right out of the cold waters of the Styx.

“Ada.” he nodded at her, remembering then kinder things, not the way she’d fed him to them but rather, the way she patched him up after, old enough to be his mother and strangely cruel in her kindnesses, “I wish ya well.”

“You should let me stay.” she replied instead, “I’ve nowhere to go and you’re about to receive an influx of clientele such as will tear this ship apart if deprived of available diversions.”

“Ain’t the first transport ship to make it successfully without the uh, moderating, yeah, moderating influences of ladies.”

“No,” she agreed coldly, “they’ll turn on each other, and turn on the captain.”

“Well, that’ll be their officer’s problem.” Elvis replied evenly and glanced over at Rosey in a subconscious tick of concern.

“So you’re letting that vicious little thing stay and not me?” Ada observed without malice, just a wry inventory of Rosey’s assets.

“Do you suddenly know your numbers, Ada Darlin’?” he asked in a tone similar to her own.

“I can count, when needed.” she shook it off like she might a fly, head turned away as if to collect herself from a slap, her shoulders shimmying and her taffeta rustling with the intake of breath.

“Course,” he grinned in an effort to cheer her, “wouldn’t do to lose count and whip a patron to death.”

“E,” there was a rather demented change for the softer in her demeanor when she spoke next, looking him dead in the eye, her dark rimmed lashes bleeding into the fine lines around her harsh eyes, “I must -please can I talk to you I never meant to do you wrong.”

Rosey found the change unsettling enough to inadvertently make a move to withdraw from their hushed tete-a-tete at the edge of the ballroom, feeling as if there was no way he could deny so forceful a plea in a woman so strangely unnerving. But that was Rosey, unused to Ada and her belladonna dilated pupils except for the occasional passing in the halls or the times she sought Etta and found her with Ada. The Captain’s hand landed heavy and final on her shoulder and stalled her retreat, rooting her to his side.

“Sure Ada,” he answered with a light tone, “I know that, you know I know that. Else you’d be overboard ages ago. And what’s more, here.” he motioned to Rosey with an open palm while keeping his eyes on Ada’s and Rosey recognizing the gesture put the envelope holding Ada’s generous allotment in his palm. “Here, Ada,” his voice was gentler, pressing the cash into her hands and closing her bleached palm himself, squeezing it shut in a gesture of farewell, “I wish ya well, i truly do.”

Ada’s eyes sharpened, her mouth flattened grimly and the harsh paint of her brow raised in recognition of his dismissal. Then like a hawk her eyes slid from his to Rosey’s, “Child,” she addressed her calmly, “will you plead a case for me?”

“Say your piece Ada.” he interrupted with a sigh, and a wary set to his mouth.

“I know you’re breaking with Parker,” she continued to look to Rosey, gripping his hands nevertheless, “I know you are, and I tell you now that if you do and leave me here I am a dead woman. He’ll come after me, you know he will, and when he does it would be better for ya that I were dead already. I’d be paid better than this cash to testify against you when you return. I’ve one decent remedy at hand, and you’ll have no blood on your conscience or ghost to tarnish your name. Grant it, take me with you.” her eyes slid back to his, “Please E, this ain’t a beg, I’m telling you now, you’d better choose to put a bullet in my mouth or else when you come back I’ll see you across a judge’s bench. You know I never had it in me to be principled, but I’d like to leave our score as is. Take me north,” she suggested as if she had not just said the previous slew of threats and dire predictions, “take me north and drop me off there. Maybe this cash will be worth something there,” she looked down at the envelope, “a new start perhaps. Or a new clientele.” Ada sniffed but it wasn’t due to tears, snuff dust more likely, Elvis thought, “I’ll make a home in Saint Paul and wait for the word that she’s put the colonel to sleep.” and she jerked her head at Rosey, much to that girl’s unsettled surprise.

“Ain’t no one gonna murder him.” was all Elvis had to say to this meandering appeal of hers.

“I wouldn’t be so sure.” Ada smirked and the wrinkles around her mouth smoothed out when she did, Rosey shuddered, “She’s wicked that one.”

“No she ain’t.”

“Fool.” Ada declared him, still eyeing Rosey, “Gonna let me stay? I’ll give ya my bellows camera, E! You know I don’t beg, I don’t, but I’ll empty shit buckets if it gets me up north.”

“That is what you’ll be doin’ if you stay.” he replied vehemently, and watched as she shrugged again. He sighed and gave a shrug of his own while pulling his hands free, both Ada and Rosey knew him enough to know it signified his concession, “Once you get up there, you know that you can’t start working again, you know that! There’s enough money in that envelope to keep you well secured, and you ain’t bad with a needle, you’ll find work. But if you start puttin out again, if you start infectin’ folks you know they’ll lock you up.”

“That a threat?” Ada asked with a hiss before catching herself, “I ain’t gonna put out,” she went on more sullenly, “or at least keep to what i been doing here. There’s gotta be perverts in Minnesota, haven’t there? And no I won't, I won’t, not until my eyes go and I can’t wield a needle. In which case your money and my time may be runnin out.”

“Yeah well, nothin’ either of us can do about that.” He observed with strained coldness.

“No.” she agreed and Rosey wondered what it was that was claiming her life so surely that he would put three thousand greenbacks in an envelope and declare it enough to last her lifetime.

“You got those gentleman suits of your’n still?” he asked her tiredly and Rosey wondered at the change of topic, “The ones as hemmed to your proportions?”

“I do.” she replied.

“Hmm,” he pondered an unspoken scheme, staring at Rosey as if seeing through her, “reckon one would fit her?”

Ada joined him in eyeing up the buxom little thing by his side, her eyes narrowing at the profusion of womanliness at her chest. “Take some squashin, but otherwise their height can be altered.”

“Then alter one,” he ordered decisively in a much stronger voice, “whichever is your most modest, alter it and have it on my bed with clean linens before another bell strikes.”

“What-“ Rosey began to ask and found that his face suggested that silent compliance was her most valued asset at present.

“Want the straps or the wooden-“ Ada herself began before he snapped,

“-No damn you, leave the equipment, just the clothes.”

Ada backed away from them warily but her eyes were scarily alight with what Rosey assumed was that woman’s version of mirth, “Aye, aye captain, but just recall, wicked that one, quite capable and wicked, I can see it in her hands.”

“Don’t mind her.” The captain spoke to a bewildered Rosey when Ada had retreated out of sight and a new line of crew had formed to gather their severances and say their farewells, “Don't mind her none,” he repeated with a shudder that suggested he personally minded her greatly, “sickness has addled mind.” he explained as if that solved everything and turned to his next departing crew member.

Rosey felt bereft and as if she were mourning dead friends for the rest of that afternoon while overseeing the severances and bidding farewell to faces more or less familiar, faces who had welcomed and cheered and worshiped beside her. The Captain’s own barely concealed grief managed to leech into her heart by osmosis as he stood beside her, shaking hands and kissing cheeks and handing out little gifts. They had done this once before, Rosey and him, passing out prizes at the school, and while this proceeding was shrouded in melancholy and business like abruptness, they moved as before like a smoothly oiled machine, seamless and complimentary in all things, even in their repressed heartache, as if now they had no secrets to separate them, they had become one.

“Well, that’s that then.” he spoke up when the last of them had left and the rest of the crew had cleared out to their designated stations, preparing the boat for the influx tomorrow. “God that took awhile.” he complained and rubbed at his lower back as if his cause for annoyance were aches instead of the upending of his world.

Rosey followed him through the room as he took stock of his deserted ballroom and fiddled with the billiard tables, “They’ll let us keep these I reckon,” he mumbled, “so long as it’s not against the house.”

“Wouldn’t want you to make any money.” she agreed sourly and he perked up and looked over at her, tsking at her in a paternal sort of way she hadn’t seen him use since her first week aboard, she realized she had missed it, “You think about money far too much for a pretty woman.” he chided and while she sent him a skeptical look he stepped into her space and pinched her cheek till her scowl melted.

“It’s what you pay me for, sir.” she answered him pointedly, trying to act stern as his arms dropped and wove around her waist with a sudden affection so strong in them she shuddered from feeling so familiar a touch after it’s absence -only since breakfast, she reminded herself. But this felt different, this felt like them, before he had begun to doubt them.

“I’m a fool to pay you for that alone.” he announced, tugging her closer somehow yet beginning to spin on his feet, a strange, stumbling, dizzying motion Rosey belatedly recognized as him dancing with her, a childish and uncoordinated spin that sent the chandeliers blurring in a white streak of crystal above them.

Elvis is dancing with me, Rosey thought with a little awe, and all that suppressed want to be upstairs when he worked a crowd, or to sit at his elbow as he wined his patrons, or fan herself as he danced with heiresses was soothed as her twirled her around now with tender frenzy, no onlookers, just for the joy of it. Not a waltz, not a polka, a bastardized sort of reel instead that took advantage of the entire length of his empty boat and had her bouncing in his arms and his legs exerting themselves to their fullest capacity. Rosey felt she’d rarely moved so fast on a horse, much less in someone’s arms. He’s dancing with me, she thought, and perhaps she laughed because of it. It was a demented sort of cheerfulness but they both felt it, like last lovers left alive after the rapture.

They spun and spun till the world tilted and a wheeze hit them and they collapsed in an ungainly heap on the floor. Rosey grunted as he landed on top of her but he didn’t bother to move, just caught his breath sprawled atop her on the rich carpeted floors.

“Why do I need a man’s suit?” she asked in a voice thin from his heaving weight.

He grunted as if she’d woken him up and it reminded her how exhausted they both were, “It’ll attract less attention goin’ to the courthouse. Got the- we gotta sign papers.”

For their wedding. Of course.

“How long before we need to leave?” she asked running her hand along his back as he still panted.

He fumbled into his vest with a series of moans and grunts before digging out his timepiece from a pocket and squinting at it. “Bout two hours. Can’t go before Jerry comes back anyway, he’s gotta witness ‘em and I sent him for ice gear.”

“Have you ever been up to Minnesota?” she asked him softly, staring up at the chandeliers and registering the spooky quiet of the near abandoned boat.

“Mhmm, couple times.” he mumbled into her neck.

“What’s it like?” she asked, secretly as intrigued and eager to go a few hundred miles northward as to go to the moon, so trapped and small had her life been before him.

“T’weren’t much.” he shrugged, “It’ll be covered in snow this time a’year and the growlers in the river will tear the hull to shreds.”

Soberly she recalled this entire adventure was miserable for him and he hadn’t even slept enough to prepare to pilot them tomorrow. “Up.” she whispered gently, shoving at his shoulders and urging him to his feet even as he whined and growled. “Up, come now up. We're lying on the floor, that's why, up.”

“Didn’t notice with those pilla’s under my check.” He murmured dreamily as she began to tug on his hand, urging him to follow her, “Where you takin’ me?” he protested.

“To bathe, and to rest.” she replied, tugging him through the double doors she had spied on him through and into the desolate kitchen, all Cruddup’s minions out to buy provisions for an army.

“Can’t go to our room, Rosey.” he objected from behind her as she lead him down the stairs.

“Why not?” she asked without pausing.

“The fella’s are in there movin’ our shit out.”

She took only a moment to cheer over the concept that they had collective shit before confusion replaced it, “Why?”

“Gonna have to give the commanding officer my quarters.” he pouted worse than her, stopped in the doorway of his suite and watching as some of the last of his books were packed into trunks by his order. “It’s expected. And if I don’t, he’ll know for certain I’ve a lady aboard and we’ll have no peace about it.”

“Where am I to go then?” she asked, some fearful little part of her still suspecting he’d pack her off and send her back.

“Down in the hull with Charlie and Cal.” he rubbed at his eyes, “Ain’t roomy but you're no fine lady.”

She nodded her head in admittance before catching his omission, “And you?”

“I’m gonna be piloting.” he replied as if that were the plainest thing in the world. That he would be piloting for fourteen consecutive days and nights with no rest.

“And when you’re not?” she raised a brow in exasperation.

“Don’t plan on leaving the wheel.” he lied moodily.

She was about to lay into him regarding his continued distancing, what with the men having left and the room bare of company but she was stopped short by the appearance of the physician from yesterday panting in the doorway.

“There you are! I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” The gentleman wheezed and comforted his heaving paunch with a clammy hand, “I have been trying to find you, it is well past time for your second tonic.”

“Aww hell.” Elvis moaned in reply, pinching the bridge of his nose in exhausted resignation.

“Wha- no! No!” Rosey spluttered, and having attracted the unimpressed attention of both men, pressed her argument with, “No! Absolutely not! Not whatever yesterday’s was. Near killed him, and I’ll have your license if you don’t get off this boat now, so help me god.”

“Rosey darlin’, don’t be like that.” Elvis' hand fluttered feebly out to grip her elbow but she was gone from his reach and crossing the room before he could and he was very tired and didn’t feel like chasing her the extra five feet.

“I’m contracted by the colonel.” The physician argued placidly in the face of Rosey’s diminutive ire. “It is my job and my contract to see to the captain’s health and have been attending it since before you-“

That’s about as much as the Captain could make out of his sentence before the thunk of the closed door right in the physician's face turned his voice to an indistinguishable mumble. Rosey turned back to him with a look of satisfied righteousness.

“Ain’t his fault.” he tried to explain to her how Dr. Nick had kept him alive, kept him running and virulent all these years despite his base nature and his poor blood.

“Yes, no doubt.” she replied in that snippy way that suggested she didn’t believe a word as she breezed past him into the washroom, “And he will be compensated for such…remarkable…service.”

“Rosey,” he watched dead eyed as she began to pump at the tub faucets, hot water then cold, as if she meant to take a bath, “we can’t send him away or he’ll tell the colonel and we’ll be fucked.”

She paused in pumping for a brief moment, steam making the little curls at her hairline boing into ringlets, “So you’re admitting he’s a goon, the man who is supposed to be caring for your health is a pimp’s goon.” She watched the captain swallow hard before he rolled his eyes and nodded his head as if she were making a greater deal of it than necessary, “Yet still you’ll take his potions?”

“What’s the harm.” he muttered, trying to think of a word or sentence to stop her as she began to unlace herself in front of him nonchalantly as though her anger had leveled them both to an even plain and she had no recollection of her previous prudery.

“The harm is you nearly dying on me last night. That’s -chiefly- the harm.” she emphasized the one word while looking at him significantly, hinting unsubtly at the more he had done that evening, or almost done.

It tuned his stomach the way even now his body responded to the natural sight of her coming into view as she shucked her layers. He shouldn’t be in here, he couldn’t be trusted around her. As she was so kindly reminding him even now. “I’ll take my leave.” he muttered, thinking about going back to the stables and Beans and catching some shut eye before going into the city.

“You’re taking a bath.” she disagreed and her tone was so foreignly authoritative his knees near buckled out of habit.

“Say what now?” he asked in a daze, not having made it even halfway to the door.

“I’m not marrying a man who smells of Mercury slats and stables.” she replied with a huff, hands on her hips accentuating the curve of them through the transparent cotton of her shift.

“We ain’t marryin.” he argued the point.

“Then you can shove your deal.”

“Rosey-“

“Come now, just get in the tub.” she urged, “I won’t touch you, if that’s what has you so petrified, I shan’t touch you, it’ll just be the sponge.”

“You don’t gotta be here for any of it.” he pointed out.

“Indeed, true.” She conceded, “And there’d be a few idiots aboard who might be prone to doubt that I gotta be here for anything. But the captain once said, I’m essential for his well being and sleep. So I’m staying. Tell me sir, in the one night since you stayed away from my bed, did you sleep?”

He flashed a grin at her tenacity before he could catch himself and turned it into a belligerent eye roll.

“Did you sleep last night, Captain?” She pressed her advantage.

“You know good’n’well I didn’t.” he replied, “Neither did you.” He added defensively only to realize it wasn’t quite the ammo he required to win this particular fight.

“So, it would seem that breaking with those habits which proved effective for your well being has been most insalubrious for you, no?” He adored it when she used those big, unnecessarily long words and pretended to busy herself as she was now with refolding washcloths and moving the soap about on the ledge. Acting industriously to hide her nerves. It made him painfully fond of her, or maybe that was the exhaustion talking and the steaming copper tub.

“I don’t mind you touchin’ me.” he muttered, starting to undo his belt, entirely unsure of what it was he minded at all, wondering when he’d started minding anything.

Funny how before she came into his life he’d have done anything for love of pleasure and money and not minded. And now, thanks to her, he found himself burdened with scruples, and they were hazy and half hearted and it felt wrong to have them at all. But he blamed her for making him think he wasn’t so cheap, that he ought to have a limit. It was true irony that the first limit he set in this history of setting him setting limits was in regards to her. And he didn’t even know their boundaries himself.

“Forgive me for -for havin’ some objection to a well endowed child babyin’ me in my own washroom.” he snarked as it was the only scruple he could manage to voice or think of.

This was his Cricket standing there, stripped down to her thin shift with the prettiest, fullest, softest pair on a woman he’d ever seen and it was hard to live with the fact he had often wanted to push them together and run his cock between them till he spewed her face with his release. He had scruples about the fact that knowing she was Cricket didn’t abate that particular desire of his, and only his exhaustion kept him composed.

“Yes well, you can sit yourself down in the tub and have trouble with that, and while you’re at it I’ll have trouble with swathing down a certified deacon.” Rosey replied pointedly and she had a point, “But we’ll both do it, won’t we? And I’ll take in stride the fact that an ordained man of the cloth once put the tip of his cock in me and still prides himself on having been quite restrained.”

Elvis’ whole body shivered at the memory of thumbing her button in his bed till her little hole sucked around his cock like a whole ‘nother mouth sucking at him down there and he had painted her belly so pretty that morning. He could see it in his memory clear as a photograph. He shucked off his pants with begrudging compliance.

“I didn’t think me being a deacon would matter so much to ya.” he begged for a little mercy as he walked to the tub, noticing that Rosey was feigning an admirable amount of disinterest in his stark naked form as he lowered himself into it, right in front of her waveringly averted eyes.

“I didn’t think a few years less on me than expected would have you infantilizing me.” she noted with another huff, before picking up his overcoat from the floor and donning it.

The jacket that usually hit below his knees came to her ankles and he bit his lip in appreciation of that before realizing she had caught him admiring and cleared his throat, “Whatcha doin’ now?” he couldn't keep up with her, his brain fuzzy since he’d nearly been asleep in the ballroom.

“Going to apologize to the damn docter and tell him he can stay.” she replied, ruffling his hair as she passed him like he were a child and for a man who had protested her need to be here for his bath he sure felt bereft being left to it alone. “You’re not taking a single dose till I inventory what all he’s givin’ but he can stay. So he doesn’t rat us.” she added, making her position on it clear before he heard her undo the latch and leave.

Alone, he slapped at the water's steaming surface and sloshed it half heartedly at his face, puckering over the feeling of hot water on sensitive eyelids. He didn’t want a bath, he wanted to sleep. And so he laid his head back against the rim of the tub and decided to catch a nap, if this is how and where his would-be assassins found him then he really didn’t give a damn anymore.

When the world swam fuzzy back into view there was a Angel swabbing him down gently, hovering over him with a halo of dark curls and a strong nose, her shoulder bare as her white gown slipped from its place at her clavicle and exposed a breast that jiggled exquisitely with every dutiful rub of her sponge across his chest. He moaned with mouth watering need to be closer to her and tried with shaky hands to leverage himself towards her, the slippery tub be damned, he wanted to be held. He wanted to sleep.

“It’s alright, it’s alright you can go back to sleep.” she whispered and adjusted something behind his head that his movements had dislodged and he had not noticed before, a rolled up washcloth it felt like, to mitigate the harsh lip of the tub against his neck.

She thinks of everything, he whispered, and tried nipping at the delicate forearm swiping past his cheek in her efforts.

“How’d it go?”he asked and his voice came out creaky and hoarse, Rosey just shrugged, an angry look on her face,

“He’s staying.” was all she said.

He caught her wrist as it began to descend past his chest, a commanding grip that made all her movement cease and her eyes meet his soberly.

“Get in here with me, Rosey darlin’.” he called for a ceasefire as he pried the sponge from between her fingers and let it float in the water, “Be our last warm bath for awhile.” he coaxed, and tugged on her tiny wrist till she was leaning close, “No reason to go separate and have you bathing in the cold. After all, we might be dead ‘fore we get another chance. For old times sake, get in.”

“Oh, so now you suddenly want to talk of old times?” she quipped as if she couldn’t stop her banter once warmed to it, but he didn’t take the bait, he just tugged gently again and reached out his other arm so that she rose from her knees and, looking down at the swarthy length of him laying against copper and shimmering beneath the eddies of water, stepped between his long legs.

“I’m always eager to talk about the way you rode my tub rail like the thing was gonna take years off your time in purgatory.” he drawled while smirking at the way the water turned her shift translucent in seconds, and to his immense satisfaction she smirked back, fully aware of her affect on him and no longer bashful.

She had given him scruples, he had given her pride. God knows how they’d manage to navigate such an exchange. “Nor I, of the way you sucked blood off my fingers.”she murmured huskily.

He’d honest to god forgotten doing that, and he feared in his anger and confusion at her recently, he had forgotten she had already killed for him. Humbled by this ungrateful omission he shifted in the tub and took her foot in his large hand as she settled opposite him, picking up the sponge and swathing it over her yittle footsy.

God the woman was a combination of minuscule proportions and hefty endowment. It warped his brain and he felt his stiff back turn loose and puddly in the hot water.

“Rosey,” he soberly tried to be honest, cradling her ankle in his broad palm and thumbing over her arch in his anxiousness, “i-i- ya see- i-it’s not that I don’t wanna be near ya.” he managed, “If I’m to be makin this trip upriver, I’m gonna…I’m gonna need that tonic, honey. A lot of it.”

He watched closely as her dark brows twisted in remonstrance at this, a helpless shake of her head refusing to believe it.

“Listen to me, no no, listen Rosey.” he begged, clutching her foot to his chest, “It’s the only way I’m gonna manage it, and you know what it turns me into. I-i-i can’t be crawling into bed with you like I used to when -when I ain’t myself. W-we can’t risk that again.” he pleaded with her to understand how close they’d come to ruination the night before. The thought of her bleeding out in childbirth due to a mindless urge of his was as clear in his mind as if it had already occurred -and he saw himself locked in some prison for sodomy while she lay dying, their baby left alone, just like he’d thought he’d left Maddy’s. That was the only vision of Memphis and returning he could imagine. And he couldn’t, never again. “We can’t risk you like that, I can’t, can’t protect ya from myself.”

He bowed his head, in shame or defeat she didn’t know, but he bowed his head till all she could see was the oily slick of his hair and the fan of his lashes, diligently bent over her well sponged foot.

“Elvis,” Rosey’s voice was soft and gentling, not requiring his acknowledgment, only that he listen, “I don’t know what Rosetta told you, I don’t know what you think occurred last night. But you were harsh, and you were wild with wants and angers, legitimate each. But, but -hear me please!” she sniffled and leaned forward in the bath to clutch his knees, needing to anchor them together, “I was not frightened of you. Nor of what you promised me, because it wasn’t a threat, can’t be a threat to someone who wants the same. Darling, darling man I-I only stopped you because -because it was the…the right…the loving thing to do. I knew you didn’t want me like that, even though I was willing. I was so very willing, oh Elvis I was! I am! But you’ve trusted me with the knowledge of what that -what such an act would mean to you. So I stopped you, that’s why I stopped you. For your sake, not out of fear.”

He was looking at her by then, a searching, quiet look of study that she noticed had none of the shrewd, squinting suspicion of the past few days. “Ya mean that?” he demanded, his voice beyond rough and looking up at her from under his lashes.

“With all my heart!” she affirmed adamantly, squeezing his knees as if her nails could puncture the truth into his marrow.

There was silence for a long bit before she realized his searching stare had gone far away and blank, then suddenly tears were pooling in those azure eyes and his shoulders had begun to shake in the way he had when he was suppressing his weeping. “Oh my love.” she mourned for him, “I’ve done you wrong, but not then, not that night.”

“Rosey I-I-I dunno w-what to say.” he choked out, leaning forward himself till they were both crouched in on themselves, knees knocking and forearms overlapping and noses brushing.

“You needn’t say a thing.” she petted his shiny head and he slumped against her forehead, tremblingly vulnerable, “But you’ll come to me, and you’ll lay by me at nights, and we will have our talks and our baths and our fights, and I will keep you true to yourself. I’ll do it, I’m your oldest friend, remember? Who better to know who you are deep down?”

“Does that mean I know you?” he whispered against her lips, a miserable little gust of words.

“I think you’ll help me learn who I am.” she replied after giving it some thought, and he hummed in understanding, and she was reminded why he was so remarkable, beyond his beauty and ability and magnetism, he had an ability to understand the root of a trouble, more than anyone alive, she thought. “I’m Rosey, I am who you fashion me to be.” she tempted him, and he stirred in her embrace, just enough to fling his own arm around her shoulders and hug her himself.

“Are you in some particular hurry to change your last name, Miss?” he teased her.

“Presley has a nice ring to it.” she shrugged. “-Elvis?” she spoke up again after a while of holding each other, she thought perhaps he had dozed off leaning against her.

“Hmm?”

Rosey thought she had been right, his hum was so throaty and groggy, he had fallen asleep. Again. The poor man, “Please trust me with this,” trust me with us, was what was said without saying it, “I’ll swear to ya, I’ll, I’ll say anything you want or promise anything that I’ll keep you from harming me. But I can’t-I can’t live down below for a month and not have you at times. I can’t, I don’t think either of us will make it that way. I really don’t.”

He roused himself from his slump and pulled back so he could meet her eyes and to her relief he gave a small smile of understanding. “Sweetheart, last night -“ he trailed off for a minute, his gaze contemplating the floorboards outside the tub and his silence lasted so long she thought he would never resume but when he did he looked her dead in the eye with a firm clarity she’d only seen him use with fellow men, as if he thought women too delicate for the weight of that stare. She felt privileged to be considered strong enough for it, even as a bolt of electricity seemed to shoot up her spin from it. “Last night when you, you stopped that nonsense…darlin’, ya gotta understand, you saved the one last dream I’ve got from gettin’ wrecked.”

“What’s that?” she whispered, leaning forward and he rubbed her knuckles with his thumb, “What’s your dream?”

“I wanna get married.” he whispered back like to was the most heinously shameful desire ever held by a human being -she had no doubt Parker had painted it similarly to keep him withdrawn over even wanting it, Nancies don’t marry, she could hear that accent saying it now, “I wanna marry a woman before God Almighty and I want to have a home, a place where I-I-I can have a family, where I ain’t looking over my shoulder all my life.” he leaned back in the tub, as if his back were too tired from the crouch and the secrets, she heard his knees pop as he straightened opposite her and the motion of leaning back -it disengaged their hands. So Rosey settled back too, clasping her own hand soothingly and knowing there was more to it than this. She sat back in the steaming water and watched as a dreamy and strange look flitted over his face and those starry eyes stared up at the boat cabin’s white washed ceiling and went miles and astral fields away from her:

“See, I’ve always wanted a perfect wedding night.” he divulged in tone so dreamy it terrified her that the Elvis she thought she knew was no longer in the room, his head now leaning against the the tub rail, and his gaze fixed to the ceiling and whatever was beyond it, “Complete with a sweet and blushing bride, as demure as she was eager. And I would worship her until she bloomed open for me and when I finally took her, it would be a sacrament. I’d be making her my wife, and God would look down on our pleasure and deem it good, bless it and the children I would plant in her womb. It wouldn’t be a sin, so He wouldn’t take her life when the time came for birth. And on that night she -she would be pleased, so very pleased with me and when we were too old to so much as dance a jig, we’d sit on our porch and reminisce about the first time I took her. How the blood only eased the way and she never had cause to fear my touch, or dread my attentions.”

His gaze which was once nearly unbearable in its intensity was now eagerly desired by Rosey, anything but this accusatory, strangely detached monologue. But then he finally drug his burning eyes from the ceiling to her naked form folded in on herself in the tub, and immediately she prayed he’d look away again.

“You,” Elvis jabbed his finger at her, some emotion finally showing and it was an entire deluge of angry hurt, “you coulda taken that from me!”

She shook her head and falsely accused confusion, whimpering out, “But I didn’t!”

“No, no you didn’t.” he agreed, more solemn than she’d ever seen him, “You saved that for me, last dream I’ve got and, a-a-and now I-I can’t, I can’t let that dream go. I don’t think -I don’t know how it’ll ever happen between us, but I can’t, I can’t ruin the chance of it. And now, this, this alliance we’re gonna make it ain’t, it ain’t that, honey. I-I’m askin’ ya to understand that a-and not to -to tempt me. And it ain’t fair, I know it ain’t fair! Not fair to you, but you’ll find I ain’t ever been much good to those who care about me.”

“That’s a goddamn lie!” she bit out fiercely, taking joy in the way his eyes grew wide at her strong language, “And you needn’t ask me so, so pathetically… you know full well I stopped you before I even knew the full of this. I figured -I’d figured enough advantage had been taken of you as it is. But I- I’ll do this for ya, for us, but only if you swear you won’t keep this as some dream.”

“Whadda ya mean, honey?” he asked, hunkering down in the tub and she watched as the bath water lapped at his collarbones, made them sparkle and glitter in the gaslamp’s glow.

“I mean that it’s a lovely dream.” Rosey said, “Lovely enough to deserve fruition.” she watched as he bit his lip and pulled at the sponge, “And I’ll guard it, I’ll guard it and deny every right i have to you so that you can have it, but only so long as you work towards making it more than a dream. Do you hear me, Presley?”

Goddamn, he thought, the woman knows me. She knows he’d very much like to marry her tonight, sign his money to her, then quietly go up to the wheelhouse and slit his wrists so as not to be here in a few weeks time when the colonel drags his name through the mud. A man put in prison for degeneracy -it welcomes all sorts of…attention… in prison. He’d know. And he wasn’t of a mind to endure it again.

“That means you’ll stay alive for me,” she went on, breaking through his panicked introspection, “it means you’ll treat me kindly, you’ll keep your temper and get us to the terroriotes and get us back, it means you’ll think of me and Cal and Etta and Maddy’s boy and all those who love you before you take more tonic than necessary. It means if you die on this trip, you’ll do it for us, not just cause you’re so tired and wanna sleep beneath the cold ground. Or else, god forgive me, I’ll use the pistol you gave me to end my own. I will. I’m done going it alone in this world.”

The salty tang of snot and tears dribbling over his top lip and seeping through the seam of his lips informed him he was crying. So was Rosey, unless the gaslit was merely reflecting off a splash to her face. He didn’t recall anyone splashing. “I’m so goddamn tired.” he admitted weakly, dropping the sponge so that he could scrub his face with his hands, hiding behind them, too bare to her knowing gaze. Please don’t see me, he kept thinking and pleading in his mind and maybe some of it came out audibly, “it’s been so long since anyone knew me, i don’t think you’ll like what you see.”

“Then that’s a mutual fear.” she pointed out, soft and sad.

“It’s gonna get hellish, Rosey,” he tried to reason, “this whole lil rebellion sure soothes the conscience but, but it’ll end with us swinging from nooses. Leave me my dreams, lemme get us out west where -where maybe we can try to, to, I dunno-“ he stared down into the bath and the wavering sight of his thighs and belly beneath the water.

“Do you think I haven’t any dreams of my own?” she challenged him, her tone was cold as ice, and suddenly he realized his glaring omission. “Have you never wondered? Do you think I’ve spent a decade toiling alone, utterly alone, and hadn’t a single dream to keep me running?”

He shook his head shamefully and snorted back his weepiness, “What is it, Rosey?” he begged softly.

“It’s simple,” she dithered, “but seems hard for anyone to grant. I don’t want to be alone.” she had a way about her where she would heave in a great breath and he could watch as her eyes swam with tears but until this morning he’d never seen them truly spill, her grief remained firmly constrained, “I want a partner in things, you know? Just someone to care enough not to die on me, to leave me alone with it all. They always have. Some by their own hand, some by giving up the fight in their sickbeds, some by careless happenstance. Or Maddy, Maddy who I needed and loved more than my own life but who wanted to die from the minute her belly swelled.” His jaw ticked and some savage, mean part exulted in the pained shock on his face at this revelation -it was about time someone else felt the hurt she’d carried all this time, “Maddy wanted to die, ever after…after what they did to her. She’d lay in bed next to me and tell me, her baby sister, tell me she hoped the babe inside her would kill her. It didn’t. But I reckon she hoped enough, long enough to die, God finally gave her her wish. I'm not sure I can forgive her for the fact she took your mama with her.” She hadn’t seen that look on his face ever before, anger and understanding all at once, and something dull and mournful coming through it. “Someone who wants to die they -they should stay away from those trying to live.” Rosey surmised a philosophy she had come to live by, sixteen years old and all alone on the plantation, “I'm asking you, Elvis, don’t invite death to this boat. Shame and pain, they’re endurable when you’re not alone, but death. Death, it separates. And there’s no strength in that.”

“Darlin, I-“ he had his hands clasped over his nose, eyes freely running with tears and trying to make his chest calm its frantic heaving. How had she known?

“I think our dreams align rather well, don’t you?” she tried for a lighter tone, scooting up again and laying her hands boldly on the water-warmed and sturdy meat of his thighs, “You want a sacramental wedding night, and I want a husband who’ll stay alive for me. Why not fight for it?”

“Rosey it gonna get nasty-“

“I am a woman, have you forgotten?” she retorted, “Shaming and lewd accusations are as common for us as compliments.”

“The shit I’ve don-“

“You did what you had to, and once you said they called you ‘femininely sensitive.’” she reminded, “I suggest it’s a strength, if you have some womanly part of you, more than most men, then there’s not a man alive who can better handle what is going to be awaiting us in Memphis.”

Us. She had said us, and he realized she meant it. He didn’t recall the last time he belived someone when they’d referred to a union with him as a joining together. With Rosey, no contract, no obligation, no physical making of one flesh was required to make an “us”. It was a natural state for them.

“This dream of yours,” she went on and he saw her begin to waver for the first time since her righteous tirade began, “if, if it’s not me, that you want to marry before God, to share that night with -I’ll, I’ll try to be rational about that.”

He didn’t miss a beat before amusedly laughing at the absurdity of anyone else besides his Rosey having the power to make him wanna live through the next month. “It would be you,” he said, “it could only ever be you.”

“Really?” she sounded all of fifteen years old and scared as hell while her eyes lit up with a painful degree of hope.

He couldn’t take it, couldn’t take her fear or the fact he’d put it there. It made him lunge forward in the bath and sent the water splashing in his quest to lay atop her, smother her whole, remind her she was his. A language the both understood, this feeling of him dwarfing her beneath his weight, oppressing her with his desires and his madness, and the fucked little part of her that he knew even now took his obsession for love. Obsession was all he had for now, but he owed it to her. He kissed her and chased her lips fervently till her head slipped against the tub’s side and the force of his kiss sent her neck backwards. Down she went into the water beneath his mouth, and he followed atop her, plunging them both beneath the shallow depth, robbing them of air, mimicking a death, proving at the last minute that he chose life when he pulled them both up and out again, their tongues still intertwined.

“You’ll live?” she panted, begged, dug her nails into his cheeks.

“I’ll live.” he answered, like it was a revelation to him, like he was seeing something ahead that utterly surprised him.

“Then you must sleep.” she murmured, a very simple observation and that was his Rosey, asking the impossible but her demands were only for the first step in climbing the mountain to be taken.

“Mhmm.” he agreed, thinking about slipping further down in the tub, curling in on himself so he could lay his head on her bath warmed breasts again.

“Let me wash your hair.” she whispered, flicking at his nose to keep him alert, “Let me wash it then you can sleep.”

“Can’t for long, we gotta-“ he began to remind her as he dunked his head quickly to wet his hair.

“I know, I won’t let you oversleep.” she stated confidently and turned him by his shoulders till he was leaning forward in her arms, his broad back to her face and her little hands rubbing at his scalp with a lather that smelled painfully refreshing from such long neglect.

It was an amusingly sweet pastime bathing a grown man, Rosey thought as she worked the foaming suds through his black strands, watching as they spilled and slid down his pretty neck and onto the freckle specked shoulders and running, running, running gleefully down the willowy taper of his back to the water's edge. A path her tongue had longed to follow. Her finger traced the path instead and he shuddered between her legs, the moans her attentions brought from him turning her feral in protectiveness. There was something heady and potent about a man sitting naked and vulnerable between one’s thighs, it brought that strange combination of feelings back to her that his sitting on her lap first sparked. Her small legs bracketed the soft skin of his strong hips and his backside was flush against her in a pantomime of the usual way of things -he was soft like this, and she wished she knew how to make it happen more often. How to make him trust her with it.

Satisfied with her scrubbing the grease out she tapped his wet shoulder and whispered around the breadth of him that he could rinse it. He shook himself awake from his doze and finding very little room to do it in this configuration, merely folded his legs impossibly together and laid himself backwards down into the water, his head hitting the bottom of the tub with a dull thud. The gaslamp made Rosey’s quivering reflection haloed above him through the water, and tufts of her gown in his periphery wavered white and ethereal as it floated beside him down here, bracketed by her thighs, soap suds clouding his watery vision at times till she swiped them away. Humoring him as he lay beneath the water, but still trying to spare his eyes.

He could push her to madness he realized -finally there was someone who cared enough he could really, really destroy by his absence. His lungs began to burn.

I’m going to live, he reminded himself feebly.

I’m going to live, I want to live, he argued feebler each repetition, for his lungs were burning but the man wouldn’t stop -I want to live- but his face was still submerged inside the barrel and he was only let out long enough to catch a breath and hear a tirade that if the man wanted a painted tart he’d get a tart and then back into the water he went till his breath was gone and his face paint was gone and his will was gone and he was just a helpless boy again and suitably appealing to the man’s tastes and -I want to live, please just let me live. His lungs were burning and above him a orange glow and it wasn’t the gaslamp, it wasn’t Rosey that looked dark and forbidding above the surface, it was their ship, it was the hull of their beloved ship and the water was on fire, the whole Mediterranean it seemed, for every time he surfaced and tried to breathe, the flaming water singed his face and back down he was forced, trying to swim down and away from the burning mass of spilt oil that the sea had become -im going to live- he had seethed and kept pushing on as his vision blacked and his lungs collapsed and the ocean glowed orange above him -I’m going to live- he had been so vicious about it back then, God where was that vicious streak? he could use it -I’m going to live- his lungs were burning and his vision spotting and his throat felt a warm weight encircling it and was that how it felt to be hung? I want to live, he thought, I’m going to live, he promised. He gripped Rosey’s hand and held it there to his throat, let her feel his fucking fear and wild delight at tasting death, trying to show her how vehemently his heart wanted him alive for her with every overburnded pulse. Her hand squeezed cruelly and his lips parted to grin and she was hauling him out, landing him in her breasts like a sea deity throwing a mariner ashore.

“Enough.” was all she said, and held him insensible to her bosom till the water grew cold and the hour late and his rest had been taken as much as could be hoped for. He drifted away to the feeling of her gently swaying him like a babe on her chest, her hand cradling his sodden head and her soft voice singing an old delta refrain,

See the rising tide

Know it′s only a matter of time

See the rising tide

So blue

Oh if it's cold in the water

Am I better for it?

Oh I can learn from my mother

If this sinking ship goes down

He did not recall much proceeding the rest nor could he figure out for the life of him their position initially as she traced him awake by a finger along his features. It was much darker in the room and his neck was bent and the one eye not smashed to a breast saw gooseflesh on her arm and her nipple hardened to a chilled nub so prominent he could hand his coat from. It was animal instinct to raise his hand from the bath and cup the shivering little bud, squashing that beautiful pound of flesh in his palm and feeling the pink little thing poke him. “You’re awake.” she said above him in response to his stupid giggle and not the boyish mauling of her breast.

“I think I am.” he hummed, intent on kneading warmth back till the nipple flattened. He felt the one under his cheek poke him in defiance.

“Aren’t you cold?” she asked, entirely unsure of what his mood might be now he had slept, or what it had been before she hauled his face above water.

“I am.” he realized.

“Perhaps we should stop playing at Ophelia then, and get warm.” she teased, breathy and moist in his ear and he remembered then the burning oceans and the sea nymphs with strong arms and fragile hearts.

“Per’aps.” he mumbled and kissed her chilled flesh beneath his cheek before raising himself up to his knees, and then unsteadily to his feet, towering over her in the tub, droplets from his body dripping down onto her face. “Gimme your hands.” and he hauled her out, pushing the sodden nightgown off both her shoulders and down over her shivering hips with some trouble, steadying her to step out of it.

“Ada came in and laid out the suit.” Rosey informed him as he picked her up in his arms and stepped out of the tub, taking care not to slip.

He tilted her towards the towel rack and she grabbed at two before throwing one over his shoulders and rubbing it into the chilled damp of his hair. He didn’t like the idea of Ada seeing them like that, but it couldn’t be helped he supposed, even though he wasn’t sure why he hadn’t just gone to the bed for a nap. Then they wouldn’t be so cold now, but he figured one’s logic when one is drifting to sleep is very different from that when you’re rested.

Ah yes, I’m gonna marry you, he recalled, ‘cause I’m a heartless bastard.

He set her down on her feet and took the towel from her hands and rubbed her thoroughly with it, feeling penitent and grateful and wishing he wasn’t so rusty at the kinder, purer forms of love. No one had wanted those from him, not in a long while and the children didn’t count, he was never with them long enough to get in a habit. It was a performance of sorts to be his old self, and he knew if he had any wisdom in him he’d forgive Cricket for her similar struggle.

He’d almost lost her in this very washroom, first night he got her back. The memory of his own terror at that prospect and the feel of broken glass beneath his belly and her naked vulnerability held to his chest made him feel an ass now, quibbling about identities and shit. It’s her, he reminded himself, it’s always been her. And she loved him, strangely but she did, and she deserved better than what he had been dishing up recently.

I’m going to live, he reminded himself like a threat, and rose to his feet to kiss her forehead.

“Are you alright, daddy?” she asked the man who she’d seen lay unblinking beneath the bath water for nigh on four minutes.

“Yeah darlin’, nap did me wonders.” he assured her and thumbed at her frown till it smoothed, “Gonna make you sleep tonight if I have to sit on ya to do it.” he threatened playfully and she smiled, tired and warm, at the promise of his nearness.

She was so tired, he realized, he’d worn her clean out. That weren’t no way for a daddy to treat his baby.

“Ada said Jerry is back aboard.” Rosey murmured as she leaned against the dresser with her towel draped over her like a shawl, watching him pat himself dry with harsh swipes of his own that left pink rub burns in its wake. She didn’t know how he intended her to dress in the male clothing laid out, she figured she would wait for his direction.

He sniffed and huffed and rubbed and shook himself like a dog might and she thought she saw some of the old vitality back in him, he certainly carried himself with the usual, steadier, measured sort of grace as he rummaged through the drawers beside her for combs and pins and his bottle of beard oil.

“C’mere baby.” he motioned with two beckoning fingers and she stepped up close to him, curious as to his intentions. He tilted her to face the mirror and took a stand behind her. Handsome and tall with his dark hair combed back, she saw him lean and naked behind her as he began to section the wet curtain of her hair, elegant fingers dividing and smoothing till it was in thirds. Satisfied, he reached round her and uncorked the bottle, pouring a dime sized portion of the stuff in his palm and rubbing his hands together to spread it, the friction making its scent waft up to her nose and she recognized it from nuzzling his neck. He used it on his sideburns, too.

He started with the ends of her hair, first the back section working it up to the scalp, then he poured more oil and did the two other sections with the same patient thoroughness. The backs of his fingers rubbed her breasts as he glided the oil through, coaxing the curls to a defined shine she’d never bothered with on her own.

“Look a’my pretty baby.” he murmured to himself as he watched her hair respond to his primping, curling and coiling all down her front.

She sighed happily and leaned against him, dreamy eyed and pale as moonlight underneath his weathered hands in the mirror’s reflection.

Always content with so little, his Rosey.

“I’m sorry there’s so little of me left for ya.” he whispered soft into her ear as he kneaded her flesh, her silky hair running like black ink between his fingers, realizing his pride was hurt by the admission, but she deserved to know that he was aware he had her playing nymph and virgin, nurse and thief, a million things at once to satisfy him. And all she dreamed of was a companion. “But what’s left -it’s yours.”

She caught his hands from her body and brought them to her lips, pressing fervent kisses against those wicked hands of his as if they’d gain her years of eternal life. “Thank you.” he felt it said against his palm.

“Pour me more oil, lil one.” he instructed her and she spilt a few droplets into his open palm in obedience.

He rubbed his hands again but instead of taking it to her scalp his hands traveled downwards to the cradle between her thighs, raking through her wiry curls with that same sweet thoroughness he had given her hair. Rosey could have wept at feeling so cherished. He kissed her cheek soothingly as she whimpered in his arms and he rubbed as long as he dared, close to forgetting the outside world from the sight of her slumped against him, her eyes closed in pleasure and his hand engulfing the whole of that pretty dark patch that only he had ever tasted.

“Please.” she whispered so softly he might have missed it if his heart hadn’t been wishing it into existence at the same time. “Please daddy, I need you there.” She spoke right as his hand had begun to slow, “It won’t take long.” she predicted with a bashful little laugh before looking up at his reflection so worriedly her realized he’d made a right mess of promising her things and withholding them right after, “You said to always tell if when-“

“Yeah, I did.” he agreed with quiet vehemence before slipping his fingers from her mound to the slick and puffy folds between her legs, mouthing at her cheek and throat tenderly as she keened and went atiptoe to grind against his hand, her eyes transfixed by the mirror as his had been moments ago. For now he wanted to watch her face as it grew crimson in growing arousal and crumpled in pleasure. He stroked her through it, his fingers rough and fast but his kisses sweet and he kept at it till she thrashed in his arms. Politely timely, he thought in amusement as he gentled his fingers out from between her legs, laid his slick palm against her breastbone as she gasped out her relief. “There, there now, ya feel better?” he asked her softly as he brought his fingers over her shoulder and into his mouth, tasting the oil and her all at once.

“Yes.” she warbled satisfied, slumping entirely against him, a shudder shaking through her whenever she tried to stand and shifted her pulsing petals together. “Thank you.” she murmured, smelling herself in the hand he was licking clean.

The Captain squeezed her jaw in his hand and kissed her soundly before picking her up again to set her shaky limbed self on the bureau, the better to fix her appearance to his vision of Rosey as a boy. It was hard to concentrate for him, what with him stepping between her splayed legs to pin up her hair into a cropped bob of sorts, her eyes going cross eyed in euphoric exhaustion as she tried to study his face up close as he worked.

“Your left eye is larger than the right.” she pronounced in hushed awe after a thorough and heavy lidded inspection.

“And you have a hawk nose, you silly thing.” he teased her, some itch in the back of his mind telling him long ago he’d called her the same thing.

It was rather difficult to make a woman who, objectively he felt, was very pretty as a woman to resemble a boy in any convincing way. Maybe it was the flushed arousal still painting her lush features in maidenly hues but every trick of his was thwarted by the soft mouth and upturned eyes, the full cheeks and delicate throat. And beneath that throat were boney shoulders that all his good food had not as yet managed to soften, and below, hanging onto her slight frame with heavy abundance were those large, soft breasts that taunted him with every attempt he made to bind them flat with the wide cloth Ada had provided for the purpose.

The Captain could succeed at smashing the bell shaped bottoms of them only to have the milky soft tops spilling out, and when pressing the tops down the profuse flesh would bulge from the bottom of it. Again and again. And Rosey was of no help, her mind foggy and hazy from her pleasure and the sleepless night catching up with her, the feeling of his hands on her and his obvious fascination with his futile task. Propped up and leaning back on her elbows, she delighted too much in his pupil-dilated exasperation not to giggle as his tongue poked out between his teeth and his hands smoothed her like her breasts were wrinkles to be tamed.

“C’mon,” he growled at them softly, then turned coaxing, “be good for daddy, c’mon cooperate. Jus’ c’mon,’stay in there, fuck they’re so big and juicy and goddman what kinda god makes a woman like this? Horny fucker, ain’t no use for them but to -just, just come on, in ya go, just stay for me, stay, stay, that’s it it jus -dammnit. I don’t wanna hurt ya darlins, ain’t no fault to be found but y’all sure just…god help me. That’s it, there, there, there stay! That too tight for ya, honey?”

“I do suppose tight is the only way this will work.” She shrugged as he reached around her and cinched the cloth in back till they throbbed from the pressure, “It’s fine. We’ll be late.” She reminded him, playfully putting her feet on his naked hips to push him away from another attempt. “This will have to do.”

“What did Ada mean when she was talking about the rest of the ‘equipment’, Elvis?” Rosey asked with benign curiosity as he put his finishing touches to her cravat, making certain not to pinch her throat with the ring that still hung from the emerald ribbon. She was as complete a picture of a stylish young man of moderate means as could be hoped. Although the generous swell of the hips were slightly suspect, her overcoat would cover such a curve nicely.

It may have been a question benignly asked but the captain reared back and turned pink down to his nipples as soon as she uttered it and his quick, “Oh, nothin.” only served to light her imagination instead of douse it as intended.

“What’s she use this for?” Rosey pressed with a scholar's tenacity, thumbing at her waistcoat pockets and feeling a strange amount of security in the masculine garb, her assets smashed and her figure encouraged to stand wide, there was something about trousers and cravats that she found oddly emboldening.

“I said nothin.” he pleaded, backing away from her, presumably in search of something to clad the long, lean nakedness of himself in now she was entirely adorned herself and prowling towards him with mind numbing intensity. He couldn’t tell if it were how well the clothes suited her or if she suited the clothes or the very recent taste of her in his mouth but the way she stalked him round the bed and back again as he tried to find some article of clothing not yet moved out had an alarmingly…stimulative…effect on him.

“Oh come now.” she dipped her voice in conspiratorial beguiling, “It’s gotta be something naughty, I can tell as you are pink down to you belly.”

“Rosey!”

“You can tell me!” she sounded like a wheedling child, in fact he was pretty certain again he'd heard her use this same tone with him ages ago and while he didn’t object to that, he objected to being stalked around in his bedroom by a masculinized Cricket while he was in the buff. “What’s she use it for?”

“Disreputable things!” he hollered while throwing his hands up in exasperation and when they fell to his sides they smacked against his bare skin lewdly. He’d just have to wear his old outfit then, he concluded with the dresser bare.

“So it’s naughty?” Unlike Rosey, this womanly nymph in pinstripe trousers before him seemed excited by that revelation and surveyed her outfit anew as if she could find some secret hidden in the pockets or pleats.

“Rosey have ya lost your mind?” he hissed at her, although if he were an honest man he would acknowledge his vehemence stemmed from his alarming levels of interest in her interest. Captain Presley was not an honest man. Not about his own wants. And so he bent over and grabbed his trousers from off the floor with grave disapproval showing in his jerky movements.

“How’s it naughty?” she asked just as eager and circled round him to grab at his trousers herself.

“I-I-it’s,” he wondered where the blushing prude of last month had gone while at the same time seeing her, truly her, more than he ever had before in her curious eyes and tenacious hands, “it’s d-degenerate.” He replied primly, trying to yank his trousers from her, not about to discussing a woman pegging a man with his future wife.

Rosey won that tugging match and sank to her knees in front of him with the pants in hand, looking for all the world like some street urchin he’d hauled off the promenade and had made kneel for him and when she looked up it was Rosey yet not Rosey and that stern nose that usually marred her soft face suited the stiff confines of this playacted gender and his hand twitched to bury itself in her falsely cropped hair and push that nose into his crotc- oh, she’d gotten down there to help him put on his pants.

God, god, god he couldn’t handle himself today.

“It excites you.” she whispered as he stepped into the leg holes and she raised them up, his pink and pulsing interest mouth level with her and he saw her throat bobbing under the stiff collar and cravat, “It can’t be bad if it excites you.” she murmured again pleadingly, her hands splayed on his thighs and her breath wafting over him.

“It don’t excite me,” he replied very slow and measured, “but you might. You do.” he amended, a simple truth.

“Like this?” she asked a little breathless and he thought she meant on her knees, which he’d have thought they already established his liking of. But when he saw where her eyes had gone he got a sudden jolt of terror mixed with arousal so strong he wasn’t sure he’d felt that in years. She was looking at the mirror again, the one he’d just pleasured and primped her in front of but now his beautiful artifice was kneeling in front of him, a gorgeously crafted dolly with pinned hair and pale hands and a mouth inches from his wavering cock and -his Rosey looked like a boy kneeling there and his heart jolted from the sight. Pride in the skill of his manufacturing an image and interest in what he knew lay beneath her layers and the wrongness of ever again finding this compelling had him shaking like a leaf of a sudden. And just as suddenly her mischief died out and his trousers were hauled up the rest of the way and fastened with businesslike efficacy.

“Not- not like, well -maybe.” He concluded and she looked up at him as if surprised he had not shelved the topic entirely. “I don’t know.” he admitted honestly as he threw on the rest of his clothing with less finesse than usual, his girl helpfully retrieving the strewn items from the floor and he could fella from the way she carried herself she enjoyed the change, too, and that was enough to excite, “I really don’t know.” he continued to contemplate it despite himself and she held her tongue and watched him curiously, “We haven’t the time for it, have to…to think on it later. Hell of a lot to think on later. C’mon now, we’ll be late.”

Mr. Samuel Clemens had made a career out of watching folks and their dealings, learning the things they didn’t want learned, writing it down and sending it off to inform other folks when they read the newspapers. Journalism was little beyond respectable voyeurism, if one was being honest, and he considered himself an excellent voyeur. What distinguished a seasoned journalist or correspondent from an ameatuer was that the later approached the world with a series of questions regarding its happenings and badgered the worlds occupants till they answered him, such a method was bound to result in skewed narrative that either aligned with the views of the amateur himself or else the folks he was meant to be detachedly observing.

Now if Mr. Clemens were an amateur, he would have badgered a waiting Mr. Binder about all sorts of things as they sat beside each other in the reception seats of the St. Louis courthouse. Lined up at this late hour against the wall facing the Judge’s empty desk like criminals awaiting a firing squad, Clemens and his shifty companion had spent a good half hour, both waiting for unnamed parties. Now because Mr. Clemens didn’t ask questions, he watched and he listened instead, he got a narrative outta people that not even they would admit to being true, save that once printed there was never a dash or comma or word they could deny having been done or said or achieved. And so, by watching and listening and waiting, Mr. Binder had told him more about the new Waterways Commision and Captain Presley’s hopeful induction to it than Mr. Clemens coulda hoped to have gained were he to ask the questions point blank. Shocking how free folks are with information when they think it ain’t wanted.

When asked what he himself was there for, Mr. Clemens honestly replied he needed his correspondent papers validated by the captain of the boat he meant to take tomorrow morning. Mr. Bidner hadn’t as much interest in boats as he did their captains and as a result the line of questioning was dropped.

So it was that when the impressive and unmistakable figure of Captain Presley entered the building with a modest entourage of young men behind him, Mr. Binder was so comfortable with his companion of thirty minutes of chit-chat that he rose without a single furtive glance backwards at the journalist and greeted the captain with a fervor stemming from proclaimed interest in finalizing their apparent alliance.

“W-where’s Miss Beaumont?” Binder asked the Captain at an entirely indelicate decibel that suggested to Mr. Clemens that the presence of the decadently apparelled young companion of the Captain’s he had noticed last evening at the gala was of the utmost importance.

The Captain’s head cocked to the side in a delicately subtle gesture that were Clemens not so invested in his observations may have gone unnoticed. Instead, however, Clemens noticed the slight young boy beside the captain give an aborted wave to Mr. Binder who after repeated double takes took to peering under the youth’s wide brimmed hat with comedic amounts of confusion.

“God, you're handsome as a boy, miss.” Mr. Binder ruled in her favor at last with fervent admiration that Mr. Clemens took note, too.

“Where’s this judge at?” Their sandy haired companion who preferred workman’s clothes even in a judicial building slammed his hand on the waiting bell that neither Bidner nor Clemens had need to ring as their parties had not arrived before.

Captain Presley alone carried himself with a respectable amount of furtive discretion and took to observing his marbled surroundings with admirable suspicion before those brilliantly vibrant eyes landed on the seated correspondent who was so conveniently privy to all of his business.

“Mr. Clemens.” he greeted the man in a tone that was neither warm nor cold, threatening or ingratiating. It’s careful neutrality promised an impressive tipping either way and Mr. Clemens smiled back at the talented fellow with a natural smile of interest at seeing him up close.

“Captain Presley I presume? An honor to make your acquaintance and just the man I was waiting for.” He stated his purpose up front so as not to be turned away with only small talk having passed between them.

“What can I do for you?” Captain Presley looked rather eager to be made use of, an odd thing in most folks nowadays who saw a favor as an unsupportable thing. Clemens hoped that the bright young man whose exploits he had once written so glowingly of still remained inside this more guarded, coiled version of himself. “I’ve not forgotten you know,”he added and this time there was some warmth in his rich voice, “that article of yours. At times I was confused as to whether you were complimenting a crocodile or a man but either way it was most gracious comin’ from a man of such experience. Reckon we should hail ya as a Riverboat Connoisseur.”

“Oh you read that piece?” Mr. Clemens was not entirely surprised but few captains remained so unabashedly appreciative of their critics.

“Well, I read the one Mark Twain wrote.” The captain bantered with his tongue poking out in a strangely endearing mannerism of teasing.

“Mark Twain?” the Captain’s sandy haired companion left off his juvenile smashing of the untended bell to watch the interaction with sudden interest.

“That’s Mr. Clemens’ pen name, Schilling.” The captain educated him not unkindly.

“Good lord, damnation this is a treat.” Schilling didn’t hold back. “He the one who wrote that article you’re always quotin-“

“Jerrah-“

“Bout you havin’ the pride of a king in your-“

“I like all his writings!” Captain Presley chose the sweet route of effusion instead of feigned disinterest to shush his companion and Mr. Clemens thought perhaps it wasn’t so bad to meet one’s heroes after all, not if a rough and tumble riverboat Captain had the heart of a tender boy inside him.

“Presley is a true pilot,” Binder quoted in revenant, dulcet tones fitted for recitation hour in a drawing room soirée “who when piloting, cares nothing about anything on earth but the river, and his pride in his occupation surpasses the pride of kings. Lethal only to those uneducated with the river and her currency, he is the nurturer of its capricious nature and the guardian of its generous splendor, a man suited best to its majesty and vastness for he neither tames nor fights it, but joins to it like a lover who means to take only what he also gives."

An awkward silence followed this poetic outburst where Mr. Schilling grunted in agreement with a five year old sentiment about his boss while the author and his subject gave themselves a bashful moment of mutual appreciation and the hermaphroditical creature at the captain’s elbow stifled a gasp of appreciation, wether for the prose or the skill was entirely unknown to anyone.

“I-it was t-t-the quote that cemented my admiration for him, Mr. Clemens.” Bidner defended his memorization of an ancient news clipping and Captain Presley patted the fellow on the back as if his inordinate admiration were a slight congealing of the chest fluids.

Mr. Binder spooked worse from that touch alone than if a shot had rung out in the empty chambers of this marble mausoleum of a building.

“What can I do for you Mr. Clemens?” Presley repeated and this time his voice was even kindly.

“The notary has my documents” Mr. Clemens answered, “but I need your signature for the validation of my correspondence pass to board your vessel on the morrow. I imagine with the loading of horses and the men and such there will be no great rush to be off, but I don’t intend to be left with my britches round my ankles cause I didn’t foresee some expediency.”

“My boat?” The Captain repeated that solitary line.

“Yessir, gonna write a column on the welfare of our ventures out west.”

“We’re goin’ north.” The captain corrected.

“Are ya now?”

“Yes. St. Paul. Droppin’ the troops off there then comin’ right back. Not much to write about.”

“Uhuh,” Clemens stroked his mustache contemplatively and peered at Mr. Binder who added his own emphatic declarations as to the destination. “You got your full orders already? And they’re for Saint Paul’s?”

“Well, no, I ain’t met the general yet.” Captain Presley conceded and shifted his weight from one foot to the other uneasily. “In fact all I’ve got is a letter of requisition for army transport, Mr. Clemens, I wouldn’t bank on no great adventure. Aww hell what, what do you know?” something seemed to dawn on the Captain and he pressed Clemens with all his attention centered on him, “Come now sir, it’ll only serve to aid me in preparin’ and get you that damn signature. I ain’t givin’ it until you tell me, even a suspicion of what you’re thinkin’ will do. I needn’t tell you how easily the army will throw you off the transport without my backing.”

Mr. Clemens just smiled placidly and beckoned him closer which the captain complied with and the two men, about evenly matched in their height put their heads together and he spoke lowly, “You heard about anythin’ a’stirrin in the Dakotas, Captain?”

“I’ve heard there’s been unrest.”

“Heap of unrest to require so many soldiers, hmm?” Clemens pointed out.

“That thought had occurred to me. Whole lotta fuss, what is it you know?”

“I was down at the Amy headquarters before last night's gala,” Mr. Clemens reminisced and if he had been just another loquacious story teller Elvis would cut him off but as it was he held his peace, “and what I saw there was a sweet little telegraph operator takin’ down a message and sobbing over it. And when I offered her my handkerchief I was let in on the information that she couldn’t believe that “he” was dead.”

“Who the hell is he?” Elvis growled.

“Well, see, that takes some puzzling together,” Clemens admitted, “and my conclusion may yet be faulty but what I do know is I heard her weeping of gallantry and golden curls and custard.”

Elvis squinted for half a second before his eyebrow raised in shrewd surmising and Clemens nodded significantly. “You think the natives got General Custer?” he said.

“Fits the description.” Clemens could not be made to state an outright opinion he did not hold outright, “And it would warrant a reinforcing presence in the territories such as we’ve seen flood this city from eastern train cars in the last twenty four hours.”

“Goddamn.”

“Indeed.”

“Still don’t mean I gotta go west.”

“Hmm, no, don’t gotta mean it.”

“Aw hell.” Elvis pinched the bridge of his nose as the likelihood settled and tried to quiet his thoughts. “Goddamn it all to hell.” he repeated again and Clemens nodded in commiseration before looking a little callously hopeful. “Yes, yes you’ll get your signature.” Elvis grumbled before turning to the opening doors out of which the judge and Mr. Moore issued forth.

“Oh, EP, you’re here, good.” Mr. Moore gave a smile of relief at his friend’s timeliness and Rosey noticed the way Mr. Clemens abruptly stepped back from their circle and sat himself down again, as if eager to be forgotten in the bustle of the judge taking his seat and Moore dumping various documents out on the desk like an orderly belching of paper from his briefcase.

“Right, we’ve multiple articles and statements here that have been notarized.” The judge took his seat and called to order the tiny group with a backwater lack of discretion in the volume of his voice, “Now just needing your signature, Captain. More importantly though, I heard there was to be a marriage. I see no woman.”

Captain Presley’s smile was brittle with nervousness and he glanced first at Rosey by his side and then over to Mr Clemens as if gauging wether that fellow was far enough away for the echoes to distort their private business. “She’s right here, your honor,” he patted his grips shoulder as he spoke in a whisper, “didn’t wanna attract attention comin’ in, ya see so-“

“Take your hat off.” The judge barked and Rosey doffed the floppy brimmed haberdashery with scared alacrity while the judge eyed her up and down dubiously. “Name?” and he consulted the paper Mr. Moore had previously provided.

Rosey panicked a little, looking at him in some fretful concern as to which he gave. “I-“

“Miss Beaumont-“ Binder prodded helpfully and she realized with some relief that Elvis didn’t want to marry Savannah, he wanted to marry her, and his entire belittling of this evening's events suddenly felt a little less harsh. Savannah would be marrying today, not her.

“Savannah Hortencia Beaumont.” she recited politely.

“That’s not what this paper says.” The Judge stared down at the parchment Scotty had provided even as that worthy fellow winced.

“If-if we’re gonna have this legal and all-“ Mr. Moore began and with the Captain’s exasperated grunt came to a finish, “then it will need to be in her right name. No one’s going to see it anyway unless this whole plan goes to hell in which case they’ll know her anyway. And it’s best her funds not get frozen for impersonation.”

The Judge listened to this dubious legal council with bored disnintetest that Jerry was certain had been paid for. Generously. Mr. Binder held his breath for fear he’d ask it himself despite his business sense that told him to remain quiet.

“Right right, your real name then, Cricket.” Elvis decided with a gentle pat to her back.

“Yes, certainly, uh, I-“ it had been absolute ages since she had so much as thought of her real name, having woken up every morning for the last decade reciting a personhood to herself in the mirror that was entirely false until it became true. The judge was waiting, eyes intently glaring at her overtop the document, “Lorena Marie Hodgkins.” she confessed in a small voice.

“Lorena?” Captain Presley objected to the name vehemently by volume alone, “Whadda ya mean by that? Your name’s Lorrie! Only name you ‘ever been called ‘cept for what I gave ya.”

“That was a shortening,” She swallowed hard, “shortened from Lorena.”

“I’ll be damned-“ he swore, “you ‘ever been called by a real name in all your life?”

“My father was fond of calling me Lorena.” she answered coldly and he felt that stirring in his belly to tuck her safely into his pocket for all eternity. Instead he nodded to the judge to get on with it while craning his neck behind him to address Mr. Clemens:

“I said I’d sign the thing for ya.” he reminded the fellow, in great impatience not to have an actual reporter witness his faux marriage contract.

“Most kind of you,” the older gentleman acknowledged in a loud voice from his distance a few seats down from the desk, “I’ll bring it to you when the notary is done.”

“Ah.” The captain smiled easily at his excuse before turning back to the desk with a mumbled “Shit.” that Rosey soothed away with a squeeze of his thigh beneath the desk.

The documents for this agreement, arrangement, trade, convenenant, whatever the hell this marriage was, remained quite stark. Before being allowed to sign it, the Judge asked with mumbling disinterest if the Captain would take her for wife and getting a hissed “yes” proceeded to ask if the woman would take him for a husband and getting a wobbly “yes” scanned his eyes across a few more qualifications for marriage and asked if anyone here knew a reason why they should not be wedded.

Crowding behind them at the desk Mr. Moore sniffled and shook his head while Jerry admanely grunted “nope.” Mr. Clemens discreetly pretended to be too far removed to overhear any of the proceedings.

“You swear to invest her with all your worldly goods?” the judge ticked the box with his quil before Elvis had even replied but it was just as well, the Captain never wavered and Rosey found herself oddly grateful for that.

“I do.”

“Are there any other vows you would like to incorporate?” The magistrate droned in such a way as to suggest he didn’t want to hear more but Elvis had paid good money for his little debacle and the notion of Mr. Clemens being right and a trip to the edge of the known world imminent made a fella start to think.

“Maybe add a lil honor and obey.” he decided and coulda sworn he heard Jerry snicker crudely behind him.

Rosey stared at him with an expression of arch disbelief but when asked if she promised to honor and obey huffed out “I do.” quite readily.

“If that is all then I pronounce-“

“I have an addition.” she piped up sweetly and Elvis’ neck popped in his sudden motion to stare at her in return.

“I already promised ‘all my worldly goods I thee endow’, and all that shit!” he reminded.

“You had me swearing two vows.” she reasoned very steadily and Mr. Clemens would have likened her to a seasoned fishmonger haggling a price at market -if he had been listening in, which he wasn’t. Of course he wasn’t. “Honor and obey.” she pressed on, “I have worldly goods but what else?”

“I-I-“ Elvis floundered trying to recall any damning specifics of genuine marriage vows before shrugging, “-alright, add what ya like.”

“With my body I thee worship.” she requested demurely of the judge, who, for the first time during this entire proceeding, showed some sliver of interest.

Peering over his spectacles at a blushing Captain the judge asked dully, “Do you Elvis Aaron Presley vow to worship your bride with your body and all your worldly good endow her with?”

“I do.” tumbled out of his spit wet lips as he stared back at her, calculation and business quite forgotten at the prospect he’d just contractually promised her the ownership of his flesh and blood. Strangely, despite her awakened and ravening appetite, he felt safer than he ever had before in all his life.

“In that case,” the judge groaned, “no objection having been raised and the persons here qualified and willing to bind themselves thus, I pronounce you man and wife.”

The happy couple remained sat with not a trace of change in their features, and finding no kiss forthcoming, the judge proceeded to unearth the next document from the pile. The next hour was spent divvying up assets and insurance policies and signing retainers for the waterway commission, signing for Mr. Clemens and putting in an order to wire money. And Rosey sat through it with straight backed deference, newly minted as Mrs. Presley with both his ring digging into the hollow of her throat and the bindings biting into her chest.

Once aboard there was still no break to be had. Mr. Moore was to leave by the midnight train and the last hours of the night were spent huddled over Jerry’s desk plotting provisions for Vernon’s trial while Jerry himself oversaw the deafening racket below of knocking down the stable walls.

The light on the desk was blazing brightly but the rest of the room was pitch dark and Rosey saw Elvis keep putting on his glasses and taking them off as if his headache were permanent. Rosey found herself breathing shallow as the bindings cut her flesh the longer she’d stayed in them and she thought Mr. Moore was inordinately frazzled with the details of bail and habeas corpus.

“Elvis!- it’s Judge Weston!” Scotty pressed for the fourth time that night as if who was presiding over Vernon’s trial held greater weight than just -that.

“That supposed to mean somethin’ to me?” Elvis finally asked the question Rosey harbored.

“Yes!” Scotty spluttered, seemingly bamboozled by Elvis’ placidity, “If the Colonel can’t get that one to relent then we’re toast! I suppose blackmail’s got a ten year expiration in the judicial realm.”

“Any idea what the Colonel’s got on him?” Elvis inquired, pinching his lip between his fingers, “Binder was askin and I couldn’t guess.”

“Y-y-you’re -you’re kidding aren’t you?” Scotty faltered and paled to such a degree Rosey got the swooping feeling he wasn’t being prudish in his fluster, “Stop kiddin about it E, I can’t take it. Stop kiddin about all of it.”

“The hell you on about?” the Captain asked angrily and with an edge of demand in his voice, “You’re always shrinkin’ and fussin’ over past shit -and for the life of me I can’t see why you don’t move the hell on! Come on, man! let it go!” his tone turned pleading, and he even reached his hand across the table with its papers and fountain pins and weights, clasping Scotty’s where it lay innervated. “What’s this got to do with the Judge? Come on Scotty, grow some balls and talk to me.”

“H-have you really forgotten?” Scotty let out in a horrified whisper.

“Mr Moore, I’ll thank ya to start talkin in full, or else hush up.”

Scotty’s eyes were wide as saucers and shimmering so startlingly in the feeble gaslamp light he looked possessed, and his frame and hand began to shake beneath his friend’s. He opened his mouth a few times and shut it repeatedly, finally in a very grave voice he began, “I hadn’t imagined for a single moment that you might not recall the events that lead to- not understand my animosity against Parker-“

“-don’t bring him up again, I asked ya about Weston-“

“-I thought we’d just agreed not to-to speak of it.” His eyes darted from Elvis’ aggravated face to yours, “And if it’s to come out, I think perhaps, perhaps it would be best if we were alone for it, E.”

“Scotty,” Elvis' voice was so steady and commanding it startled her when it disturbed the hush of the room, “either you can unburden yourself or ya can help me with the judge, and if those two things go together for whatever reason, then let’s have it out. Come on man, Rosey’s no stranger to judicial corruption.” and he laughed as he patted his new wife on the back.

“God, E-“ Scotty began to rip at his cravat as if in dire need of more air, “please, uh, trust me this ain’t for a lady’s ears.”

“Rosey’s got a right to know my business.” He replied simply.

“All of it?” Scotty implied and suddenly Elvis seemed to catch the drift she had already noticed underlying Mr Moore’s discomfiture.

“Scotty, what the hell you on about?” he asked urgently, his chair screeching as he jerked and leaned forward.

“You don’t recall any dealings with Judge Weston?” Scotty asked, and if a corpse had a voice it would sound no less hollow.

“None.” Elvis cried, “Look, you remember I got sick and I don’t remember much of anything from that last week in Memphis.”

“And ya never bothered to ask?” Scotty cried despairingly.

“Colonel told me we cut some good deals,” Elvis insisted, “and it was obvious we did! We had a boat by the end of it and a reprieve. Terms were that I couldn’t set foot in Memphis. Which was a bitter condition, I admit, but considering what we were up against…and that’s why I haven’t come to see ya, man, I ain’t allowed there.”

“You didn’t get sick, Elvis.” Scotty said simply, his whole face slack with grief, “Or, no more than we all were from hunger and the cold.” he amended.

“You gonna tell me?” Elvis asked, leaning forward even more and clasping both hands to Scotty’s, nearly tipping out his own chair. “You gotta tell me what I’m up against, man, c’mon. Gives you more grief than it does me to dwell on it, just a clean cut, say it and be done.”

“Alright, alright uh…” Scotty gripped his hand and looked up to the ceiling for either devine help or a less distracting spur to his memories than Elvis’ intense gaze. “You remember goin to a dinner party at that fella’s place?”

“What fella?”

“The judge.”

“Judge Weston?”

“Yes, dammnit yes, Weston.”

“Vaguely.” Elvis replied, shortly, “I recall feelin sicker than a dog all evenin, no matter what you say that i weren’t any worse than y’all.”

“Oh you were worse!” Scotty gave a trembling laugh of pure nervousness, “That evening you were worse, i couldn’t make sense of it, till Bill told me Colonel had gotten Ada to give ya somethin to loosen ya up -you weren’t sleepin much then, you recall that? Yeah, well so he’d given ya somethin and you were loopy, and I couldn't figure why he’d risk you lollin’ around in your chair at a Judge’s dinner party where you were meant to plead your case. -You weren’t bein intolerable!” Scotty assured him as he could see Elvis began to look wary, “You were just, out of it and and and actin like your brains got wiped, turned ya into a child. Made ya real docile which was probably the point to prove you weren’t no murderer but-. Oh god.” Moore snatched his hand away from the Captain’s comforting grip and hid his face, as if he needed to block out his small audience to keep going.

“Go on, man, go on.” Elvis commanded him and out of instinct, sensing a coming horror, Rosey laid her little hand on his lower back, rubbing soothing circles into the space where his vest rode up from his trousers.

“The invitation had stated a late time for dinner.” Scotty remarked, “I remember balking over who ate their supper at half past ten at night. Parker told me that Judge’s did, since the rest of their day was taken up with the common welfare. Parker always had an answer to every one of my protests, every one, but to this day I never have gone to another judge’s house for an intimate dinner that close to midnight.”

Sweat was gathering in the dip of Elvis' back, she could feel it beneath his shirt and she herself felt as if she dared not breathe until Scotty finished this faintly worrisome narrative of unremarkable happenings.

“God forgive me, I got sick of the chatter and the deals and the way they were talking about bribes and shit at a Judge’s table.” Scotty moaned into his hands, behind him the inky black darkness of the room suddenly seemed sinister to you, “Made me sick and I got all- you know how I get- got all self righteous about it and said I had enough and told the judge he was a disgrace to justice and-and he told me to get outta his house and I said I would, happily. And I got up, I got up and I left. I went back to our lodging above the tavern. Bill was out, he’d been lodging above the stables most nights anyway.” Scotty let out a long groan into his hands before taking them away from his face, the solitary lamp casting it in a tear streaked demented orange glow, “I left E! I swear I asked if you were comin and you said yeah and then the Colonel told ya to sit yourself down, that this wasn’t over. And you obeyed meek as a child and…and fed up I left. -I left you there.”

Elvis’ leg was jimmying so hard beneath the table at this point that the ink pots were sloshing from it. “Scotty, I need ya ya tell me what you know.” he said, deathly calm.

“I don’t know what happened!” Scotty gave a scream, gratefully tempered by his snot hoarse throat. “But what I do know is-by dawn you weren’t back, and I went downstairs to find you and Parker and was just in time to meet a hackney coach pulling up to the curb and one of the Judge’s lackeys unloaded you into my arms like a wet sack of grain.” he met Elvis eyes then, anger giving him fuel to conquer shame or grief, “I shoulda taken you to hospital, I shoulda waved down that hackney coach down again the minute I saw the state you were in and I shoulda charged the Judge for the drive to a doctor. But I couldn’t do that, could I?” he yelled, “Cause if I had, then you’d not only be half dead, you’d be imprisoned for the cause of your wounds.” Unnerving as Elvis’ motionless acceptance of this speech was it gave Mr Moore the freedom to conclude, “So,” his voice had lost its venom and gone soft and sad again, “so I spent that morning cleaning blood and filth from you and when Parker cared to come check on his merchandise he had the audacity to act as if he was appalled and scandalized by the Judge’s —behavior. And he promised you that you’d be taken care of, never have to take it like that again, that you had earned your pardons. In hindsight i see he played you like a goddamn fiddle and I- forgive me but I was so young and stupid and angry at it all. When you shoved me away and took to huddlin under his wing, I shouldn’t have blamed ya, you were drugged and wrecked and not thinking straight but I- I was worn out too, E. You wouldn’t listen to me when I told ya he’d sold you, and I didn’t have the fight in me to try to keep ya from him when you didn’t wanna be kept away. I thought you knew he’d traded you that night, and I thought you didn’t care, that I’d really lost ya, that you’d lost yourself tryin to get us home. So I left ya, to follow your own road. You didn’t need me anyhow, Parker got ya Dr Nick who’s fuckin potions could do more than me holdin ya and- and you got your riverboat. Now you’re the envy of the Mississippi, so it ain’t no sob story.” he puffed out a snotty breath as if he’d just put down a burden he’d been hauling for years. Rosey knew that feeling intimately.

They both were nervous to look to Elvis but when she did it was as if he had heard nothing of this, or that it was of no consequence, so still was his expression. Like a rattled veteran who can’t be roused from stupor after battle, finding some peace in a dimension undetectable to the rest.

“Say something, E, for god’s sake, say you forgive me for leavin ya.” Scotty began to blabber and she aimed a vicious kick at his shin under the table.

“This isn’t about you, Mr Moore.” Rosey hissed but not even her venomous rebuke could rouse Elvis from his inspection of the table's grained surface.

“Do you really not recall any of it?” Mr Moore switched his avenue of lamentation, unable to be quiet under the weight of guilt that all this time his snide remarks about Elvis being without principles had been directed at a friend who never knew he had once been robbed of them. “You’d swore to me that once we got to Memphis you wouldn’t take to it again, no matter how bad it got and then- oh god, I thought, I thought you changed your mind, thought that’s why you got so mad at me for bringing it up after and- I had to unlace ya outuvva Goddamn corset, E!”

“Mr Moore!” she seethed and he shut his mouth mechanically at the way Elvis’ stormy eyes suggested he was indeed beginning to recall some of it at long last. His hand left the table and fluttered to his stomach in that way she recognized at trying to quell some sick.

Elvis rose abruptly, knocking her hand from its place on his back and went to the side table, rummaging in the dark space before pouring a glass of water shakily, his face turned from the table. “Scotty,” he said in a neutral tone, “Mr Binder is headed to Memphis to investigate these suspected judges, the ones taking bribes and such,” he gave a long pause as the ambiguous “such” now had a brutal, personal definition, “is there any chance that such investigations might…backfire?”

“What do you mean?” Mr Moore asked, his whole bearing so exhausted from the ordeal of confessing.

“I mean is there reason to believe there’s any -evidence…that would tie him to me, besides money, of course. The money proof is there, Binder knows that.”

“Well I-“ Mr. Moore floundered until Elvis turned back around and looked at him with commanding expectancy, “I can’t imagine there would be? Unless the driver…I’m sure those house servants are used to being discreet about such things. I can’t say for certain but- he wouldn’t risk any evidence and, it’s not like the check would read-“ he trailed off.

Elvis had the demented bravery to laugh. “To Mr. Elvis Presley,” he mimicked the motions of writing a check, “for the usage of his a-“

“Don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t!” Scotty cried hoarsely, “-it was a crime! Elvis! A crime against you and God Almighty!” Scotty broke down in tears brought on by guilt and frustration.

“I know!” Elvis screamed right back and threw the now empty glass right past their heads in emphasis, shattering it against the opposite wall. “You’re actin’ like it was you got passed around by a man you trusted.” he spit, “You’ve sat on this story like a goddamn prude cause you can’t so much as talk about these things without whinin and now you’re asking me to what -what do you want me to do to make you feel better about me finally knowing, hmmm? Cry? Kill myself? What would be a reaction that would make you feel better, Scotty Moore? What do any of you folks want me to do to make ya feel heard?”

As if this wild tirade of hurt and accusations had finally burned him out, Rosey saw the Captain’s tall form sway and he clutched at the side board, the tray which held the glasses and decanter sliding from his blind clutch and crashing to the floor. She was by him in an instant, a hand on the back of his neck and her discarded hat in front of him as he was sick, letting him crush her hand in his clammy one. He stayed leaning over the side board for a few moments, breathing raggedly and staring at the wall in front of him.

“Ya know this means he never meant for daddy to walk free.” was the first thing the Captain said after getting his voice back, addressing Scotty who was still sat behind him, weeping at the injustice of it all. “Colonel either has lost his grip entirely or won’t use it for this, he don’t want me to even have my own father.” and the next shudder through him was less a heaving of his stomach and more a sob. “Reckon this whole lil insurrection was perfectly timed.” he mumbled and leaned into her attentions as Rosey took off her own cravat and dabbed at his sweaty face. “While I’m gone Scotty,” he finally turned round to face his old friend and Scotty looked up with devoted eagerness, his face shimmering with tears in the gas lamp’s glow, “I’m gonna count on you to see they don’t just eliminate my daddy, ya hear? I’d rather it get out that I played lover to a judge than anything happen to him, do you hear me? Don’t spare my name, it’s lost already -Colonel’s gonna see to that. You just see to it justice is done for my daddy, alright? I’m countin’ on ya, Scotty! You’re like a bother to me.” And he wept himself.

Scotty was out of his chair and embracing him moments later, an angry sort of affection that wishes time could be gotten back and ills erased, “Might not come to all that.” he muttered soothingly as he rocked the Captain like a child in his embrace, a steadying hand on the back of that glossy bowed head. Rosey had never seen the Captain so gently intimate with another man and there was a obvious history to this embrace, a well worn ritual of Scotty lying and shushing, and Elvis believing just long enough to get the wind back in his sails. It made her eyes burn.

“You know it will.” Elvus muttered back into Scotty’s neck and got his head patted more fervently for it.

“I’ll be here for ya this time.” Scotty swore, and got the breath squeezed out of him by Elvis’ arms again.

“I’m going to sleep.” Elvis announced after pulling away, his eyes downcast and the shadow of his lashes heavy on his cheeks from the gloom, “God speed ya, man.” He commissioned his friend with a kiss to the cheek before a solitary finger snagged Rosey’s wrist and tugged her towards the doorway, “Jerry’s got orders to see ya to the train.”

They did not return to their room, for it was no longer their room, and when he took her down, ever downwards, into the bowels of his little kingdom and opened first one door that held a sleeping Charlie and Cal then a next, she felt it fitting that their first night ended somewhere new. A squalid little honeymoon, even if there were to be no intimacy. He creaked open the next door, slightly farther removed from the main stable area by the harness racks and grain storage, and in it she saw that it had a singular cot of dubious plushness, next to that a washstand, a mirror above that and a rickety chair shoved in a corner that it really couldn’t afford to take up as the door only opened half way with its bulk blocking it.

The room was wooden bare and stark of beauty but he was right, she was no fine lady.

Their goods already piled on the chair and heaped on what little floor space they had, no sooner had he kicked the door shut behind then than he dropped her hand to begin rummaging through one of the trunks.

She watched him attentively as she began to shuck her masculine layers, not even her worry for the state of his mind able to take her own off the searing bite of the bindings anymore. He was pulling out little bottles from a chest and when he caught sight of her expression he assured, not without kindness,

“Jus’ herbs baby.”

She heard him uncork then and the tink tink tink of drops hitting a spoon as she wrestled her shirt over her head.

By the time her vision was clear he was stripping too, his dose already taken and she helped steady him as they worked in silence, it felt oddly comfortable and she feared a misplaced condolence regarding his recent enlightenment might tip the balance unfavorably. So she held her tongue and helped him strip and kissed at his skin as they did. When they had succeeded in undressing him he thumbed at her mouth and placed a kiss there after a moment of thought.

“Ya need some water, girl, your lip’s chapped.” he said, and brought her a glass he must’ve filled with water from the washstand and used to take his tonic.

The water was terribly bitter and she grimaced. “These bindings are hurting me.” she managed to mutter even as the world suddenly got very hazy and her own feet seemed to stumble towards him. He caught her and sat her on the edge of the bed and propped her up against his leg as he worked to undo the knot with fretful urgency.

Round and round he unwound the cloth and at last she could suck in a full breath. It made her world foggier still, the wall wavering as she rested her cheek against his thigh and slumped, her tongue heavy in her mouth and that bitter tang cloying to the roof of her mouth.

Gently he tipped her into the bed and she fell back amongst the sheets naked as the day she was born and strangely uninhibited by that as his eyes burned up every inch of her. Her consciousness seemed to be fading and some tiny spark of panic helped swim to the surface, recalling that he had untrusted her with keeping them chaste. It seemed very hard to do with the world dim and her legs so heavy they spread of their own accord, a hot and slick mess of her insides seemingly spilling out. She felt spilled out on the sheets and it was bizarre and unsettling and so very natural all the same.

She heard him suck in a noisy breath of his own and lament, “God, what’ve I done to ya?”

And she very much thought the same -what have you done to my little head, Captain? it is spinning.

He was speaking of her breasts, however, which she could not see. But in the light of the swinging lantern above them he could see the welts and bruises that had already begun to show on her pale skin, the soft, vulnerable things accusing him cruelly with each angry mark. “Poor, poor things.” he muttered, his tongue heavy and the taste of the tonic bitter.

He lowered himself down to lay above her, gently, and pulling the sheet over them brought his mouth to her. First one breast, then the other, laving away the damage he’d caused and chasing out the bitterness of his mouth with the salty plushness of her skin. “Daddy’s sorry, daddy didn’t mean to hurt ya none, didn’t mean to at all, poor widdle fings….”

She could barely make out the words as he mumbled around mouthfuls of her flesh and his nuzzling sucks and kneading was strangely effective, she held his head to her just as Scotty had done, a soothing pressure to the back of his skull and anchored him to her as he rooted around, the sweet weight of him naked and pliant on top of her again -just as it should be she thought. His sideburns scratched her wet perked nipples and she hissed in delight, tugging at his hair to repeat the motion and his moan shook the whole length of her. She thought she managed to trap one of his thighs between her own and wiggled against it, but maybe not.

The cot was much too small, she realized suddenly, they had to be atop each other or else fall off. She held into him tighter and he nuzzled her contentedly, his own world going foggy.

They must be together or they would fall off, she kept thinking, but she didn’t know if she could hold him with the way her limbs were melting. Her mouth tasted so bitter.

What did you do to me, Captain? she wanted to ask but his mouth was sweet and warm and her breasts sore.

“I’m glad I’ve got you, Lorrie Darlin’.” she heard him whisper before she succumbed to the weight of his head on her breast and sank into dreamless rest.

#elvis fanfiction #elvis imagine #elvis fanfic #elvis x reader #elvis presley #elvis smut #elvis aaron presley #elvis austin butler #austin butler #austin butler elvis #austin x reader #austin elvis imagine #a whole man is hard to find

[dailyunsolvedmysteries-movedd]

The 1973 Pascagoula Alien Abduction

On the night of October 11, 1973, co-workers Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker were fishing on the Pascagoula River in Mississippi when the two men suddenly heard a hissing sound coming behind them. When they turned around, they saw an oval-shaped craft hovering in the air and flashing blue lights. A door on the craft opened, and three robot-like creatures floated down toward Hickson’s and Parker’s boat. The creatures were about 5 feet tall, with gray wrinkled skin, clawed hands, and slits for eyes and a mouth. The two men found themselves paralyzed and unable to resist being grabbed by the creatures. Parker fainted at this point, and they were then floated up into the spaceship with their abductors. According to Hickson, he was taken into a room full of light and examined by an oval-shaped probe that circled around his body. When the probe had finished its examination, the creatures floated out of the room and then floated Hickson back outside after 20 minutes. Hickson found Parker on the shore, crying and praying.  The spaceship then left, and Hickson and Parker went into their car to calm down and try to make sense of what happened.

Although afraid that nobody would believe them, Hickson and Parker called the Kessler Air Force Base, which recommended that they report the incident to the local sheriff. At first, the sheriff and his deputies were skeptical and thought the men were drunk. When they left Hickson and Parker alone in a room with a secret tape recorder, however, they continued to talk as though the experience were real. At one point, Hickson told Parker, “It scared me to death too, son. You can’t get over it in a lifetime. Jesus Christ have mercy.” The story appeared on local newspaper headlines the next day, and soon news reporters and UFO investigators were crawling all over Pascagoula and harassing Hickson and Parker at their workplace. Hundreds of UFO sightings in Mississippi were reported in the next couple of weeks, including an encounter by some Coast Guardsmen with a glowing object moving underwater in the Pascagoula River. 

While Parker initially tried to keep his distance from the incident, Hickson gave media interviews and lectures about his experience, even visiting local schools. In 1983, he published “UFO Contact at Pascagoula” with investigator William Mendez, a full-fledged (and rare) book about the encounter and three incidents of psychic telecommunication he said that he received in 1974. Until he passed away in September 2011, Hickson continued to insist that the story was true and that the creatures he saw were peaceful aliens concerned about the earth. After participating in some hypnotic sessions, Parker recovered vague memories about what had happened that night. Unlike Hickson, he was wary of the attention he attracted, and eventually moved out of the state. Over the past two decades, he has become more open to interviews and has even participated in UFO conventions. 

#The 1973 Pascagoula Alien Abduction #aliens #ufos #creepy #weird

[just-someone-online]

More Monster High Headcanons

There'll probably be one more of these before I get them out of my system lol. Again, I haven't finished the diaries yet so some of the G1 headcanons might not gel super well with them.

River Styxx does in fact have a scythe, but after putting one too many holes into her dad's boat due to carelessness, her access to it has been restricted.

G3 Lagoona's scales were indeed blue when she was little, but as she grew older, they began shifting hues to pink.

While most monsters say nonboonary instead of nonbinary, skeletons and similar boney monsters refer to it as being nonspineary.

Despite all three versions of Draculaura being vegetarians, one of them (Not sure who. Probably not G2) has turned somebody to save their life. She doesn't like to talk about it.

While most monsters lived alone after the Great Fright Flight, many formed small communities around the world. Emphasis on small, as they needed to be able to quickly evacuate if any humans stumbled upon them.

Not all zombies speak zombie. Some grow up speaking whatever the dominant language is where they live while others simply don't use the language until their larynx begins rotting away. Moanica is the former and G3 Ghoulia is the latter.

Even though humans have largely forgotten that monsters exist, there have been some unfortunate incidents, hence why a lot of the monsters the Ghoul Squad found were living on their own.

G2 Clawdeen (And I suppose all werewolves by extension) has a tail, but after being bitten by teething werepups one too many times, she prefers to keep it tucked away.

G1 and G2 Twyla are autistic, they told me themselves. One of them (Both of them?) has a little hourglass necklace that she stims with.

For a few months after Electrified, Frankie had some issues regulating her electricity. Sometimes they'd give off a minor jolt, but other times she was shooting off enough electricity to power a classroom. They hope they never have to absorb a city's worth of power ever again.

Alivia has a habit of twisting at her bolts when she's thinking and it makes Frankie's heart stop every time they catch her doing it. "Those are holding your skull together! Stop it!"

G3 Cleo has never had a good school picture. You could take a picture of her falling down the stairs with your iCoffin and she'd look amazing in it, but if it were for the fearbook, she'd look like a mess.

The first time the ghouls invited G2 Twyla to a creepover, there was a brief moment where they thought she bailed on them partway through. Turns out she had fallen asleep and sank into the shadows.

G1 and G2 Frankie have no idea where babies come from (Well, non-simulacrum babies) and none of their friends want to deal with the secondhand embarrassment of explaining. G3 on the other hand, learned when they got a flashback to one of their brain donors learning.

#monster high #monster high g1 #monster high g2 #monster high g3 #monster high headcanons #river styxx #lagoona blue #draculaura #moanica d'kay #ghoulia yelps #clawdeen wolf #twyla boogeyman #frankie stein #alivia stein #cleo de nile

[odinsblog]

Remember: these are allegedly “pro-life” “Christian” Republicans supporting murder

WASHINGTON — Officers working for Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security initiative have been ordered to push small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande, and have been told not to give water to asylum seekers even in extreme heat, according to an email from a Department of Public Safety trooper who described the actions as “inhumane.”

The July 3 account, reviewed by Hearst Newspapers, discloses several previously unreported incidents the trooper witnessed in Eagle Pass, where the state of Texas has strung miles of razor wire and deployed a wall of buoys in the Rio Grande.

According to the email, a pregnant woman having a miscarriage was found late last month caught in the wire, doubled over in pain. A four-year-old girl passed out from heat exhaustion after she tried to go through it and was pushed back by Texas National Guard soldiers. A teenager broke his leg trying to navigate the water around the wire and had to be carried by his father.

The email, which the trooper sent to a superior, suggests that Texas has set “traps” of razor wire-wrapped barrels in parts of the river with high water and low visibility. And it says the wire has increased the risk of drownings by forcing migrants into deeper stretches of the river.

The trooper’s email sheds new light on a series of previously reported drownings in the river during a one-week stretch earlier this month, including a mother and at least one of her two children, who federal Border Patrol agents spotted struggling to cross the Rio Grande on July 1.

According to the email, a DPS boat found the mother and one of the children, who went under the water for a minute. They were pulled from the river and given medical care before being transferred to EMS, but were later declared deceased at the hospital. The second child was never found, the email said.

The governor has said he is taking necessary steps to secure the border and accused federal officials of refusing to do so.

(continue reading)

#politics #immigration #asylum seekers #greg abbott #republicans are evil #texas #white supremacy #racism #christofascism

[phenomenal1500]

~Wake Up, My Love~

Masterlist

A/N: This was requested by DEVILHORNS on wattpad, thank you so much for the request. I hope it's okay. ♥️ I changed it a bit so it wouldn't look too much like the last one.

Summary: Reader is injured after the waterfall incident and Harald helps save her.

Timeline: Season 2, after the waterfall scene.

Pairing: Harald Sigurdsson x Fem!Reader Warning: Angst.

"Y/N!" Harald pulled himself out of the calm river and coughed up the water stuck in his lungs as he crawled onto the shore. The impact of the boat hitting the water really struck his head, headache now pounding and making the man feel dizzy. "Y/N! Call out to me!"

"She's over here!" Mariam yelled back when the woman spotted her unconsciously floating by the wreckage. Still swimming to shore herself however, the prince helped her the last part and together they rushed over to the wreckage that was left of the boat. "Oh, poor dear." She whispered, lifting her out of the river with Harald.

Y/N had multiple cuts on her body, but her broken legs were their biggest concern. If she woke up, that would be something that could hold them back for real. It didn't look too good and an injury like that wasn't something they could fix easily. He was lucky with Marian alive and well since she had most knowledge of the group, but even she seemed concerned for a moment.

"You think she'll be alright?" Harald whispered, carefully laying the woman down on the sand. They couldn't move her too much and as long as she was out of the water it was good enough.

"Yes, but I need some long thin sticks and some rope. Can you look for those, Harald?" She questioned calmly, trying to see where her legs were broken and where it needed help the most.

"Yeah, I will start searching right away. Is that everything or is anything else needed?"

"That's everything for now. Please hurry." She smiled sweetly despite the stress they were in, just to give him a bit of hope and comfort.

They both knew Y/N needed to wake up soon or she could drown from the water in her lungs and her leg had to be put back into place or the damage could worsen so they needed to think and act fast. Those were important reasons for Mariam to ask Harald to be sharp and quick so a bit of hope couldn't hurt him. It only motivated him to be fast.

Harald rushed to the forest side of the shore and found some long thin, but also strong sticks and brought them back to Mariam within a few minutes. He then also climbed onto the wreck to grab the spare ropes they had brought in case the sail ropes snapped and tossed them to her as well. There was no time to waste.

"Are those strong enough?"

"They're perfect, now I need you to position yourself right beside her and put your hands here and here." The woman quickly pointed out to Harald to hold Y/N by her shin and thigh and explained to him what way to move her leg to put it back in place. He had more strength so he was the one who had to do so, also because Mariam was still busy building her structures.

"In this way...?" He followed her instructions carefully because even though she was unconscious, he couldn't live with himself if he hurt her more than was absolutely necessary. He really didn't want to mess anything up.

"Yes, now move to her other leg. They both need to heal correctly if she wants to be able to walk again." He watched her, quietly hating this. He didn't want her to die or end up with an everlasting injury, but he was terrified of hurting her as well. "It's okay, Harald. It's best for her." She reassured him and he slowly nodded, repeating the action with her other leg too before he let Mariam tend to her legs any further.

It was clear she knew what she was doing as she put together two support structures for her legs to stay straight.

"Will those help her heal?" Harald just watched for a moment, finding it fascinating.

"Yes, and most importantly it will give her some relief. It prevents her from moving her legs too much and will keep them straight." She cleared up what she was doing and he nodded, holding the still unconscious woman's hand gently.

"That's amazing news. Now all you have to do is wake up, my love." He whispered against her forehead before giving it a long lasting, but soft kiss. "All you have to do is open those gorgeous eyes and tell me you're okay."

Nothing happened though and her breathing even lessened.

"I think she has too much water in her lungs." She looked at Harald and he suddenly noticed her chest rising and falling quicker.... She needed air and fast.

He checked her pulse and waited for Mariam to finish putting on her structures before moving the woman to her side carefully, lightly tapping on her back and working from top to bottom to get the water out of her lungs. It worked as a small warm stream of water started to leak from her mouth.

"Where did you learn that?"

"My father once taught me at sea the first time we sailed to England." He spoke proudly and watched the woman cough up more water, a sign she was getting air and she was waking up. "Y/N?"

"Harald...?" She groaned, the pain of the fall just now hitting her.

"I'm right here, love." He held her hand close to his heart. "We'll get you out of here safely."

"You promise...?" She mumbled, eyes trying to focus on Harald's.

"I promise. You're safe."

#vikings imagine #vikings #vikings valhalla #harald hardrada #harald sigurdsson #Harald sigurdsson x reader #x reader #mariam vikiings #angst #requests open #wake up my love

[bubbles-for-all-of-us]

Golden hour

Previous chapter / Next chapter

a/n welcome to part four! idk why but I keep on writing this story at 1am and it's like that's the only time I can write it. Thank you so much for the love. ✨🤍

Azriel x reader

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Your eyes shot open, hands gripping the blanket's material as you shot up. This was the biggest downfall of your abilities—revisiting the nightmares of others that you had chased away that night. They didn't hurt every time, yet when they did, they were uncomfortable enough to make you want to skip a day or two afterward.

The makeshift bed you made was empty. Even if you didn't want to admit it, it did make you feel sad. A part of you hoped Azriel would have been here when you woke up, but considering the blanket, he laid on was still somewhat warm, he hadn't left all that long ago.

You wrapped your arms around yourself, trying to savor the last bits of warmth. Azriel. Gods, how good did it feel to lay in his arms? The scent of him. You could still smell a little bit of him around the place and on your bare skin that touched him. You couldn't help it. And it didn't even matter if you wanted to admit it or not; you were missing him. Your heart ached because you missed him so much. You turned your head to the window; the rays of sunlight hadn't yet crossed the living room, implying you slept for an hour at most. Considering how tough last night's chases were, you couldn't imagine how you were going to get through today. Your body ached, screaming for you to lay down and rest, but you knew that you couldn't afford it.

A light tingle ran across your arm, and you smiled to yourself as you saw the little beam of darkness swirling against your skin. "Have you been left on watch again?", you asked, reaching for it, as it danced all around your hand before slithering closer to your ear. "Happy?", the shadow asked quietly. You smirked in response, and the dark creature churned around the room frantically. "If you tell him even a word," you said, before collapsing back onto the pile of blankets. If that thing could smirk, you knew I'd be looking at you like a sheepish cat.

As you stood up, the room spun. Bracing yourself on the table, you closed your eyes just so you could escape that nauseating feeling. You reached your limit; there was no beating around the bush. You were usually good at spacing out nights when you worked. You didn't go chasing dreams every night. According to the protocol, there were several night terrors one needed to have. Creating a perfect, sugar-coated dream world wasn't allowed.

But to forget about the shadow singer and the incident in his bedroom, you went on and on. Night after night, hour after hour. And now that almost all of your powers had been drained, you weren't sure how you were going to make it through the day. But you had to; you had promised fresh sandwiches and warm homemade soup for the ones who needed it most. So steadying yourself, you lifted your head and walked out of the house to gather vegetables from the garden.

If not for the nagging calls of his High Lord, Azriel would have scratched everything off his schedule and just held you all day long. Allowing you to sleep peacefully and providing the warmth your body required. Peeling away from you was extremely hard, especially when your dainty fingers grasped his hand, and in your sleepy state, you had asked him to stay.

But maybe it was for the best that Rhys had called. It meant that Azriel would have something that would distract him from the pull in his chest. The spymaster was too afraid to come to terms with it just yet. For now, that feeling would have to live within him. For now, it will stay hidden.

"You called," Azriel said as he entered the study through the main door. Nyx instantly jumped off Fayre's lap and ran his way. Az was only able to nod his head slightly at his High Lady before the boy leaped into his arms.

"Uncle Az! Uncle Az! Daddy and I built a little boat that could float in the river," this babe was the whole world to everyone in the inner circle. Azriel pushed some of the little boy's black hair away from his face as he studied the boat in his tiny hands, "That looks good, Nyx, and I'm sure not even the biggest waves would drown it." The boy beamed at his uncle, "Will you come with us to watch it set sail?".

"Uncle Azriel has a lot of work now, Nyxy," Rhysand said firmly. So the tension remained, Azriel figured. He didn't need to look Rhys's way to know that he still wasn't fully forgotten. Feyra gave the spymaster an apologetic look as she scooped up her son in her hands. She knew about it all; Rhys hardly ever kept things for her, so Azriel smiled back at her before turning to his two brothers. "I will not ask where you were last night," Rhys spoke up after the door to the study was closed. "There were unexpected troubles in the camp," Azriel chose to stay standing. Oddly enough, it felt like he had more power than.

"Then why do you look like you just came home from a decade's worth of vacation?", the shadow singer glared at Cassian, but he knew that he wasn't wrong. The male caught a glimpse of himself in one of the mirrors in your house as he headed off. There were no bags under his eyes, and his skin had gotten back some color. He looked alive for the first time in a long while. Azriel choose to ignore the Lord of Bloodshed, as held his eyes on Rhys as he spoke, "You know your answer to the question. I, on the other hand, have unanswered ones." Azriel knew that he was in no position to challenge his high lord—not that he wanted that. But he wasn't going to back away. He needed to know why your sudden appearance in court was kept so secretive. But, after a century of living with Rhys, the spymaster knew that his High Lord was always up to something, for reasons only he could explain.

"Why wasn't I notified when she was found?", he demanded emphatically. Not a single glimpse of uncertainty there. Rhysand gave him a long, cold stare. Azriel could feel him calculating, clearly thinking of what he wanted to say, and what was going to stay under the covers.

"Wait, he was with Y/N?", Cassian beamed, and Azriel didn't need to look his way to know that he was standing there smirking like an idiot. "And you knew about it?", the male pointed at Rhys before crossing his arms over his chest. Azriel couldn't figure out why Cassian was upset that this information hadn't been handed to him on a silver platter, so he shrugged his brother off once again.

"You haven't been in the right state of mind for a while now, brother. So Cassian and I thought that it was in your own best interest to not know about this", and that same wave of anger arose in Azriel. He wasn't used to someone making decisions for him. He obeyed out of a deep respect for his high lord. After all, Rhys has done a lot for him and Cassian, but in his eyes, this was crossing a line.

"So hiding the fact that you found a female by the border was supposed to save me, but the never-ending reports of camp fights that you showed my way were?", Azriel snarled through gritted teeth. Rhys said nothing after that. They gazed at each other like two wild cats that had crossed each other's paths and neither wanted to let the other pass. It was clear to Az that he wasn't going to get any answers here. Fine, he thought to himself, let's write it off as a noble move. He's letting her tell her own story.

The silence that fell between the three of them was torture. It wasn't usual for them just to glare at one another and say nothing. At least one of them would be cracking jokes. But then again, there had never been serious secrets between them. The trust they had built throughout the years had been steel solid. And Azriel was well aware that his recent actions had raised some eyebrows. "Now that you've mentioned camps, they'll need a lot more monitoring," Azriel realized those words carried a completely different meaning. It wasn't all just about the work. Rhys was implying that he wouldn't have time to entertain his new lady friend.

"That's fine by me," the shadow singer said in a calm voice, not backing out of the fight, and that only made Rhys narrow his eyes at him more. "I don't think you'll have time for whatever you are doing now," "Rhysand, I respect your opinion, but this time I will handle it on my own."

In frustration, the high lord pinched the bridge of his nose, "If you think you finally found someone worth.." However, before his brother could finish his sentence, the spymaster was already on his way out the door, "Send me those reports from the camps, and I'll look into it."

For now, Azriel didn't want to think about it. Even if it was selfish, all he wanted was to be by your side. Learn about you. Mother had decided to send you his way. Quite literally left you to him at the side of the court. He wasn't going to let you slip through his fingers.

Just like all those times before, without even fully thinking, Azriel found himself heading towards the main streets of Velaris. Somehow he knew that you were going to be there. Something from within him told him where to find you.

And his instincts weren't wrong. Your hair was pulled up messily as you twirled around the street in an olive green dress, handing out food and sharing smiles with the ones who needed it the most. He didn't dare to intrude. He knew that even though people loved him here, he still carried that sense of coldness wherever he went. Even though they hadn't done anything rebellious against the court, his cold demeanor made more than one shiver.

You were packing up the last bit of food when two hands covered your eyes, making you flinch slightly. Your first instinct was to fight back and reach for the dagger that was strapped to your lower leg. But then that familiar musky scent filled your nostrils, and your lips curled into a fond smile before you placed your own hands on top of Azriel's.

"You're lucky I didn't kick back because we would be having scrambled eggs now," Azriel threw his head back, his hands slipping to your shoulders as laughter escaped his lips. You watched him in amusement. You'd never heard such a lovely laugh before. His face looked completely different when he laughed and you broke into a grin yourself as you watched him.

"I guess it's my lucky day today," the male replied, his gaze fixed on yours. But his smile didn't last long as he saw your drained face. It's like all the features that wore him down slipped off him and vanished overnight, ending up on your face. Azriel couldn't help but frown as he cupped your cheeks in both of his hands. "Are you feeling all right?", his words were filled with concern, and you couldn't help but find it endearing. You knew that you couldn't lie. So you only swallowed sharply before smiling at him.

Azriel tilted his head to the side and said, "You're not fine, aren't you?" One of his hands came to rest on top of your forehead as if he were checking if you had a fever, but your skin was just as cold as before, if not more. Just like in the morning when he held you. Licking your lips that all of a sudden felt super dry, you mumbled, "Just a long night; I drained myself a little." This was partially a lie you told yourself, just a slightly prettier version of the truth, so he wouldn't worry too much.

"Then you should be in bed, not here," Azriel said a little too harshly, causing you to scoff. "I have my duties as well, and I'm quite okay; you don't have to worry." You turned away from Azriel, feeling extremely uneasy under his watch. You knew that if you showed even the slightest hint of discomfort, he was going to start throwing comments, and you didn't want to deal with that now. Azriel stood back and watched you pack your belongings. He didn't want to make you feel like he was overbearing or that he wanted to control you in some way. All he wanted to do was care for you.

It was only when you wobbled slightly, catching yourself on the stand in front of you, that Azriel stepped closer, hands firmly gripping your upper arm. You knew you couldn't hide it any longer. The last bit of energy you had was fully used up, and now you need to face the consequences. The weakness that floated over you made you lean your head onto Azriel's shoulder. The world in front of you started to spin.

The shadow singer slowly turned you toward him, his eyes going white at the sight of your face. He presumed that was blood trickling down your nose. And it would've been a clear sign of exhaustion that he wouldn't have questioned. Just your blood wasn't red; it was like a river of gold. And he would've asked some questions, but you collapsed in his arms. As the darkness overtook you, your body went completely limp.

When you didn't wake up after Azriel flew you home, the panic inside him rose even more. He knew you were life; he could feel it. Your heart was beating. Beat after a beat. But when the sound of your heartbeat started to get lighter and the fear of this being more serious than he had first thought filled Azriel's mind.

Now, sitting by your bed, he genuinely thought that what he did was more than irrational. He acted like a primal animal. That the fear overcame him. He became a madman. He knew he probably should've just gotten Madja and brought her to your house, but instead, he flew to the house of the wind. Rushing through the doors frantically screamed for someone to help him. Begging for someone to make sure that you were okay.

When Madja finished checking you, she told him it was just a simple burnout. A simple burnout. Azriel wanted to snarl at her and tell her that it wasn't just a simple coming out. The fact that you were burned out was a serious thing. But a part of him felt stupid as if he had made a mistake by bringing you here. He had brought everyone in onto how he felt, and now hiding it was going to be way harder. No, it was going to be impossible.

Azriel saw Rhys pulling Madja to the side to talk. He saw the way he and Cassian looked at him. Feyra had even come to comfort him. Your lover will be fine, she said. Lover. Azriel wanted to laugh. He didn't even have enough time yet to make sure that you felt the same. He didn't even know how he felt.

For a couple of hours, the spymaster just sat in a chair beside your bed, his bed, he had carried you there himself. Fidgeting with his knife, he felt his mind getting clouded again. Deep down, he had a feeling that you were going to hate that you were brought here. Azriel told himself that he shouldn't have but then the fear of losing you... No, he simply couldn't live with the thought of that. If this was how he felt even before the bond had fully snapped for the two of you, Mother above. Then how would this all feel if you two had accepted the golden thread that bound you?

The rattling of the sheets made Azriel's head snap toward the bed. "Hey", he whispered to you as he leaned closer, hand running over your forehead gently. "Hi", Your voice was barely audible, but even the fact that he got to hear your voice again was a relief. "I think my fearless warrior overstepped her boundaries", even if your eyes still look tired, as you glanced at him, Azriel could see that some of the sparkles that painted your beautiful emerald eyes had returned. You shook your head slightly, "Your warrior?", you questioned the spymaster, but he only nodded, "Yeah, and I'll have to figure out how to punish you for causing me such a fright."

As you took a look around the room, you realized that you were wearing a tiny house, your eyebrows were wrinkled. As if reading your mind, Azriel spoke, "You're in my room. I brought you here. I should have just brought you a healer... but I was scared... your heartbeat... and then the blood... I just," you squeezed his hand gently. Azriel was rambling, and he was clearly under a lot of stress; it didn't take a genius to figure that out. You could feel his hand trembling slightly as he too moved to hold onto you. As if he was still trying to make himself believe that you were here.

"Thank you for caring for me," you muttered softly, but Azrael only lowered his head into his hand. You could feel his mind getting clouded with thoughts. After minutes of silence, you finally did dare to ask, "You feel it too, don't you?", but it looked like something from within struck as his head shot up. He just stared at you.

Did you feel it too? No, you couldn't. It had to be one-sided. Someone like you could never fall in love with someone like him. That isn't going to happen. You were a threat only a short while ago. Azriel had only known your touch for such a short amount of time. He couldn't, he told himself,' shouldn't be addicted. It wasn't supposed to be true, and it wasn't true.

"The things that you're telling yourself right now are not true, Azriel", your thumb ran over the shell of his palm, "I felt your way before I came here. I came here because I felt you. I ran to safety, and it brought me here." You admitted that a lump in your throat was getting tighter, making it harder for you to speak. Azriel shook his head as he pulled away.

"I know that the fact that I feel your emotions frightens you. I know that you're not used to that, but I felt what you felt for so long, I...", you wanted to say so much more, but the words finally failed you as the tears started running down your face.

His silence scared you, and now more than ever, you debated if it was the right time to tell him. You only felt the bond snap into place this morning, right as he wrapped you up in his arms and when you finally felt the safety of his touch. As if decades of your cries had been answered, and finally, after all the pain and suffering, you had found your haven.

"Come here," Azriel said, climbing into bed with you and bringing your body closer as you let out a sob. Even if this frightened him, seeing you cry... No, he wasn't going to let you cry because of him, "You don't want the band?", pushing away, you looked at the shadow singer as if skimming for a clear enough sign that he was disappointed to be mated with someone like you.

"What? Of course, I want it; what are you talking about?", your bottom lip quivered again, and Azriel drew you closer to his chest. His mind was screaming at him that such outbursts of emotion weren't good for you, not now. Not when you were still so weak.

"Look at me," Azriel said after your sobs turned into hiccups, pulling away slightly so he could see your eyes. He wanted you to look him in the eyes, "I've never felt anything like this before and I still don't know what I did to deserve someone like you", "Don't say that, you're worth even more", Mother above did Azriel just wanted to kiss you all over your face now. 

"I just... Can we wait for a little before we", Azriel cupped your face once again before smiling at you, "There's no rush, take all the time you need", smiling at the shadow singer you leaned in to leave a kiss his cheek before pressing his hand to your lips as well. Azriel was about to say something when the doors opened slightly before an older-looking woman walked in.

"Ahh, look who's awake. You sure gave my boy a scare; I was terrified I would be stapled to the wall myself," she said, waving Azriel off the bed as she came closer to you and check on you once again. Azriel stayed by the bed, taking in every movement that Madja made. Ready to protest or help if that was needed. "Please accept my apologies; I'll make sure to teach him some manners," the healer laughed at your words before handing you a cup of delicious-smelling liquid. "Oh, I don't doubt it. Rest up for now. Azriel will bring you dinner to bed," she said, nodding her head towards the door. Azriel hesitated—the idea of leaving you alone didn't please him, but he knew Madja was going to scold him if he refused.

"I'll be back up as soon as I can. Is there anything you might be craving?", the shadow singer asked, leaning in to press a kiss to your forehead, which now felt much warmer. You shook your head and said, "Anything will do, just no meat." Azriel felt a burning need to go back to his room the minute he stepped away. He knew the magic house would make and bring whatever food you might have wanted to you but Madja had prepped something to make sure that you regained all the necessary nutrition that you had lost. Yet the moment he walked into the kitchen, he was met with both Cassian and Rhys. Oh great, he thought, not even Madja is working against him.

"How is she?", Rhys asked, and Azriel didn't even meet his eyes. It wasn't that he was ashamed of you or what you two had going on. He was afraid that this would make him appear weak. That they would look at him differently. "She's as good as she can be", from the corner of his eye the shadow singer saw Cassian walking closer to him. "So...," the male trailed off, already smiling. "So what?", Azriel knew that playing dumb wasn't going to save him because they could also sense it on him.

Letting out a sigh the spymaster lifted his eyes to look at his brothers, "She's... She's my mate", the silence fell upon them and for some reason, Azriel was waiting for one of them to tell him off but instead the room erupted with laughter as the two males embraced him. Pushing him around in a playful manner "When she's feeling better you two need to come to have dinner with us at the river house", Rhys clapped his brother on his chest, "And take good care of her because she deserves to finally know what happiness looks like", those words even if they were sweet and came from the heart made Azriel stiffen up again. He still knew so little of you. He still needed to figure out more about the camps. But not now. Now you needed to get better. That was the important part.

"Do I and Nesta need to flee the house? Cause if you want to fu...", but Rhys quickly placed a hand onto Cassian's mouth, not wanting to test the limits of a male who had just found his mate. But Azriel only laughed, causing both Rhys and Cassian to look at each other. "I'll ask her about the dinner," he said before walking away, hoping to hold you through the night without any distractions.

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#azriel x reader #azriel x you #rhys x reader #cassian x reader

[dailyunsolvedmysteries]

The 1973 Pascagoula Alien Abduction

On the night of October 11, 1973, co-workers Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker were fishing on the Pascagoula River in Mississippi when the two men suddenly heard a hissing sound coming behind them. When they turned around, they saw an oval-shaped craft hovering in the air and flashing blue lights. A door on the craft opened, and three robot-like creatures floated down toward Hickson’s and Parker’s boat. The creatures were about 5 feet tall, with gray wrinkled skin, clawed hands, and slits for eyes and a mouth. The two men found themselves paralyzed and unable to resist being grabbed by the creatures. Parker fainted at this point, and they were then floated up into the spaceship with their abductors. According to Hickson, he was taken into a room full of light and examined by an oval-shaped probe that circled around his body. When the probe had finished its examination, the creatures floated out of the room and then floated Hickson back outside after 20 minutes. Hickson found Parker on the shore, crying and praying.  The spaceship then left, and Hickson and Parker went into their car to calm down and try to make sense of what happened.

Although afraid that nobody would believe them, Hickson and Parker called the Kessler Air Force Base, which recommended that they report the incident to the local sheriff. At first, the sheriff and his deputies were skeptical and thought the men were drunk. When they left Hickson and Parker alone in a room with a secret tape recorder, however, they continued to talk as though the experience were real. At one point, Hickson told Parker, “It scared me to death too, son. You can’t get over it in a lifetime. Jesus Christ have mercy.” The story appeared on local newspaper headlines the next day, and soon news reporters and UFO investigators were crawling all over Pascagoula and harassing Hickson and Parker at their workplace. Hundreds of UFO sightings in Mississippi were reported in the next couple of weeks, including an encounter by some Coast Guardsmen with a glowing object moving underwater in the Pascagoula River. 

While Parker initially tried to keep his distance from the incident, Hickson gave media interviews and lectures about his experience, even visiting local schools. In 1983, he published “UFO Contact at Pascagoula” with investigator William Mendez, a full-fledged (and rare) book about the encounter and three incidents of psychic telecommunication he said that he received in 1974. Until he passed away in September 2011, Hickson continued to insist that the story was true and that the creatures he saw were peaceful aliens concerned about the earth. After participating in some hypnotic sessions, Parker recovered vague memories about what had happened that night. Unlike Hickson, he was wary of the attention he attracted, and eventually moved out of the state. Over the past two decades, he has become more open to interviews and has even participated in UFO conventions. 

#The 1973 Pascagoula Alien Abduction #aliens #ufos #creepy #weird

[would-this-pokemon-be-a-friend]

have you done clodsire or quagsire yet?

(I haven't, so I flipped a coin and ended up landing on quagsire!)

A quagsire may be a lot for a lot of pet owners to handle, but it would certainly not be out of the question for someone with the right resources that knows what they're getting into.

See, quagsires love to swim. Or maybe it'd be better to say they like to float, or maybe even just sit, in water. In the wild, quagsires live in rivers (Crystal), even popping up often in those that are busy with human activity and boats (Gold). We don't know exactly what quagsires eat, but we know that they catch their prey by remaining as still as possible with their mouths held wide open, waiting for prey to swim right into them (Ruby/Sapphire). They don't move a lot (Ruby/Sapphire) but they spend a lot, if not almost all, of their time in the water. Having a pet quagsire would require having constant access to water for them to spend their time in. They are known to not get hungry quickly due to their sluggish lifestyle (Ruby/Sapphire), but they are not too clever (Pearl), so it is possible that a quagsire wouldn't maintain a healthy diet outside of their natural habitat and may become malnourished. They're not active hunters, so it would be important, when keeping one, to seek ways to either replicate their wild hunting behavior by releasing live prey into a controlled water environment or to find ways to hand-feed them that don't lead to them becoming lazy or overweight.

Given quagsires' size, handling these needs would be no easy task. Not many people have constant access to a body of water that is big enough for a four foot creature to spend all day in, unless they are willing to give up a pool to become their new buddy's hangout spot. Luckily, they aren't picky about their habitats: they are well known to be easy-going and carefree, not minding when they bump into obstacles like boats or rocks (Gold, FireRed).

Quagsires are, for the most part, not very dangerous. However, they are capable of using two moves that had a large impact on their score: Earthquake and Toxic. Earthquake is one of the most concerning moves that a pokémon can learn, since it can wreck haoc on your home and poses a risk to everyone inside it. Toxic allows quagsires to, with high accuracy, inflict a target with a bad poisoning that worsens over time. Quagsires are not known to be very aggressive given their care-free lifestyle, but we must consider that accidents do happen, and this pokémon, for whatever reason, can cause a lot of destruction to your home and body.

Quagsires are pretty laid back pokémon. They'd make a great buddy, and they're cute to boot. If you are able to provide an environment that simulates their wild habitat for their health and happiness, and are aware of the unlikely, but possible, chance of a dangerous incident, a quagsire may be a good pet for you. I'd suggest that newer water-type pet owners start off with something smaller, like a wooper or a fish pokémon, to get used to caring for an aquatic pet, but if you are determined to dive right in with this big fella it can't go that wrong.

#pokémon #pokemon #quagsire #pkmn irl #PR-C

[robislav1986-blog]

I’ve been reading a lot of posts in the Dracula Daily tag where first time readers note how surprised they were at how well Bram Stoker is able to portray trauma in his characters. I felt it was worth mentioning that there’s a bit of history from his personal life that may shed light on that. In 1882, Bram Stoker received the bronze medal from the Royal Humane Society. It was awarded to him for his efforts in rendering aid to a drowning victim.

According to reports of the incident, Stoker was traveling via steamboat when he witnessed a fellow passenger deliberately jump into the Thames River. Stoker dove in after the man and tried to keep his head above water until they were picked up by a boat. When attempts to revive the man failed there, Stoker proceeded to *carry* the stranger to his house, laid him upon his kitchen table, and called his brother, a doctor, to render medical aid. Ultimately, they were unable to resuscitate the man.

The man that Bram Stoker tried to rescue remained unidentified, though some thought he may have been a soldier due to some branding on his skin and a missing finger from some previous injury. 

Knowing that about Bram Stoker, it’s no surprise that he was able to present PTSD in a nuanced and sincere manner after having that kind of encounter with death. And given mainstream Christianity’s position on suicide being a mortal sin, it’s not hard to infer that Stoker’s efforts were motivated by the desire to save not just a man’s life, but his very soul as well. Even with all of Stoker’s efforts, the man’s death would have weighed pretty heavily on his mind. It’s only natural to assume that Stoker must have carried a considerable level of guilt from that experience.

So yeah, I think the reason that Stoker portrayed PTSD so well is that he was probably unpacking his own trauma through his writing.

With that in mind, it’s not hard to draw parallels between this real-life tragedy and Lucy’s death in the novel. One was a nameless (possible) soldier who had presumably been forsaken by society and had nowhere else to turn, and the other was a bright young woman who was struck down in her youth when her adult life was only just beginning. And this is ultimately what makes Abraham van Helsing Bram Stoker’s self-insert. Like Stoker, Van Helsing was presented a stranger in desperate need of help, whose life and very soul were on the line. And, like Stoker, Van Helsing proceeded to move heaven and earth, doing everything in his power to save this individual. And still came up short.

I also think that a lot of Bram Stoker’s qualities are reflected in the other characters as well, and not just the protagonists. A lot of commenters have remarked on Dracula having so many characters who do good for its own sake, whether its a small coastal community giving a hero's burial to a brave sea captain or a handful of peasants risking the wrath of a supernatural being to save a traveling solicitor. It’s easy to see how such portrayals of universal goodness can come across as trite or insincere, but it’s wholly earnest when portrayed by Stoker, because the characters’ capacity for courage and kindness are a reflection of the moral fortitude of a man who wouldn’t hesitate to jump into a river to save the life of a stranger.

I can picture Stoker, hunched over his writing, trying to come up with the words to properly convey the tragedy of Lucy. He pauses and his gaze falls upon that bronze medal, a reminder of his valiant but futile efforts to save a lost soul he encountered by total happenstance. It’s not hard to imagine him writing those scenes while remembering that night where he stood in his kitchen, clothes still damp from his dive into the Thames, listening to the doctors as they solemnly tell him that there’s nothing more that can be done.

Ultimately, what sets Van Helsing apart from his creator is that Stoker was able to give Van Helsing a second chance. The Dutch physician was ultimately able to redeem his failure by saving others from Lucy’s fate. There may have been some level of catharsis for Stoker in writing the triumph of his heroes, and I like to think he found some level of peace in that.

#dracula #dracula daily #dracula spoilers #bram stoker #lucy westenra #abraham van helsing #cw suicide #cw drowning

[maggie4thewin]

Heyyyyy, guess what!!!!

I finally decided to contribute to the Roy × Spewart ship and write my own fanfiction! The ship was originally my idea, after all! It's a sick-fic(?) with Dieter related elements.

And keep in mind, I am @thekoopalingsandstuffs 's sister, so I have inside knowledge on settings n' stuff like that :D

It was a cold November moring, roughly a month or so after the "Dieler incident" occurred, which still lingered in the back of Spewart's mind. Spewart had at least semi gotten over the events. He was still completely traumatized by that night and would certainly never forget about it, sure, but he was well on his way to leaving it in the past. His siblings had stopped bringing Dee up every chance they got, and Ludwig, too, seemed to go back to normal behavior.

Spewart himself was doing quite a good job at keeping his mind away from Dieter by doing fun activities like kniting, reading, writing, and more. That was why he was getting over it so well. He kept himself distracted . But today was different. Today was not a good day. From the moment Spewart woke up, he knew today would not be a good day. He was sick. It took only a few moments once he woke up to realize it. The way his head pounded, his throat felt tight, his nose was stuffed, and his stomach felt. Well, the same way it always did--But everything he felt was awful.

Spewart, with the permission of Madame Broode, drove his siblings to school, then immediately drove back home and was now laying on the couch with a blanket lazily tossed over his body, alone. Very much alone. Alone with his thoughts. He couldn't knit a scarf, read a novel, or write a poem if he wanted to, so with nothing else to do, his mind started spewing unwanted thoughts at him which he was forced to listen to. Those thoughts started off fine. Old, embarrassing, cringey memories from the past. Simple. then those turned into more recent memories of things he'd done, like losing his cool and snapping at people who never did anything wrong, because he was so stressed about goddamm Dieter.

Now Spewart's mind was fully on Dieter. The way Dieter looked, the things that Dieter had said, the way that Dieter behaved. Dieter... Raping him. Dieter dying. Dieter getting tossed off a boat and into a river. Dieter going missing on the news. It was just. Dieter. For nearly ten straight minutes, Dieter was all Spewart could think about. Spewart was nearly paralyzed, unable to direct his thoughts elsewhere. By now, he'd realized that he was thinking about Dieter, but he couldn't think about anything else. And he sure tried. But after five more minutes, he gave up and let his thoughts spiral down about Dieter.

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. It completely caught Spewart off-guard and fully snapped him out of his trance. He sat still for a moment, processing what just happened, then there was another knock, finally getting Spewart up from his seat and over to the door. He assumed it was Madame Broode, likely forgetting her key or something. Who else would it be? Well, Roy was probably one of the last people Spewart had been expecting. Once the door was open, the two stared at each other in silence for a bit. "Um. Hi," Roy finally said. Spewart blinked. "What are you doing here?"

"Well, I got out of school early 'cuz I had an appointment, but that appointment got canceled, and I didn't really feel like going back to school, then I remembered one of your siblings saying that you were sick, so I decided to just pop by and check in on you!" Roy's rambling ended and the two went back to being silent. "... Come in?" Spewart eventually mumbled, backing up to allow Roy through. Roy's appearance was definitely unexpected. Even though he just gave an explanation, Spewart still felt confused. To be honest, he and Roy weren't close friends or anything like that. So why did Roy feel the need to check in on him? Or not just simply text him? Spewart didn't actually ask any of these inquiries out loud, but he still wondered them.

Once in the living room, Spewart quickly sat back down on the couch. He felt weak and really couldn't keep standing. The couch was black with a silky texture which contrasted with the ivory, almost white blanket Spewart had that he had actually knitted himself! Next to the couch was a small table where a little tissue box sat. And beside the table was a mini trash bin and a silver bucket. Roy decided to give Spewart some space and sat down in a grey chair on the opposite side of the room. "So... How are you feeling?" Roy chipperly asked. "Um... Not horrible, but still definitely not good," Spewart explained. He truly didn't feel like talking to anyone, but didn't want to be rude.

Roy himself didn't really know what to do here, but he wanted to help Spewart. "Can l get you anything?" Spewart was about to say no when he remembered, "Well, there's a blue pill bottle on the counter next to the fridge. Can you please bring that to me?" Roy quickly got up and brought over the pill bottle as well as a glass of orange juice to help swallow it. Spewart hadn't even asked for that! Of all the drinks available in the fridge, orange juice actually happened to be Spewart's favorite. Was it just a coincidence, or did Roy somehow know that it was his favorite? Or did he just get orange juice because it's known for being full of vitamins? Spewart didn't know, nor did he ask--He quickly took the pill and swallowed it before profusely thanking Roy.

Roy sat back down and smiled. "I'm used to helping all of my younger siblings when they're sick. I'm sort of the '"group mom,'" he explained, which got a small chuckle out of Spewart. Truth be told, Spewart reminded Roy a lot of Ludwig. They were both very sweet, smart, and easily-frightened individuals. What Roy didn't know yet was just how much easier to frighten Spewart was than Ludwig. That being said, Roy knew a surprising amount about Spewart after only a few months of knowing him. And not just the basic stuff that everyone seemed to know. Roy knew that Spewart used to vape to help with stress. And he knew that Spewart had at least considered suicide, which it appeared that not even his own siblings knew about.

Spewart began to get up from the couch, but as he attempted to do so, he felt a sharp pain in his back, causing him to loudly squeak and sit back down, getting Roy to look over. Spewart, ever since he got pushed by Dieter into the alley, had minor back problems. He somewhat struggled to stand up without pain. Instead, Roy got up and ran over to Spewart. "What's wrong?" "Nothing! I was just, trying to get up." "Get up for what? Here, you stay down, I will get whatever it is you need!" "... I was trying to go to the bathroom..." "Oh..." That, of course, sounded like something Ludwig would say... After thinking for a moment, Roy scooped Spewart up off the couch into his arms and held him like a baby. Despite being close to the same size, lifting Spewart was in no way difficult to Roy.

"Woah, what are you doing?!?!" Spewart yelped. "Helping!" Roy answered cheerully as he began to run off with the bunny to the bathroom. Roy didn't realize it until he'd set Spewart down, but the poor bunny was completely shaking and breathing very heavily. "Oh... Hey, are you okay?!" Spewart didn't answer. What just happened had completely terrified him. It was something that Dieter would do... Well... Okay, Dieter would never princess-carry Spewart to assist him in accessing the restroom. But the picking him up without warning seemed like something he would do if he was able to. And in the moment, Spewart didn't know where Roy was taking him! All of that happening in one moment just, made him freak out.

There Spewart stood, trembling in one spot and hyperventilating, starting to have a panic attack, as Roy, who just wanted to help, stood in front of him, unsure what to do. "Spewart!" Roy called his name. No response. He did it again. After the ninth time, Spewart finally looked up at him. "I'm sorry!" Roy told him frantically. Spewart didn't respond still, but after a minute or two, he stopped shaking and stood still. "Are you okay...?" Roy asked, sounding very, VERY worried. "........." Spewart slowly nodded. Before Roy could say anything else, the bunny swiftly made his way into the unoccupied bathroom, which Roy patiently and nervously waited outside the door of.

Spewart soon exited, and before Roy could say anything, HE started frantically apologizing to Roy for frightening HIM with his own panic. "Woah, woah, woah! Hey, it's okay! l was just trying to make sure you were alright! And... Well, are you okay? What happened?" Spewart remained sient for a few seconds before speaking. "I-I just... Wasn't expecting to be picked up so suddenly." "Oh... I understand. Well, l'm sorry!! I didn't mean to scare you! I do that to Ludwig all the time when he has to go... I guess I should have asked first." Roy looked down the fairly long hall that led back to the living room. "Hm... Do I have your permission to pick you up and carry you back over there?"

Spewart seemed a bit caught off-guard by the question but ultimately nodded. Roy, more slowly and gently now, picked Spewart up and began walking down the hall. Now, for whatever reason, Spewart didn't feel scared. He actually sort of felt. Good? Being in Roy's arms made him feel warm and safe. Something that Dieter never made him feel... Before he knew it, Roy had set him down on the couch and was making his way back to the chair. "Wait!" Spewart suddenly called. Roy looked back at him. "Um... Can you stay next to me? Please?" Roy quickly turned around and sat next to Spewart without question. In that moment, Spewart felt a little guilty, realizing he could possibly get Roy sick. But Roy didn't seem to care.

The two sat happily together. At some point, Roy was asked to get the remote, so now they were watching My Little Pony. Spewart felt a bit embarrassed that he had requested this, but Roy still didn't seem to mind at all! If MLP was what Spewart wanted to watch, then Roy would watch it! Soon, an hour and a half had gone by. In that time, Roy had made the two of them sandwiches, Spewert had taken three more pills, the duo watched SEVERAL episodes of MLP, and took the chain-chomp (Chompikins) out together. By the end of the second hour, Spewart did not want to leave Roy's side. He felt oddly connected to him.

After all that time had passed, Spewart was beginning to feel sleepy. Roy casually wrapping his arms around the bunny made him feel even more cozy and sleepy. Spewart was beginning to drift away when he was suddenly awoken by his phone notification sound. He had changed the sound not too long ago because the old one gave him fash-backs from when Dieter would try to call him non-stop... The notification was coming from the fact that someone, Hariet, had texted him. The text itself was innocent. Something about how Hariet had won a bunch of candy as a prize for something in class and wanted to know if Spewart wanted her to save some for him. As he was texting, "Yes," it suddenly occurred to Spewart that the man he was snuggling and felt so connected to happened to be Hariet's boyfriend. Or, well that's what he was supposed to be.

After the text was sent, Spewart looked up at Roy. Roy looked back at him and smiled. "You okay? Need something?" "No, I um... I just have a question for you." "Oh?" "What are your thoughts on Hariet?" Roy looked a bit puzzled. "I mean... I like her, but... You know how things between her and I have been going. Not well. And I'm sure that by now, she's given up on our relationship. It's been quite a while since our last date, and we haven't spoken much since then... Why do you ask?" "No reason!" "Ah, okay!"

The room went back to silent after that interaction, minus the sound of the TV, until Spewart happened to notice a small buzzing noise near him. He soon realized that it was Roy... Purring! The sound of a koopa purring was certainly odd to Spewart. He'd never heard any koopa do it before. And he used to live with koopas! While he was in the foster care system... So purring must not be a common occurrence, he thought. And Roy soon thought nearly the same thing as he heard faint, happy squeaks coming from Spewart. Squeaks that Spewart didn't even realize he had been making! The squeaks sounded very congested due to the bunny being sick, but Roy really didn't care! He thought they were cute.

One more hour had gone by, and the duo were still happily sitting together, watching the TV. All was well until Spewart suddenly jerked up straight with one hand over his mouth and his whole body pulsating. "Are you okay??" Roy instanty asked, looking over. He soon realized what was happening, so he grabbed the bucket that was next to his leg and immediately handed it to Spewart. Within seconds, Spewart was vomiting into the bucket, just as Roy suspected would happen. Roy was unsure what to do now but quickly thought of something. Being as gentle as possible, he started pulling Spewart's hair back so it wouldn't get in the way or get vomit in it. After holding the hair back for a bit, Roy realized he had one of his bracelets on and started using that as a hair tie, tying up Spewart's hair into a ponytail.

Soon, the vomiting stopped. Spewart pulled the full bucket away from his face and groaned. "... Sorry you had to see that, Roy... Here, I'll go-" "No no, I got it!" Roy took the bucket out of Spewart's hands and rushed into the bathroom, pouring it down into the toilet, (Which conveniently had the seat already up-) flushing it, washed out the bucket in the sink, and retured. Upon returning to the living room, Roy finally got a good look at Spewart with his hair tied up. And oh jeez, Roy certainly liked the sight of that. He froze up and stiffened for a second before being met with Spewart's nervous regret-filled eyes, which put him back into movement.

"There, all better!" Roy quickly assured as he sat back down and placed the clean bucket on the floor. Spewart had gotten his face cleaned up while Roy was gone and was now trying to apologize to him again. "I'm so sorry, Roy, I didn't mean to-" "Hey, it's okay! Don't apologize! It's not your fault! And nothing bad happened! All of it got in the bucket, right?" Spewart shamefully nodded. Yet all the shame seemed to fade into nothing as Roy wrapped his ams back around Spewart. The quiet, happy squeaks soon started back up, as did Roy's purring.

Two more hours had gone by with no issue. Both the bunny and the koopa were so calm and relaxed in each other's arms. Not thinking much of it, Roy began to reach across Spewart's lap to grab the remote that was under his thigh. Roy felt a bit hungry and assumed Spewart felt the same way, so he was planning to prepare them some more food. He, of course, had to pause the show to do that. His hand was just a few inches above Spewart's hips as it slowly crept by. Suddenly, seeing the hand out of the corner of his eye in THAT AREA, Spewart screamed and jumped up, causing Roy to jump back and also freak out.

Ever since the Dieter incident, whenever someone touched or had their hand near the lower half of his body without warning, Spewart immediately began to freak out. He couldn't help it. One day, Rango happened to notice a loose thread on Spewart's sweat pants. He casually started to pull on it without saying anything, not thinking much of it, but when Spewart felt it, it immediately sent him into hysterics with seemingly no explanation as to why.

"Dude, what's the matter??" Roy shouted, clearly frightened by Spewart's sudden outburst. "I-I um..." Spewart mumbled, now realizing how unwarranted his scream and jump was. But Roy kept looking at him with concern. He wanted an answer. "I just thought you were trying to... Do something..." "Do what?" Spewart gave a few vague hand gestures, unsure how to describe it. Finally, he uttered, "Dieter did something to me one time, and I've been kinda jumpy whenever people... Um... Uh..." His sentence trailed off in the end. "What did Dieter do to you??" Roy demanded, now way more concerned with that than Spewart's initial freak-out. Spewart stood silent for... A long time. But eventually, he spoke.

.........

"So, now you know... Just... Don't tell anyone I told you about this... Especially not Ludwig... Please, Roy, I'm begging you..." Roy, too, was silent for quite a while. But he nodded in the end. "I won't... " He silently promised. And that was that. "Can I get you anything?" Roy suddenly asked, as if nothing had happened. Spewart's eyes widened with a bit of surprise. "I was going to make more sandwiches. But do you want that?" "I... Um... Sure..." And with Spewart's permission, Roy carefully carried him into the kitchen and made the two some sandwiches to share.

[sidhedust]

Well, folks wanted more worldbuilding and pre-Arc 1 sketches of concepts and characters that don’t come up until later-so here’s an assortment of neighbors! In order, from left to right, we have the malachite sprite, a veil sprite, a sea sprite, and a river spirit, gratuitously called a dragon in Tovera’s folklore.

Like the fairies of the Emerald Isles, these guys used to be humanoids with magic prowess and sprawling civilizations, ruling the earth, sky, and sea before humans came along. Eventually, they became spirits of many shapes and sizes due to the magic of the mortal realm becoming weak over time.

More info under the cut!

Malachite sprites and other gem-like sprites are seen in the mountains to the northeast, the Mountains of the Four. They can bend the earth, and fuse gems into their bodies for defense and fashion. If they like someone (usually because they fed them) they’ll leave crudely made jewelry in their windowsill or doormat. These folk appear in the folklore of the Ichor clan, Wyver clan, and the dwarven clans of the mountains, often seen represented in statues in front of mines, old murals in the mountains, and in stories about Ichor and dwarven brides being dolled up in jewels by them.

Magi on the west coast of Tovera see a lot of these slug-like sea sprites, especially when it’s warm-they are friendly to humans, but mages shoo them away from beaches to avoid any magic based incidents. Similar to selkies, many stories exist of slug women falling for fishermen on land. They range in size, being as small as the animals they resemble to being around the size of an adult human. They appear in the folklore of the Lagaos clan and Anfini clan, the former living from the beaches to the lakes of the land, and the latter living mostly on the coast.

The shimmering, opalescent veil sprites double as wind sprites, and can be found anywhere. They attend to the Veil, monitoring it and repairing it when it’s disturbed by magic anomalies. When they aren’t doing that, they’re pranking humans and neighbors alike, using their power over wind, glamour and perception to bend and twist the veil and freak mortals and neighbors out-mortals are skeptical of the neighbor’s existence, and neighbors don’t like being seen, so it’s a fast way to get a scare out of both and a laugh for yourself. Because they’re everywhere, they appear in a lot of clan’s folklore, both human and odd folk alike, usually as a type of wind spirit.

Lastly, the spirits of rivers, the curly-furred, humanish faced dragons, are a rare sight. Many mages haven’t seen one in their lifetimes. It is said that they live in houses made of sand, shells, and water based plants smashed together at the bottom of rivers, either solitarily or in a small pod of other dragon spirits. Like eastern dragons, these neighbors are long and noodle-like, and to travel they gather water vapor to make clouds to walk on. What little is known about them is that river towns, like…well, Dragonriver, have lots of art and festivals centering these beings, often appearing as symbols of good fortune-it’s said that those who take a lantern boat, place waterfowl, fish, or fresh fruit on it, and send it downstream will have a great fishing/hunting season, and the river won’t flood the town next season.

#sidhedust art #concept art #spirits #nature spirits #the malachite sprite is an eyesore (affectionate) #I’ve always wanted to make a gem people so I’m happy I hashed one out #the size for them isn’t mentioned but they range from to your calves to the size of a young child #so like to your stomach or even chest #veil sprites are about the size of a flat hand. and the dragons range from big dogs to classic eastern dragon noodle size

[permettez-moi]

The burning bridge audiobook thinkies:

So you are telling me that in the burning bridge alone, we discover Halt has not only tossed a baron into the moat, but he also yeeted Gilan in the river before making him his apprentice, I fear that's where it started (or maybe he's dealing with his past trauma xD)

Also the fact that Halt basically yeeted the baron in the moat bc he missed Will so much

Halt admitting that his grim face is trained 'cultivated over the years'

The reader of the audiobook reads Alyss as al-iece/ al-is / al-ise (he kind of drawls out the 'yss' part of her name, instead of saying Alice, which is how I say it in my head, which is therefor the only correct way, so it hurts my ears

ALYSS BRINGING UP THE MOAT INCIDENT

HAHAHAH I'M DYING TO THE FACT THAT ALYSS BASICALLY SAID SHE'S SCARED WILL WILL TURN OUT LIKE HALT (grim and silent) (also the fact that, when Alyss died Will did turn so brb crying)

I am obsessed with Gil fangirling about Horace's swordmanship

OMG OMG OMG the scene where Halt and Alyss are out to convince that one absolute asshole of a baron(?) To hand over troops to Arald, because he has refused before, claiming independence from Redmond fief, and he is being a misogynistic shit, and Halt steps up, SAYING HE IS TO ADRESS ALYSS AS 'LADY ALYSS' AND NOT AS GIRL OR SWEETHEART OMMGGGG I AM FANGIRLING SO MUCH, MY HEARTBEAT GOT RAISED FROM THIS

I am dying please help

THE BOOK STATES THAT HALTS BOW IS 60 KG, AND BECAUSE HE HAS TO DRAW IT OFTEN AND EASILY, HIS ARM PROLLY HOLD A LOT MORE STRENGTH THAN THAT, AND I GENUINELY DON'T MEAN THIS IN A HOE WAY, BUT I WEIGH BETWEEN 60-70 KG MEANING HALT COULD PICK ME UP WITH EASE, AND IT IS DOING THINGS TO ME

3 people. Halt has, so far, tossed 3 people in moats. I always thought it was just the one guy. (And Gil isn't technically a moat, but I am counting it)

Let's not talk about Halt kind of crushing on Alyss after she kisses him on the cheek. Let's just pretend it doesn't excist

EVANLYN EVANLYN EVANLYN

Not Gil saying he'll hang the bandits

Okay okay, hear me out, Evanlyn/Gil (or Cas/Gil)

Poor Duncan thinking Cassie is dead makes me cry

Crying again at Duncan discovering Cassie is still alive

The small detail that Arald, too, was sad about Will being kidnapped

Halt crying about Will

Okay but Gil seeing Horace's move with the dagger before anyone else is a really fun detail

Morgarath is called insane here, and I think it really works

RODNEY SCREAMING TO LIL BABY HORACE BC HE'S AL WORRIED AND UPSEt

The scene at the boat between Halt and Will is being listened to in class, and my emotions are very hard to contain

Help I finished it already, but it's like €10 for each book, and they're only about 10h of listening time, which is approximately a full school day (I listend while I work) and when I tell you I don't have to money for this 😭😭 (any of you know where I can 'loan' the books read by William Zappa?)

#ranger's apprentice #ra #rangers apprentice #john flanagan #the burning bridge

[aita-blorbos]

AITA for having a one-night stand/cheating on my husband/messing up confessing it to my husband?

Hi! So my (24F) dad (50M) recently (as in: *very* recently) sent in an AITA about killing the guy I had a one-night stand with (it’s titled “AITA for killing the guy my daughter was having an affair with/handling this situation poorly?”, I’ll try to add a link), so I thought I would write in because well, I was there and I have my own problems.

So additional backstory/information:

Yes, my husband (28M) is a clergyman. HOWEVER, I didn’t know that when I met him. We met a couple years ago when his boat wrecked and washed up outside our village and I rescued him. He was running from the police (because like. our country didn’t like Protestants for a bit. don’t ask.) and stayed with us under a false name, only revealing his true name and occupation around the time we got married.

And then he got called away to go abroad for several months for work and didn’t take me with him. I really don’t know why he didn’t, but. He just straight-up didn’t take me. I *could* have gone with him. It’s not like I had anything on my calendar. But he didn’t take me.

(Also, before he left my cousins [33M, who’s also my ex-fiancé, don’t ask; and 25F] came to stay with us, as did The Guy [27M].)

So I was left with three houseguests, one overbearing dad, one church congregation that’s basically just the population of the village, no husband, and pretty much nothing to do. And also my husband didn’t write very often.

So The Guy started acting really weird and trying to flirt with me, but I was having absolutely none of it at first. But as weeks and months went by, pretty much complete silence. I acknowledge in retrospect that there may have been mail issues or sabotage or whatever, but at this point I wasn’t getting ANYTHING from my husband. I love him dearly but I was really starting to resent all this and I felt like I was less important to him than his work was.

And The Guy took advantage of this. Not like That, but there was definitely some emotional manipulation going on and I know I should’ve recognized it then and I do now, but yeah, to kinda quote my dad: long story short, one thing led to another and we did indeed end up having a one-night stand. The morning after, he fled my bedroom at dawn, taking with him a bunch of letters and my wedding ring, and jumped into the river by our house. He survived that, obviously.

But I was consumed with guilt and regret basically from the moment it happened and became so sick from it that I was bedridden for several days. The Guy (who’s trained as a doctor, I don’t think my dad mentioned that) tried to come “treat me” several times, but I refused to let him in every time.

Anyway, eight days after The Incident, my husband returned home (and yes, it was also our wedding anniversary the day he came home, which just makes all this worse). So it turns out my husband totally heard the whole story about The Guy’s escape from a boatman who happened to witness it and also gave the letters he dropped to my husband, but my husband is (was?) a big believer in the power of unconditional forgiveness and burned the papers rather than reveal who was involved.

And then after everyone welcomed him home, we had some time alone. And it was…hard. Especially because he spent a lot of time talking about how while he was abroad he witnessed a lot of women cheating on their husbands and one of the things that kept him going was that he remembered me and that I wasn’t like that. Oops. So I asked him if he would forgive me if I did something like that and he said no. And then I got upset, and then he saw that my wedding ring was missing and demanded to know where it went. And well, I was too flustered and couldn’t really tell him so he got really upset.

Well, this is starting to get really long so I’m just gonna say that my dad, complicated feelings I may have about him, honestly summed most of it up pretty well (except, Dad, you were going to KILL YOURSELF??? REALLY??? AFTER YOU TOLD ME I HAD TO SUFFER AND BEAR IT???), so I’m just going to add a few bullet points:

-Yes, I did decide to write a letter telling my husband everything and yes, my dad DID tell me to destroy it because if I confessed what happened, our family would be disgraced and my husband would kill himself.

-The Guy kept trying to get me to sleep with him again. (The “homecoming party dumbass” incident involved him trying to smuggle a letter arranging a meeting with me inside a book to which we both had keys. And then when that didn’t work he FOLLOWED ME TO MY MOM’S GRAVE WHILE I WAS HAVING A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN. I told him to give me back my stuff and then leave forever. He said no.)

-Yes, I did confess everything to my husband. No, I did not know my dad had already accidentally revealed everything. Yes, my husband did try to kill The Guy after he refused a duel challenge. No, he did not actually kill him.

-Although my husband DID also say he was never going to forgive me and and cursed me or something, but in his defense he was kind of losing it at the moment and he passed out shortly thereafter.

-Yes, my husband did offer me a divorce. Yes, I initially refused because I do still love him and I absolutely did NOT want to marry The Guy. I did eventually accept, however, only because 19th century marriage rules are weird and say that my husband doesn’t have to listen to me. But if we’re not married, he *has* to listen to me because he’s a clergyman and I’m technically a member of the congregation. So I accepted the divorce only to be able to tell him my full side of the story and to tell him the truth: in spite of everything, I still love him truly.

-Yes, I am absolutely horrified that my father murdered him. Am I mad? Yes. Am I going to hold it against him? No. This is a shitty situation for everyone, and it’s by and large my fault.

So yeah—I am well aware that I am the asshole, or at least one of several assholes. My coming here is less about that and more about a) presenting my side of the story and b) asking a related question that doesn’t have its own subreddit before we have a whole meeting/service about it: is there any chance I have of being forgiven, by God and/or by my husband?

So: AITA, WIBF (will I be forgiven), thanks in advance, and God bless!

#aita #am i the asshole #unreality #suicide mention #incest mention