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#sometimes i ruminate over people i used to know like... four years ago
turtletaubwrites · 2 months
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I've got the bad brains sometimes, and I hope you don't mind. Please scroll by if you don't want to see a personal/mental health update/vent.
Medical leave is over, and I've noticed that with stress ramping up, my OCD symptoms are also flaring.
I had pretty much stopped using any form social media for the past few years because of OCD. I feel an intense pressure to make sure that every single thing I put out into the world is perfect, and won't hurt or offend anyone, to the point where I will ruminate and fixate over a single exclamation point in a text message for hours/days (and often just give up and decide to never interact again), etc.
I realized lately that since I started writing 4 months ago, I've been super afraid to read fics from my wonderful fellow writers if it involves characters I'm currently writing about because I'm terrified of accidentally stealing ideas. But now I'm feeling guilty that I haven't been as supportive and interactive as I should or want to be, and I don't know how to balance those conflicting feelings without seeming disingenuous. Plus, I'm still so terrified of stealing ideas, I'm not sure how to cope with that one yet.
I've also been feeling guilty because I've gained so many followers so quickly, and I know that it's only because I was on medical leave and hyperfixated on this, and wrote so many things so fast.
I'm trying to work through it, but unfortunately my ADHD diagnosis has prevented me from making a lot of progress since I had to drop my exposure response prevention therapy because I couldn't remember to do the things.
Not to mention the fact that the only reason I was able to start writing four months ago was because I had my first bipolar episode since being diagnosed and medicated for 3 years. The imposter syndrome monster has been growing stronger.
I'm sorry for the vent. I just really love it here. And I'm afraid with my symptoms acting up, I might get too freaked out to be seen by the world.
I'm afraid I'll get even more scared than I already am to try to make friends. I'm afraid I will question everything I write until I can't post a single thing. I'm afraid I'll disappear from here just like I have from so many other lovely places because of the weight that my brain puts on every action, every word, and every inaction, every single thing that I do that could be perceived by others.
Being here, writing, and sharing has meant so much to me, and it saved me during medical leave. Interacting with people here has been wonderful, and I wish I was comfortable enough to reach out more.
Thank you for reading this. I'm just fighting the OCD real bad right now, and I really don't want it to stop me from writing and being here with all of you.
(Posting this and not deleting it will be good ocd work. Just gotta not drive myself insane over it.)
(Come on Lynna, you've read and edited this too many times already. Just post it.)
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onestowatch · 3 years
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Lowertown Is Growing Up [First Look + Q&A]
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Photo: Shamshawan Scott
Olivia Osby and Avsha Weinberg always knew they wanted to make music. The difficult part came when the inevitable questions of how and with who would arise. At least that was the case until a chance encounter in a high school math class in suburban Atlanta, which would eventually serve as the birthplace for Lowertown. Now, a few odd years later Olivia and Avsha find themselves signed to Dirty Hit, home to the likes of The 1975 and beabadoobee, and aiming to make their most ambitious project to date.
“The Gaping Mouth,” a sprawling confessional that blends soft-spoken lyricism bordering on avant-garde poetry and experimental indie rock instrumentation, arrives as the first taste of that ambition. The titular single from their forthcoming EP, set to release September 16, feels like a daring call to arms, a single firework shot in the dark, impossible to ignore and indistinguishable. Most notably of all, it feels like a noted maturation for the duo, a step forward into new, uncharted territory.
On the new single, Osby ponders on the object of her affection, or rather attention, repeatedly uttering the lines “You are the iris in my eye” until they no longer seem to be coming from her, taking on the weight of a mantra spoken outside herself. It’s only one such instance of the duo’s newfound stream-of-conscious lyrical approach, which sees them ruminating on the fallacy of growing up and the associated fantasies that come with it. All of this is complemented by the duo’s fearless instrumentation and production flourishes, which call to mind everything from experimental ‘90s indie rock to the sonic detours that permeated Sufjan Steven’s early works. 
We had the chance to speak to Lowertown via e-mail about the difficulties of shifting from “teenagerdom” to adulthood, the advantages of having a french fry fork and their bold new musical direction.
You two originally met in a high school math class. How did the discussion of music first get brought up and how did it lead to forming Lowertown?
Avsha: Olivia was a new student at the school, and I was shy, so we had sat next to each other for some time before we really had any conversation. After some months, I would look at the music Olivia would listen to over her shoulder and make small excited comments or jokes. That’s how our friendship began, through comments about Olivia’s love of emo music or my insufferable judgment on some new music I had heard. It took a year for us to start thinking about doing music together. The eventual forming of Lowertown happened on a beach in Ottawa, where I was again making a judgment on some new song I had found and decided to show Olivia some of my demos. That was where we decided to work together. Those demos and others eventually formed our first record Friends
Were there ever any thoughts about pursuing music before that fateful meeting?
Olivia: I’d always hoped to be able to do music professionally, but it had always seemed like it was so far away from being possible. I always knew that even if my solo music did not work out as a career, I wanted to work in the music field. Whether that was becoming a manager for other musicians or becoming a booking agent, I knew for a long time I wanted to be surrounded by music no matter what I ended up doing.
A: I had spent almost my entire life hoping to be a musician. I started playing classical piano at age four, and up until two years ago, was planning on going to a conservatory and becoming a concert pianist. As my taste expanded, I taught myself guitar, drums, bass, and production, all with the hopes of continuing professionally. Growing up, I was exposed to many different artists and genres, and I always wanted to give people what the music that I grew up with gave to me. The demos that I had recorded in middle school were the ones I showed Olivia and the ones that led to us knowing that we had to start a band.
What was it like signing to Dirty Hit?
A: The process of signing was definitely a difficult one as we had begun talking with the label only a few months before COVID, and as we were narrowing down on the decision to sign, it became incredibly difficult to see a scenario where we would be able to meet anybody on the label. We ended up having many, many FaceTime and Zoom conversations, wherein we were able to talk in-depth with the team and get a good sense of the label. These conversations were really great, and it was a great signifier of the relationship to come as we have had a really great relationship with the label. Although the signing process was tumultuous, we were able to grasp that the relationship between Dirty Hit and their artists was a familial one, and that made us incredibly excited to work together.
If you could have one thing in the world at this very moment, what would it be?
O: A good night’s sleep. I have terrible insomnia and can’t remember the last time I had one.
A: A french fry fork. I’m pretty exhausted with how messy eating french fries is.
Has the past year affected how your approach music at all?
A: In the past, I knew that the more I worked, the better I became, but this year has shown me that the times that you choose to completely leave some things alone are just as important as the times that you focus all your energy on them. I was completely drained of inspiration and motivation until I was able to sit and do absolutely nothing. The lack of music helped me realize that there was a lot about myself that I wasn’t thinking about. I was able to learn more about myself and have new sources of inspiration and thought.
O: For sure. This year has given me an excessive amount of time to get better at playing music in general since I’ve been on my own so much. It has also given me too much time to sit and think by myself, which can be beneficial for music but also pretty detrimental at the same time. I’ve ended up feeling like my old sound and writing process was really stale, since I had been writing songs the same way for years. I’ve ended up experimenting a lot with new sounds and approaches to songwriting, which has been extremely refreshing and I feel like it’s brought out some of my best work. I used to put way less emphasis on instrumentation, but now that I’ve progressed a lot musically, I’ve written a lot of instrumentation that I’m very proud of and that has ended up developing into Lowertown work. I also learned a lot about production over this past year which has been extremely inspiring and helpful for my solo work.
How did you approach the songwriting on “The Gaping Mouth?” The lyricism and experimental instrumentation are honestly breathtaking.
A: When composing the instrumentals, I wanted to write a song that was very expressive and unique but that worked entirely on feeling rather than a traditional verse and chorus song. I wanted to write the piece with points that I knew the guitars would push Olivia’s voice to the forefront and points that raised the energy around Olivia’s words. Olivia’s lyrics are so personal, and she always has so much to say, so I wanted the whole song to ebb and flow together with the identical, and occasionally reciprocal, emotion and intimacy.
O: Avsha sent me this beautiful guitar piece one day and it immediately connected with me, and I stayed up all night working on it. I recorded a demo take of the vocals, just singing/talking over the song where it felt right and natural. That first take I took at home at four in the morning actually ended up being used in the final song because it felt so emotive and raw. The first vocal take had an unmatched authenticity that we couldn’t capture again in the studio no matter how many takes we tried. Our producer Catherine ended up falling in love with it as well and did not want to try to replicate something that was already amazing as it was.
There’s a real sense of maturation present not just in the delivery of the single but in the lyrics, “Being stupid and being 15 / Being older and think I know who I am and what I want… / The way I stay the same and I never change.” Is growing up or rather the idea of growing up a central theme to the music you’re currently working on?
O: I had just graduated high school when we were writing this new project, and I was feeling extremely anxious about the trajectory of my life. I kept thinking about if I was doing all that I should be doing at this age and how much had I really changed since the beginning of high school. I felt like a lot of mannerisms and detrimental ways of thinking that had plagued me when I was 14-15 were still incredibly present in my life, and it felt pathetic to think that I had not made much progress on some of my biggest shortcomings since I had first become a teenager. I feel like at 18/19, you’re not quite an adult, but you’re no longer just a teenager. You begin to shoulder real responsibility and have a lot of agency over your life. It’s quite terrifying being the one who has the power to make important personal decisions. If you screw up, it’s on you and no one else. The transition from high school where you have assignments to turn in every day and tests and a crazy amount of structure (you wake up and go to bed the same time every weekday) to making music and creating with a self-made schedule can be extremely jarring. I’m still grappling with that transition, as my workflow can sometimes trail into six in the morning which sometimes becomes a problem.
“The Gaping Mouth” is the eponymous single from your forthcoming EP. What can people expect from your new EP?
O: It’s gonna be leveled up from anything we’ve dropped before! This is our first project recorded in a studio setting as well as working in-person with a producer. We’ve matured since our last project as musicians and we’ve simply grown more into adults. A lot of this was written when we were 18 and when we’d just turned 19, and a lot of things happened at that point in our lives to write about. Our producer Catherine really helped push me to my full potential while working together. There are some louder songs mixed with some instrumentally dense and beautiful songs. There’s a good amount of experimentation as well in this project that I’m excited for everyone to hear.
A: We’ve focused so much on our songwriting and composition; I think people will be able to hear how we’ve matured. I think this EP reflects our need to always change our sound and grow it. It’s exciting because I think it’s really fresh and still has our musical roots sewn into the core.
And what’s one thing you hope people take away from this next stage of your music?
A: I hope people are able to see the world and the story that we want to create with our music. I hope people can see that our sound will always be maturing and that our music can be surprising and exciting.
O: I feel like our fan base has grown alongside us. Lowertown has been a project since we were 16 and it feels like it has already come so far, which is so amazing and I’m really thankful for everything that’s happened thus far. I hope our music can continue to authentically capture each stage of life Avsha and I live through while making music together. This record was written fresh after graduating high school, so I hope those who are grappling with the jarring transition from teenagerdom to adulthood can find some solace in the feelings expressed in this record.
What is your go-to fast food order?
O: We’re both pescatarian so sometimes finding easy fast food can be annoying. I’m a big burrito person so I’ll always get a bean burrito with a ton of veggies.
A: A universal choice for me in any fast food place would be an extra large order of fries, or however many is the most they offer, and a large Diet Coke. There were points during this year where every day of the week was punctuated with an absurd amount of McDonald’s fries and hot sauce.
Who are your Ones To Watch?
O: Pretty Sick , Horse Jumper of Love, N0v3l
A: Uboa, OOIOO, Donzii
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andrawmedae · 3 years
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A fireplace tale
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The fireplace had always been Rowena’s favorite place to think. To fantasize, to ruminate, to bounce some ideas back and forth, even if, let’s be honest, she always ended up hurting herself with some gloomy thoughts.
At the edge of the tall pines, tremendous blazings had given way to dying embers, and the traveling companions divided the watch quarters among themselves.
As she stirred her spoon in the hot broth Sindri brewed, turnips and pine nuts along with some leftover bread, the young dwarf replayed in her head the events of the last days.
The party had been on the road for a few days, and the young bard was feeling a bit agitated, to say the least. How can one think about such trivial things when children are missing? How can one feel so jaunty and cheerful when talking to a special someone when some moments ago, people were murdered in front of one’s eyes? How can one(/cut)..
Sindri: … your soup?
Rowena: Sorry cousin, what?
Sindri: You need to eat a bit more Rowena, I think the night won’t be a quiet one, the woods are teeming with life, and I’m not sure it’s the affable kind.
Rowena: I… yes, yes I’ll eat up.
The two dwarves were sitting side by side on a heavy branch, by the fire where a cauldron was quietly bubbling. A few meters away, three makeshift tents stood tall, right on the fringe of some ominous pines. The warmth of the flames was welcome as the cool midnight breeze was beginning to pierce through the layers of adventurers' cloth.
Sindri: You don’t seem as chipper as usual, is something on your mind?
Rowena (not very convincing): Well yes of course I mean, the children are still lost, we don’t yet know what awaits us beyond these cursed woods, and the nights to come are not going to help me calm my mind.
Sindri: Rowena, I have roamed these lands for 200 years longer than you, and yet you honestly seem to think I can’t see when you are hiding something from me?
Rowena: Oh come on cousin, don’t play that old trick on me, truly it’s nothing in particular
Sindri (amused): Oooh I see I see. You know, it is my mind who is surely playing tricks on me, because I was quite confident it was related to yesterday. You know, the fact that when we decided to break the buddy system for last night’s vigil, and that you would have loooved finishing your conversation with Iaus(/cut)
Rowena (quick, afraid): Oy shut up, shut up they’ll hear us, you don’t know if everybody is asleep Sindri!
Sindri (joyful): Aha, perceptive as always your good Cousin Sindri, Heh? Rowena, you can’t fool me, it's not because my beard is whiter than yours that I no longer perceive the flicker, that flicker, in people's eyes.
Rowena: It’s not what you think, or not exactly, not all, I mean I (stumbles) (pause)
Sindri: What is it cousin? (pause) I’m sorry for teasing you a bit, I could not help myself. But it was so tempting, you know? I promise, you can tell me if you want to, you know I won’t judge you.
Rowena: Yes, yes I know, it’s just that I’m a bit embarrassed talking about that with you. I mean all I know about, you know, your love life, is that you have been married to Pia for quite some time now, which is wonderful of course, but that’s it! I don’t know all the foolishness from your younger years, the silly things you won’t tell without one or two tankards full of ale. So well it’s… weird I guess, for me, talking about that, because well, you don’t know much about me either, and a vigil doesn’t scream “Comfy and safe time for coming out to your long lost cousin”
Sindri: Coming out you say? Wait, I thought it was about Iaus?
Rowena: Well, yeah it kinda is? But at the same time it’s a little more complicated than that, and I feel a little uneasy about it. I’m 80 but I still feel like such a child! I mean (whispering) having a crush in these peculiar circumstances would already be a bit challenging to deal with… but having several, on people who know each other and work together it’s ooooh- I would love burying my head in the earth and disappearing.
Sindri: You know what little cousin? I think it’s time for me to tell you more about my -how did you put it, oh Pelor give me strength, - my love life, while you drink your soup.
Rowena: ...
Sindri: Well to begin with the part that you know(/cut)
Rowena (intrigued): The part that I know?
Sindri (amused): Rowena, it would be easier for me to tell you about that time if you drank your soup peacefully. Now, as I was saying, you know I’m happily married to Pia. Back in the day, it was as wanted the tradition, but our union was also beneficial to not only our two families, but a lot of other people. Some trades and arrangements were made, contracts and apprenticeships, we knew our clans would have some steady years as a result of our families becoming one. The part that you don’t know, and where I’ll be glad if you take a generous gulp right… (Rowena takes a spoonful) oh, thank you dear. I am so much more than Pia’s husband, and she’s so much more than Sindri’s wife. Because hmm, you know, when, you know when we met, well. There were a lot of people in the Crag you know? And… (silent)
Slowly, gently, Rowena swallowed her mouthful before sitting on the ground, in front of Sindri. She held his hand as she said quietly
Rowena: Were you in love with someone else?
Sindri (smiling, quietly): Well, as a matter of fact, I still am! Rowena, I have been in love with two wonderful people for over 100 years, who know each other and that I love both of them : my dearest Pia, who gives me love and strength everyday, and who gave me adorable children, and Amonak, who also gives me love and strength everyday.
Rowena (loudly): Oh my gooood that’s amazing!
Iaus (alerted/groggy/from afar): What? Are we being ambushed?
Rowena: (Oh shit, laughing) Sorry, no, all fine, you can go back to sleep! (lower, but very fast) Tell me more about Amonak, about everything!
Sindri: Hahaha, I’m glad to see your ardor, it warms my heart a little, being able to talk about both of them to my charming cousin, and to feel elated and relieved about it. I wish to tell you about the time where we met, because I assume you are experiencing quite a similar phase right now. I met Amonak before meeting Pia. He was about (/cut)my age
Rowena (bursting with joy but trying to keep her voice down): He? Amonak is a man?
Sindri (amused, lighthearted): Shhh, finish your soup first, you can grill me later! Yes, Amonak is a man, a dwarf from the FrostIron Moun(/cut)… (thinking) has anyone told you that the FrostIron Mountains folks are positively… open minded with who one should love? It is a sacred sentiment after all, a blessing, and when one lucky person falls in love with another, it is always celebrated fondly. When I met him, all I could see was a young dwarf radiating with such a calming but firm presence, so much aching but so much joy, and all I wanted to do was listening to him explaining passionately how one could smith a well-balanced axe, or how to cure a bad beer induced hangover. Yes, I may have experienced the last one while being cared for said hangover.
Rowena: Oh you need to tell me the secret recipe for that, Cousin
Sindri (light laughter): Aging 100 years should help you greatly! Being close to Amonak felt like floating in the clouds, bathing in the sunlight without suffering from the heat, feeling strong as Moradin, but as light as the wind too. The Crag was still the Crag of course, but thanks to him, the hardship seemed less terrible to endure. I won’t bore you with all the petty details, but we spent days discovering each other slowly and gently, then months sharing and caring for each other. A few years later, Pia and some others arrived in the Crag. She too made me feel like a ray of sunshine was brushing my ski, gently painting my cheeks pink each time she spoke to me. Some other newcomers were also fascinating people, I know for a fact that Amonak did bind with some of them. After all those years talking with the same company, It felt for both of us like a breath of fresh winter air… I could have convinced myself that I was 50 years old again. I took advantage of every stolen moment with Pia to get to know her, then the discussions got longer and longer, whether they were just between the two of us, with Amonak or the other newcomers. I was falling in love with her too. And it was such a delightful feeling, such a special blessing that I wanted to talk to Amonak as soon as I understood it.
Rowena: And you did? Were you not afraid of breaking his heart?
Sindri: Well to be honest, I don’t see one’s heart as a breakable thing. For instance, a mighty tree could be a beautiful picture to represent that strong force of nature, but I think it rather is closer to… well, water? It can bend, it won’t break. And yes, sometimes it can freeze, but with a little warmth, a soft conversation or a prayer it can easily melt back to an impetuous torrent, full of life and joy, full of light and love. I was not afraid of breaking Amonak’s heart. I knew that even if it froze for a bit, I could easily help my beloved unthaw it, making him feel unique and adored. But the beauty of this moment was slightly different that you could have guessed, because well, Amonak fell in love with one of the newcomers too!
Rowena: Nooooo, for real?
Sindri (amused): Yes, yes, “for real”. I don’t know if Pelor blessed us, or if I am one of the luckiest dwarves that ever lived, but since that day, my heart is held not by two, but by four hands, and it never felt cold anymore.
Rowena: Sindri, that’s so beautiful, thank you for sharing such a cherished memory, it makes me wanna burst into song.
Sindri: It would be an honor, but I don’t think our new friends would feel the same that late in the night!
Rowena: Haha, you are right. (pensive) Does it make this journey harder for you? I mean, I know for a fact that you did not see Pia for a long time, is it the same with Amonak?
Sindri: Well, sadly yes. I had to protect them both. But I’m gonna let you in on a little secret. When Pia and I got married, we enchanted our rings so that they could communicate with each other. It's not much, we can't have a conversation, but thanks to that, I can know if Pia is in good shape, if she is happy, and to know that it fills me with joy and serenity. And do you see that locket holding my cape? Everyone thinks that's a sigil for Pelor, a sun with a sunflower, that would be totally appropriate. But the truth is quite different as you will have already guessed.
Rowena: Amonak have the same sigil?
Sindri: Well not quite identical, Amonak is a cleric of Moradin, his own sigil has an anvil with a sunflower. Here let me show you. As Sindri places a hand on his locket, as to warm it a bit, he says with a gentle voice Sindri: Hello sunbeam, I hope you are alright.
Then, putting his hand on his knee, the sun began to revolve on itself, while the sunflower above it began to rotate in the opposite direction. A few moments later, two eyelid-like shapes opened, and a calm metallic voice responded. The Locket Warm. Love. Safe. Time
Rowena: Did he? It? Who?
Sindri: Amonak seems to be fine according to our lockets, and he misses me. ó elskan mín.
Rowena: That’s so… magnificent! Can you teach me how to do that? I could enchant my own harp and… well I have other instruments who can..
Sindri: In time I could show you that my dear, but I think you ought to yourself to have some heartfelt conversations with some other people over there, before saying Hey, this magical harmonica will tell me if you are alive and well, and by the way I have a crush on you
Soren: Oh, you have a crush on who?
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thislassishooked · 4 years
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CS January Joy Day 2
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Whew, I almost didn’t make it. I actually didn’t see my name on the list until New Years Eve, but somehow I was able to churn this out in two days. I’m so excited to share this little story because it gives my readers a peek into my life. I am a medical laboratory scientist and this is sort of what I do on a daily basis, minus the hot doc and precocious Henry. Thank you @csjanuaryjoy​ for hosting this event again this year. Enjoy!
AO3
Summery: Emma doesn’t like visitors to her laboratory at Storybrooke General Hospital, but somehow finds herself making an exception, albeit reluctantly, for the hospital’s new attractive, accident prone, infectious disease physician.
He could hear the music from the adjoining hallway. The smile that spread from cheek to cheek was not due to the catchy, nineties pop music coming from the laboratory, but the woman who was, no doubt, dancing and singing along, oblivious to his impending approach. It wasn’t until he reached the barely propped door that he caught the lyrics, sung from Swan’s own lips.
“Doctor Jones, Jones, calling Doctor Jones, Doctor Jones, Doctor Jones, get up now, wake up now!”
Killian felt his heart swell at the thought that just maybe the song wasn’t a coincidence, that perhaps she had chosen it on purpose. He hoped she had chosen it on purpose. He wasn’t ashamed to admit that every time he heard the music from Swan Lake, his mind would unwittingly conjure an image of Emma’s glorious green eyes. When it came to Emma Swan, Killian was most definitely fucked, and not in the good way. He was sure she didn’t return his affections, all scowls and eye rolls, and to make matters worse, he always made a bloody fool of himself in her presence. Gone was his swagger, his vocabulary, his god damned dignity.
He nudged the door further open and his jaw dropped at the scene before him. Emma was bent over her microscope, swinging her hips to the beat, somehow accentuating the curve of her perfect hind quarters in the not so flattering blue scrubs. The move was mesmerizing, seeing as she had to keep the upper half of her alluring body completely still. 
He must have been watching her for over a minute, knowing full well that if he didn’t make his presence known soon, he would definitely be approaching creeper status. Just as he pushed himself through the doorway, his scrub ties caught on the handle, making him yelp in surprise as his movement was suddenly halted, causing him to juggle the sample he was carrying, before thankfully catching it tightly in his grip while simultaneously scaring the living daylights out of Emma, if her startled scream was anything to go off of. Yet again, Killian Jones had made an utter fool of himself in front of Emma Swan.
---
January was Emma’s favorite time of year. The stress and loneliness of the holiday season had ended and her workload increased with every new case of the sniffles that walked through the hospital doors. The lab is where Emma was happiest, staring at sample after sample of blood, sputum, urine, etc., identifying the culprit and sending the results back to the doctors.
From a young age, Emma had excelled in science. Sometimes she would even catch her foster parents bragging to other parents that she had won first place in the science fair, but it never seemed to last. She would eventually end up back in a group home where finding any privacy to study was rare and frustrating. She didn’t bother making friends, choosing instead to read every science book she could get her hands on from the library. She hadn’t meant to read the huge copy of the Sanford Guide to Infectious Diseases, but after only a few pages she was hooked. Emma considered going to medical school, but ultimately decided she would be happier not dealing with patients. She really wasn’t much of a people person so she took the next logical step and focused on behind the scenes laboratory work, earning her masters degree in public health from Columbia University and snagging the medical laboratory scientists job at Storybrooke Hospital.
She had been at the hospital’s lab for two years when she learned that the resident infectious disease expert was retiring and his replacement was a Dr. K. Jones, a professor from London’s School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She found it odd that a doctor with such an impressive resume would give up his or her fancy job in the UK, take such a pay cut and come to their sleepy little town.
She remembered the first time she met Killian Jones. She had strolled into her lab one morning to find a man with thick, dark hair fiddling with her electron microscope. When she cleared her throat, irritated that this stranger had had his hands all over her things, he swung around so fast that his hand actually knocked the petri dish from the stage and it splattered all over the floor. He had started sputtering out an apology while grabbing some cleaning supplies. She then watched in horror and admittedly a bit of amusement as things just got worse. He ended up spilling half a bottle of Clorox on the floor, then somehow proceeded to slip on the puddle and end up flat on his back in the pool, no doubt ruining his dark, form fitting clothes. She noticed as he laid on the floor groaning that dark scruff peppered his jaw, cheeks and upper lip. He threw his hands over the top half of his face, most likely out of frustration and embarrassment and when he spoke again, she noticed that he had an accent. An English accent. She made her way to his prone body and folded her arms as she got a better look at him. Her brain made the connection, seeing as no one without security clearance was allowed access to her lab, and was surprised that the British expat and her new colleague was so young.
“Dr. K. Jones, I presume?” Emma asked, trying to keep any hint of amusement out of her voice.
“Aye,” he confirmed, removing his hands from his face and Emma was instantly struck by the blue of his eyes, topped with thick, expressive eyebrows. She was right, he looked completely mortified. Something in his expression changed when he swept his gaze over her though and it made Emma feel exposed. She didn’t like visitors to her lab, only ever allowing her assistant Ruby to deliver Samples to her. Jones clambered to his feet while Emma continued to ruminate. “Killian Jones,” he clarified, offering his hand to Emma. She ignored it.
“Emma Swan,” she stated curtly. “For future reference, Dr. Jones, this is my lab and I value my privacy. My assistant will be in touch.” She turned from a speechless Killian, note to self, don’t ever call him that, and swept her hands in the direction of the door, indicating that he could use it to exit the same way he entered. He left without another word, but it would not be the last she saw of him, in her lab, messing with her stuff. Killian Jones was relentless in his pursuit to befriend Emma. He got deep under her skin by personally delivering every STAT sample, complimenting her on her work, and always managing to make a damn fool of himself while doing it. She feared her icy facade was beginning to noticeably melt.
---
Killian scratched that spot behind his right ear as Emma visibly deflated with that adorable head shake she gave him after every ungraceful mishap.
“Jones, I have asked you too many times to count for over two years to have Ruby deliver the samples.” She tried to keep her face stern, but Killian could see the tiniest crack of a smile at the corners of her soft pink lips.
“That you have, Swan, and I will continue to ignore your requests so that I may have the chance to see your smiling face every day,” he quipped while removing his scrub ties from the door handle. To his utter horror, as soon as he released his hold on the scrubs they fell to his ankles, leaving him in his dark blue boxers with little red anchors that probably matched the color of his face. Emma’s hint of a smile blossomed into a wide, amused grin. At least he succeeded in something today. He quickly hauled the bottoms back up his legs, setting the sample aside so he could retie them.
“Nice undies, Dr. Jones,” she snickered.
“Nice choice of music today, Ms. Swan.” She blushed at that. It really was the most adorable thing he’d seen all day. “While I would love to get snarky with you today, Emma, I’m afraid I’m here for a more serious matter.” Emma nodded for him to continue. He picked up the sample and carefully carried it to her workstation. “This sputum sample is from Henry Mills,” he explained as he handed it over to her. Her breath caught at the mention of Henry’s name. He knew she and the boy were close. Henry was the only visitor to the lab Emma welcomed with open arms. The lad had a knack for science and would often visit the hospital to learn as much about medical science from Emma or himself.
“What do you suspect it is?” she asked as she placed the sample on the stage and adjusted the lense.
“He said he cut his hand while playing in his castle at the playground four days ago and he’s experiencing gastrointestinal distress. He has a fever of 102 with chills, but what worries me most is the redness on the underside of his arm.” He could see Emma blanch as she focused on the sample. He was pretty sure what he was dealing with before retrieving the sample, he just needed Emma’s confirmation.
“Positive for staphylococcus aureus,” she said robotically. “Have you started him on antibiotics? Has he responded?” she asked frantically. Staph infections were pretty easy to treat ten years ago, but with the rise of antibiotic resistant strains, such as MRSA, they could be a death sentence.
“I’ve already ordered intravenous methicillin and we’ll know in about four to six hours if he responds. I’ll keep you updated.” Emma nodded as Killian turned to leave.
“Killian,” she uttered. He paused at the sound of his name and turned back to see her bashfully duck her head and tuck a loose strand of her golden blonde locks behind her ear. “Thank you,” she stated sincerely as her eyes met his. He nodded in response and left to rejoin Henry and his mother to deliver the disappointing news.
---
Emma made her way to the ICU, tears threatening to spill as she approached Henry’s door. Killian had diagnosed him with MRSA after he continued to decline with his first treatment. He had been admitted that night and started an aggressive treatment on a different antibiotic, but things were looking grim two days in as Henry’s condition worsened. His fever spiked at 106 just before he slipped into a coma. Killian started him on Bactrim, their last hope, three days ago, but he still hadn’t regained consciousness. The drug seemed to be working, his fever had dropped dramatically and his rash was shrinking, but the concern now was if he had suffered any brain damage. 
Emma spotted Killian leaving Henry’s room just as she came around the corner. He rubbed furiously as his eyes, let out a long sigh and trudged onward. She knew he hadn’t left the hospital since Henry had been unresponsive. The bags under his sad eyes were evidence that he was sleep deprived as was she. As promised, he had kept her informed, sending a nurse down to the lab with all the details so that he could stay by Henry’s side. She could no longer deny that she had very deep feelings for that man and she desperately missed his visits, as destructive as they sometimes were.
She pushed open the door to Henry’s room and was greeted with the sigh of the ventilator and occasional beeps indicating his heart was a least still beating. He looked so pale and still, a far cry from the lively child that had visited her a week ago. He had been so full of questions that day. She remembered he had wanted to know everything about mad cow disease. She let herself smile at the memory of his response when she told him it could only officially be diagnosed posthumously with a sample of the brain.
“Cool, do you have any samples in your cold storage?”
She explained that the condition was so rare, very few labs in the world had those kinds of samples. His disappointment was quickly forgotten when she let him look at some of the blood samples the phlebotomists had collected that day.
Henry had been regularly visiting her for two years, his first visit having happened just hours after the very accident prone Jones had made a mess of her precious lab. The precocious either year old had wondered in, not knowing that the lab was off limits. He reminded her of herself at that age and found that she was happy to satisfy his curiosity.
“Hi Henry,” she started lamely. “I have a bunch of new samples that I just know you’ll be dying to look at. I can’t wait to show you your own.” She could no longer hold in the tears. “You just need to get better, okay? Please, Henry, I don’t know what I'd do if you left me. You’re my only friend.” She thought that last statement over and realized that it may not be exactly true. Killian had inserted himself into her life, curiously on the same day as Henry, and she found herself looking forward to her time spent with both of them. 
She leaned down to give Henry a kiss on his forehead and as she was yanking on the heavy door to leave, Killian came crashing through, apparently not expecting the door to open itself. He must have been leaning his back against it because he was once again prone, on the floor, groaning from pain and frustration.
“I’m sorry, I swear I didn’t know you were there,” she said, putting down her bag and offering him her hand.
“It’s not your fault, love,” he assured her as he took her proffered hand. “I just can’t seem to keep it together when I’m in your presence.”
“Well, if it’s any consolation, sometimes I find it kind of endearing.”
“Endearing…” he repeated as he brushed his hand down his front. She thought he was waiting for her to elaborate so she opened her stupid mouth and made it so much worse.
“Cute, I mean, oh god, I have to go.” She rushed out the door with the image of his shocked face ingrained in her memory. Now she was the one making a fool of herself in front of him. She escaped to her fortress of solitude to try to forget that ever happened.
---
Killian watched her disappear with new found hope in his heart. Perhaps his feelings weren’t so one-sided anymore. His face turned serious again when his eyes landed on Henry.
“She’ll never go on a date with me if I let you die, lad,” he said grimly as he approached Henry’s bed. He looked curiously at the brain activity reader and got the shock of a lifetime.
“She’ll never go on a date with you if you don’t ask her,” a little voice squeaked from below.
“Right you are, Henry,” Killian responded with a face splitting grin. He couldn’t wait to tell Emma. He proceeded to examine the boy, checking for any signs of brain damage. He was positive Henry suffered no permanent damage after listening intently as the boy prattled on about the different types of Ebola. “I’m glad you’re back, Master Henry.”
Killian gave the nursing staff instructions to call Regina immediately with the news then rushed down to the basement to give Emma the good news personally. His heart broke a little for the woman he loved when he realized there was no music coming from the lab. He could hear little sniffles coming from her office as he carefully entered the lab, keeping an eye on his scrub ties while also being vigilant of any other hazards. He knocked on her office door and got a somber “Come in.” Her eyes were wet and rimmed with red. She steeled herself, most likely preparing for bad news. Killian reached out his hand and caught a falling tear on her cheek with his thumb. He brushed the offending liquid away and smiled reassuringly at her.
“Don’t cry, my love. Henry is going to be back to his old ways in a matter of days.” Emma just stared at him, stunned for a moment. It was only then that he realized his mistake in calling her ‘his’ love, rather than just ‘love’. He was worried that he had gone too far this time, but she didn’t run. She schooled her features as she asked him a series of questions.
“He’s awake?”
“Aye.”
“No permanent damage?”
“Nope.”
“Good.” With that, she grabbed his collar and pulled his lips to hers, meeting them in a passionate embrace. It took his stunned brain a second to realize what was happening, but once it didn, he kissed her back fervently. His right hand shot up to the back of her head, holding her in place as his left pulled her midsection closer. She responded by threading both of hers through his hair, no doubt making a mess of it, but he couldn’t care less. His Swan was kissing him and by god, he never wanted it to end. She ran her tongue along the seam of his lips and he happily opened for her, meeting hers with his in a lover’s tango. Her appreciative moan gave him the courage to grasp her by her hips and raise them enough to set her on her desk. She voluntarily opened her legs to allow him space between them, letting out a guttural groan as their bodies met through the thin fabric of their scrubs. Killian really wanted to take this further, but knew that Emma would be anxious to see Henry and it probably wasn't the best location.
“Emma,” he muttered against her mouth. Emma responded with little kisses across his jaw and down his throat, igniting a fire in him that would be damn well near impossible to put out if she carried on like that. “Have mercy, Swan.” She chuckled against his thrumming pulse point then lifted her head just enough to rest their foreheads together.
“Thank you, Killian.” He pulled his head away only so he could look into her eyes that shone so much brighter than they had in the past week.
“For what, love?”
“For saving Henry’s life. And,” she seemed to hesitate, but continued after he gave her an encouraging grin, “for not giving up on me.” He knew this was his chance. It was now or never.
“Will you go out with me?” he asked sincerely. Emma’s answer was in the form of another kiss, soft, sweet and slow this time. She pulled away so she could hop off the desk, threading her fingers through his as she did.
“Pick me up tomorrow at eight?” Killian pulled their entwined hands up to his lips to place a kiss just above her knuckles.
“Aye, it’s a date.”
Emma strolled out of her office and toward the exit of the lab, excited to see Henry, all the while singing to herself. This time, Killian knew the song was meant for his ears.
“Doctor Jones, Jones, calling Doctor Jones, Doctor Jones, Doctor Jones, get up now,”
“Wake up now,” Killian supplied.
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lefaystrent · 5 years
Note
In your Kid Logan AU do you think maybe one day Logan gets really like torn thinking there all going to leave him but Virgil finds out and like have a bonding moment??? Sorry im a sucker for platonic analogical
Pomp and Circumstance
Fandom: Thomas Sanders, Sanders Sides
Pairings: platonic LAMP,platonic analogical
Word Count: 1920
Masterlist Link
 _______________________________________________________________
It’s Spring and Patton isgraduating.
They all knew it would happen. Anobvious outcome. Why wouldn’t it happen? Logan didn’t meet Patton until hissenior year. The months in between then and now are not altogether infinitesimal.Logically, Logan knew this would happen.
But as Logan sits up in thebleachers of the auditorium, sandwiched in between Virgil and Roman, he findshimself frowning down at the sea of red-cloaked graduates in their seats downbelow, each one waiting for their name to be called.
Logan didn’t think he would behere. That’s it, isn’t it?
That first day, when Patton draggedhim across the lunch room to sit with his friends—Logan never imagined apossibility that it would lead him here, sitting in the crowd, supporting his friend.
What does Logan remember from hisown graduation? Hardly anything, if he’s being honest. The principal and valedictorianand whoever-else-just-had-to-say-a-speech droned on, and he had sat amongst hispeers tuning all of it out. He’d never been a fan of fanfare, and the ceremony hadnumbed his brain with boredom.
Pitiful, isn’t it? Logan had beenbored at his own graduation. What was there to get excited about? He had knownhe would get his diploma and go on to college. It had been an absolute. Whathad there been to celebrate then? His classmates’ success? Although he knewthem, he didn’t know them, so why should he care?
Practical, if not cold.
Logan watches as one-by-one thestudents walk up onto the stage when their name is called. Throughout the entireceremony, Patton has been looking up at them every couple of minutes, facebeaming and hand waving excitedly at them.
Logan wonders if he himself wouldhave been this excited if he had formed any lasting attachments in high school.His parents and grandfather had been amongst the audience that day, there tosupport him. They had been very proud, but that was his family and that hadbeen expected by that point too.
On either side of him, screamserupt. He startles, only to realize that Virgil and Roman had shot up to let loosea chorus of cheers.
Patton’s name had been called andhe almost missed it.
Logan stands as well, clapping andoffering what he can. Patton looks beyond joyous. He hops up the stage stepsand—rather than shake the principal’s hand—he outright hugs the man.
“Look at that dork,” Virgil snorts.
“He’s so happy,” Roman agrees.
“I think the principal is uncomfortable,”Logan comments.
“How much do you want to bet thatPatton’s doing that on purpose?” Virgil asks.
“Why would he do that on purpose?”
Virgil and Roman share a look overLogan. Logan huffs. This is all part of theirPatton-can-actually-be-really-passive-aggressive agenda.
“I just don’t see it.”
“That’s the point, Specs. He’s goodat it.”
Patton smiles a satisfied smile allthe way back to his seat. The principal straightens his jacket like he’s justbeen knocked over by an unruly dog.
“What do you think, Finding Emo?Should we do the same when we graduate?”
“Or we could accidentally push himoff the stage.”
“Virgil.”
“What? I said accidentally.”
The conversation continues, mostlycentering around how much they disliked the principal.
From down the rows of bleachers,Logan’s gaze drifts down to Patton’s family. His parents and all of his siblingsare in attendance.
Patton’s little brother is watchingLogan. He’s looking back over his shoulder, staring up at him. Dee’s expressionis blank, observing what Logan will do.
Logan turns away and listens to astory from Roman and Virgil’s freshman year when they got in trouble with theprincipal.
The ceremony drags on and eventuallycomes to an end. Everyone’s getting up from their seats and Logan doesn’t makea fuss when Roman steers him through the crowd.
“What? You’re so tiny. Don’t wantto lose you.”
“Figuratively bite me.”
Well, not much of a fuss anyway.
They go to wait out in the lobbyarea. So many people are coming and going and grouping off and taking picturesand smiling. Roman and Virgil are talking with some of their classmates, andLogan’s just …
He’s not contributing to theconversation anymore. Not that anybody is asking for his opinion on anything.He sees that his presence is inconsequential, so he doesn’t feel guilty forslipping away.
Logan heads outside. There’s morefamilies and graduates hanging around by the entrance. Logan steers clear ofthem and makes his way to Roman’s car. They’re all going out to eat afterwardsanyway. It’s not like Logan will miss anything.
Virgil finds him sitting againstthe back bumper. It can’t have been more than ten minutes.
“Found ya,” Virgil says.
“You were looking for me?”
Virgil shrugs. He plops down besideLogan. “Sorta? I’m not really a fan of crowds. Thought I’d might as well findwhere you snuck off to. So, two birds, one stone.”
“I see …”
The noise is not as oppressive outhere. People walk by and cars filter out, but it’s all in passing and gonebefore it’s really began.
Fleeting. It’s all so fleeting.
“Patton is … happy,” Loganobserves. It’s not anything new, merely a conversation opener. It’s not really hisstyle and Virgil knows it. He’s staring Logan down but Logan is busy watchingthe world pass them by.
“I’d be happy too. High school isjust a load of bullshit. Patton’s free now.”
“He still has college.”
“Yeah, but that’s better than highschool at least. Don’t have to deal with all the petty drama and stupid kidsand teachers who think they know everything.”
“There are also professors whothink they know everything, even when they clearly do not.”
“Touché,” Virgil acquiesces, notcommenting on how familiar Logan seems to be on the subject.
“How much longer do you think they’llbe?”
“Forever and a half. They’reprobably taking about a million pictures.”
“Unlikely. I’m sure their phones donot have that much memory storage.”
“You know, sometimes I think you takethings literally just to mess with me.”
“I have no idea what you mean.”
Virgil laughs and it’s a softcomfort.
Night had fallen a while ago. Beamsfrom headlights break through the shadows from time to time. Red-robed figuresare easy to pick out. One of those graduation gowns could belong to Patton, butfrom this distance it’s hard to tell.
“Lo … what’s wrong?”
“What makes you think something’swrong?”
Virgil levels a look at him. “Ialways think something’s wrong. And sometimes I’m even right about it.”
“And you think that this is one ofthose times?”
“I know that this is one ofthose times.”
“Irrefutable evidence, surely.”
“Is it Patton?”
Logan digs his fingers into the legsof his pants. It’s wrinkling the material. Logan hates wrinkled clothing, yethe’s doing it anyway.
“What makes you think my unconfirmed‘wrong state’ is caused by Patton?”
“You’re the one who brought him upfirst.”
“We are at his graduation.”
“Yeah, we are.”
“…”
“He’ll be moving away soon forcollege.”
“… yes, I know.”
“A whole four hours away. Notexactly a quick trip.”
“Yes Virgil, I know.”
“We can call him if we want, but I’msure he’s gonna be super busy with college stuff.”
“Yes, he will be.”
“And then even phone calls willprobably turn out to be too much effort. At some point we won’t even be talking.”
“Do you have a point to thisnegative ruminating?”
“It’s what you’re thinking, right?Patton’s going to move away soon, and we’ll still be here, and he’s going toforget about us.”
He’s not wrong. That surprisesLogan more than anything, mostly because Virgil has given words to a verycomplicated bundle of emotion that Logan has been struggling to unravel.
“How do you know that?” Logan asksquietly.
Virgil shifts, his forearms restingon his knees, fingers laced together. “Because I’ve been thinking it too.”
Oh.
Somehow, in all of Logan’spondering, he’s forgotten that Virgil and Roman have known Patton for manyyears more than he has. And that Virgil is prone to anxious thoughts. Thisshould have been expected.
Or perhaps not so expected. IfLogan is struggling to pinpoint his own emotional distress, he can be evenworse at times when it comes to other people’s emotions.
“You have Roman, at least,” Logansays. It’s an attempt at comfort, but the words are layered with a hard edge.
Oh, that’s jealousy right there.
Virgil’s brows furrow. “What do youmean? I’ve got you too, right?”
Logan tilts his head back, eyesroaming over the dark sky. There’s nothing but clouds. “Not for long. You andRoman won’t be long behind Patton, and then I’ll be …”
Here. Alone.
Funny how that’s never bothered himbefore.
Virgil groans loudly, making Loganjump in the relative quiet. He covers his face with his palms, pressing theheel of his hands over his eyes.
“Logan, do you really think we’regoing to forget about you or something?”
“Perhaps not forget, but it is entirelypossible that when encountering a new environment and workload that—”
“Nope, stop, don’t even finishthat.”
“But—”
“Seriously Lo, that’s not how it’sreally going to turn out. We’re not going to lose touch or anything.”
“But even you said—”
“I know what I said. I’m wrong a lotof the time. I might be worried about it, but I know Patton’s not goingto let us stop being friends. I mean, have you met the guy?”
“… perhaps once or twice.”
Virgil snorts and Logan feels alittle better for it. “Alright smartass. Just admit we’re both being dumb andthat the power of friendship or whatever will prevail.”
“The power of friendship?”
“Ugh, leave me alone, it’s probablywhat Patton or Roman would say. Just admit we’re dumb already.”
“I’m quite smart actually. Have youseen my GPA?”
“I hate you so much,” Virgil saysand Logan laughs.
Later, when much of the parking lothas emptied out, Roman and Patton find them.
“You guuuuys!” Patton yells,running up to them. His red cap is missing and Logan wonders if he’s alreadylost it. “Where were you? We were taking pictures!”
“Ew,” Virgil and Logan say at thesame time. They smile at each other.
“Not really my thing,” Virgil says.
“I’m not partial to them myself,”Logan agrees.
“And I’ve heard cameras steal yoursoul. Wouldn’t want my soul to get sucked out, if I have one.”
“Yes, that would be terrible.”
“You both are terrible,” Romaninterrupts. “And clearly you enable each other too much.”
“Look at Princey, pulling out thebig words.”
“From where did he pull them?”
“I would say ‘brain’, but the jury’sstill out on that one.”
Roman gasps in offense.
Logan watches them bicker, afondness overcoming him, syrupy sweet. He glances over to Patton who’s watchingthem with the same expression. He catches Logan’s gaze and smiles.
“One picture?” Patton pleads. “Justof the four of us? For me?”
Logan puts on a show of sighing. “IfI must, then so be it.”
“Yay!” Patton cheers and throws hisarms around Logan. “Thank you Logey-Wogey!”
Logan’s expression softens. “You’rewelcome … Patty-Watty.”
Patton’s excited screams can be heardall the way back to the auditorium.
________________________________________________________________
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kshitij1997 · 4 years
Text
Hello again!
I hope you're all doing well! I have to say, I'm enjoying writing this far more than I thought I would.
For those who were confused as to who the giants of Europe were in the previous chapter, they were namely Great Britain, Austria-Hungary, the Russian Empire, and the Ottomans, to an extent. I forgot to add that detail in the previous chapter, sorry 😉.
All frozen characters belong to Disney, all I own is this head-cannon and the original characters.
Let's continue :D
Chapter 3: A Collapse, some friendships, a wedding, and possible parenthood
Agnarr sometimes had a habit of zoning out and biting his lower lip while listening to Iduna sing, a quirky quality Iduna found adorable, and always ribbed Agnarr about it in good humour. Agnarr on his part, always found it fascinating and endearing how Iduna was always drawn to nature, and how a nice cup of brewed hot chocolate always lifted her spirits. He also felt a sense of pride when he saw how quickly she learnt the ways of the European royalty despite being a mere commoner. Sure, the beginning was a little rocky with Iduna making small mistakes in conducting herself, but what she may have slightly lacked in conduct and tradition, she made up for it in emotional intelligence and choosing her words carefully, and most importantly her good humour and candour. Ah, the things lovebirds discover and like about each other when they court. While the people were wary of her northern ancestry at first, they soon warmed up to her due to her kindness and sincerity of her desires to want the best for them.
But, while these two were building their own corner of paradise, big changes were happening in Europe. The Emperor of France was finally cornered in a defeat two years after that damned invasion of the Russian Empire. Napoleon was finally ousted from power and exiled to the island of Elba. Fair enough, Europe agreed, for the troublemaker to be kept away from the mainland, like the naughty kid punished to stand outside and think about what they have done. France came to Arendelle for help again, however by now Arendelle was done with them, having reached an understanding with the Russians and the crown of Corona, and the Southern Isles and Weselton only too happy to fill up the vacuum left by the French.
Still, the king was wary of the Southern Isles and Weselton, what with the Southern Isles royal family being notorious for their bonds of blood thinner than air, their tendency to breed like rabbits, and their famed history of going at each other's throats. As long as Arendelle didn't get injured in the crossfire, the King didn't really care, but he could have done without the acrimony, as the present king of The Southern Isles was a little eccentric, but he was fun to hang around with. As far as Weselton was concerned, it was a royalty of crooks and gangsters to king Agnarr. They had little class, lesser respect, and both the duke and his successor never found an opportunity to turn any event into a money-making machine, as they worshipped their riches, and no people, land or race was sacred enough to not sacrifice for them to achieve their ends. The Russians Tsars on their part were never very popular among their own people, and they were regular subject to assassination attempts and revolts, so the Russian empire too couldn't be the definitive reliable ally. Moreover, Alexander was closer in age to his father, so while their interaction was always warm and cordial, king Agnarr always felt distant from the Tsar. The one true ally and possible friend to Agnarr was King Reginald of Corona and his queen to be, lady Sophia of Southern Austria, who bonded with Iduna over their mutual good fortunes and friendship. When the friendship between the kings was on rocky terrain back in 1812, it was the two ladies who made the peace;
"I have all the respect in the world for Agnarr, and the way he has tried to manoeuvre his kingdom through this crisis, but I can't see my husband to be turning the other on this one, Iduna. Reginald feels betrayed, and he's not too keen on being forgiving yet."
"I understand and that position Sophia, but Agnarr didn't have the luxury of making a good decision from that mess. He tried to please everyone, as was expected of him, and everyone has taken advantage of it. He has bent over backwards trying to make amends for his father's harsh stance and the former French emperor's megalomania, for which he was gotten nothing but ridicule and contempt. He and I are desperately trying to find someone in this moment of chaos and trying to escape the witch hunt."
"It's not just a witch hunt, it's also restitution. The European monarchy has had an axe to grind with king Runeard, now they feel cheated and angered by how he's ignoring them to fight his own countrymen. I can't say I blame them, what with how the 18th century ended and the 19th began." Said Sophia, with the horrors of the Napoleonic wars fresh in her mind.
"They may have their reasons, that doesn't mean we don't have our own. Agnarr also has his own father to contend with. Do you really believe he wanted all this to happen? His father was backed into a corner by his French friend, he couldn't refuse him after what happened in Spain. Agnarr tried to minimize the ensuing forest fire, but his efforts were not appreciated." Iduna defended her beau.
"Don't get me wrong, we fully appreciate his endeavour in that direction, however it was an admission of weakness on his part, and as we have both come to know, weakness is not received well in our circles." Sophia said empathetically.
"This is all moot, as Agnarr is not being given a chance to correct his father's errors, and he wants what's best not only for Arendelle, but also for the stability of Europe. He is making sincere attempts at reconciling with his friends, spending far more effort at retaining those who are close to him than acquainting and dealing with strangers." Iduna put her foot down.
"The strangers being Corona's immediate northern and western neighbours, correct?" Sophia inquired with a faint smile on her lips.
"Yes, and he would appreciate and hold the true friendship strong through thick and thin." Iduna replied, making her point here.
"I have a couple of observations to make." Sophia started after a few minutes of ruminating on the subject. "Go ahead Sophia" Iduna pressed on.
"Agnarr is lucky to have you, and you have learnt well a trade completely alien to you." Sophia grinned. Iduna blushed despite getting used to the praise and replied with a smile, "Thank you, Sophia. I have a very good and supporting companion whom I'm fortunate to have in return. I also have come a long way from tripping over the coattails of the king of Bavaria, and almost setting him on fire. I have on good authority that he still doesn't like me." Iduna added with a smirk. Sophia laughed heartily at that for some time, remembering the pandemonium that had happened at the Bavarian king's wedding anniversary four months ago; in the May of 1812.
She calmed down at length, and assured her, "Alright, you've made your point Iduna, leave Reginald to me. I'll convince him. Soon, this problem wouldn't be a problem anymore." Iduna beamed at that "Thank you so much, Sophia. You don't know how much this means to both Agnarr and me." Iduna said with genuine gratitude and relief in her voice.
"You are most welcome, Iduna." Sophia beamed with satisfaction. "So, when are we all getting the much-awaited wedding invitations for the romantic, noble and adroit couple?" Sophia teased.
"Well, we are romantic, arguably noble and rumoured to be adroit, but we are still fourteen or fifteen at best. You tell me Sophia, when shall Europe see Corona and Austria-Hungary join hands in matrimony?" Iduna asked cheekily in return.
"Ah well, I'm ready now, but we both know there are other things at hand first." Sophia sighed.
"True, but at least we can put this particular business behind us" Iduna assured.
"Yes, and just in time for both of us to leave" Noted Sophia.
The two friends embraced and wished each other safe travels.
Iduna remembered the conversation that had brought the two nations together two years ago, quite fondly, and had grown very close to Sophia in the meantime. As King Agnarr and King Reginald forged the new order of Europe post Napoleon, European society keenly baptized them as ' The northern brothers '. As for the queens-in waiting, they maintained a healthy correspondence, discussing all joys and tensions, and forged a nigh sisterly bond. It wasn't surprising to for Iduna to be the first person to know about the wedding date and being Sophia's maid of honour, and it was inevitable for king Agnarr to be king Reginald's best man.
It was a happy and lavish affair in October 1814, with royalty coming from as far as the Ottoman Empire, Macedonia and Egypt. Sure, now Corona had ideological differences with the Ottomans, but that didn't stop the Sultan from helping himself to the finest offerings of king Reginald's palace kitchens. The then-king of Great Britain sent his regrets, but that could be forgiven as the poor monarch was already half-mad and blind with age. As for the ever-dignified Tsar, he blessed the union with prosperity and a long lineage. He may have been a party mad youth in his time, as were all the Romanovs, but his Tsarina had tethered him to a dignity that he quietly enjoyed. The king of The Southern Isles was particularly interested in the lineage and advised king Reginald to secure the succession as soon as possible.
"The Tsar's blessing is good and all, but I'd wish king Christian the eighth of The Southern Isles had more time to educate me on the subject." Reginald said glibly to Agnarr after making sure the father of nine children was out of earshot.
"I don't know about the king, but Sophia would definitely fucking kill you when she hears that." Laughed Agnarr.
"Hey, Iduna taught you to have a brutal sense of humour! That lady is magnificent" ribbed the king of Corona.
"I agree wholeheartedly. Do you think king Christian will reach double-digits with his kids?"
"He's definitely getting close, even if he's up there in age. I'll wager at least eleven before he's done." teased Reginald, before his queen quietly twisted his ears.
"You two clearly have way too much fucking time on your hands" scolded the inebriated queen; well, it was her night too. "I'm sorry, dear. It slipped out; I didn't mean anything by it." wailed the king. "Yeah, we'll see about that." challenged his Austria-Hungarian better half.
This silly exchange lightened up the ballroom, with The Southern Isles King and the Duke of Weselton cackling in the distance and even the stoic Tsar grinning good-naturedly.
"Hear hear, the true power of Corona!" Proclaimed Iduna, appearing as if out of nowhere with her signature mug of hot chocolate.
"Hey darling, you got your way after all" said Agnarr, graciously admitting defeat to an earlier bet he made with his belle.
"Damn right." Iduna replied, holding her hot chocolate mug high up. Then she spoke "I'm so happy for them, the whole thing was textbook." "Yeah me too, they are a fine couple, we are good at this, we should do this more often." Agnarr said.
Then Agnarr turned wistful and grim and said, "I wish the French leader came, they have been our longest supporting allies, even if our relations have soured in the last few years."
"The surviving bourbon king is old and obese; we can't expect him to travel such a distance without incident." Mused Iduna.
"Still, he could have sent a representative, would have meant everything. I know from experience that this can't end well." Agnarr said quietly "Now why didn't he send any message?"
As if to answer his question, a messenger entered the ball room and made a beeline for the centre "Pardon me for this ugly interruption but listen all. Napoleon Bonaparte has escaped the island of Elba, has garnered support back in France and has usurped the bourbon monarchy again. King Louis the eighteenth is on the run, requesting asylum in Corona."
The European royalty may have had various grim reactions to this worrying news, but the Tsar summed it up best "That fucking devil."
It was a tough few months for the northern brothers ahead, along with the rest of Europe. Napoleon, the crazy genius that he was, had managed to find the backing of the crown of Spain, the Italian peninsula whom he had promised freedom from Austria-Hungary upon his conquest, and some nominal support from the Ottomans, who were only too happy to stick it to their problem neighbour up north.
But Napoleon's star was on the fall, suffering terrible losses despite some early victories. Despite that, it took the combined forces of the Russians, the British, Corona, Austria-Hungary, The Southern Isles and Weselton to destroy his presence forever in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. The kingdom of Arendelle chose to maintain the supply lines for its allies instead of sending actual soldiers. Upon Napoleon's defeat and escape from the battle, the Tsar called for his head once and for all, but the duke of Wellington and Iduna intervened to exile him to St Helena's instead. They reasoned to avoid making that statement by rationalizing that France would be better left intact than scrambled by Napoleon's Execution.
Three weeks after the European powers decided Napoleon's fate, king Agnarr married now queen Iduna in a simple private ceremony, worlds apart from the celebration at Corona months ago. Of course, the close friends and allies were invited, and even though they had the odd Duke of Weselton grumbling about the lack of pretence and grandeur, king Reginald and queen Sophia lifted all spirits by announcing that they were with child.
"You magnificent bastard, you did it!" shouted the king of Arendelle as he gave the king of Corona a bear hug. "Right back at you, you scoundrel." bellowed Reginald.
"Well done both of you, but remember, this is but a beginning." The Tsar grinned.
"Oh your majesty, you're making us nervous" King Reginald replied in good humour.
"Thank you for taking my advice to heart, king Reginald" said king Christian, clearly pleased with himself.
"I suppose it makes the paltry Arendelle wedding ceremony worth it" grumbled the duke of Weselton.
"You make me sad, duke. I think you might either be clinically insane, or drunk on an empty stomach. Seeing the empty glass in your hand, I guess the latter." teased Christian, to which the duke merely grunted.
"Come with me, I'll introduce you to a poison far better than money" winked the king of The Southern Isles.
Agnarr merely laughed as Reginald relaxed his fisted hands after the duke left with the king, and within the span of a few minutes, was dancing his best impression of a chicken.
"He's clearly forgotten all his troubles"
"Good for him."
"Ah lighten up Reggie, I doubt you'll remember in the morning either."
"Hmm, I guess."
Agnarr grew serious and put his left arm over Reginald's shoulder, who returned the gesture.
"All the best for your parenthood."
"All good fortune for your married life as well, brother."
Agnarr gave a big smile before calling out: "Iduna, sweetheart, come here and bring Sophia with you as well."
"Here I am" Iduna warbled, clearly enjoying the first time she had ever been drunk, hanging onto Sophia's shoulder, who merely found it adorable. By this time, king Christian had also managed to calm the duke down after thoroughly enjoying the duke's dancing and 'mating calls' himself.
"Let's make a toast" Agnarr raised his glass as he collected Iduna in his right arm.
"To the lost" Agnarr said at length.
"To the lost" echoed the queen and everyone else.
"Skall to that" king Christian being himself, followed the duke shrieking "Caw Caw!"
Overcome with emotion and love, king Agnarr kissed his bride Iduna, who was so emotional at that point that she let out a long kulning for the occasion and buried her face into Agnarr's chest. She said with her voice cracking from tears, "If only my family could see me like this." King Agnarr whispered back kindly, "I know, I miss my parents too." The king held his bride close till she was well again, her eyes shinning with tears of joy. Reginald and Sophia watched the pair fondly coming closer themselves.
"I love you, Agnarr." "I love you too, Iduna"
"Not fair" Sophia remarked, trying to lighten up the mood, "she gets drunk then sings like an angel and tells people that she loves them, I get drunk and get into a quarrel with Reggie."
"We all have our charms, love." grinned Reginald.
Hmmm, this is getting somewhere, well thank you for sticking with this story!
Next time, we will see the sisters we have been waiting for :D
As always, constructive feedback is always welcome.
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loelapaloela · 4 years
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So...
I had my last therapy session today.
That means that after 6.5 years, four different treatments, 5 therapists, 2.5 (super shitty) years of medication with even more disastrous withdrawals, and one successful (recently started) medication round I am 'done'. And then I am only counting my most recent run, not the things I did before turning 18. It feels like I am graduating from a really, really hard and intense elective programme most people get to avoid without any of the celebration that comes with a graduation. Although I don’t feel like I want a lot of recognition and congratulations for finally being ‘normal’, I still want to mark it somehow because I am still bordering on disbelief.
I am not much of a social media person and this is wicked personal, but I just wanted to put it somewhere. Sometimes the only thing that kept me somewhat upright was telling myself that this day was possible. Even when I did not really believe it, I fantasised and dreamed of this day. It was a lot more dramatic and poetic in those fantasies, but the idea was still that things would be better. That one day I was going to wake up and I was going to feel okay. That I’d look around my living room and I’d actually live in it, that I’d be able to enjoy a quiet moment, and that I would just be able to breathe.
This is a postcard from Postsecret that really hit home for me a long time ago and I have some things to say about it.
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Life is easier for other people. Really. I know everyone struggles and people rarely breeze through life but oh my god is it easier. It’s been four weeks since my medication started working, which was the last puzzle piece I needed for my ‘recovery’ (god I’m scared to use that word), and I am so overwhelmed with how much lighter I feel. And I get so much more done. Basically the first week I was just high on this feeling because I was baffled with how much I could fit in a day and how good it felt.
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^ me the entire time
No seriously, I cannot stress enough how much nicer it is when basic shit like brushing your teeth, getting out of the house, or choosing what to eat doesn’t take up all your energy supply. Also, PSA, if you feel like it takes too much energy to do things like groceries, you might want to do something about that because that’s not normal (WHO KNEW).
By the way, on things being normal: you might have a lot of friends that have mental health issues, for reasons, but normal means compared to the whole population. Don’t let your bubble fool you into thinking things are normal or just part of the deal. They’re not. You deserve better.
On to the next part: decisions! Holy shit I am so much better at making them! I went shopping and I actually had opinions and I just got the things I liked! I am still amazed when I can sit somewhere and doubt for a bit and just decide what I want to do and not anxiously scroll through whatever internet medium for distraction (once again, PSA, consistently not being able to focus on things you enjoy is not normal). 
Which brings me to this: my concentration. I am able to just perform tasks without having a YouTube video or podcast or anything to distract me. I can do one thing at a time and finish it. I get so much more work done. What I used to call procrastination, really just turned out to be depression. I still delay doing tasks I don’t like, of course, and I definitely am not crazy productive, but it’s never self-sabotaging or destructive. 
I am so much more capable of engaging with the world. I have the energy to talk to people, to respond to messages and hold a conversation. Some flakiness is just part of life, but sometimes flakiness is just depression. 
And yes, I laugh more. I am excited about little things. I have joy. But those changes have not been the biggest for me. In the past years I have been able to experience joy, it was just hard to come by and it wouldn’t stick around, but I would never say I haven’t been happy. I was just very profoundly unhappy, too.
People would often think that my goal was to be happy all the time. They’d remind me that no one is always happy and I shouldn’t have unrealistic standards. Honestly, that’s just another way of trying to say that I should deny my senses telling me that what I am experiencing is not okay. I understand that I might come across as chasing constant happiness and to be honest sometimes I did just want that (who can blame me?), but the opposite of depression has never been happiness. 
It’s being able to feel normal emotions without shutting down or being overwhelmed. It’s being able to think ‘oh shit that was awkward’ and not ruminate endlessly. It’s being able to be confronted with some really fucked up thinking patterns (oh hello personality problems!) and cope. This is why I don’t say medication ‘cured’ me in the end. The medication gave me the space to reap the benefits from what I have painstakingly been sowing for the past 6.5 years. I had to learn those things, I had to address those patterns, and I had to go through it in order to be able to get here. 
Most of the time I really never thought I’d be here. I had no way of envisioning where I was going because I had been depressed for so long that I had no idea what it would be like if it were gone. It scared me, because at least I knew what rock bottom looked like and where I was. 
I did not climb up out of this in one beautiful straight line, I did not enjoy it, I did not know I was close until I was out of it, and I never felt strong or brave. It was hard. And I am sad that this happened to me. So while I am happy it’s likely over, I do not feel like I can triumphantly run over some finish line and celebrate. I feel like I need to process this experience, I need to figure out who I am without this cloud hanging over me, and I need to let my eyes adjust to this brightness. I am a little intimidated by life, because it’s so much. I also think I might enjoy life, because it’s so full.
What I mean to say is: I think I am going to be okay. And you can be, too. 
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FIC: Last Year’s Language
Rating: T Fandom: Stardew Valley Pairing: Shane/Female Farmer Tags: Pre-Relationship, Friendship, Pining, Fluff Word Count: 3000 Summary: Shane and Lydia spend a quiet New Year's Eve at the farmhouse, which leaves Shane a lot of room to ruminate. Post-eight heart event, pre-relationship. Also on AO3. 
Sometimes, Shane thought, it seemed as if Lydia had decided to skip straight past friendship and right on to old married couple, disgustingly comfortable with one another.
Not that they were...not that she would...there was no point in even ruminating on the subject, even though ruminating was probably the only thing he did well. Turning thoughts and ideas over and over and over in his mind until they'd turned into something monstrous and horrifying: his specialty.
This was different. This, he wished he could turn into something shiny and good. But he was incapable of that, so it was better that he left it alone entirely.
He tried to, anyway. Despite that silent vow, he still found it—her—in his thoughts more often than not. It wasn’t the first, or the last, or the only way his brain had betrayed him, so he tolerated this behavior and hoped that it would pass, just like everything else.
But. He was supposed to be trying to be kinder to himself. (His therapist said that this was really being “fair” to himself. He disagreed. They compromised on “kind.”) And if he was being kinder to himself, then he had to admit that the situations he kept putting himself in did not really make it easy to forget how he felt about her. Or how the chemicals in his brain thought they felt about her, at least.
Now that—that wasn't fair. Not to him, but to Lydia. Of course he liked her. He could hardly believe that there were people in Pelican Town who didn't—but they existed, supposedly. He steered clear of them.
If only he could stop there, with liking her, and be satisfied.
Lydia picked up a card from the draw pile, tucking it into the middle of her hand, the way she did with every card she picked up. She studied it a long time, her brow furrowed in concentration, and then lifted the whole fan of cards to conceal her mouth. It was no use; he heard her jaw crack all the way across the table from the strength of the yawn. Farmers were not meant to stay up so late—not even on New Year’s Eve. Didn’t matter that winter was still desperately hanging on, that nothing was growing on Northern Lights Farm; she always found a way to occupy herself. Judging by the bruise on the hand holding the cards, she’d probably been back to the mines today.
“We can pretend we made it to midnight,” he offered.
She glared over her cards at him, her eyes bloodshot. “You just want to get out with your dignity intact.” She tapped the pad of paper where she was keeping score.
“I’m behind by more than a hundred points, last I checked,” he said dryly. “As usual, there's no escaping with my dignity.”
The cards lowered a little, enough for him to see her brief smile—quickly overcome by another yawn. “You could still come back,” she said, jumping from mild trash talk to encouragement instantly. “We’ve got twenty-seven minutes. A lot can change in twenty-seven minutes.”
He rolled his eyes; she discarded another card. His turn. He picked up the card she’d dropped, inspecting it against his hand. Two of hearts. Enough to complete his Ace-Two-Three-Four run, and with a couple of other three of a kinds…
He laid down his cards, surprised at his good luck. “Gin.”
“Fuck,” she sighed, laying down her cards, too, and began to count up what she owed him, pencil in hand. He'd caught her with a couple of face cards unaccounted for. “See? I told you.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
She penciled in the new scores, elbow on the table, chin in hand, while he gathered up the cards and began to shuffle, watching her out of the corner of his eye. There was a big get-together at the Stardrop tonight, but Lydia had opted out, despite half a dozen separate invitations. She could have been toasting with the rest of the town right now; most of them liked her pretty well, after all, a few idiots notwithstanding.
But instead, she was here. She'd invited him and Jas over, promised hot drinks and a towering stack of brownies and entertainment. And he'd been too selfish to turn her down, even though she'd have been better off mingling, drinking with all the people who could still drink without nearly killing themselves. She probably wished she was there.
No. No, that was last year's language. Lydia didn't do anything she didn't want to do. He knew that.
Even though he was sure that this was boring. That he was boring. She had to be bored.
She yawned again, proving his point.
"Sorry," she said, her eyes drooping a little. "I shouldn't have gone to the mines today."
He glanced at the bruise on her hand again. It wasn't about him, as usual; he was blowing things out of proportion, as usual.
"That's nothing to worry about, right?" he asked, nodding at the hand.
She held it out in front of her while he dealt the cards, frowning, turning it this way and that. "Nah. I've had worse."
His stomach twisted. The memory of that night—it hadn't been so long ago, just earlier this winter—made his blood run cold. His mind, which had always been more his enemy than anything else, sometimes reminded him of it at moments when he was otherwise just fine: the strange huddled shape she'd made on her porch, the snow caught in her eyelashes, the blood dried on her face—
"I'm okay," her voice said, quiet, and he snapped back to the present to find himself holding the deck, both their hands dealt. Hastily, he put the stack of cards down between them.
"Yeah, I know," he said, picking up his hand.
When he glanced up again, checking to see if she'd picked up a card, she was watching him; her hazel eyes were murky in the firelight, her teeth worried at her lower lip, and his stomach twisted in an entirely different—almost entirely pleasant—way.
"I'm careful," she said. "I promise. Way more careful than I was that night."
"I know," he said again, and then, "I'll just feel better when you're back to swearing at the sprinklers, is all."
She laughed; her eyes twinkled. "It's nice of you to worry about me," she said, teasing, and finally gathered up her cards to take a look at them.
"I do," he said. It was important for her to know that, he thought. That she wasn't the one doing all the worrying. "Worry about you. But I know you can take care of yourself."
She wasn't laughing anymore; her features had fallen into more serious lines. He should have let it go, should have let her make her joke and brush it off.
"To be honest with you, I...I'll feel better when I'm back to swearing at the sprinklers, too. It's an adventure down there, but…" She trailed off, eyes wandering her cards, frowning.
“But?” he prompted.
She shook her head, gave a quick shrug. “I don’t know. It gets lonely.”
Strange. Somehow, he had a hard time imagining that Lydia ever got lonely. He could arrive at the farm any time of the day or night, and she would be in the middle of some task—swearing at the sprinklers, her hands full of a piece of lumpy knitting, four pots and pans on the stove with something delicious simmering inside. Sometimes just lying sprawled out on the grass with her dog half on top of her, talking to him like he was a person.
She always seemed so occupied, like her life alone was so rich and full. His life alone had never felt like that.
But she hadn't said, “It gets scary,” or “it gets cold,” or “it gets bloody.” Lonely. In a dangerous mine full of dangerous creatures, she got lonely.
It seemed like an invitation, somehow. Or maybe a question she couldn't bring herself to ask. He knew all about those.
“If you want company,” he said, before he could second-guess himself, “just ask, okay?”
She looked up; her mouth opened, just slightly, then closed again. For a long moment, she considered him instead of her cards, as if weighing his hardiness against rock crabs and enraged bats and all the varieties of slimes.
“Really?” she asked, and though his instinct was to interpret this as judgmental, as dubious, he heard something else entirely in her voice, something even he couldn't miss. Hope. Relief.
“Yeah,” he said. “I mean, as long as I’m not working, or busy with Jas…" That was a lot of caveats, but he had to pay attention to his responsibilities; she understood. "I can come with you whenever. Really.”
She smiled, a slow, liquid thing entirely unlike her usual quick grins, and his heart made an astonishing effort to break through his ribcage and throw itself at her feet.
He was doing a great job stifling that crush. Really, really great. It would evaporate any day now.
“I would like that,” she said. “Next Saturday, maybe?”
He nodded, afraid of what might come out of his mouth next if he didn’t keep it firmly shut, and they returned to their card game. She stayed quiet this time, but whenever she lowered her cards and exposed her face he saw that smile, firmly entrenched, and thought, I did that, somehow. His brain was already feverishly working on how to achieve a repeat performance.
She won, of course, but the margin was narrower than he’d thought it would end up being. He could read that in all kinds of nasty ways. An omen that he would always fall a little short no matter how hard he tried, maybe. But he tried to think of a kinder way to interpret it, instead. Like he was catching up, slowly but surely.
Instead of turning on the TV, they watched the clock on her mantle, the tarnished golden second hand creeping steadily closer to midnight—and then, in an instant, it passed through the peeling XII.
"Well, that's that," Lydia said matter-of-factly.
He drained the last of his cider. “I should probably get going.”
She yawned, so wide that he feared for her jaw. “Need help with Jas?” she asked, even though it was clear how hard she was fighting to stay awake; she wouldn’t make the minute walk to the truck, let alone the twenty-minute walk back from the ranch.
“I'm pretty sure I can get her to the car.”
Lydia pushed back from the table and stretched, arms reaching out above her head, and he made himself look away, pushed back from the table himself and went to collect Jas from beneath the pile of blankets in Lydia's room. In the semi-darkness, he didn't even give himself permission to look around; it felt too much like spying on her, like an intrusion.
Jas, he'd learned early on in their life together, was a light sleeper. He focused entirely on peeling back the blankets without waking her up. No sooner had he set aside the second one, though, than her eyes opened, glinting in the low light.
"What time is it?" she asked, her voice still slurred from sleep.
"Little after midnight. Time to go home."
Her face scrunched up in a devastated scowl. "I missed it," she lamented, wide-awake in an instant, throwing back the rest of the blankets and nearly burying Shane beneath them. "You should've woken me up!"
He was too old and tired to feel anything in particular at the passing of the hand of the clock over midnight, but with a suddenness that winded him, he remembered being a kid, imagining some magic in it all, that this year would be the year, and he was seeing it right from the beginning.
It had all been bullshit, obviously, but it didn’t have to be for Jas.
He managed to evict himself from all the quilts. “Sorry, kiddo,” he said, and meant it. “Next year I’ll wake you up, okay?”
With a huff, she threw herself out of the bed and flounced into the main room. Shane made it to the doorway just in time to see Jas slam the front door behind her, not even acknowledging Lydia.
“Ouch,” Lydia said, laying a hand over her heart.
“Yeah, we’ve really offended her,” he said, frustrated. "Sorry. She's not usually like that. Even when I screw up."
"Hey. Don't say that. You didn't know."
He shrugged, helplessly, and saw Lydia's eyes narrow in calculation despite her exhaustion.
"I think she’ll forgive us," she declared. "Especially if you take some of these home with you.” She pointed out the stack of brownies. “I’ll pack them up.”
He would have protested, except that he understood very well by now, after nearly a year of knowing her, that little else in the world gave her more pleasure than foisting food off on people. He therefore endured the brownie acquisition process in silence.
“Thanks for having us,” he said, the tupperware container of brownies in hand, standing in the open door.
“Thanks for coming,” she said, and then, her face more serious, “hey. I know you hate talking about this stuff, but I just wanted to say—it’s been a good year for you, you know? You’ve done some incredible things.”
He had his own opinions on what things qualified as incredible, but he didn’t like making Lydia look like she’d just watched him kick a puppy, so he kept his mouth shut.
“And my year’s been pretty great, too,” she said, in a smaller voice. Her eyes fell from his face to study his shoes. “In no small part thanks to you, so...thanks.”
Quickly—so quickly he wasn’t entirely sure what her intention was, and so he stood there, frozen in place—she stepped closer and hugged him, arms looping up around his shoulders. Maybe this was an instinctive human thing that he hadn’t missed out on, because it only took a heartbeat for him to react, one arm wrapping around her, the other hand holding the brownies aloft.
For a moment, all attempts to stifle whatever this was failed. He held her, and she didn't pull away; she pressed closer. There was a nice, clean scent to her hair—he'd caught brief hints of it before, but now he realized there was a sweet, flowery aroma beneath, simple, like the wildflowers that grew rampant on the land she hadn't had time to cultivate yet in warmer weather.
For a moment, he let himself want exactly what he wanted. To imagine not going home, after all.
But only for a moment.
He convinced himself to loosen the arm that was around her, to begin to pull away. They were still safely in the territory of normal friend stuff. Hugs on special occasions. Awkward, but nice, sentiments. In limited capacity this was all completely, totally normal.
But as he pulled back, she turned her head. Her lips brushed his cheek, a touch so soft and light that he would later half-convince himself he'd imagined it. Only then did she let him go.
In his opinion, that stretched the boundaries of normal a bit.
“Happy New Year,” she said, her voice soft, and automatically he stepped back, clearing the doorway, his mind too jumbled to produce any coherent words. She began to shut the door.
“Hey,” he said, the word struggling through his throat, which seemed to have attempted to close entirely.
He’d said nothing, absolutely nothing, and some reciprocation was probably warranted, right? Normal? She paused, door still half-open, waiting, and he cast around frantically for words that would actually match, that would actually mean anything. Not his strong suit.
“It was thanks to you,” he said, finally. “You know that, right? You stuck your neck out for me when...I mean. I was an asshole to you.”
She raised one eyebrow. That smile was still there, somehow. What were the parameters for it? He had no idea.
“It was worth it,” she said, and shut the door.
He stood there, still stunned, for a good ten seconds; and then, remembering Jas, he trotted over to the truck.
He couldn't ruminate on any of that. The last sixty seconds were strictly off-limits for rumination. Not for fear that he'd tarnish them—or maybe, yes, actually, he could very well tarnish them. By believing that any of it had meant more than it did.
He expected to find Jas sulking in the passenger seat, but instead she was upright and alert as he climbed up to the driver’s side, brownies in hand. He set them down before he could drop them and searched his pockets for the keys, a little unnerved by how closely she was watching him.
“Can I ask you something?” Jas said.
“Yeah, of course,” he said, expecting her to bargain for a brownie somehow.
“Do you like her?”
He paused in the act of shoving the keys in the ignition. “Who, Lydia?”
Jas sighed impatiently and crossed her arms over her chest. “No, Buttons,” she said sarcastically, naming Lydia’s first cow. “Of course, Lydia.”
“Well, yeah. We’re friends.”
She gave him a look, a look that seemed way too sharp for a seven-year-old. “That’s it?” she pressed.
“Yeah,” he said, even though his stomach tied itself in another knot around the lie. “That’s it. Why?”
“I just really like Lydia, too,” she said, wiggling deeper into her seat. “That’s all.”
She was definitely hinting at something, but he wasn’t about to take that bait. “Yeah? That why you didn’t even say goodbye to her?”
Guilt flashed over her face. “Is she mad?” she asked worriedly.
“No, but it probably wouldn’t hurt to say you’re sorry next time you see her.”
She nodded, clearly relieved, and lapsed into silence. He knew better than to think the topic was forgotten, but for now, she seemed willing to drop it. Someday, though...maybe she wouldn’t be.
He wasn’t sure what he was going to do then.
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comicteaparty · 5 years
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June 15th-June 21st, 2019 Creator Babble Archive
The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from June 15th, 2019 to June 21st, 2019.  The chat focused on the following question:
Describe your comic’s protagonist.  Why should we as an audience care about them and their goals?
Nutty (Court of Roses)
Technically I have five protagonists in Court of Roses http://courtofroses.thecomicseries.com/, but I can focus on the main one; Merlow is simply a wandering minstrel who, despite fighting some inner demons, just wants to bring laughter and song everywhere he goes. He is passionate and loves his line of work, and finds the beauty in all expressions in music, and, in turn, in life and in people. His friendly and sincere approach to everyone is what helps bring him and the other four main bards together. Without spoiling too much, once they begin to travel together, he'll be the unofficial leader and the glue between them all.
keii4ii
HoK is about heartbreaks that develop quietly, between people who do genuinely care about each other. The main example of such heartbreaks is feeling abandoned when you need their support more than ever. A lot of us have been through that, myself included. There are countless variations of that experience; the specific variations that I know firsthand, I've mixed them around and given to Ethan and Danbi. That's why their story speaks to my soul, the bruised part of it. And maybe it will speak to yours, too, for the same reasons.
deo101
Millennium's http://millennium.thecomicseries.com/ protagonist, Sage, is a kindhearted, southern farmer who has been thrown into a lot of bad situations he could never understand or prepare for, but always approaches with as much love as he can. I guess we root for him because we, too, want to see the best in things and have that kind of positivity work out.
Respheal
Conan of Galebound http://www.galebound.com/ is a pretty typical farmboy, except he just learned that he's a Hidden Backup Prince, that he has the power to command Magicians, that he's an assassination target, his kidnapper/protector is probably also an assassin, and the literal ocean called him "far worse"--whatever that means. He's had a rough couple of days. I like to think he's relatable and ultimately a good person. At first, his goal was just to get back home, but then he made a terrible mistake with his newly-discovered power. Immediately he takes responsibility for his actions, seeking to learn more about this power so he doesn't hurt anyone else and maybe even help against those using the same power for cruel reasons. Once he feels responsible for something, he tends to through his entire self into taking care of or fixing a problem--sometimes to the point of being a bit self-sacrificial about it. His overall arc, though, is really about following your heart, and recognizing what you really want to do versus what you're doing out of a sense of obligation--or sometimes discovering that your "obligations" and what you want are one and the same.
Desnik
My comic's protagonist (http://ask-a-warlock.tumblr.com/) is actually not the warlock...it's a small bird named Margo who is an animate drawing. She hops out of an illuminated manuscript one day and discovers the real world is very brutal and harsh. Through a series of buddy adventures with a knight, and demonic crime-solving with a cleric, Margo does eventually choose to be part of the real world, because she belongs with her friends...although she secretly desires to be human, as well(edited)
Desnik
argh, I put in the wrong askawarlock...haha, well, updated my urlwith dashes
Mharz
The Angel with Black Wings http://blackwings.mharz.com/ or Big Sis as what me and my readers call her at this point is a sweet and very caring towards people. She's like a motherly figure of some sort. (The one who will tuck you in bed and bake you loads of cookies) However she's heavily plagued by mental illness (feeling extreme guilt and blaming herself on anything bad that happens around her, thinking she doesn't deserve anything good in life, and inner voices that seems to be getting stronger as time passes.) Even tho she thinks she doesn't deserve it, deep down there is a tiny glimmer of hope that one day, she'd be forgiven. Altho her mental issues are amplified, I think most of us can relate to have felt guilt about something we did/didn't do and dwelled and ruminated on it for so long, having uncontrollable thoughts and inner voices that tells us that we are worthless, we are horrible people, everyone hates us and we don't deserve anything. I personally on that boat and slowly working on getting better. So I wrote my comics in the hope whoever reads my comics can make them feel better in some way and find that glimmer of hope. wheeze (edited)
MJ Massey
Emily (http://welcometoblackball.com/) is pretty much a passive doormat. She starts out just doing whatever her parents say and taking the path of least resistence until she feels she can't, that she has to take action to solve her sister's murder. But she has no patience for the shenanigans and games of others, always taking the most direct path she can. Some would say this makes her a concise person, but in her mind she's just doing what's easiest. She ends becoming more assertive and independent over time until she can finally make her own life choices with confidence. A good bit of her insecurities come from being very ill with measles a few years ago, and having to have her hair shaved off. It never grew back quite the same as it was, and her parents are a little more on her case because they want her to marry well in society.
kayotics
I think on paper, Toivo (https://ingress-comic.com/) sounds awful. He’s a wizard professor, single father, serial romantic, and unlucky in his adventures. He’s anxious and a little mean and obnoxious. He’s snarky and kind of an asshole and makes mistakes and doesn’t consider other people’s emotions, so he makes things hard for other people. He orchestrates most of the problems he has to solve. But i think that’s why he’s fun? He’s a good person at heart but he isn’t perfect and that’s the type of character I like to read about.
Desnik
@kayotics He seems like a genuinely fun character to read about. I like characters with flaws that seem to make sense with the story being told
kayotics
@Desnik I like to think he is! One of my favorite comic series is Ranma 1/2, and I think that series fundamentally taught me that you can have characters who are objectively not great people and still likable.
MJ Massey
I've enjoyed reading his misadventures so far. I think that since he usually learns some sort of lesson from his misadventures it makes him really endearing to balance out his flaws
NeilKapit
Lamar Anderson, the current focus of We Are The Wyrecats (http://wyrecats.com/) is a superhero of unyielding principle, to the point of self-destructive fanaticism. He’s a mute genius with cerebral palsy, who has difficulty walking without his hero armor. The Wyrecats were the first and only time he felt like he had friends, and K.A. was his first crush (reciprocated, though neither of them acted on it). When she was put in a coma and the team disbanded, he basically started a one man war against the US government that secretly initiated the plot (long story). Five years later, with K.A. waking up, he’s been questioning his approach, which involved stockpiling weapons and hiring mercenaries to wage guerilla war upon his country’s intelligence agencies. Since K.A.’s hardly in the best mental health at the moment, Lamar’s trying to do his best by her to make a world she’d want to live in.
snuffysam
Mizuki Sato is the protagonist of Super Galaxy Knights Deluxe R (http://sgkdr.thecomicseries.com/). She's a small woman from a small farm town, going on adventures through a strange world. Mizuki's main draw is that she's entertaining to watch. She constantly back-sasses & annoys the people she encounters on her journey (to be fair, some of those people are Taci Ramino) - and when action happens, Mizuki is ahead of the game, out-strategizing her enemies and pushing past her own limits. She may be a bit reckless with her own health, but to her it's worth it if she's helping other people in any way. Mizuki's main goal in life is to find love - someone she could get married to someday, specifically. But... that often doesn't work out for her. Every time Mizuki falls for someone, she loses them to someone else - or worse, she ends up in a short-lived relationship filled with endless put-downs. The people Mizuki encounters in her daily life enjoy the fact that she's around. They like the way she entertains them, the way she helps them out, the way she... makes them happy. But, at least from Mizuki's perspective, nobody she meets actually loves her in any meaningful way. anyway funney muscle lady shoot rainbow lasers woo
AntiBunny
My comic AntiBunny http://antibunny.net/ has multiple protagonists depending on what angle we're seeing the world through, but the original protagonist Pooky Bunny can be best described as a gender ambiguous depressed mess who's trying to become a better person. Why should you care? When you first meet Pooky their depression is clearly in control. As the story unfolds in the past you start to see where that depression comes from, and as it unfolds in the present you'll see Pooky learning to let others in, slowly moving to become a better person. Pooky is not OK, and realizes that, but also sees a way forward. So if you want to see someone who is initially consumed by their flaws and who eventually realizes them and works to overcome them, then maybe you'll care about Pooky. What are their goals? Pooky has both what I'd call external goals, that is things they want to accomplish in the real world, and internal ones, that is how they'd like to change as a person. Externally Pooky is all about unraveling mysteries. Being a reporter Pooky often is chasing a story. Internally Pooky's goals change. Early on it's little more than subsistence. Struggling to get by from one day to the next. Though as the story progresses as Pooky says "I'm trying to be a better person." Pooky goes from being someone who's dead inside to coming alive again. You'll see that trauma in Nailbat that started this, and in The Gritty City Stories you'll see the recovery. It's all about the fall, bottoming out, and climbing back up. Essentially that's Pooky.
Attila Polyák
Anne is the protagonist and mostly the perspective character of Tales of Midgard: The Age of Magic https://talesofmidgard.com/comic/book-1-cover-page/. She's a knight and a mage and more or less she's a well established person with a generally (currently) good life. She's definitely not someone special. Magic is very common and accessible to basically everyone and being a knight in a world full of magic is also not really extraordinary. So why should you care about someone who's not special? That's exactly the point! Most fantasy stories are set in fantastic worlds yet the main cast, and the protagonists especially, are still special. Even compared to the world. Not here. This story is the story of the everyman. The true everyman, not a chosen one, not someone who is surrounded by prophecies left and right, just your regular normal person. Of course we're still in a fantasy world so what's regular to the characters is still fantastic for the readers, and these "everydays" are still adventures compared to the normal lives most of us live in real life. Plus... Just because she not special she and everyone else in the story can still, just like in real life, be swooped up into events that are larger than life and seeing normal people cope with the extraordinary is always more interesting than extraordinary people playing their own game.
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blatherkatt · 6 years
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Title: The Mockingbird of Whitestone [Critical Role]
Chapter 1: The Visitor
Summary: Twenty years later, Vox Machina--or as much of it as can get to Whitestone at the time--reunite. It’s not their first time doing so, and they don’t plan on it being the last. It should just be another reunion. 
But something completely unexpected throws everything into chaos, and leaves Vex’ahlia struggling with emotions she’d thought buried, and Percy trying to piece together the fragments of a very confusing puzzle.
Canon pairings, focusing on Perc’ahlia; warnings for minor blood in a later chapter and a whole lot of ruminating on a canonical major character death. 
Rating: T
Author’s Note: so in accordance with my personal philosophy of “if you can give a species a tail why wouldn’t you” it may be noted that some of these characters have tails that wouldn’t have such according to official wotc materials. gnomes, for example. you cant stop me hahahaha 
NEXT
He’d had his share of broken watches, but this one was…interesting. Everything looked fine—the gears sitting strong and unbroken, yet refusing to turn, the winding tool equally pristine yet unbudging. At an easy glance, everything seemed perfectly normal, and yet, some unknown piece of the puzzle was keeping it from working. It was always something tiny in cases like these, he was sure. He drew in closer and squinted, maneuvering the tool in hand to gently lever up one of the gears, knowing with an intense certainty that it had to be something simple that he’d missed, some piece of sand that’d gotten caught in just the wrong place, or a tiny piece of gadgetry misplaced or broken or missing altogether—
A pair of hands on his shoulders pulled Percy out of his reverie. The gentle grip tugged him back, tilting his chair onto its back legs and causing him to tilt his own head back to see Vex’ahlia’s teasing smile. “Percy,” Vex said, peering down at him with a twinkle in her eye, “If you glare at that watch any harder, I’m afraid it’s going to catch fire.”
Percy snorted. Vex let the chair settle all four legs back down onto the carefully maintained stones of Whitestone’s town square. Percy looked away as Vex draped herself across his shoulders, her chin now tucked against his neck. “I’m not—glaring at it, dear, I’m just very focused. Whatever’s going wrong with the thing is subtle enough that it’s hard to pinpoint, so—“
“Darling,” she said, in a low, sweet voice by his ear that, even twenty years into their marriage, still made the hair on the back of his neck stand up, “You’re not supposed to be working, you’re supposed to be relaxing.” She pressed a kiss to his cheek and stood up, pulling away. “There’s a festival on tomorrow, our friends will be here any moment, and you’re here fussing over a watch? Really, Percy.”
She took a moment to stretch, and Percy took a moment to take in the view. The world seemed to frame a perfect backdrop for her— a light breeze stirring the loose half-cloak draped around her shoulders and the skirts of her pale blue dress. The day was bright and clear, and, despite the patches of snow still visible here and there on the ground, much of the plant life was starting to show new patches of green. The Sun Tree in particular had already sprouted enough buds and early blooms to cause a perpetual soft rain of petals in the town square, some of which drifted past Vex’ahlia, one or two catching in her hair. Not for the first time Percy found himself quietly struck by how lucky he was to have this—a moment of peace in his town, rebuilt and recovering after the harm once done to it, decades ago, and a woman he sometimes still couldn’t believe he was married to…
He shook his head. “That’s exactly why I’m fussing with the watch, dear,” he said. “They’re late, and if I don’t keep myself busy somehow, I’ll drive myself mad with impatience! I mean, really, we’ve only been planning to meet up for weeks.”
“They’ll be here,” Vex chided.
“They were supposed to be here half an hour ago. I made everyone a bloody watch but it’s apparently not enough—this is the trouble, you know, with depending on the druid for travel, because then if she’s late, so is everybody else—“
“I take it back. You were right, Percy, you should just stick with fiddling with the watch.” The affection in her voice robbed it of any sting the gentle teasing might’ve had otherwise. “Being a clockmaker’s made you so obsessed with punctuality, dear, you may really have a problem.”
He sighed, carefully putting away the watch and his tools, brushing a few errant petals off his coat. “It’s not—I just miss them, honestly. It seems they’ve all been busy with things so often lately. It’s a shame poor Tary couldn’t make it, but at the very least we can get the rest of the family all together in one place for once.” He stood up, intending to walk over her, but paused with a wince as a shooting pain lanced up one of his legs. He leaned on the table, grimacing, before standing up the rest of the way. Noting Vex’s slightly worried expression, he threw up a hurried smile, and said, “Augh, that’s a twinge. Oof.”
“Your knees again?” she asked, eyes bright with concern.
“Nothing too serious, I think, just the usual stiffness. You know, sometimes I wonder if it was the sixth or seventh dragon that did it.”
He’d hoped the joke would lighten the mood enough to soothe any worries, but Vex frowned.  At the very least, she chose to change the subject rather than put up any sort of fuss. “I don’t suppose you know where the kids are?” she asked. “I saw Trissa and Leo pestering—sorry, helping—some of the traveling merchants, but I’ve no idea where the rest are.”
“Well, I think Crispin is hanging out with his friends somewhere, and Arthur was tagging along with Cassandra last I saw him. Tiff’s right over there, though,” he said, pointing towards the Sun Tree with a grin.
Vex’ahlia looked, and then bent over with a quiet “Oh, no,” buried under a laugh.
“At this point, Trinket may in fact be the most patient bear in the world,” Percy said, moving to her side, arms folded loosely. “Certainly, he’s the most fashionable.”
There, under the Sun Tree, lay the huge bear. He was, with some very obvious displeasure, allowing Percy and Vex’s three year old daughter to climb all over him as she weaved flowers and ribbons into his fur. He made no attempt to stop her—having gone through sharing his home with a toddler four times before this, he knew it was a futile endeavor—but he still turned toward the sound of Vex’s voice and let out a low, despairing moan full of the deep, existential anguish only a bear beset by an excitable toddler can ever truly know.
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“She’s been at it for the better part of an hour,” Percy grinned.
“Tiffany, darling, what are you doing over there?” Vex called. “Are you making Trinket pretty for the festival?”
Tiffany perked up at her mother’s voice, seemed to seriously contemplate the question for a moment, and then nodded and said, “Yeah!”
The bear let out another soulful moan and rested his head on the pavement.
“Ohh, I know, buddy, I know, you’re so patient.” Vex giggled and leaned on Percy slightly. “Oh, gods, honestly, he could just stand up and tip her off without hurting her, I don’t know why he just takes it.”
“However will he survive the embearassment,” Percy said, receiving a swat on the arm and a laugh for his efforts.
They’d been standing side by side for a few minutes, idly chatting and occasionally tossing little Tiff a few words of encouragement, when Cassandra walked into the square and made a beeline towards them, Arthur following after with all the forced gravitas an eight year old could muster.
“They’re not here yet?” she asked, looking a bit harried. She’d been working hard on getting everything ready for the Renewal Festival, and it showed; Percy and Vex had tried to take some of the weight off her shoulders, but she’d insisted on doing the bulk of the work herself—not exactly unusual for her, really, but Percy still worried.
Vex shook her head. “Not yet, much to Percy’s chagrin.”
Cassandra pursed her lips, huffing out a frustrated breath. “Well, hopefully they get here soon. I might have a bit of a job for you all before we get too comfortable with celebrating. One of the guards just told me that someone reported seeing bluecoats in the old cemetery.”
Percy groaned. “Oh, gods, again? I thought for sure we cleared the little devils out last year.”
“They might be back,” Cassandra said. “No one’s been stung yet, and I’ve yet to confirm anything in any case, but I’d really like to avoid a repeat of last summer.”
“And us with a town full of visitors for the festival who won’t know how dangerous they are,” said Vex, folding her arms. “Thank the gods Keyleth’s coming. If anyone can convince a damn mess of hornets to move elsewhere, it’s an archdruid.”
“Might not hurt to warn people to see a cleric straight away if they are stung, just in case,” Percy said. “We very nearly had a couple folks die last year who didn’t know any better.”
“When is Aunt Keyleth and the others gonna be here?” Arthur said, demonstrating his usual complete lack of interest in ‘adult talk.’
Percy rolled his eyes fondly. “Well, they should have been here—ah, speak of the devil, finally!”
With a familiar groan of ancient wood splitting apart, the Sun Tree opened up into the familiar tunnel. It was followed by an extremely unnecessary bellow and the sound of stampeding footsteps. Vex and Percy shared a look as Arthur’s face split into a grin. Grog stampeded through, narrowly avoiding knocking Arthur over, several bags in his arms and two gnomes clinging to his shoulders, Scanlan yelling in mock terror, Pike laughing helplessly. Keyleth stepped sedately through the portal a moment later, just before it closed.
“Yeah!!” Arthur cheered, as Grog skidded to a stop. Grog threw up his arms, full as they were, and bellowed in response, accidentally dislodging Scanlan in the process.
“Ow!!” said Scanlan, full of mock ruined pride more than any real pain, as Arthur and Grog both laughed. Pike slid down and landed nimbly on her feet as Scanlan launched into an exaggerated tirade against Grog, sending Arthur into stitches.
Keyleth and Pike, however, both spotted Percy and Vex and beelined toward them, and the ensuing hugs drained out all of Percy’s frustration in an instant. Nevertheless, if only for the look of things, he adopted his most exasperated tone as he asked, “What bloody took you all so long? We were expecting you almost an hour ago!”
Pike rolled her eyes. “Sorry, we had to deal with a very serious discussion about whether or not Grog’s too old and creaky to be the team tough guy anymore. Scanlan teased him about his beard going gray, and Grog took it way too personally, and they ended up arguing until Grog insisted on proving that he’s still just as tough as ever.”
“Is that why he came running in like a bat out of the hells?” said Vex.
“Yup,” said Keyleth. “Demanded we all hand over all our bags and that the gnomes climb on. I think he wanted to carry me, too, but there was literally no room, so he made up for it by running through.”
Vex covered her face, shaking with mirth. “Gods, I’ve missed you all,” she said.
“Oy, Percy, I think you got a bit of a limpet problem,” Grog said. He stomped over, making a big show out of every step, with Arthur clinging excitedly to the goliath’s massive foot. “This one’s got real big and reeal clingy. Gonna need a great big scraper to get this ‘un off.” Arthur was beside himself with giggles.
Percy eyed Grog. “Well, maybe if you all weren’t late, he wouldn’t be quite so clingy!”
“I came as fast as I could!” Grog whined, the bags sagging. “I ran all the way here!”
“We noticed.”
A bark of laughter echoed behind Grog. For a moment, Percy thought it was aimed at his joke, but no; Scanlan had noticed Trinket’s predicament. Trinket, devastated at his complete and total humiliation, covered his face with his paws and moaned.
Tiffany, however, was…well, normally she would have run over with Arthur, now that Percy thought about it, but she was staring intently at some distant point in the opposite direction. For just a moment, he thought he spotted a flash of movement that way himself, but before he could comment, Keyleth spoke up and the thought quickly fled his mind, only to be remembered much later.
“Tiff!” Keyleth shouted, bouncing on the balls of her feet and waving. “Tiff, hey, over here!”
Tiffany turned with a quiet “huh?” Upon spotting Keyleth, the little girl’s face split into a huge grin and she ran full force at Keyleth. “Aun’ Kiki!!”
Keyleth swooped the little girl up into her arms, chattering excitedly back and forth with her as Tiffany proceeded to say hello to the rest of her ‘aunts’ and ‘uncles’ in turn.
(For a moment, a piece of Percy that stubbornly refused to die reflected on the aunts and uncles she’d never get to meet—Percy’s own siblings who never got to meet his new, adoptive family, and also…But thoughts like that weren’t productive at times like this. Better to celebrate the family they had with them right now than spend time hating the empty spaces in the lineup. Nothing good came of dwelling on that for too long.)
Cassandra, who’d been holding back initially, stepped forward. “Sorry to interrupt, and to bother you the moment you get here, Keyleth—“
“Whahuh?” Keyleth said, having been midway through intense conversation with the three year old still in her arms about the huuuge butterfly Tiffany had seen that morning.
“We’ve, ah, possibly got an infestation of some particularly nasty hornets that Cass wants to deal with before anyone gets hurt,” said Percy. “They can be deadly, unfortunately, but the poison takes long enough to kick in that most people don’t realize the danger of getting stung until they’re sick enough that treating it becomes costly. Think you could, maybe…”
“Oh! Oh, sure, yeah, no problem,” said Keyleth, setting Tiffany down. “Lead the way, Percy!”
“If you two are headed off, then, I think I should try and find the rest of the kids,” Vex said. “Shall we meet back here?”
“Me, too, Mommy!” Tiff piped up, reaching her hands up.
“I don’t see why not. It’s a nice day out, and some of the traveling merchants and entertainers have been setting up shop early,” said Percy. “We might as well enjoy the rest of the day.”
Grog shifted uncomfortably. His arms were still full of everyone’s bags, and however much he may have liked to deny it, the silver streaks through his beard made no secret of the fact that he was starting to feel his age at least as much as Percy was. “I mean, I wouldn’t mind…stopping by the castle, just for a few minutes,” he mumbled, which, for him, meant it was still pretty loud, all things considered.
“Oh, just put the bags down, you big goof,” said Pike. Grog shrugged and, with no ceremony whatsoever, dropped everything.
Vex had seen her fair share of Renewal Festivals, but she had to admit, Whitestone’s were something very special. Granted, you only needed to endure one Whitestone winter, trapped indoors by the biting cold and heavy snows, huddling close to the fire and braving the outdoors only when no other option remained, to understand why—the entire town was desperate for the onset of spring by the time the thaws came. Still, it was always a delight; the festival wasn’t truly considered to start until tomorrow, yet already people were celebrating. Everywhere one looked, there’d be a makeshift band practicing out in front of a tavern, with a handful of people dancing along, or a pair of kids running around and laughing through the streets, perhaps someone airing out their best clothes now that it wasn’t too cold to open a window. She understood that it had previously been a much more insular celebration, of course, back when Whitestone was more isolated, but these days, with Percy and Cassandra working hard to maintain communications with and open roads to Emon and Westrun, a number of traveling merchants and performers always stopped by to help grow the celebrations even further. Many were still setting up booths and claiming their bits of the street, but some were already settled in, displaying wares or sending delicious smells through the pleasantly warm air.
Somewhere amongst them, she knew, were two of her children, but so far, even with Tiffany and Trinket’s help, they’d yet to spot them. Of course, Tiffany was too distracted by just about everything, constantly pointing and cooing from her perch on Trinket’s back, to really be helping. Vex’ahlia kept her eyes and ears open, nodding along with her daughter’s babbling without really listening, looking instead for Trissa and Leo—they’d be together, no doubt, as they always were, and probably up to trouble. At thirteen and twelve respectively, they were the closest of the children in age as well as just being generally attached at the hip, ever reminiscent of…
Well, they were very close, in any case.
After a bit of searching, finally, she spotted the pair amongst a trio of tabaxi. Two were lounging on the opposite side of the street from her children, apparently taking a break from practicing for some sort of act and enjoying a kettle of tea between them. The third was a younger girl with golden tabby markings who couldn’t have been much older than Crispin’s sixteen. She had all of Trissa and Leo’s rapt attention, shuffling and carefully twirling and twisting a set of cards between her fingers. One of the older tabaxi, a brown one with faint spots and tufted ears, called out a word of encouragement. The other one was more reddish in color, a little older and a lot surlier, grumbling into his cup and getting an elbow to the ribs for whatever harsh comment he’d made.  
Vex stood back and watched the girl perform for a moment, amused and curious. The girl was explaining the meaning of the cards to her enraptured audience, twirling each one with a flourish before tucking it back into the deck. She stumbled in her delivery, however, upon glancing up and spotting Trinket. The other two Tabaxi were similarly startled, the older one climbing up onto his chair in surprise.
“Oh, he’s harmless, don’t worry,” said Vex to the adults, and then, turning to the girl, added, “Please don’t stop on my account.” She smiled her most winning smile. “I’ll have to take my children away in just a moment here, I’m afraid, but we can spare a few more minutes.”
“Aww, mooom,” Leo groaned, at the same instant that Trissa cried, “What? Why?”
“Because our guests are here, Trissa. We’re going to need to track down Crispin, too, Arthur’s already with them.”
“O-oh, I didn’t mean to—We’re just, just messing around,” the tabaxi girl stammered, her prior confidence vanished. “You can—I won’t keep them.”
“But Mom, she says she can tell the future with her cards, and I wanna see her do it!” said Leo.
“Yeah, they’re really weird, one’s got a fiend on it and—“
“They’re, they don’t…telling the future’s not exactly what I said,” the girl said.
Vex sighed and rolled her eyes to look at the adult tabaxi, the more good-natured of whom shrugged with a smile. Turning back to the girl, she said, “Well, like I said, we have a few minutes. Why don’t you give me a reading?”
The girl blinked. “O-oh, uh, really?” she asked, her ears twitching back nervously as she looked toward the other two.
“Go for it, Patch!” called the brown tabaxi.
“’S two copper,” grumbled the older one. “No freebies.”
Vex raised an eyebrow. “That’s a bit cheaper than I expected,” she said, handing over the money. A few copper was a small cost to perhaps encourage an aspiring performer to continue on her path. She doubted there was any real fortune telling happening, but there was still an art to her craft, one that Vex could appreciate.  
Patch flicked her ears back in embarrassment. “I’m, um, I’m very new at this. This is—it’s the first time they’re letting me perform for money.”
“Don’t tell her that!” the old one scowled.
“Shit, shit, sorry Saph, I forgot—“
“Don’t worry about it, Patch! Saph, shut the hell up and let her perform, you old curmudgeon, she can do this.” The brown one grinned and raised his cup, eyes shining.
“Hey, everyone’s got to start somewhere,” Vex said, kneeling down on the blanket Patch had acting as a cushion. “So, where do we start?”
Patch swallowed, her fingers making the cards dance apparently without her notice. “Well, um, you…you ask me some question, and the cards will…tell me the answer, sort of.” She swallowed, struggling to regain her composure. “So, miss, um…”
“Lady Vex’ahlia,” Vex said, and smiled a little bit more upon hearing one of the two grown tabaxi erupt into a choking cough at the title. They really must be from well out of town if the bear hadn’t been a dead giveaway as to just who she was.
Patch’s eyes widened a bit. “Right, then, L-Lady Vex’ahlia,” she said, “What questions do you have for, um, for the cards?”
Vex tapped her lip, acting like she was considering it in detail. “Well, there’s not much I have going on right now, but…how about this: Can you give me a general feel for how this festival’s going to go this year? We’d really like for it to be a good one, but we’ve already had some hiccups. Nothing too serious, yet. Is anything else…unexpected coming our way?”
There, an easy question for a first-timer to come up with an answer for, Vex thought. Could be interesting to see how she’d respond.
Patch nodded, and then turned back to the cards, now shuffling them in earnest. This seemed to be what she was most comfortable with, the movement of the cards themselves, flashing and shifting in intricate patterns. The effect was slightly spoiled when, in the process of drawing one, she nearly dropped it, but she recovered with a slightly awkward grin, and laid out three cards, face down.
One by one, she flipped each over, muttering to herself, “So, that’s…uhm, something, some big change or something to do with fate, hoo boy, that’s always interesting….and that’s…a person, maybe a stranger, maybe not…Um. Hm. That’s. That’s a really weird set of three, to get, um.” She tapped a finger against her chin. “So. I think what the cards have to say to that, is that you’ll have….some sort of. Fateful encounter with…with an unexpected visitor? To your festival. Someone’s coming that you didn’t expect, and it’ll…it’ll be interesting?”
One of the tabaxi, probably the surly one, slapped a hand to their head and groaned. Vex refused to look back and see.
“A fateful encounter with an unexpected visitor, that’s exciting,” Vex said. “Do the cards say if this is to be a friendly visitor, or someone I should be worried about?”
“Friend,” said Patch, her voice suddenly very certain. “Definitely a friend.” She blinked, and shrunk a bit, as if surprised by her own burst of confidence. “I mean,” she said, “I don’t…the cards don’t. Actually specify, but I get the feeling it’s, um, going to be a friend.”
“That’s a relief,” said Vex. “Well, that was wonderful, young Patch!” She pressed a gold piece into the girl’s hand, giving her a wink and a grin as she stood up. “You’re very good with those cards, I’m sure that with a bit more practice you’ll have the confidence to really do well.” Patch nodded her head in an astonished gratitude, holding the coin close to her chest.
“Th-thank you,” she said, as Vex gestured for her children to get up as well.
“Thank you for the reading,” said Vex in return. “Who knows, maybe this means Tary’ll be able to make it, after all! We were so disappointed to learn he couldn’t come—heaven knows how he’d get here without Keyleth’s help, but stranger things have happened…”
“Feh,” huffed old Saph. Then, turning in his seat, he hesitated. “What the fuck?” he spat, looking around. “Where’s the teapot?”
“What do you mean, ‘where’s the teapot’? It’s right where you left it, you daft—wait, what the hell, it was just there a second ago…” The brown one began glancing around, too, ducking under the table and rising a moment later scratching his head.
“I wouldn’t ask where it is if it was where I left it, Kite,” scowled Saph. “I’m tellin’ you, it’s gone! I bet one o’ you damn kids took it, hand it over!”
“Saph, stop—I’m sorry, my Lady, he’s been—we’ve been traveling a while, and he’s grouchy on a good day, your kids seem wonderful and I’m sure they’d never—“
Vex held up a hand. “It’s alright, thank you for that. I’m sure they wouldn’t dream of taking your nice tea pot, right?” She cast a stern eye on all three of her children. Trissa and Leo adopted expressions of pure innocence, but Tiffany surprised her by pointing toward an alley behind the two tabaxi men.
“It was the funny shadow person who did it, Mama!” she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Didn’t you see?”
“Sure it was, kiddo,” said Saph, slouching angrily back in his seat.
“Funny shadow person?” Vex said. “What do you mean, Tiff, dear? You saw a shadow take the pot?”
Tiffany nodded. “Yeah! They’ve been doing all sorts of other stuff, too! I keep seeing them running around! They took the teapot just now, and before they were running around an’ got scared by Aun’ Kiki bringing everyone through the Sun Tree.”
“Scared?”
“Yeah, cuz they ran off and hid!”
A dark shape, running into the shadows just out of view, so soon after she’d been promised an unexpected visitor and a twist of fate…She stamped the thought down, quickly. Thinking like that would only lead to unnecessary heartache. It was just the juxtaposition of a small child’s imagination and a strangely fitting fortune, that was all.
Right?
“Well, if we see them again, we’ll have to let them know that they’re welcome,” she said, kissing her daughter gently on the nose. “And that it’s not nice to take teapots.”
Tiffany giggled.
They moved on, Trissa and Leo growing more excited to see the rest of Vox Machina as they went. Finding Crispin proved easier and considerably more uneventful; he’d just been hanging out with a few other teens from town, and complained loudly at having to leave to deal with weird family stuff. Vex ignored it; she knew he was just as excited to see his adoptive aunts and uncles as any of the younger kids.
(Most of their five children had the de Rolo’s brown hair, but Crispin’s was jet black, and he wore it long. In a ponytail, usually, but, still, he looked just enough like Vex’s brother that sometimes Vex grew very…thoughtful.
It was nothing. She was just on edge. Maybe getting that fortune had been a mistake.)
Trissa and Leo bolted out to greet the rest of the team when they arrived back at the square, while Crispin begrudgingly accepted a hug from Pike. Vex smiled for a moment, but it faded when she saw Keyleth and Percy returning as well, Keyleth running for her things with a grim expression.
“What’s going on?” she asked, rushing over.
“Nothing, dear, just—look, Keyleth already dealt with it, I’m fine.” He sighed and gave her a very weary look. “The report about the bluecoats was right, and one of the little bastards got me on the hand. Keyleth managed to convince the rest to leave, but it was less of a conversation and more zapping the damn nest to smithereens.”
“I’m really sorry,” Keyleth called. “Those things are really mean, though, geez.”
“And she already—“ Vex started.
“I cast a spell to neutralize any poison, don’t worry,” Keyleth said. “At least, Percy said that’s what was needed? It just  looked like an ordinary wasp sting, though.”
“That’s what’s so nasty about bluecoats,” Percy grumbled. “They don’t look bad on the first day, and sometimes people shake off the poison with no trouble, but by the time you know you’ve failed to do so, it’s already gotten bad enough that treating it’s going to be really bloody expensive, so it’s best to be overcautious.” He shook his hand and hissed in a breath. “That, and it hurts way more than a bee sting should be allowed to, augh.”
“I’ve got something that could help with that in here somewhere, hold on,” Keyleth said, tugging a smaller bag out from within her larger one. “Shoot,” she said a moment later, “I’m nearly out, I forgot to restock my herb kit.”
“Well, what do you need, darling?” said Vex. “There’s a storehouse not too far from here. It’s…really, any herbs we have in there are going to probably be more for cooking than medicine, and they’ll be dried out to last through the winter, but it’s worth checking, at least.”
“Really, it’s fine, I don’t need—” Percy started, but Vex shushed him.  
Keyleth blew an exasperated raspberry. “I can make do, I guess,” she said. “Dried won’t be as strong, but should still get the job done. I’ve got enough here for the one sting, at least.” She rattled off a few herb names, and Vex nodded, hurrying off.
It was as good an excuse as any to get away for a moment. She was still feeling…off. That thought that had popped into mind, when Tiffany mentioned someone slinking around in the shadows, still wouldn’t leave her mind, despite her best efforts. It…Couldn’t possibly be who she thought it was, there was no way. But…the tabaxi girl had seemed so certain, when she’d said that there would be a friend here, just for a moment, and, who knew, maybe he was stealing teapots and slinking around as one of his old jokes, preparing for some dramatic entrance, the old show-off…
She paused, mere feet away from the storehouse door, staring at the ground.
Or, more accurately, at the pair of raven feathers laying on the stones.
Which. Was perfectly explained away by the fact that the city was lousy with ravens, of course. Nothing to be surprised about. But…Now that she stopped, she realized that she could hear someone moving about in the storehouse. Despite every perfectly reasonable explanation for the list of small things that happened today that she was likely reading too much into, hope rose within her, cautiously whispering that, maybe…
Maybe he’d found a way back, somehow? Stranger things had happened, right?
Taking a deep breath, unable to fight the smile off her face, she pulled the door open, her brother’s name on her lips—
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It wasn’t Vax.
There was someone in the storeroom, certainly, but they were wholly unfamiliar. Even with their back turned, she could see that much; they were small, most of their frame hidden behind a cloak, but she could see a short, tufted tail peaking out from under it, even in the darkness, and a pair of large, tattered ears. The intruder flicked their hooded head toward her the moment the door was swung open, but in the deep shadows of the storeroom juxtaposed by the harsh light from outside, all she could make out initially of the face was a pair of huge, somewhat wide-set, bulging yellow eyes, with no visible iris and slitted red pupils. They had been rummaging in one of the crates in the storeroom, and were still holding up the lid with one hand.
It wasn’t Vax. It couldn’t be him. Judging on the height alone, nevermind the odd eyes and huge ears, it wasn’t even anything that could reasonably be called a half-elf. Her heart sank, and she forgot herself for a moment, distracted by her own sharp sorrow. She didn’t notice straight away as the intruder’s posture changed, stiffening and drawing inward, like an animal preparing to leap, didn’t notice the tattered ears sweeping back, barely registered that they were slowly setting down the lid of the crate, something clutched tightly in one hand.
“You—“ She paused, collecting herself. It wasn’t Vax. Of course it wasn’t Vax, he’d been—he’d been dead for twenty years, it had been silly to think—“You shouldn’t be in here. This is…”
She trailed off again, as her eyes adjusted to the difficult lighting. The creature was stepping more into the shadows, but the movement allowed just enough light to touch their face for Vex to pick out flat features accented by a set of jutting, uneven, sharp teeth. The realization of what she was talking to hit like a lightning bolt.
Reaching instinctively for a bow she didn’t have, she cursed, and slammed the door shut, hearing the body of the creature reach it a moment later. Struggling, she held the door shut as best she could, and reached for her earring, shouting so that even without it, guards would hear, so that people would know to find their children and run for cover—
“Goblins!”
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pixelgrotto · 6 years
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D&D With My Bro: The Case of the Almost Assassination
For the last four months, my brother and I have been playing a Dungeons & Dragons campaign that I whipped up called The Case of the Almost Assassination, and we came to a triumphant finale the other night. My bro’s called it a “steampunk mystery set in a fantasy world,” which is a good description, but on a more detailed level, the campaign was also heavily influenced by the Ace Attorney and Professor Layton games and exists in the universe of The Thirteenth Hour, a series of fantasy stories self-published by my brother that are inspired by 80s movies and cartoons. So the whole thing is one huge ball of fun nerdiness, and figuring that it might be cool to chronicle the campaign as we played, I captured each of our sessions on video. You can watch the whole thing on YouTube here in convenient playlist format (listening to it in the background like a podcast is also pretty nice, I gotta say), and there’s over 20 hours there, which is longer than some of the video games I’ve blogged about! 
This wasn’t the first time that my brother and I had played D&D, since I’d previously introduced the game to him via a small four hour mini-campaign last time I visited his house. (He’s written some great thoughts on that adventure, as well as the experience of missing out on D&D in his childhood but getting the chance to discover it as an adult here.) But this was certainly the first time we’d played something long that continued from week to week, and it was also the first time we’d used virtual tabletop software - in this case the very useful Roll 20 - to play online. Minus a few minor internet hiccups, it ran smoothly, and I think both of us had a great time. The experience also made me ruminate on three interesting facts about D&D that I think not enough people write about, and I’m going to jot off a few thoughts on them here. Without further ado...
1) It is perfectly possible, and sometimes even more fun, to play D&D with just one other person. 
Normally, Dungeons & Dragons conjures up images of a bunch of people - usually three or four at minimum - sitting at a table listening to instructions given to them by the Dungeon/Game Master, or DM. But the hardest part of D&D isn’t juggling rules or even fighting Challenge Rating 30 monsters - it’s getting a group of three or four people to meet up together on a consistent basis! This is why you can tell that anyone who still thinks of D&D as an activity for anti-social basement dwellers hasn’t actually played it, because in truth, the game is a demanding social commitment, especially for adults.
Thankfully, while it might be a less common way to play, you can totally enjoy D&D with just two people. Usually this means that someone more familiar with the rules has to be the DM while the other person acts as the player, which is what my brother and I did. Sometimes, the DM will also have to create a player character for themselves, and I did that in order to assist my bro with various battles and tricky scenes. This is more work for the DM, since they’ll have to juggle both their own character as well as the various non-playable characters (NPCs) encountered in the story, but if you’re up for it, it’s a rewarding exercise.
The best thing about playing D&D with just one DM and one player is how efficient it is. Three or four player D&D (to say nothing of five, six, or even more players) can get slowed down by arguments about how to progress or share loot, not to mention downtime in battles when a player who has a bazillion spells at his disposal deliberates on the one he wants to use that will both do the most damage and look the coolest. Don’t get me wrong, I actually love these sorts of interactions, but it’s also nice to strip all that fat away. 
When it’s just one player and the DM, the DM also has the chance to make that player feel pivotally important by basing the story around them. Usually, the “unit” of D&D is the adventuring party, but in a one person + one DM game, the player gets to shine as the main character. Thus, it’s a good idea to choose the sort of story that can emphasize the important actions of an individual, and in my opinion the best ones for this are heavy on role-playing and character interaction rather than dungeon crawling and monster slaying. For example, a rogue adventure in an urban environment might fit the bill...or maybe even a mystery. Which leads me to my second point...
2) If you’re a DM making a homebrew campaign, try utilizing a setting that your players are already familiar with.
When my brother initially agreed to play a long campaign with me, I first thought that we might attempt one of the many published Forgotten Realms adventures that have been released for 5th Edition D&D. But then I realized that while my brother is mildly familiar with the Forgotten Realms, thanks to old comics and fantasy art from the 80s and 90s, he’s much more familiar with the setting that he created for his own fantasy novel, The Thirteenth Hour. My bro originally wrote this book when he was a high school kid and finally published it a few years ago, and in the time since, he’s written some short spin-offs and outlined ideas for a sequel. In the mini-campaign we’d played in October, his character was actually a half-elf ranger named the Wayfarer who’ll play a pivotal role in book two, and I initially pitched the whole idea of D&D to him as “Hey, this can help you brainstorm your sequel concepts before you put them down to paper.” 
Once I began toying with the idea of making a homebrew campaign set in The Thirteenth Hour world, I started worrying that my brother’s universe was limited when compared to the “fantasy kitchen sink” setting of the Forgotten Realms. I mean, my bro’s book didn’t even have orcs! Or dwarves! What was I gonna do! But then I stopped being reliant on fantasy tropes and actually re-read The Thirteenth Hour, quickly finding that there was plenty I could work with.The universe that my brother created doesn’t have all of the races that Tolkien coined, but it’s still full of magic and wonder - a place where crafty old wizards inspired by The Last Starfighter’s Centauri run amok, strange technological anomalies like hover boards occasionally pop up and an otherworldly gatekeeper known as the Dreamweaver lets the spirits of the deceased visit their loved ones in dreams. And there’s also a large kingdom called Tartec ruled over by a vaguely Trump-esque king named Darian, who thinks he’s found the elixir of immortality when actually all he’s discovered is coffee. (If you think this sounds amusing, you can pick up a digital copy of my bro’s book on Amazon for less than a cup of Starbucks!)
Darian’s a funny character, and in one of the spin-off short stories that my brother wrote, an older and slightly wiser version of him reflects on how an assassin nearly took his head off with a dagger. This one sentence got me thinking who that assassin might be, and before I knew it I’d come up with the basic hook of a campaign. At the time, I was also reading Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, a D&D book that introduces 5th Edition’s Inquisitive subclass, which is basically a fantasy Sherlock Holmes. Suddenly, the ideas began bubbling in my head - the campaign would be a detective story set in Tartec with two leads trying to determine the identity of King Darian’s would-be assassins. Once I had this hook, I decided to draw further inspiration from the two video game series I think of when I hear the word “detective” - the Professor Layton games (which I like the style of but am rubbish at, since puzzles confound me) and the Ace Attorney series, which I’ve written about before. My brother would be the main character Lester LeFoe (patterned slightly after Phoenix Wright, the star of Ace Attorney), and I’d be the spunky female assistant Claudia Copperhoof (a little similar to Phoenix’s assistant Maya Fey). 
I hoped that situating these characters in my brother’s world would breed a quicker sense of familiarity than he’d get from playing a generic warrior in the Forgotten Realms, and I think it’s safe to say that the experiment succeeded. Thus, even though 5th Edition D&D products all use the Realms as their default setting, it’s worth remembering that you don’t have to follow this lead, and can always tailor your campaign to a world that your players are already familiar with. In my brother’s case, he’s a writer who made his own world, but for someone else this can easily be Middle-Earth or the Hyborian Age of Robert E. Howard’s Conan books. The D&D Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide actively encourage modifying published adventures to appeal to your players’ favorite settings, in fact, and not only will this potentially help to decrease the amount of lore you need to explain as a Dungeon Master, but it’ll also help keep the attention of everybody listening to you. Because who wouldn’t want to insert themselves into their favorite bit of genre fiction as a legendary figure? In many ways, the whole point of D&D is to give people a framework to do that!
3) If you’re DMing for someone who doesn’t have much time to play, remember that a linear campaign is not necessarily a bad thing, and simplify the more complicated rules - making stuff up whenever necessary!
On page six of the 5th Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide, there’s a whole section entitled “Know Your Players,” which is all about altering your game to appeal to the personalities at your table. If you’re DMing for people who like acting and appreciate in-depth stories, give them plenty of role-playing opportunities and narrative twists, for instance, and if you’re dealing with folks who’d rather just make their characters look cool, try having them fight lots of monsters who reward snazzy armor and weapons. 
There should really be a sub-section there entitled “How to run a game for players who are low on time.” Because that’s my brother in a nutshell. He’s a late 30s dude who works a demanding job and has two small children to take care of, one of whom is barely half a year old. (You can hear my nephew gurgling in the background in a few of our videos, and sometimes we’d even have to stop playing when the baby woke up from a snooze, which is a situation that I’m sure all new parents can relate to.) I know for a fact that my brother is also the type of guy whose eyes will glaze over when presented with a lot of complicated rules - as is probably the case for anyone who only has at most an hour or two, often in the late evening, to sit down to play a game when the rest of the family is in bed. 
In my opinion, the way to tailor your game to such a player is to make a brisk, well-paced story that they can actually see to a satisfying conclusion. This means that the campaign might be fairly linear - a word which seems to have bizarre negative connotations to some D&D players out there, who are always ranting about “railroading,” which is when a DM puts players down a predetermined path without any wiggle room. I think it’s important to note that “linear” does NOT necessarily equate to “railroading,” however, and that a sprawling campaign with a trillion different outcomes and choices to make at every interval isn’t necessarily the best approach for someone who can only play a little bit each week and might get bored if they feel like they aren’t making tangible progress. 
Let me put it this way - the campaign that I made for my brother was tightly designed. Instead of giving Lester and Claudia a vast landscape to explore, everything was confined to the city of Tartec, and I made an effort to nudge the characters towards certain objectives that they had to complete in order to solve the mystery, such infiltrating a manor house in the upper class section of town. But I also made sure to flesh out these few areas (quality over quantity) and allowed a certain degree of freedom in how the objectives could be cleared. For instance, I initially thought that Lester and Claudia might sneak into the manor house through the sewers. But as I was brainstorming strategies with my bro, the topic of disguises came up, because Claudia owned a disguise kit. And eventually we decided to infiltrate the party with Lester masquerading as a nutty old lady and Claudia as his keeper, which was a fun improvisation that I never would’ve anticipated - but still a viable way to complete the main objective that didn’t negatively impact the story’s pacing. 
On the topic of keeping the pace of the story brisk for a player low on time, I feel like it’s also important to minimize the number crunching and reduce D&D’s more complicated rules whenever possible. In practice, this meant that I took care of as much behind-the-scenes stats management as possible so my bro wouldn’t have to, though I did always try to explain to him what was going on (and what all of those funky dice rolls meant) so he’d have some understanding of the game’s mechanics. Also, whenever we were in a situation where I wasn’t sure of a rule, instead of wasting time looking at the Player’s Handbook, nine times out of ten I’d just make something up on the fly. For example, our adventure had a friendly NPC orangutan in it (specifically chosen because I know my brother likes backflipping primates) and she was supposed to be a super strong, unpredictable force of nature in the final battle. I’d lost the stats that I’d used for her when she first appeared, and instead of looking for them, I decided to just roll a d20 for her damage, figuring that the end result would be close enough. In that same vein, there were a few instances where I made mistakes, since I’m still a relatively new DM. Once I totally miscalculated a character’s special attack, leading to a funny NPC death (which I’d expected but not exactly in that way) and on multiple occasions I flat out forgot to apply modifiers to attack rolls. But instead of going back to redo everything I’d either just laugh it off or forge ahead, hoping that my bro didn’t notice, which he never did. 
Ultimately, my philosophy for DMing is to not sweat the small stuff TOO much if it probably doesn’t matter in the long run, especially if you’re running a game for just one person whose free hours are precious. I believe this sort of approach might be sacrilegious to some of the more rules-oriented DMs out there, like the ones who spend hundreds of words arguing over damage variables on the D&D Subreddit. But I’m not one of those folks, and I’d prefer to follow the advice of Sly Flourish, a DM who has a great website where he advocates a “lazy” style of Dungeon Mastering which de-emphasizes nitpicking over rules in favor of just having fun. 
At the end of the day, having fun is what D&D is all about. It’s a game of make believe that can really bring out your inner storytelling-loving child, and in an era where very few adults are encouraged to even consider the concept of “make believe,” it can be a truly wonderful breath of fresh air. And if you don’t believe me...I encourage you to watch The Case of the Almost Assassination and try not to crack up at some of the situations that Lester LeFoe and Claudia Copperhoof found themselves in. :)
The pics above are either art that I assembled for our adventure or screenshots that I took while we were playing! The little figurines I designed via HeroForge.
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elliemarchetti · 6 years
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A Red Lover
Old fic revised for AO3 
Words:1575
As he fell, he saw nothing but flames; they were everywhere, meeting him, crackling and sizzling as they destroyed all the memories they had managed to build before reaching the front. He was sure that not even a charred mush would remain of him, that his bones would turn to ashes, and there wouldn’t be a grave where people could cry for his loss. He bang his head against something, and in his field of vision appeared a thousand shiny stars. In fact, they weren’t stars but sparks. His uniform caught fire, carbonized, began to smoke, but it didn’t happen to his skin, and he felt no pain but the sparks’ heat, as if they were going through his body, as if they were tickling his nerves. It wasn’t a bad feeling to try before he died: he felt alive like never before, like a blind man who finally came back to see after a long time. He sensed something moving inside him, but it was no longer just the sparks: it was the whole flame, which slid over him, blackened his clothes leaving the skin intact. The flames were trying to kill him without succeeding. It was all wrong, obviously; he shouldn’t have been alive, he wouldn’t have to get a big cloud of black smoke around him, the floor wouldn’t have to start crunching and the walls wouldn’t have to crack. The fire became clearer and more aggressive, but after a while, it weakened, making Thomas feel stronger. It didn’t matter that he was falling again, that three floors of that area of ​​the building had been destroyed, or that he was almost naked. It didn’t matter because he landed on a pile of dust, or perhaps ashes, definitely battered, with sore muscles, but undoubtedly alive. He stood up with difficulty, the clothes that continued to fall apart. Above him, inside the building, in the areas that hadn’t been touched by the explosion, someone was looking at that havoc. How many had died because of Maven? Then he turned, sensing other looks, this time pointed at him, a red boy who had escaped that ruckus. Watching him, there were two guys: one was taller and thinner, and the other more sturdy and stocky, but the differences between the two seemed to end there. They definitely had to be brothers. Both had wide eyes. One seemed angry, the other confused. Then their expressions changed: the biggest seemed scared, and Thomas wondered how it was possible. He was thin and pale, nobody feared him.
"He's one of us." instead said the taller, the look drawn by a small scratch on the back of his right hand. Then he didn’t fully understand what else happened, he only knew that the boy approached and in a moment he found himself very far from there, in a place that with time he would’ve learned to define a house, among people who for those like Maven had envisaged only one destiny: death.
 Farley left him in a corridor, to ruminate on her words: he had always thought that there was only the distinction between reds and silvers, kings and slaves, and instead he discovered that there was much more, a range of nuances that he didn’t understand, in which he had precipitated unwillingly. He grew up wondering if he could have dinner every night, like any other red, and now he found himself in a place full of red with full bellies and enough energy to be able to fight against the silver. He had to choose and he had to do it quickly. Would he join the Scarlet Guard, ready to sacrifice himself and everything he wanted to reach the infamous common goal, or would he continue a life that he no longer had? Thomas knew that, after all, there was no choice: he couldn’t go back to the front, he couldn’t go home, and he wouldn’t even be able to live far from there, because when the silvers are on you, there's no far enough place. So he accepted that same evening, certain that he had just launched himself into a business that would’ve eaten him alive.
 He realized he wasn’t wrong only three years later, when Farley dragged him around midnight into a greenhouse in the Royal Palace. She didn’t explain anything to him, only that they had found new, important members for the Guard. They hid in the greenhouse in four: Thomas, Farley, Kilorn, a new recruit who seemed ready to sell his soul to please someone important in the Guard, and another girl, who carried a big assault rifle with her. She had to have little aim.
"Excuse me if I don’t do the reverence." Farley said, emerging from a grove of magnolias where she was hidden with Thomas, upon the arrival of two figures. One was Walsh, he had heard of her and had even seen her, sometimes, and the other was a girl younger than him, not so tall, thin and definitely not silver. It didn’t take a genius to understand it, yet he noted that someone had given her special care. She had to be Mareena, the one everyone talked about. Her real name was Mare, and she was like him.
"Farley." she said, greeting the Scarlet Guard’s captain. Therefore, they must have already met. He suspected it. Farley didn’t return the greeting, asking Walsh where the other was. Thomas had originally believed it was some red, someone who worked in the palace, but no one had ever been so excited for a simple recruit. Was him a newblood that had managed to stay hidden all that time?
"What does that mean? Who else joined?" Mare asked, too loudly, for Thomas's tastes, but not wrongly. He didn’t like all that secrecy and certainly wasn’t excited at the idea that someone else would arrive there at any moment, with the possibility of a betrayal.
“Maven.” Thomas heard his own voice whisper. He had grown up, but it was undeniably him. He didn’t know whether to scream with joy, to see him alive, or run away, because the last time he was next to him, he almost risked dying. He was a prince, a silver, the enemy, and yet here he was, along with Farley. Thomas felt his heart burst with joy. He had stifled his love for Maven long ago, had abandoned those stupid fantasies of a kid when he had taken the oath of the Guard. Holland, his companion, a red servant of a certain age, with many years of service behind him, seemed to burst with pride.
"Mare, I told you you're not alone." Maven said, and his voice was so different, that Thomas almost felt a stab in his stomach. He kept his hands on his hips and contracted them: he seemed nervous, probably because of Farley. Not that it was difficult to understand why: the girl had approached with a gun in her hand, almost as nervous as he was, but her voice was firm and decisive. Thomas remained hidden, even though he was sick of being just a spectator. He wanted to tell him that he was proud of him, he wanted to tell him that he remembered everything they had said six years ago, yet he stayed still, to keep his place in the Guard, because he was too used to taking orders. Farley, however, didn’t move an inch, causing Thomas's blood to freeze in his veins. Weren’t his words enough? What did she want more? Then, as if he had always known, Maven started talking again. He spoke of when he was twelve and his father sent him to the front, to temper him, to make him look more like Cal. Thomas felt a lump in his throat as he pulled out secrets that had only revealed to him, feelings that a prince should never have felt. Farley, however, snorted. Thomas never shared this abrupt and mean way; he believed there were better ways to inspire trust and loyalty, he believed that reigning through fear was something silver do, but he would never say it.  He knew that she had lost so much, but Thomas hadn’t really been a privileged in life, yet his heart hadn’t dried up like that.
"I don’t need a jealous kid."
"It’s not jealousy that pushed me here." Maven corrected her, and Thomas smiled. He hadn’t changed so much, after all. "I spent three years in a camp to follow Cal, the officers and generals, watching the soldiers die and fight a war in which no one believed."
Thomas closed his eyes, trying to shake off the nightmares. There was no honor or loyalty, whence he came, only madness and destruction, rivers of blood poured from both sides of the border.
"And our people have given so much more," Maven continued, implacable. He spoke like a river in flood that can no longer be dammed, and he spoke of a boy who was only seventeen, red and came from the cold north. He was speaking of him.
 "You should have told me!" thundered Thomas, on the way back. Farley didn’t even deign to look back at him.
"You knew everything, I told you everything!"
His anger was unstoppable, but fortunately, no one tried to use any kind of power in the vicinity, or he wasn’t sure he would be able to stop, once he started his revenge against the captain.
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xerxia31 · 6 years
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Finding Home 2
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I wrote a little story called Finding My Way Home last year for ms2sl, and even though I was satisfied with how that story ended, I’ve had this itch to write the day after ever since. Sometimes, you just have to give in. So, here’s the continuation that no one asked for. Rated E. You know why.
Finding my way Home, Part 2
rated E
o-o-o
The drive home is quiet. We are both exhausted after five days with Peeta's family. And after all of that mayhem, the silence feels welcome. But it leaves me far too much time in my head. Far too much time to worry that what we've shared won't survive when we rejoin our real lives.
Even when we stop for a quick meal we barely talk. But we hold hands under the table, and that reassures me.
So when Peeta drops me off at my apartment I'm confused. Standing at my door, holding my bag, he slumps against the frame. “I'll see you tomorrow?” he asks.
“You're not coming in?” It's not even eight yet.
“I'm so tired, Katniss,” he whispers, and I swallow my disappointment. As hard as this weekend was for me, I know it was so much worse for him.
“Okay, yeah.” I say, then fidget uncomfortably. Do I hug him goodnight? Kiss him? Three years of being best friends, not quite twenty-four hours of being more - I have no idea how to act.
He saves me from my awkwardness, leaning down to kiss me, just lightly, and I practically melt. He pulls away and meets my eyes. “I love you,” he says.
“I love you, too,” I whisper. And then he leaves.
After four nights sharing a bed with Peeta, my own bed feels cold and lonely. Though we hadn't discussed anything this morning, nor during the long drive home, I guess I thought he'd stay with me. That we might pick up where we left off this morning.
That he'd at least want to.
o-o-o
Mondays are always rough, and a Monday after having missed three workdays the week before is a special kind of hell. But the benefit of being too busy to stop or eat or even breathe is that I'm also too busy to ruminate.
It's six-thirty by the time I shut down my computer and grab my car keys. For the first time all day, my phone chimes with a message from Peeta. <<Text me when you're done at work>>.
I send back a quick <<Just leaving now>> and toss the phone in my purse. I refuse to overthink this.
When I get home, I find Peeta standing in the hallway outside my apartment door, leaning against the wall, head hanging. Twin emotions flood me; the swell of gratitude for his unwavering presence in my life that I always feel when I see him, and a kind of sick dread at the sight of his slumped, defeated posture. He turns at the sound of the stairwell door closing behind me, and his whole countenance changes. He straightens, and his face lights up. I can't resist returning his smile, confused though I am.
Only when I move closer do I notice that he's holding a bunch of flowers. “Hi,” he says, reaching for me, and I wrap my arms around his neck, holding him tight, breathing him in. The familiarity soothes me; Peeta Mellark is the best hugger. For all of the time we've been friends, his arms have been there to comfort me. The emotional roller coaster threatens to unhinge me. “Can I come in?” he murmurs against my hair and I laugh, a watery little sound.
He pulls away, concern crinkling his brow, but I shake my head and unlock the door. It's largely symbolic though; Peeta has his own key, he didn't have to wait for me in the hallway. “Why didn't you let yourself in?” I ask, blinking back tears before he can see them.
“A gentleman shouldn't let himself into a lady's home uninvited.”
I scowl. “Peeta, I've invited you in a hundred times, you have a key for heaven’s sake!” I turn to face him fully, confused and flustered. Why is he acting so strange? So stiff and formal? “What's going on?” It's barely a breath; I feel so intensely vulnerable. I have precious little experience in dating, if that's what this is now, but I didn't expect things to feel so uncomfortable between us.
Instead of answering, he hands the flowers to me. “These are for you.” Lavender roses and larkspur, soft and fragrant. I’ve never been given flowers before, not once.
“Thank you,” I whisper. After another few beats of awkward silence, I head to the kitchen to put the flowers in some water. Peeta follows, but stays as far away from me as the tiny space will allow. My hands shake as I arrange the stems in a glass pitcher. Peeta doesn't say a word, merely waits, watching his feet. Every insecurity claws out of my chest. Finally I give voice to the biggest of my fears. “Do you regret what happened between us?” My voice cracks, and his head snaps up, horror in his eyes.
“No!” I startle at his vehemence, and he steps forward, grasping my shoulders. “No, I could never,” he says so seriously I have no choice but to believe him.
“Then why are you acting so weird?”
He blinks at me, face blank. Then he laughs incredulously, and drops his forehead to mine. “Shit, I am,” he sighs. His hands fall away. “I've waited half my life for a chance to be with you, Katniss. I’m scared shitless of screwing it up. I want to do this right.” He lifts his head, plays with a tendril of hair that's escaped from my braid. “I want to take you out on dates, to wine and dine you.”
“I don't need any of that,” I start, but he's having none of it.
“You deserve those things, Katniss, and so much more. This weekend, God, it was incredible. But I just dragged you off to bed, like it was no big deal. And it was such a big deal. The biggest. I didn't show you how special you are, how much you mean to me.” He rakes his hand through his hair, genuinely upset with himself. I'm bewildered.
“You do show me that, Peeta. All of the time. You always treat me like I'm special.” And he does. He puts my happiness before his own every time.
“Katniss,” he starts, then takes a deep breath, as if to begin another long argument. But I cut him off.
“I don't want to lose my best friend.” Those ocean blue eyes that have captivated me for years are serious, searching. “I want to see you every day and do everything together. I want to laugh with you and cry on your shoulder. I want to just be Katniss and Peeta, like always. Except with more kissing. And… stuff.” My cheeks feel hot, and a smirk is playing on his lips. “Peeta,” I whisper, holding his gaze steadily. “I just want you.”
His soft laugh ripples over my eyelashes just before he leans down to kiss me. To really kiss me, kisses like the ones we shared that incredible night in his childhood bedroom. Kisses that makes me feel loved, wanted.
One thumb traces lazy circles on my hip bone while his other hand knots in my hair. My own arms are simply wrapped around his back, clinging. And I sigh. The fears and doubts fade away. This is right. This is the way we are meant to be.
As if he can sense my thoughts, he pulls back just enough to beam at me. “You are so incredible,” he rasps. “Let me take you out for dinner.”
“Sure,” I say. Then I kiss him again, because I can.
It takes another ten minutes before we can stop kissing long enough to leave my apartment, and I squirm the entire drive to the restaurant.
He chooses a place a few minutes away, a cute little restaurant I've driven by but never checked out before. He admits he hasn't either, but has always wanted to.
And it turns out to be just perfect for us. Definitely a ‘date’ spot, intimate tables for two, candles, soft music. Despite that, we act like ourselves. It's isn't weird or uncomfortable. It's just us. Like a hundred other dinners together. Except when I hold his hand and he kisses my fingers, it’s one by one, languidly, holding my eyes hostage as he does. I feel each erotic touch of his lips echoed in my belly.
And after we exit the restaurant, he presses me against the the passenger door of his car. “Remember,” he whispers, his lips just brushing my ear, “we’re madly in love, so it’s all right to kiss me anytime you feel like it.” And though I laugh, desire burns hot and bright throughout me. I want him.
We are still laughing and holding hands when we get back to my apartment. He pauses at the threshold. “Uh-uh,” I say, tugging him inside. “We’re not getting weird again.” He laughs a little self consciously, but he doesn’t resist.
I grab a pair of beers from the fridge before joining him on the couch. He leaves the television off, shifting when I sit so that we are facing each other. He smiles, and I can't help smiling back. But I need to know. “Why did you run off yesterday?” I ask.
He doesn't answer right away; instead, he reaches out, traces my face with gentle fingers. “I didn't want to leave,” he admits. “But I felt like if I stayed I'd be pressuring you.”
I roll my eyes. “For two people who talk every single day, we’re crappy communicators.” Peeta chuckles. “It kind of sucked,” I confess. “I thought you were having second thoughts.”
“I'm sorry,” he says, completely sincerely. He sets his bottle on the table and takes my hand. His long artist’s fingers play with my own. “It just feels a little surreal still. I’ve wanted you for so long, and now that you feel the same way… I don’t know. I just keep expecting I’ll wake up and it’ll have all been a dream.” He looks at me through those pale golden lashes, cheeks tinged just a bit pink. He’s beautiful, but it’s more than that.
I love him.
“This is very real, Peeta,” I say. My bottle joins his, then I take a deep breath. He was the one who initiated what happened between us two days ago. Maybe what he needs now is to see how much I want him too.
The first time I crawled into his lap, I was too overwhelmed by my burgeoning feelings to really appreciate his solid body under mine. But now I can take my time to admire how gorgeous he is.
He chuckles when I straddle him, but lets me dictate what’s happening, his huge hands resting lightly on my hips. I explore him over his clothing with just the tips of my fingers, tracing the taut muscles of his shoulders, the defined pecs hiding under soft cotton. Then I start on his shirt, button by button. But when I get halfway, he stops me, his eyes full of doubt. “I want you,” I tell him, toying with his buttons while I wait.
“I don't want us to rush this,” he says.
I smirk. “This is technically our third date, Peeta.” We've joked about this before. The third date is the one that ends in sex.
He snorts. “How do you figure?”
“The rehearsal dinner was our first date,” I tell him, and he wrinkles his nose.
“Some date,” he grumbles.
“It was our first kiss.” His eyes soften. He reaches up to cup my cheek in one big hand, running his thumb over my bottom lip.
“It was the most incredible kiss of my life,” he says softly, eyes fixed on my mouth. “You were so gorgeous and open, even though I was being kind of a dick.” His eyes flit up to meet mine. “And you were wearing those black pants that make your ass look so good.” He slides his hands down my body, reaching around to squeeze my butt, drawing me closer. I lean in and kiss him, softly, then rest my forehead against his and we breathe together.
“Our second date was the wedding?” he guesses, eyes closed.
“Dinner and dancing,” I joke, and his answering laugh skates across my lips.
“That dress. And what was underneath. Fuck,” he trails off, groaning. Then we're kissing again, though I have no idea who started it.
I sneak my fingers inside his shirt, and he leans back to pull it off, along with the tee beneath it. I moan. “You are so hot.” I’m practically panting. It’s not like I’ve never noticed, I'm not blind. But I've never really had an opportunity to ogle the expanse of taut muscle and golden flesh, sparsely dusted with burnished gold hair that trails downward, beckoning my eyes to skim his abdominals, perfectly defined.
I take my time tasting all of that skin, sucking the hollow of his throat, tweaking his nipples with my teeth. Enjoying the way he squirms when I drag my tongue along his ticklish rib cage. Learning him. His hands twitch, I can feel the effort it’s taking him to stay still.
With a deep breath to steady my nerves, I start on my own buttons. I slip each one free slowly, drawing out the process before finally tossing my blouse on the sofa beside us. And even though the bra I'm wearing underneath is plain white cotton he groans, grabbing my ass again, pulling me more tightly against him. Skin on skin. His hips buck upwards, showing me just how much he likes what he sees. It's exhilarating, knowing the effect I'm having on him. Feeling it cradled between my thighs.
I go back to kissing him, gripping his sculpted shoulders and rocking above him. I’m aching, and so wet I’ve doubtless saturated my slacks, but I can’t be still. The rough seam of his jeans stimulates me with every swivel. His hands wander up and down my back, toying with the clasp of my bra before retreating. I refuse to be discouraged by his hesitation, not when I can feel his body’s response, hear his stuttering breaths. When I reach back and unhook the contraption, flinging it somewhere across the room, his restraint snaps. He cups my breasts, gently squeezing them, a pained expression on his face. “Fuck,” he groans. “Do you have any idea how fucking sexy you are?”
“Show me,” I beg. He leans in, presses a kiss to my sternum, his stubble scraping my breasts. My clit pulses with every pass of his tongue as he laves my skin, teasing me as I squirm, trying to align myself with that hot, wet mouth.
It feels like an eternity before finally his soft lips close over my nipple and I wail like a thing possessed. I cup the back of his head, holding him to me as he roughly sucks and bites and drives me to the brink of insanity. “Please,” I beg, a breathless plea.
He stands up so quickly I nearly yank his hair out, but he holds me tight, pressed against the hard length of his body. I can feel his muscles ripple as he practically runs to my bedroom.
But when he sets me beside the bed, he slows down again, stepping back to simply stare as I shift nervously under his gaze. I reach for the button on my slacks, but he shakes his head. “Let me,” he whispers. He kneels before me, pressing soft kisses along my belly as he pulls off my pants, inch by inch. And when finally he tosses them in a crumpled heap on my bedroom floor, he leans his forehead against my hipbone, taking deep, calming breaths, as if my simple white cotton panties are more than he can bear. “So gorgeous,” he groans again. “You really don’t know, do you? How gorgeous you are?”
His words are always so pretty, but I’m a woman on a mission. I want him. Now. I grab his hair and tug until he gets the hint and stands. Then I reach for his belt and pull him a little closer, turned on even more by his sharp little inhale of surprise. But he kisses me again, his tongue stealing my concentration as I try, blind and flustered, to undo his jeans.
When I finally wriggle my frantic fingers into his pants, when I finally grip him in my hand, hot and hard and ready for me, he shudders, his kisses becoming sloppier, needier as he moans into my mouth.
But he stops me too soon. “Don't wanna come yet,” he rasps.
“Peeta,” I whine, impatient. He guides me backwards two steps. My legs hit the bed, and he tugs my hips until I'm perched on the edge of the mattress and he's kneeling in front of me, sliding my panties off and licking his lips.
As much as I loved his mouth on me the first time he did it, I really want him - all of him - tonight. I want to have sex. More than that, I want to make love. Cupping his jaw, I tell him so, my voice shaking a little but my intent clear. Then I wait.
“Katniss,” he smiles, his eyes soft and affectionate, his words skating across my flesh, stealing my sense. “I have been fantasizing about this - about you - for as long as I can remember, and I haven't had sex in more than a year. When I'm finally inside you, I'm not going to last ninety seconds.” Even in the dim, I can see the tips of his ears turning red. “Let me make you come first. Please.”
I want to argue with him, to tell him that it doesn't matter to me whether I come or not. But I can see it matters to him, of course it does, he always puts me first in every other way so I can't be surprised that he's the same, sexually. It’s thrilling, honestly.
I swallow hard, and lean back on my elbows. He beams up at me before his head dips, and he kisses the ticklish skin of my inner thighs, swirling his tongue ever closer, adding sharp little nips with his teeth, making me squirm. Before I can beg, he shifts, finally giving me what I want. His tongue licks a long, luscious line along my flesh. His mouth is soft and wet as he tastes me, alternating languid explorations and focussed flicks as I buck and keen.  
He could make me come in seconds flat, I know. But he doesn't, teasing me, bringing me right to the edge before pulling back just a bit, then doing it again, over and over until I'm pleading for release. Until I'm so keyed up I can't even think straight. Only then does he draw my throbbing clit between his lips, sucking on the tiny nub.
I come so hard I see stars, and there's no way my nosy neighbours didn't hear my wails of pleasure. But I couldn't care less.
He looks ridiculously pleased with himself as he crawls up to kiss me, but I scowl against his lips. “No more waiting, Peeta,” I grumble, but he knows I'm not really upset. I can see it in the way his eyes smile.
“Yes ma’am,” he laughs. And I laugh too. Because it's Peeta, my best friend, and now my lover. It feels like this has always been an inevitability. That no matter what, this was always going to happen.
He stands, sliding his jeans down. His cock juts out proudly, long and hard and all for me. I'd like to taste him too, but that will have to wait for another day.
We've already discussed contraception, two days ago while I lay in his arms, finally having confessed to each other what we both should have known all along. He knows I'm on the pill. I know he was tested a few months ago when he changed insurance carriers, and that he hasn't been with anyone since. There is nothing to hold us back. “Katniss,” he murmurs, climbing back into the bed.
“Don't ask me again if I'm sure, Peeta,” I tell him, and my voice stays steady despite my pounding heart. Because I am sure. I've never been more certain in my life.
My virginity isn't something I've guarded like a priceless jewel, it's not something I've kept locked away waiting for the perfect time. Despite that, I am, in this moment, so glad that I waited. So glad that it's Peeta.
He lowers himself to hover over me, cradled between my legs, and I can feel him hard against my thigh, just inches away. I suck in a deep breath, my heart speeding up. But he pauses, hazy blue eyes locked on my own, his thumbs stroking my cheekbones. Fear that he's having second thoughts makes the adrenaline spike in my veins. I don't think my ego could take it if he asked permission one more time. But he doesn't. Those serious eyes flicker with heat and lust, but also shine with something more. “I love you,” he whispers. Then he presses into me.
My heart pounds like a jackhammer, but I try my hardest to relax. Peeta moves slowly, watching my face the entire time. It doesn’t hurt, exactly, but the stretch, the burn, the feeling of fullness as he pushes in is almost overwhelming. Time hangs suspended as he claims each millimeter with aching control.
The sweat breaking out across his brow and the slight trembling of his arms tell a different story though. I know him, know how hard he’s fighting to go slow. “It’s okay,” I whisper, and lean up to kiss his jaw. I can feel his moan under my lips.
“You feel so fucking good,” he groans.
“You do too,” I murmur. It's not completely true, but the pleasure that lights his handsome face makes the white lie worth it.
He lowers himself further, pressing our bodies together. His hand slides under my neck, arching my throat to his mouth. “I swear I'll make it good for you, Katniss,” he says as he starts to move, shallow thrusts, gentle rocking. And it does start to feel good. I tilt my pelvis experimentally, and Peeta curses, grabbing my hip, pulling me more tightly against him.
My eyes drift shut of their own accord, overwhelmed by the intensity of the moment, but Peeta cups my cheek. “Open your eyes, Katniss,” he growls, his voice deeper and rougher than I’ve ever heard it before. “Good,” he nods as I meet his eyes, huge and nearly black. “Stay with me.”
“Always,” I whisper, tears pricking the corners of my eyes.
He’s moving faster, driving deep into me with every thrust. His eyes, hazy with pleasure and wonder, remain locked on my own. My name falls from his lips over and over, an invocation. A plea.
The first flickers of fire kindle in my belly, curling and coiling, and a surprised little oh escapes me. Peeta smiles, pleased and a little cocky. “Like that?” he asks, snapping his hips a fraction harder, and the fire builds. I can only nod frantically.
My hands clutch at his shoulders as the pleasure intensifies. Gasps and soft sighs progress to moans. I probably sound like a porno version of myself but I can't swallow back the sounds. Peeta doesn't seem to mind. If anything, my uninhibited cries spur him on.
He sneaks a hand between us, his thumb catching my clit roughly. Shock and pleasure jolt through me, and I involuntarily clench every muscle. “Oh fuck,” Peeta gasps. “I can’t-
His hips snap once, twice, thrusting more deeply than I imagined possible. His teeth find that sensitive spot where my neck and shoulder meet, biting hard enough to make me shudder. Then his body stiffens and stills. Tremors run down his spine and a low, drawn-out moan escapes him as he lifts his head. But it's the expression on his face that nearly does me in. He looks trapped between agony and ecstasy.
I expect him to pull out and roll away but he doesn't. Instead, he kisses me, and not slowly or sweetly. He kisses me passionately, showing me that we’re not done here. I feel a swell of tenderness. This man, this incredible man is more invested in my pleasure than his own.
Still inside me, he starts to rock again, sliding fractionally in and out, still filling me, but the stretch isn't so overwhelming now. And his talented thumb resumes its assault.
But it's his words that push me over the edge. In gasps and groans he tells me I'm beautiful. That he’s never wanted anyone the way he wants me. That he loves me. I cling to him as I tremble and pulse. It’s so much more intimate, coming apart in his arms while he stares into my eyes, than it was when he went down on me. I feel connected to him more than just physically.
His hair is damp with sweat and falls across eyes that practically glow for me. I've never found him more attractive than I do right at this moment.
He pulls out and crumples to the bed beside me, pulling me in close, my face pressed against his throat where I can feel his pulse fluttering against my lips. “Holy shit,” he gasps. And I smile.
I don’t know how long we lie together, sticky and sated, drifting in contentment, only that it isn’t anywhere near long enough when he moves to climb off the bed. “No,” I mumble, half asleep but still lucid enough to panic a little. “Don’t leave.”
He kisses my cheek. “I’ll be right back.”
I can hear him pad out into the hall and to the bathroom, hear water running. Then he’s back, cleaning me up with a warm cloth, gentle and tender. I stiffen, and heat blooms in my face, but I don’t ask him to stop. It’s strange, but sweet, something I’d never, not in any dream or fantasy, imagined him doing for me. Then he tosses the cloth somewhere behind him, and lies down with me again, fitting our bodies together and sighing against my hair.
I should be scared shitless by the intensity of this. But I’m not. Maybe because it’s Peeta, and he’s always felt like comfort and joy and safety. And now, he feels like home.
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the-redmane-family · 6 years
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The Deaths of Emelye Nesterova, Part 3
[ Though it’s taken me slightly longer to complete than I initially imagined, Emelye’s introductory story concludes with this final part! Enjoy!
Link to Part 1: http://the-redmane-family.tumblr.com/post/172997503680/the-deaths-of-emelye-nesterova-part-1
Link to Part 2: http://the-redmane-family.tumblr.com/post/173295139370/the-deaths-of-emelye-nesterova-part-2 ]
For what seemed like an eternity, the priest and the ranger sat in silence. The memory of Emelye’s final moments hung between them like a thick tapestry, thicker still than the partition that now separated them in the rotted wooden confessional. She sat unbreathing, held in what seemed to be a duty-bound pause, until the dark bishop spoke again.
“And so, for a time, your mind was lost to the Scourge, your soul ensnared by the icy grasp of the Frozen Throne.”
“Yes.”
“But it was not so forever. She found you. She set you free.”
“Yes.”
Another paused followed from the deep voice. When next it spoke, there was a hushed reverence to it. “As it was with all of our people. Yes… the Shadows have chosen her to lead us unto that dark horizon.”
“It is as you say, bishop.”
“I digress, Darkmar. Tell me again of the killing of your brother. It was some time after your joining the Forsaken, was it not?” The air between them held an ominous charge, as if the man who now urged such recollections knew of the emotional weight they carried, perhaps even relished the chance to bring that sentimentality once more into the light—and once more to smash it to pieces with the hammer of Forsaken justice.
“Yes, it was,” she replied simply. “Neither my brother nor I much cared to reflect on our newfound freedom. I guess we’ve just never been ones to let our thoughts get in the way of our actions. So we found work to do. There was plenty to be done, and he soon found himself among the Royal Apothecary Society, while I joined the Forsaken military. It was an easy choice because it was duty. And duty has always made sense to me.”
“A credit to your father’s legacy. Even in death, his daughter remains steadfast.”
Emelye smiled bitterly, a smile that her confessor could not see. It was gone by the time she spoke again. “Me, yes. My brother, not so much.”
“Tell me of his crime.”
“He kept his misgivings a secret—even from me. Always he told me of things when we were younger, but being among the undead… being undead ourselves, it changed us forever. We both felt it. I accepted it, but Kegan… Kegan couldn’t handle the experiments that the apothecaries engaged in. Even having apprenticed with an apothecary in his life… of course, I didn’t find any of this out until later. After I was sent to hunt him down.”
“And why were you dispatched on such an errand?”
Emelye gave another brief pause before she continued. At last, the moment was upon her. The killing. Another chance to snuff out the unlife of the baby brother she’d once sung to sleep when the drafty loft of their home woke him from his tender rest. Safe in the loving hands of his sister. Hands that were fated to take the very life they once safeguarded.
“An apothecary reported a break in at the Society’s vaults. Kegan was clumsy, and didn’t take care to cover his tracks. None of his companions thought to dispose of the witnesses, either. They were on a mission of morality, and to kill anything was unthinkable to them.” She frowned. “But I’d have rather him killed fellow Forsaken than what he did next.”
“What did he do?”
“He went to the Alliance.” The chainmail-clad woman uttered the word venomously. “There were four in total—my brother, a woman called Alina, and two other men, Ricter and Dermot. Ordinary citizens who had joined the Society and, by chance, happened upon a collection of artifacts that set them on edge. The bloodstones.”
An audible shifting sounded from the other side of the partition. “Go on.”
“I still don’t know what power lurked within those stones. I’m not a mage, or a scholar. But whatever the bloodstones were capable of, it scared my brother. And apparently he wasn’t the only one frightened.” She grimaced, recalling the cold feel of the stones in her satchel as she had transported them back to the Forsaken magus—a formless malice that scratched at the corners of her mind, yearning to be let in. But she had ignored it then, as she ignored the temptation to dwell on it now.
“So, he convinced the others to help him. They stole from the Forsaken. They stole from the Dark Lady. And they fled south, to Hillsbrad, where they willingly turned themselves over to the humans at the Lordamere Internment Camp, to the warden who oversaw the installation. Belamoore was her name. It didn’t take long for our agents to track him down… and when they did, well.” The woman fell silent for a moment. “Well, the magus charged with their retrieval sent for me.”
“Wordeen Voidglare.” The brooding priest spoke the name disinterestedly.
“He saw an opportunity,” Emelye continued. “An opportunity to test me. To see if disloyalty ran in the family… to ensure that, one way or another, he wouldn’t have to worry about the Darkmar siblings ever again. You see, I’d been working out of Tarren Mill as a scout for some time, assisting the Deathstalkers in probing for weaknesses along the outskirts of Southshore and the Hillsbrad Fields. Before they were blighted into oblivion.” The ranger furrowed her brow, her face twisting into a hard, determined stare as she studied the decrepit floorboards of the confessional. “So Voidglare sent for me. And he instructed me to kill Kegan, to kill his companions, and to return the bloodstones to him.”
Silence followed from the other side of the small booth. After a pregnant pause, the deep voice sounded again. “How was the manner of his death? How did your brother meet his fate?”
“Like a coward.” The reply came without pause. Emelye lifted her eyes to study the far wooden wall, her voice tinged with bitterness as she spoke. “It was easy enough to slip through the camp’s perimeter. Just me and two others. That was all we needed. In and out, silent as the shadows. We found Alina, Ricter, Dermot, and disposed of them one by one. The Alliance fools hadn’t even taken the bloodstones from them. It was twice the reward for half the effort: the Dark Lady’s artifacts retrieved, and the traitors who stole them snuffed out.
“Then we found Kegan. The last of the four to die, fittingly. I remember every detail. The look on his face when he saw me enter. Recognition. Acceptance. Resignation. The fight had gone out of him—the light in his eyes that I remembered from so long ago. The first day he came home from his work at that apothecary in Stratholme,” Emelye said as her voice grew softer, “and the day that I drove a sword through his heart. I stared at him, disbelieving, and said ‘Little brother… what have you done?’” The ranger’s voice was barely a whisper now as she repeated the words, her face still set in a look of determination. “‘Little brother… what have you done?’ I’ll never forget his reply, just as I’ll never forget when father said goodbye for the last time. He said, ‘Remember father, sister. A choice between what’s right and what’s easy. This is right.’” The ranger stopped for a moment. “I had never hated him more. To invoke father like that. As if doing my duty was easy. Loyalty is right. Stealing is easy. Duty is right. Fleeing is easy.”
“He knew the price of his misdeeds. None can long elude the justice of the Forsaken.”
Emelye seemed not to hear him as she continued. “He was clutching the red, oval-shaped gemstone in his hand when my blade pierced his chest. Sometimes I wonder if he had intended to defend himself with it… to use it against me, somehow. But I don’t think he did. He would rather have died than be Forsaken any longer. He would rather have died than harm me.” The ruminative tone quickly evaporated. “He was weak. And a coward.”
“And yet, he was your brother.”
“Yes.” She paused. “He was my brother.” The final words of the woman’s confession echoed the first, signaling an unannounced end to the shadowy bishop’s methodical, meandering interrogation. For a moment longer, she sat in silence until the sound of creaking wood came from the other side of the partition.
“Come, Darkmar. We have work to do.”
Emelye stood wordlessly, moving with a soldier’s grace as she stepped out of the confessional and into the relatively small back room where it was located, her footsteps thudding dully on the wooden floorboards. The tall priest stood with his hands folded behind his back, peering down at her out of sickly, aged yellow eyes.
“I have an assignment for you, my shadow hand. It is an errand of great importance.”
The ranger mimicked the priest’s posture, straightening her back and standing with her armored hands clasped behind her, over the dark cloak she wore. “Yes, bishop. What do you require?”
Her confessor narrowed his gaze, his bushy eyebrows knitting together as the sallow skin on his face creased with lines of age and undeath. “The time has come for you to take up your brother’s place within the Royal Apothecary Society. I have worked among their ranks for some time, observing the apothecaries, assisting with inquiries, steering the wayward sheep from… seditious proclivities.” He continued, his low voice seeming to fill the space of the small room with its authoritative timbre. “And now that your duties have brought you back to Lordaeron, I ask that you continue the work of the Shadow in the halls of the Apothecarium. Learn their craft. Assist them with their weaponry and their constructs. Protect them in the field. Bring a steady hand and an equanimous mind.”
Emelye offered no protest, but the look on her face did little to hide her apparent surprise at the bishop’s instructions. The thought of joining the very organization that her brother had served years ago was one she hadn’t considered until this very moment.
“Understood, bishop. What of my work with the Forsaken military?”
“You will continue there as ever you have ere this meeting,” the man replied. “And therein lies your inherent value to the Society. The disparate entities that exist to protect the Forsaken must be inseparable. Doubtless you will find that much of the work overlaps… for the same blight created by the apothecaries is also deployed on the field of battle.”
“The Stormheim strain was quite potent,” Emelye said. “The wreck of the Black Rose in the Cove of Nashal had a remarkable effect on the wildlife. It was impressively destructive… to understand the subtleties of blight chemistry…” The ranger pursed her lips, slowly working her jaw in thought.
“You will be assigned to Branch 27-B, under Grand Apothecary Thaddeus Seenwood. I have sent a missive to the high apothecary of Testing and Deployment, Ethyl Plagueguts, regarding your imminent arrival. I would also have you speak with the branch’s chief of security, the warrior known as Helskorn.” The towering bishop squinted at her. “He, too, participated in the battle against Greymane’s forces that took place in Stormheim. A deathguard aboard the Black Rose, and a peerless fighter with as much reason to hate the worgen filth as any true Forsaken.”
Emelye nodded solemnly. “It will be done then, bishop. I will join the Royal Apothecary Society, offer them my assistance, and await any instruction from you.”
The dark priest grimaced. “You will be my eyes and ears, Darkmar. With the preparations for war well underway, the Cult must be rallied once more. The Forgotten Shadow will drive the heart and soul of our people as the Forsaken war machine heralds the dawn of a new era, and we shall ride the approaching storm to the bereavement of our enemies. I go hence to make such spiritual matters my foremost preoccupation, returning only as I am needed to assist the Forsaken government.”
The armor-clad ranger bowed her head respectfully, and then the bishop placed his hand on her shoulder, the dark cloth of his glove resting on the layered chainmail pauldron.
“Draw your strength from the aphotic divine that dwells inseparably in every soul. You will need to be fortified for the times ahead.”
“May the Shadows ever guide our way,” she replied, and as Maerlyn removed his hand from Emelye’s shoulder, her yellow, undead eyes burned with intensity. Then she spoke again, her light, almost delicate voice taking on a tone of stern authority. “It is as the Dark Lady has said. We will go forth and strike down our enemies, and once they have been vanquished, we will rebuild Lordaeron to its former glory.”
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pandaigdig · 3 years
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The stories we tell ourselves
27 February 2021. It seems like the lockdown sort of made me miss a certain person that became an important presence in my life for a while. 
Four, five years after the fact, before every dreamless slumber, my thoughts never fail to drift to Blue. At one point I believed that my wishes might have the power to bring him back and continue where we left off, no matter how long that takes as if this grieving period has an immeasurable expiration date that will magically kick off with a happy ending. Looking back on a rather strange time of my life, I always try to remember who I was, what I looked like, how I took care of myself and my feelings, and the very desires that were left unsaid but immensely obvious in our actions. The majority of his presence – his shaky arrogance, false projections, frustrations, and debilitating self-doubt – was nearly impossible to soothe so we turned almost everything in jest until we couldn't distinguish hurt from laughter.
But in rare moments of tenderness, Blue was thoughtful, encouraging, and endearingly (sometimes painfully) opinionated about every little thing. When we had our first serious conversation over chat, it went on for hours and hours than I can count. Little did I know that it would be our thing for months to come: he talked about all the bands that saved his life, the places in Japan he was dying to visit, our shared love for musicians named Paul, as well as a mutual admiration for John Cusack. I told him that Say Anything is one of my all-time favorites and, to this day, I'm still wishing for a love like what Lloyd and Diane had.
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"Have you seen High Fidelity? Akong-ako si John Cusack don," he said. "Although, Jack Black also had some moments."
I told him I was planning to because I was finishing reading the book at the time. “Keep this book away from your girlfriend – it contains too many of your secrets to let it fall into the wrong hands,” one of the most prominent praises for the book says. It read to me like a red flag as Blue and I entered into a month of seeing each other. 
I knew what kind of person Rob Gordon was. He was ruminating, insecure, selfish, and lonely. He was terrible with women. Cusack translated this on screen very, very well. His charming man as Lloyd was nowhere to be found even with Cusack’s regular joe good looks. But then again, I’ve always felt compelled to love complex (read: difficult) people. 
Blue glorified this character, as well as the movie, to death. He’d come over to my place a week later to watch it with him.
"Sabi ko sayo e, guys like us still stand a chance," he said as the credits rolled, looping his arm around my middle, stopping me so we could lay some more. It was a sunny afternoon on a weekday and I remember taking him to my bedroom to smoke because I didn't want the smell to give away the fact that I wasn't alone. Boyfriends, or any form of male company really, were an unspoken restriction in our make-shift compound. 
I watched while I waited for him to finish the last drag off of his cigarette before walking up towards him by the window. I just wanted to be close to him – to see if he could let me in. It was still unfathomable to me that I invited a boy in my room, let alone one that I actually have real attraction for and seems to feel the same way. He sealed our closeness as his tall frame leaned on mine until our lips met in an innocent but lingering kiss.
Soon these secret meetings became uncomfortable. From going to each other's houses, we would opt to stay at motels with no lunch nor dinner dates prior. I was starting to worry. But more than anything I was sad because I had already altered my brain to allow myself to be seen, warts and all. I opened up my heart and I was ready to jump from infatuation to real love. Maybe I was already there.
Our memories are imperfect and often glossed over, and when I trace them back to those five, six months of... whatever, I often catch myself wondering if they were ever real. Though, one thing is for sure: I was aware of how I felt. 
To quote Tavi Gevinson, “I try to remember that what I really want is not to go back, but what I have now: the image, the memory.” 
We were anchored in troubled waters and the angle was off right from the beginning. I already felt small compared to him. Five years ago I would've claimed that no other guy could ever make me feel how he made me feel. That, my affections were a gift he so deserved that I would be the luckiest person on earth had he acknowledged them, if not returned. I always felt reciprocation was already too much to ask – that I would be more than fine with settling for the bare minimum. As I said, I already felt small next to him.
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Today, like many days passed, I wish I reacted differently and cherished those moments of openness because I knew he was maybe reaching out for someone to listen. I always felt he just didn't like being pitied because of his stubborn pride. Even so, I won't ever trade those bits of perpetual bliss talking from our beds for anything. I want to believe that I truly connected with someone in those brief months just when I thought my life was getting stranger and turning into something I could no longer control.
Those of us who were born with a growing solitude and harbored an uncompromised independence have a complicated relationship with intimacy. I don't dislike vulnerability even if it's with the wrong friends and romantic potentials because I'm not an inverted snob. But then again, intimacy is a fickle thing to betray and plays a key part in abandonment. I'm still going through establishing the right set of boundaries with everyone I meet and I already know; I just have to remind myself time and time again that they don't have to be infinite.
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stubert87 · 4 years
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I've felt the need to return to my old safe space to put something out into the universe. I've not been in a great place now for at least a month. What started as a mild wobble in confidence & self esteem, has escalated into a severe depressive episode.
I woke up this time 4 weeks ago and didn't want to be alive anymore. I should add some context to that. I didn't want to kill myself, quite the opposite. But all my desire to walk this earth and breathe another breath was gone. As soon as the thought of not wanting to be here appeared in my head, it very quickly made itself comfortable and became a very unwelcome guest. Every day became a nightmare, my head a battlefield on which what little willpower I felt I had slogged it out with the army of negative ideations that had dug their trenches and made their stand.
I think I'd forgotten what this felt like. The overwhelming urge to have the ground swallow you and never be bothered by anything again. The panicked reaction in your head, telling you to hide from the seemingly very real and immeasurable threat. But where do you hide from your own thoughts? How do you run from yourself?
It's been a long four weeks and I'm not sure I'm out of the woods yet. I'm more coasting along the treeline, enjoying the fresh air and sunlight again. I think at this point it's definitely worth reflecting on how I ended up here. How I wound up on the brink of a very dangerous existential crisis.
Between September last year and January this year I unfortunately lost 2 family members. Added to that the trip of a lifetime I'd saved and counted down to went a bit let's tong and it all got a bit much. I listened to my little brain and took some time off. Spending it with family and close friends. Connecting with the amazing support I have in my life. And then 2 months later lockdown happened and all that wonderful support felt like it had been ripped away. It just felt like one knock after another that leaves an already hurting soul, and vulnerable psyche very open to further blows.
Living by yourself, isolated from friends and family back home, having nothing but work to go to day in, day out, whilst managing the fear of this new pandemic, and the multitude of "what ifs" it generates... I know I'm not the only one to have found themselves in this position. The vast majority of humans aren't hard wired to live in isolation, and definitely not an isolation that generates so much fear and anxiety.
But lockdown restrictions have eased now, why is it that my latest episode has hit me now? Why not back in April or May when the lockdown was at its most stringent? The only reasoning I can settle on, is that we've entered the dreaded "new normal". The vast majority of us entered lockdown hoping to spend a few months in isolation and exit lockdown in a joyous victory over covid and go back to our normality. When the fact is we've slowly trickled back out of our anxiety ridden hideaways, into a world of new rules and behaviours and guess what... More anxiety and stress. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, if you will. Nothing about how we're living now is normal. Every masked individual, plastic screen and social distancing sign pushing us further into a state of anxiety and worry.
Even if you're not worried about your own health. There's the worry of the health of those close to you, as well as worrying how people see you, will people judge you for not wearing a mask, how will someone react if you get too close, and the wondering when all this will be over and you can just hug your nana again. An endless lists of what's, what ifs, how's, and why's. It's a draining cycle for all involved. The human fight or flight mechanism isn't the best of states to be living in for a prolonged period of time, and the effects of this long term stress and worry are more and more evident in wider society.
I always try to keep talking to those around me. And I've tried talking my way through this current episode I've found myself in, but what I found petrified me. In an effort to reach out, to talk, to try and steady myself and get help from those around me, I found far too many people in very unsettled states of mind. It added another overwhelming feeling to this all. It seemed like no one was in a position to help, because they themselves needed help. This evidence of living under social distancing induced anxiety was showing on so many people I spoke to. There is no doubt in my mind that there is a good portion of our population on the verge, if not in the midst of a mental health crisis and it worries me deeply.
The biggest thing I can say to you all if you suspect someone close to you isn't in a great state of mental wellbeing and you feel in a position to help is simple. Act. Don't talk. People think that talking is the answer, and to some extent it is. But "it's time to talk" is a years old slogan and we need to progress past this. In order to talk, we that are suffering need help getting un-stuck. Un-stuck from the negative ideations, the constant rumination, and the sluggish brain-fog that consumes us. Sometimes the best way to do that is to kick start us into action. Don't just tell the person you're concerned about that you're here if you need them. Be there. Tell them (don't ask) that you're taking them for a walk, or to dinner, or popping round for a cuppa. The jolt to the system these acts give often helps awaken the senses, and just the same as a tiny spark can set away a blazing inferno, the smallest bit of positivity can snowball and help the person to find their footing on their path again. Be prepared to be cancelled on. But as someone who's been here before, I ask you not to give up on them if they do cancel. For some people the whole process of meeting up can feel too overwhelming and they will try cancelling or making excuses. Gently persevere with them, they're not being inconsiderate, they just can't quite face it yet.
One thing I'd love people to normalise is talking about coping mechanisms. A rather pretentious way of saying "things you do to keep you going". I seem to auto-deploy them these days when I get unwell. I like to meditate and practice yoga to try and calm the mind and align it to my breathing and be present in my body. I try to read. I make sure I make social plans, but also make sure I take time out away from the hustle and bustle. I have to say they're working a treat. Which may sound a bit hypocritical considering the fact I've said I've had one of the worst depressive episodes I've had in a long time, but the last time I felt like this was 2014 and I had to go on medication. Here I am finding myself in a better place without medical intervention, having managed through my coping mechanisms, and some brilliant people who arrived just as I needed them, whether they knew it or not.
It's a hard hard task managing your mental health. For some of us, it will literally be our life's work. But growth doesn't come from never having experienced difficulties, it comes from seeing those difficulties and working through them. I for one am always looking to grow, which means I must expect further difficulties on the way. My biggest offering to those needing help through their poor mental health is to explore and find your coping mechanisms. Even if that's just picking one person a day to phone or text or making one social plan each day. I can never ever stress the importance of some kind of physical activity. It's no surprise my mental wellbeing took an upwards turn the second I re-engaged with my yoga and started cycling again. The mind and body aren't separate entities. They should both be nurtured together.
Before I sign off, I want to say that if anyone reading this is wondering why I never reached out to you, I'm sorry. It's not that I don't value you, or see you as someone who can help. My brain was in a thoroughly irrational state, and didn't make rational choices. But I want you to know I got there. And I will always get there. I know nothing else but to fight this.
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