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fanmoose12 · 3 years

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at the coastline of memories

For the longest time, Hange had been lost.

(or a fic about amnesiac!hange, based on that one ask i’ve received ages ago)

Hange wakes up, and the world is still dark. She blindly reaches to the bedside table, lights up the gas lamp on, grabs her glasses and puts them on. The world comes into focus and Hange glances at the opposite wall, checking the time.

4:32

She curls her lips in a slight smile. She woke up just in time.

She swings her legs of the bed and yawns, stretching her limbs. She gets up and heads to the kitchen, putting a kettle on a stove and firing it up.

While the kettle heats up, she moves to the bathroom, grabbing a soothing balm on her way.

Once there, Hange takes off her glasses and starts applying the balm, carefully smearing it all over her face.

The burns don't hurt anymore, at least not as much as they did in the beginning. Hange learned how to live with it just as she learned how to live with not knowing how she had received these burns or how she got there - to the middle of nowhere, on a coastline next to a ruined structure that she could only guess was once a port.

Finished with her face, Hange moves to her hands, applying the balm to the inside of her fingers and the backside of her palm. The balm cools her still tender wounds and Hange softly signs, relishing in the pleasant feeling.

The whistle of a kettle shakes her up and Hange whirls around, hurrying to turn it off. She gives another look at the clock, worrying her lip between teeth as she sees that it's past quarter to five. It's only the beginning of spring and the sun doesn't raise up that early at this time of year, but Hange feels a pressing need to hurry. She can't be late, not today, not after she spent weeks, chasing the mysterious man.

The man that had been visiting Hange's cabin for as long as she was living there. He brings her food, medicine, clothes and other supplies. Sometimes he even goes as far as to bring her little gifts - books, flowers and sweets.

He never shows his face, though. He never approaches Hange, never talks with her. Whenever she attempts to catch him, he disappears without a trace. She has only ever seen him from far, in the rare moments when she was lucky enough to catch him leaving her cabin. Frustratingly so, he does his best to remain hidden.

Hange doesn't understand it. The man - for whatever reason - obviously cares about her. Then why is he so dead set on staying away? Why doesn't he let her express her gratitude at least?

She thinks every night about it. She curses her mind for forgetting.

Her previous life exists only in the flashes of sound and images. They're bright, loud, blurry and swift. Hange can't make sense of them no matter how hard she tries. It frustrates her to no end, makes her want to tear out what little hair is left out on her scalp, but nothing comes back to her.

She's sure that the man is important, she's almost sure that he was a part of her old life. What reason does he have to help her now after all?

But the man doesn't want to see her, and Hange needs to see him, so she resorts to different methods. He won't be running away from her anymore, she is going to make sure of that.

With that in mind, Hange pours hot water in two cups, adding tea leaves to it. She throws some sugar in her cup, but hesitates to do the same with the cup she's preparing for that man. She doesn't know why, but it feels wrong.

Your sugary shit destroys the true essence of tea, she suddenly remembers. For the life of her, she can't recall who has said that to her. Or when. Or why.

Deciding to tackle this issue some other time, Hange goes back into the room, wraps a blanket around her shoulders and then takes the cups with steaming tea.

Pushing the front door open with her leg, she comes out on a porch and breathes in deeply, savoring the fresh, crisp air. She puts the cups down on a small table and settles down in a rocking chair, pulling the blanket tighter around herself. Hange shivers slightly, the morning chill freezing her fingers and toes.

She hides them inside the warm cocoon of a thick fabric and turns her eyes to the horizon. The stars slowly disappear, showing a narrow strip of golden light. It paints the sea below it in a gentle purple color.

A smile pulls on her lips as she continues to watch the sunrise. Hange sits back in a chair, rocking slightly. She glances to one side, then to another. Confirming that the coast is clear, she allows herself to close her eyes for just a second.

Just a second, and the world around her is dark again.

***

Hange groans, shielding her eyes from a light shining right at her. She looks up and nearly jumps. The sun is high in the sky. She was going to rest just for a bit. For how long that bit had lasted?

She swirls her head from side to side. The coastline is clear. Already clear. There is no one there, and she is alone.

She looks down then and sees a small package by the door. She glances at the table with teacups on it. One of them is empty.

Despite her failed attempt at catching the mysterious and annoying, but extremely nice man, Hange smiles.

"Have you enjoyed the tea at least?" she asks, hoping that he listens.

***

Hange spends the next couple of mornings, watching the sunset and anxiously waiting for the man to show up. She slaps her face and pinches the skin of her arm, stopping herself from falling asleep. It bears no result, however, because the man doesn't show up.

It is only when Hange finally gives up, returning inside her cabin that the man returns. She disappears for just a moment, going inside to make another cup of tea. When she comes back, a package with fresh fish, a journal and a few quills is already awaiting her. Hange sighs, annoyed at the man, despite his gifts. She needs another plan, it seems.

***

She has more than enough time to think about it. Hange’s life is dull and uneventful to a point of making her feel weird. She doesn’t know what life she led before she was found on the coastline near the port, with severe burns and wounds and before she stumbled into abandoned, old cabin, but this— this peace and quiet that defies her every living moment now, it’s— it’s not unwelcome. But it seems wrong. There is a need, a desperation set deep in her bones. It torments her at night, nudging her to do something, anything. It always keeps her on edge, pushing her in the unfamiliar direction.

That direction feels a dead-end.

***

Not every part of her life is lost. There are some memories that persistently linger in the depth of her mind. She still remembers her childhood - the bright, sunny days, filled with carelessness and wonder. The way wind blew through her hair, the way sunlight danced on her skin and kissed her cheeks, these memories don’t fade. On the contrary, there is more life in them than in Hange herself.

She knows the gentle touch of her mother and remembers the strict face of her father. She can close her eyes and see her puppy, running towards her every time she came home from the never-ending adventures, greeting her with loud, happy barking and wiggling tail.

Her school, a grand beautiful building with big windows and polished floors, still lives in her memory. And the image of the school’s library – the favorite place in the whole world for little Hange, where she spent countless afternoons – fills her with happiness and content even after all these years. She remembers the displeasure and annoyance she felt in the moments when she couldn’t reach the higher shelves. She jumped and stretched out her hand and balanced on the balls of her feet, huffed and scoffed, but nothing ever worked out, until she let go of her pride and went to fetch a chair. She still recalls the wonder and excitement every book evoked inside her. Her fingertips, although scarred and burned, didn’t forget the feeling of yellowed pages. The voice of her teacher, scolding her for reading without proper lighting, still echoes in her ears.

However, everything after that, past the playgrounds and school yards, is nothing more than a blur.

She remembers the cold, dark nights, spent by a fire, surrounded by merry laughter. She remembers the feeling of adrenaline, of excitement and agitation, yet can’t recall what exactly had caused these emotions. She remembers the parchment and a quill, remembers that she used to write, write, write. Not a single written word comes back to her, though. She remembers a bright, imposing figure right ahead, a reassuring, calming presence just behind her shoulder, and someone standing right next to her, their hands almost touching.

These people were important, Hange knows that. She wants to remember them so desperately.

But no matter how much she tries— she can’t.

***

Whatever life she used to have, it most certainly couldn’t have been easy. It was not a life of leisure and prosperity, because her body, despite its weak and injured state, still isn’t used to lazing around.

The spring only just began, and the earth is too cold yet for gardening. As long as the cool weather holds, Hange has nothing to occupy herself with. There are no seeds to plant, no weeds to pull out, no crops to look after. She has all the time in the world.

She can sleep as much as she wants, yet every morning she wakes up at the very break of dawn. Still exhausted and weary, she forces herself to sleep for a little bit more, but she can’t.

So she walks out on a porch, a cup of tea in her hands, and watches the sun slowly rise up over the sea. The sight is mesmerizing, Hange watches it every morning and yet she’s not bored of it in the slightest. She feels like she will never get bored of it, she drinks it more eagerly than the hot tea.

Watching the world growing from black to light, cold blue, before settling into palette of bright yellow, orange and pink never fails in making Hange sigh in wonder. The crush of waves across the shore, the sun beams illuminating the dark green water, the white foam swirling around evoke a warm, tender feeling inside her. It’s a confusing bundle of excitement, pride and happiness.

It makes her think – maybe, it was all worth it.

It makes her think – maybe, we can finally be free.

*** There is nothing much for her to do, so Hange concentrates on getting her memories back. It’s not an easy task, and it proves to be even harder, when Hange comes to conclusion that she has but a single clue, nothing more than a thin, uneven string that connects her past and present life.

That man.

So she thinks long and hard about her next course of action, writes one plan after another in her recently received journal. The process is oddly familiar, it brings her a sort of nostalgia, although Hange doesn't know the source of it. Still, it's comforting and she spends long mornings, days and nights, sitting at her porch under the light of sun, gas lamp and stars, thinking how to get closer to that kind, but irritatingly distant man.

In the end, she can't come up with a decent enough plan, and so Hange resorts to leaving a note to him. She wants to show her gratitude, and if she can't do it face-to-face, if he wishes to continue hiding from her, then so be it, she'll play by his rules.

It frustrates her, she can't deny it, but she needs to do something, and it’s the very least she can do after all the kindness this man has bestowed upon her.

***

The next time, when a package is delivered to her doorstep, it contains fresh apples and seeds. With a smile on her face, Hange brings it all inside and sets out to work.

She washes her hands, puts the apples on the counter and fires up the oven. Next she takes a bag of flour and pours it into a bowl. She adds water and sugar and mixes it all up. She opens the oven, places the bottom crust and spills the contents of the bowl there. Then Hange moves to the basket, delivered by a man. She grabs a few apples, washes them thoroughly and starts cutting them.

It takes her a while to finish, and so Hange starts humming under her breath, losing herself in the routine of gripping one side of apple with the fingers of her left hand and then slicing it with a knife she's holding in her right one.

The quick chop-chop-chop sets a tune to the melody she's humming and Hange smiles, enjoying the mundenity of it all.

At least, nothing will explode this time...

The thought is so bizarre, it appears completely out of blue. Hange freezes for a second, ruining the rhythm of her work. She looks up to the celling and repeats that thought, muttering it under her breath.

Explosion, explosion...

What could it possibly mean? Why does it fill her with anxiety? And what is that another feeling? Fear?

Tree branch hits the window in that exact moment, and Hange jumps. The sudden sound rings unusually loud in the silence of her little cabin.

It sounds almost like a gunshot.

This thought leaves Hange feeling even more shaken that she was before.

She exhales nervously, gripping the edge of the table until her knuckles go white. She feels dizzy out of sudden. Like there isn't enough air in the room.

Like she's swimming underwater and struggling to take a breath.

Why does that feeling seem familiar?

Hange shakes her head, wipes her forehead with the backside of her palm, hoping that it would help get rid of those ridiculous thoughts.

"I should spend more time outside," she mumbles, her voice still trembling. With unsteady hands she returns to the apples.

She quickly finishes chopping them and then puts it all in the oven.

Now all she has is to wait, and so Hange heads into the bedroom to get a paper and quill from there. After all, the pie is worth nothing, if she doesn’t write a note.

***

When the pie is ready, Hange puts it on the best plate she possesses. She covers it with the only napkin she has and then she takes it outside, setting it on a table at the porch. She brews a cup of tea and puts it next to the plate. Then she lays down a note.

Since you don't let me thank you any other way, it reads. Hange hopes it won’t go unanswered.

***

Next morning she wakes up and immediately dashes out of the house, stopping only to put her glasses on and get her warm robe. She forgets about her morning balm applying ritual, too excited to see the results of her little experiment.

Just as she hoped, the pie and tea are gone. Her note is gone too and another one lies instead.

Grinning from ear to ear, Hange eagerly snatches it in her arms, grips it tightly with her fingers and squints slightly, quickly reading it.

Work on your cooking skills, four-eyes. The pie was awful. Try adding less sugar next time. I think just a piece of this shitty pie could give someone cavities. Tea was good, though.

Hange rereads the note a few times, struggling to understand. She can't quite decide if she should be angry or amused. She settles on a mix of something in between.

Her experiment produced an unexpected results, it seems. It helped her realize that her assumption about that man was a bit wrong. He's kind, yes. Caring too. But he's not nice. Quite the contrary. He's a little piece of shit, Hange decides with a gleeful smile.

How curious, she thinks and lets out a happy snicker.

***

Hange's shirt rips at the seams a few days later. It's not her only shirt - the mysterious man has made sure of that - but it's her favorite one. So Hange searches the house, turning it upside down to find a needle and a thread.

Her hands tremble as she tries to fit the thread into the needle and Hange curses, as she misses the small aperture once again. She pushes the glasses up on her forehead and squints, struggling to get the thread inside.

After a few failed attempts and more than a few colorful words, Hange succeeds. She celebrates it with a wide grin and grabs the shirt, starting to stitch the torn parts together.

The stitch is even and neat, Hange wonders if she has been taught that. As far as she remembers, her mother tried numerous times to teach her how to do embroidery, but little Hange always refused, running away and hiding in the library. Evidently, she changed a lot since then.

I managed to stitch his face just as perfectly.

Hange blinks as that thought appears. She closes her eyes and instead of a shirt, she sees a bloody mess of ripped skin, muscles and tendons.

She blinks again and that vision is gone. Hange closes her eyes, tries to recreate the image, but she's drawing a blank this time. She is greeted with nothing but darkness.

She growls in frustration and throws the goddamn shirt away.

She was so close to remembering something, to getting back a part of her life. But, as before, it had ended in a failure.

The feeling is strangely familiar to her.

***

She spends the next week, writing little notes to the man. Sometimes he answers, granting her with more of his crude and sarcastic comments. Other times, when she attempts to ask a personal question, when she begs him to tell her his name or when she laments about wanting to get to know him, the messages go unanswered and her note stays exactly where she laid it, fluttering in the wind.

The frustration gets to her after a while and Hange starts to feel bored. The routine is pressing onto her and so she packs what little provision she has, grabs one of her warmer sweaters, puts on a patch to hide her missing eye and decides to go exploring.

There is a town near enough that it takes only a couple of hours to get there. Hange visited it once, before the winter came and the snow made the trip impossible. The town isn’t big – truthfully, it’s hard to even call it a town – the place stands in ruins with only a few houses rebuild and ready to let people in.

Now, as Hange enters the town after three long months, she sees that it’s changed. Not much, but enough to attract attention, enough to make Hange marvel at the additional buildings and appreciate the hard labor done by the townspeople.

She walks through the town slowly, gawking at everything and everyone. Despite the chilly weather, the people are working hard, rebuilding what was once lost.

When she came to this town for the first time, she asked about the cause of this ruin, thinking that it could be linked to her own wounds, and, consequently, to her old life.

The answers she received, though, didn’t satisfy her. The tales of giant people, destroying everything in their path sounded familiar, almost similar to the stories her mother used to tell her. It reminded her of the tales about titans Hange read in the school’s library. She was scared of them back then, and at the same time excited too. She always wanted to see one up close, and so she felt something close to regret when the townspeople informed her that there are no titans anymore.

“Those island devils got rid of them, thank gods,” one woman said to Hange back then. “Everyone now calls them heroes, but do you wish to know what I think? We should have destroyed them all along with their damned island.”

Hateful words left a bile taste in Hange’s mouth. They made her angry for a reason she couldn’t even understand. She left quickly after, her mind even a bigger mess than usual.

Now, as she strolls through the narrow streets, Hange thinks back to that conversation. Is it true that those islanders are to blame? Could it be that they’re the reason for the burns on her body? For the memories she lost? Maybe, Hange should hate them too?

It’s easy to hate someone when you don’t know them, she remembers words from one of her teachers at school. Hange finds it hard to agree with that statement. She thinks the contrary is true – it’s impossible and irrational to hate someone, when you don’t even know them.

She banishes these thoughts as she turns a corner and sees a man struggling to carry a large wooden pole. Hange isn’t that strong herself, the wounds taking its toll on her, but she rushes over to him, ready to help. She grips the pole with her hands and lifts it up, putting it on her shoulder to support it.

The man slightly turns his head, probably with intent of thanking her. Their eyes meet and he drops the pole almost instantly.

“You!” he gasps, his eyes wide. “It’s you!”

Hange puts the pole down and frowns. She wants to ask the man so many questions. What does he mean? Does he know her? Did they meet before? When? Who is he? Who is she?

Before she can at least open her mouth, the man grips her shoulders and stares at her face, his eyes running up and down frantically, as a wide smile pulls on his lips.

“It really is you,” he concludes happily. “Captain— he was right! He didn’t imagine it all, oh god, it’s a miracle!”

“I’m sorry,” Hange says slowly. “But who are you?”

“Oh.” The man lets her go immediately. He takes a step back and fixes his shirt. His eyes fill with sadness.

“So he was right about this as well,” he whispers more to himself than to Hange. “Forgive me, please,” he adds, and he does look apologetic, but Hange suspects it’s for entirely different reason. “I mistook you for a good friend.”

“Onyankopon!” someone calls from inside the house. “What’s taking you so long?”

“Sorry,” he repeats, flashing her a painfully forced smile. “I need to go.”

He leaves before Hange can reply and ask him to stay and explain.

“Onyankopon.” Hange mutters, pronouncing each syllable.

The name doesn’t seem familiar. But it spreads a wave of warmth through her chest.

***

She keeps muttering that name under her breath on her way home. It results in absolutely nothing, but Hange is nothing if not persistent. When she comes back home, she finds a few hyacinths planted in a pot that stands at the table at her porch.

Hange’s heart swells at the sight of it. The flowers are purple, and it’s her favorite color. She wonders if the man knows that little bit of trivia about her and if the choice of color was purposeful. She writes a quick note, asking him exactly that.

At the bottom of a page, she asks if the man knows a guy, named Onyankopon.

As always happens with that kind of questions, she doesn’t receive an answer.

***

Too soon, life returns to the world. The trees become greener, the sun shines brighter, and the water in the ocean gets warm enough for Hange to dip her toes in it.

The birds return back to the coastline too, the seagulls filling Hange’s quiet life with cheerful squeaking. When she isn't busy with crops and flowers in her little garden, Hange walks out on a beach and spends her days, watching the little things fly around. The sight is strangely calming, soothing her weary soul.

It’s during one of those perfect, peaceful days that it happens. There is not a cloud in the sky and a soft breeze moves through the air, entangling in her hair and moving through a thin cotton shirt she’s wearing. She curls her lips in a smile, squinting against the bright sun.

In that moment, Hange feels blissfully content.

It happens faster that she can react. She looks up, shifting her eyes from the sea to the flock of seagulls, flying high enough that Hange needs to raise her head.

There are eight of them – two bigger ones are on the front, leading the others, while the rest is flying behind, keeping close to each other.

Hange’s smile widens at the sight of the small family.

And it slips from her face, as she sees that one of birds, the one of two at the front, starts falling. Hange watches it as though in slow motion, staring at the sudden descent with wide shocked eyes.

The seagull’s body hits the ground with a soft sound that isn’t loud enough to be heard over the ocean’s hissing or the beating of Hange’s heart.

The other birds halt their movement but don’t dive in the sand. They hover above the body on the ground, silently mourning one of their kind, before continuing their flight.

Looking at it hurts.

Hange stares at it for another long moment, and then scrambles onto her feet, gathering the little bird into her trembling hands. She can feel the faint heartbeat beneath her fingers and Hange rushes back to her cabin, desperate to help the injured creature.

***

She spends the whole day, nursing little one back to health. After all of her efforts, it lives and breathes, but it’s too weak to fly or even move yet. Hange prepares a makeshift nest for a bird and leaves it there, watching closely.

She falls asleep right at the table, where she left the seagull, using her own elbow as a pillow.

It’s there, where, later that night, Hange has a nightmare.

She had dreams before, always blurry, filled with silhouettes and shadows, always disappearing from her mind with first rays of sunshine.

This one is different. This one is terrifying as it is vivid. It still isn't concrete enough, but it evokes something inside her— something that hurts.

The dream – it was full of desperation. It was full of confusing feelings, of ‘there is no one, but me, who can do this’ and ‘I don’t want to go, not right now, not from him’. The thing that feels the most real, the thing that makes her heart ache is a feeling of a hand on her chest. It’s warm, so warm that it burns. It gets through a few layers of clothing, marking her skin, before finally reaching her heart.

And before she can enjoy it, before she can savor this sweet torture, the hand is gone. The hand is gone, and she’s still burning, but this— this fire that spreads through her veins is different. It kisses her skin, but not gently, not like a lover. It kisses her with dispassionate hatred, with apathy that is set to destroy her. It kisses her, sucking all the air out of her lungs.

And then— then Hange is falling.

***

She wakes up before her body hits the ground. A loud, annoying noise stirs her sleep. She lifts her head and the sound doesn’t stop.

Hange groggily looks around, confused and disoriented. It takes her another few seconds to locate the source of the commotion.

It’s the window at the far side of her cabin. Someone is knocking on it. A sound between a gasp and laughter bubbles out of Hange’s throat as she takes a good look at the intruder.

It’s a seagull.

She slowly rises to her feet and approaches the window, opening it. The bird instantly flies inside, and Hange isn’t at all surprised to see that it stops in front of the nest she made for her winged patient.

From across the room, Hange watches the birds interact. The newly arrived seagull approaches its friend cautiously, slowly. When it reaches to wounded seagull, it opens his beak and puts a small fish down, so the other bird could reach it.

Hange almost coos at the sight.

The caring seagull doesn’t stay for long. It waits until the wounded one finishes the fish, and then it flies away, leaving Hange’s cabin through the still opened window.

“I’ll call you Sawney,” she whispers, as the bird flies past her. “And you will be Bean,” she grins, approaching the wounded bird.

As she checks the state of the bird, the strange dream continues to linger at the back of Hange’s mind.

Is that what had happened to her? Did she almost burn alive? Whose hand was on her chest? Who was the person she didn’t want to leave? Where are they now?

Why just thinking about it hurts so much?

She’s desperate to get her answers, and she knows a person, who most certainly has them.

In a last, almost definitely futile attempt to find the truth, Hange sits down and writes a letter. She writes about her dream, about lost memories and torn connections. She writes, asking, begging the man to let her know who she was. Who she is.

The next day, she receives her answer. It’s a disappointingly short one.

Forgive me. It’s better this way.

***

After that, Hange tries to forget about her forgotten life. She lost her memories. She’s still alive and able to make new ones.

The life goes on, and so does Hange.

The summer rolls around and suddenly she's constantly busy, tending to her crops and garden.

She continues to look after the injured Bean. The progress is slow, but Hange's patient. The bird's family is patient too, and they frequently fly inside Hange's cabin to bring more food or simply to visit. Suddenly, it’s not just Sawney and Bean. It’s a whole flock of seagulls.

When the mess inside gets too much even for Hange, she moves the nest outside and the rest of the flock starts living there, caring about the injured bird in little ways they can.

The birds can be loud, but Hange doesn't mind. They provide a company in her quiet life, they help keeping the loneliness at bay.

Birdwatching becomes one of her favorite past times. There is a certain appeal in studying the winged creatures. Hange notes different kinds of movements and habits each bird exhibits. She watches them hunt and eat, watches them interact with each other. Sometimes she even brings out a journal, cataloging everything she finds peculiar about her small test subjects.

It’s comforting in some way. It almost fills the void inside her chest.

***

One day, she receives a bag of sweets. On top of it lays a note that says:

Are your hobbies so boring that watching the birds is somehow fun for you?

Hange giggles, as she reads it, and quickly writes a reply.

It's much more fun than you think!

***

Something changes after that small exchange.

The man starts leaving her messages more frequently, and Hange, now that she let go of her attempts to get her memories back, answers each and one of them.

Her mysterious friend is actually funny, Hange realizes after his secrecy stops annoying her. He’s sarcastic and crude, and has quite a foul mouth.

Hange enjoys that aspect of him more that she probably should.

She enjoys their little conversation too, even though they’re not particularly lengthy. The man doesn’t visit her every day, but when he does, he always leaves a small note, asking how is she doing and what does she need him to bring. Hange answers him with more varied questions. She asks about his favorite color, his favorite season and if he sleeps on his back or on his side. She etches every answer into her mind, collecting bits of trivia about him like it’s the most valuable treasure.

Despite never seeing his face, Hange likes him. A lot.

His notes always bring a smile to her lips. Hange starts to miss him when he doesn’t show up for a few days. And after a while she realizes – she starts caring about this man. Not as an acquaintance from her past life, not as a means to get her memories back. He becomes something more to her.

He becomes a friend.

***

It all happens in almost unbelievably mundane way.

A vicious storm catches Hange unaware. The weather was sunny and warm one moment, and in the next – the wind picks up, throwing sand in her eyes. The rain starts a mere seconds after, drenching her clothes in a record time. The seagulls she was watching don’t waste a single moment and soar into the air, hurriedly leaving to seek a shelter.

Hange needs to find a hiding place too. She gets to her feet and starts walking. Her steps aren't swift or hasty, she slowly strolls back to the cabin. Despite the harsh rain and wet clothes, she doesn’t shiver.

The rain turns into a downpour, but Hange enjoys it nevertheless. The droplets that persistently hit her face feel warm. They soothe the burns that still ache. They elevate the pain that hides deep in her bones.

The lightning strikes, the sudden booming sound ringing over the empty beach. It startles Hange, but she doesn’t cry out – she laughs, louder than rain and thunder. She spins around, yelling in pure joy.

In that moment, Hange is happy. In that moment, she is free.

It’s with laughter still bubbling out of her throat that she sees him. His hand shielding his head from a downpour, he descends from the porch. His eyes are cast down, watching his step.

Hange freezes in her spot, watching him.

He lifts his face, their eyes meet, and— and everything makes sense now. Everything comes back, the memories return as though she never lost them.

“Levi,” the name stumbles from her lips unprompted, unplanned. “Levi.” She repeats it again, because she likes the sound of it. Without realizing it, she missed saying his name, she missed him. So she calls his name again. And again.

Levi watches her, clenching and unclenching his fist. He takes a deep breath, shakes his head and then asks. “So your memories returned?”

“They did,” Hange nods.

“When?”

She shrugs. “Just now.”

“And you…” he clears his throat, shifting his weight from one foot to another. His eyes don’t leave her face. “You aren’t freaked out by this?”

She shrugs again. “I guess I’m still processing. Would you like to… help me with it?”

And before he can answer, Hange adds. “I know I’ve talked about living in the forest but… will the coastline be good enough for you?”

“You’re more than enough,” he says and takes a step closer. Hange takes a step too.

They meet in the middle.

#is this thing too weird? probably!#levihan #levihan fanfiction

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sablelab · 4 years

Text

Covert Operations - Chapter 141

SYNOPSIS: Jamie and Claire sail on to the picture-perfect Whitehaven Beach where Jamie has organised a romantic picnic in a secluded area and to see the phenomenal swirling white sand formations from Hill Inlet.

Chapter 140(S) and all other chapters can be found at … https://sablelab.tumblr.com/covertoperations

THANK YOU so much for reading my story, liking or reblogging it and for your lovely comments on the last chapter. I hope that you will all enjoy this chapter as well.

CHAPTER 141 (S)

There was a gentle breeze off the water today as they sailed along and not a cloud in the wide, blue sky. If felt as if they were the only ones alive in these vast waters of the Coral Sea and had the whole of the Whitsundays to themselves. The day so far had been so memorable that Claire was soaking up every minute of her first time to this part of Queensland. Snorkelling had been so much fun. She’d loved every minute watching all the beautiful marine life that lived beneath these waters on the reef. Everything had been magical and just being with Jamie and seeing him enjoy himself as much as her had been the icing on the cake. She didn’t know what he had in store next but she was feeling quite peckish and hoped that they would soon be where they could have a picnic.

As Jamie masterfully skippered the yacht, Claire came up behind him leaning over him and slid her arms around his waist. She propped her chin on his shoulder and brushed her lips on his tanned skin already showing signs of some sunburn. Seeing the slight redness, she kissed across his shoulders from one side to the other. Jamie could feel the smile on her lips and was sorely tempted to lay anchor then and there in the middle of the sea and carry his Claire to the sleeping quarters and spend the rest of the day making love. But he had other plans that he knew she would love. They could finish this when they returned tonight and make love under the stars instead.

“Thank you, Jamie,” Claire whispered against his ear.

Her warm breath fanned his lobe and when she captured it in her teeth, he turned around to face her wrapping his arms around her and holding her close against his chest.

“What for Sassenach?”

“Today has been magical so far.”

“The day is but young mo ghràidh. There are still places to explore where we are going.”

She pressed closer in his arms, hiding her silly smile against his shoulder. “I doubt it can be any better than our snorkelling but whatever it is Jamie I will love it too.”

“I know ye will Sassenach.”

Claire gasped and pushed away a little to see the smirk he was not in any way attempting to hide. She lowered her hands and grabbed him on the butt cheeks.

"Just what are you up to Fraser?” she teased knowing that little inflection in his voice was a dead giveaway. She knew then that Jamie had arranged another something special and she was thrilled.

“So, what are we going to do? You’re not going to make me walk the plank are you captain?” she said in jest.

Jamie placed his hands to her hips, and sliding them lower, brought his Claire up against him suggestively. "And what plank might that be Sassenach?” he whispered seductively against her ear rotating his hips against hers in playfulness.

Touché! she thought knowing immediately she’d been outfoxed because he’d jumped on her words with a double meaning and with actions too. However, she could give as good as she got and replied with her own ambiguity well aware now of her euphemism.

“Well Mr Fraser … I guess you just might need to wait and see.”

Jamie laughed and kissed her brow as his hands moved from her backside to wrap around her waist. Instinctively Claire leaned into her love and gave him a kiss on his laughing mouth as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

“How would ye like tae steer the yacht Sassenach? Do ye think ye could handle that?” he asked turning her around once again until she was facing the steering wheel and nestling against his body.

“Aye, aye captain. I think I can handle that.”

He placed Claire’s hands on the wheel and placing his own over hers leaned into her body as his warm breath brushed against her neck. Claire could feel Jamie’s body’s response to her nearness and taking advantage of his vulnerability she wriggled a little against him. In so doing she was happily aware of the guttural groan he smothered against her neck.

“I think I can handle that … very well.”

He kissed her on the back of the neck once more. “Yer going tae be the death of me Sassenach but I am going tae die a happy man.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Having Jamie pressed so close against her body as he rested his head on her shoulder was having an amazing effect on her senses. Claire could feel every nuance of James Fraser’s virile body and it was making her a little breathless. The fact that his head rested against her shoulder was another matter altogether. Jamie took every opportunity to unnerve her as she tried to keep the yacht on track but having him so close was doing her head in. He was taking great delight in teasing her every chance he got for he knew that his every move or touch was sending lusty thoughts through her head. Claire sighed when he moved her Kaftan away for greater access to her neck. His lips brushed her naked shoulder but when his teeth nipped at her skin, she thought she would collapse in front of him if it weren’t for his arms around her waist. Delicious sensations of his teeth biting her skin caused her to sigh.

“Ye taste salty Sassenach. I like it.”

“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ, James Fraser. You certainly know how to break down a girl’s defences.”

“Only yours Sassenach … only ever yours,” he replied as his warm breath washed over her skin leaving goosebumps in its wake. “Do ye want me tae stop?”

“N-no …”

“Well then … I guess I will just take another wee bite,” and Jamie proceeded to do so. Claire dropped her head to the side giving him greater access to that tender spot behind her ear that was particularly sensitive to his caresses. She knew he would nibble there next.

“Jamie?” she murmured.

“Hmmm?”

“Will we be there soon?”

“Why Sassenach? … Too hot for ye here on the yacht? Do ye need tae cool down a wee bit?” he replied languishing kisses from one side of her neck to the other as Claire moved her head to the other side for better access.

She was slowly self-combusting with his gentle caresses and stumbled with her answer. “Yes … well no … Maybe … I’m hungry,” she finally was able to blurt out.

“So am I …” he replied giving her one last nip to her collarbone before giving his Claire some respite from his advances but again issuing her with an innuendo that she knew he would follow through on when given half the chance.

“You’re incorrigible James Fraser,” she admonished at his cheeky reply.

Jamie merely laughed out loud with hilarity.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Standing together they sailed the yacht to their next destination content as they were to explore what else the Whitsundays had in store for them. Jamie had put in the coordinates for Whitehaven Beach on Whitsunday Island, the picture postcard jewel of this area and where he had planned to have a romantic beach picnic with his Sassenach. This piece of heaven on earth was iconic and famous for its fairytale pure, fine, white silica sand washed by the beautiful crystal clear turquoise, green and blue water that lapped at its shore.

The journey didn’t take them that long and the time flew by for both of them until soon up ahead they saw the coastline that was their destination and they continued to sail to the northern side of the seven-kilometre stretch of brilliant white sand. A stunning coast with towering hoop pines, diverse vegetation pouring out towards the open sea, swirling white sand and the clearest blue water both had ever seen surrounded them the closer they went deeper in to the bay. It was like an oasis in the sea, with crystal-clear water and a pristine environment untouched by any development.

Claire had been so caught up in admiring the vista that she didn’t realise they had almost arrived until Jamie lifted her hand and kissed her fingers, “Well Sassenach we’re nearly there.”

He followed the coastline around until he found a concealed gem, a secluded spot hidden behind rocks on the northern end of Whitehaven Beach. Jamie safely anchored their yacht in a sheltered place leaving Claire to drink in the gorgeous sight. Closing her eyes, she breathed in the fresh salty air into her lungs. When she opened them, the view was absolutely amazing as her gaze took in the wide-open ocean and blankets of white sand and the total beauty of this gem of the Whitsundays. This insanely beautiful, unspoiled beach with the pure silica sand was a brilliant luminescent colour. It was truly breathtaking and was just like a snapshot taken right out of a travel magazine.

This spectacular spot to spend their afternoon had her intrigued. Silhouetted by mountains covered in reddish rocks and tufts of green foliage and the impossibly white sand of the beach was truly beautiful. The water was so clear that Claire could see to the sandy depths. The hidden bay was incredibly lovely and was the perfect place for a quiet swim, a spot of sunbaking and their picnic in this slice of heaven that they had all to themselves. Here they could experience the beauty of Whitehaven Beach in privacy away from any other day trippers to the beach and climb to Hill Inlet Lookout for the best view of the area of the stunning swirling sands.

“It’s absolutely spectacular Jamie … a little piece of paradise,” Claire finally said slightly breathless and awe struck.

“Aye ‘tis mo nighean donn,” he replied casting his eyes to the scene before them.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Jamie quickly organized their rubber dinghy for the short tender into shore for the rest of the day with the supplies for their picnic and any gear they might need for a day on the beach. They both got in the dinghy and he started the outboard motor and set it on course for the secluded beach at the tip of Hill Inlet. In next to no time Jamie had beached the small craft on the sand and pulled it a little way up the beach just to be on the safe side. Claire watched her love return to the dinghy to collect their belongings and then again to help her get out of the craft. Her eyes took him in from his hypnotic blue eyes, to the little grooves that furrowed his forehead and to the ginger beard growth on his jaw that made him look like a bold, swashbuckling pirate. What she saw left her breathless. James Alexander Malcolm Mackenzie Fraser was one mighty fine specimen of manhood. Reaching out his arms towards her, Claire put her arms around Jamie’s neck as he lifted her from the dinghy and carried her up the beach before letting her glide slowly but sensually down his body.

When her feet touched the ground, Claire was amazed at the sensation she experienced. The tactile sensation was surprising, for there was nothing better than the feeling of sinking her toes into the velvety texture of the sand. It oozed through her toes like the ripple of water in a stream and it felt so soft and silky smooth against the soles of her feet. Claire wriggled her toes in the soft consistency of the sand and looked up at Jamie with a huge smile on her face.

“I feel like I’m walking in a dream, like I’m on a soft, cool cloud. It feels wonderful.”

“Aye, it’s nae coarse at all Sassenach.”

Leaning down Claire took a handful of sand and let it slip between her fingers. She glanced back up at Jamie with an astonished expression on her face. “I have never felt sand like this before.”

“Neither have I. I read it’s the silica which gives the sand its unique white colour and verra fine powdery grain, Sassenach no wonder it is so soft.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

They walked along the beach to find a perfect spot to chill out for their picnic. Because the sand was made of a pure silica composition, it didn’t retain heat, and even on this hot day, it was so nice and cool to walk but there was also something odd that they noticed. It felt as if the fine, white, velvety sand was talking to them as it made an unusual sound under their feet as they walked along.

“Did you notice that noise Jamie?”

“Aye … I did Sassenach. The sand is whispering tae us like barking spiders.”

“Spiders don’t bark Jamie,” she giggled as she watched what he did next.

“Aye they do … and it sounds just like this. Listen Sassenach.”

Claire couldn’t stop laughing as Jamie demonstrated the squeaking sound that his larger feet made when he walked in the sand. This James Fraser was so uninhibited and carefree that seeing him like this was a revelation. He was so relaxed and happy-go-lucky that she couldn’t help but feel his infectious happiness too as she emulated what he’d done in the sand as well. The sound of their laughter filled the air as they happily walked along hand in hand until they settled on the picture-perfect spot to make base for the rest of the day and for their romantic picnic in this idyllic setting.

Whitehaven Beach was sheltered from the open ocean by the other islands in the Whitsunday group and the outer reef. In the distance they could see their sleek, white yacht anchored like a cork bobbing on the water just waiting for their return. From their vantage point they could see sparkling crystal blue waves rippling along the shallow shoreline and an endless beautiful azure blue sea stretching for miles along the coastline giving them a picturesque view as far as the eye could see. There were no big waves or rip tides to worry about and the water was very tranquil. This was the perfect spot for swimming, for the crystal-clear turquoise water looked particularly inviting on this hot day as it sparkled in the sun. After their romantic picnic, they could laze on the beach or cool off with a quick dip in the balmy tropical waters this afternoon if they wanted to.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

However, they didn’t take a swim once they had finished eating, for Jamie and Claire decided to make the short 1-kilometre return walk up the hill to Hill Inlet Lookout instead. It was only a short walk from their base and they happily made the journey up the slight incline to the viewing platform. Although it was a little steep in places, it was not too difficult for walking with plenty of steps along the way to offset the gradient of the hill and besides Claire had Jamie to help her navigate the walk. A large goanna basking in the sun scurried back into the bushes to climb a tree to escape as their laughter disturbed him from his little nap. They just noticed the flash of its tail as the creature made a hasty retreat away from the humans into safety. Looking up, they saw a white bellied sea eagle soar high overhead patrolling the area looking for prey and watched as it dived down into the water then fly back up with a fish in its beak. Despite being only half-way up the track, vantage points gave them great views over the inlet. Signs erected along the way gave them an insight into the unique lifestyle of this area’s Traditional Owners, the Ngaro People who occupied this region over 9,000 years ago. They could even see their white and sliver yacht in the distance in the vibrant blue water cupped by the rugged earth.

In no time Jamie and Claire had reached the lookout and it was well worth the walk to get the great view and they were captivated by the sight before them. Taking Claire’s hand in his, Jamie guided her hand towards the breathtaking sight before them, his voice filled with joy as he pointed out another spectacular sight to behold of the ever-changing shapes of blue water and white sand created by the moving tides. Few experiences could compare to what they saw from this vantage point. They were able to see a panoramic view of the beach below and the surrounding lush, green tropical islands that took their breath away. From the lookout they could see a magical picture of the twirling pattern of dazzling sand through the turquoise and aquamarine water. The outgoing low tide had shifted the sand and water to create a huge swirling fusion of colours and patterns where the magical waters and sand danced together below in the tidal lagoons of Hill Inlet.

The whirling colours of both were brilliant. They were fascinated by the way the swirling soft, snowy, white sand meandered along the inlet like a mythical Dreamtime snake. The island was now towering over the water curving along the glittering ocean and they saw a magnificent humpback whale out at sea migrating north from their feeding grounds in Antarctica to the warmer waters here in the Whitsundays. It was a phenomenal experience and truly breathtaking and one of nature’s masterpieces to witness. As they stood admiring the vista, Jamie glided his hand over Claire’s shoulder to rest on her arm and drew her close. Sighing, she contently rested her head on his shoulder.

“It’s so beautiful,” she breathed, unable to tear her eyes away from the view.

His gaze was suddenly preoccupied not with the panorama but with the woman by his side. Jamie however, had eyes only for the exquisite view of his Sassenach.

“Aye … “tis.” He replied hugging her to his side but again his words were ambiguous. “The view I can see is the most gorgeous thing I have ever seen.”

His Claire was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen and knowing that she was her old self again was all that he needed to know. Their time here in the Whitsundays had done her the world of good. She was healthy, relaxed and radiant. Claire Beauchamp was also a wanton witch who had bewitched him over these past days and the thought of returning to Section One was an anathema to him. His Sassenach had recovered from her trauma at the monastery in this environment as too had he until they had been swept up in the paradise they had experienced. Just watching his Claire awestruck made it all the more special knowing that they had experienced this magical place together. They had certainly created beautiful memories that would sustain them when they returned to Section One.

The world had passed them by and they had relished every day spent here and every day they had left was indeed sacrosanct. When the time came for them to leave it would be extremely hard knowing that what awaited them back at Section was manipulation by their leaders, surveillance of their behaviour and the constant threat of danger that they faced when on missions. However, together they were strong and united and he knew that they could and would survive the challenges that lay ahead. But for now, they would make the most of every single moment they had left however much time that was.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Making their way back down to their secluded beach, Jamie and Claire walked along the sand close to the lapping waves crashing onto the shore. Darting back and forth happily they caught each little foray of rippling water swallowing the shore and licking at their calves. The water felt refreshing after their little hike while the breeze was a cool caress across their skin. They laughed as the water flowed over their toes as they stood and waited for the next wave to cover their feet before returning back to the sea. This was the most perfect day and any thoughts of Section One had been erased from their minds. There was only the two of them in paradise. Two lovers ambling along the most perfect beach on this most perfect day. They could want for nothing more to feel invigorated and alive.

The solitude and beauty of this spot really hit them both as they strolled along hand in hand leaning into one another and smiling. They could hear a flock of Rainbow Lorikeets fly overhead making their way to the native flowering trees for a feast on the pollen. As they looked up, they saw the beautiful rainbow plumage of the little parrots with a green with a blue face, and an orangey red breast. They were chirpy little birds, noisy and chattery as they flew to their feeding place in the trees behind where they had set up for the day.

“Oh, look Jamie! … I can see another pod of dolphins,” Claire exclaimed as they wandered along the shoreline. They stopped and stood together for a moment watching the sea creatures frolic and dive in the water.

They were so relaxed as they walked along the beach with not a care in the world other than to enjoy this special day in the Whitsundays. Jamie had his arm around Claire’s waist while her hand rested on his tummy as they looked at each other happily and so much in love. He pulled her in a little closer to his body, kissed her and before Claire knew what he was doing, Jamie scooped her up into his arms and twirled her about. Kicking her feet up and down in the air and laughing she placed her arms around his neck, and as her lover carried her along the beach, she peppered his face all over with kisses of her own. Claire was so happy, that she couldn’t wipe the smile off of her face as their laughter rang out loud and clear echoing along with the sounds of a kookaburra.

The two of them were in the best place ever emotionally since they had left Section One and these idyllic days spent on their downtime had been so special. Although they both knew that all good things eventually did come to an end, that was the furthest thing from their thoughts, for nothing could mar this wonderful day.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ to be continued next FRIDAY 28th AUGUST

#jamieandclairecrossover #Jamieandclairefanfic #jamieandclaireau #the lallybroch library #outlander fanfiction #crossover outlander/lfn spies modernau #LFNoutlander #covert operations

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years

Link

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

June 28, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

This evening, President Joe Biden published an op-ed in Yahoo News about the infrastructure bill now moving forward on its way to Congress. He called the measure “a once-in-a-generation investment to modernize our infrastructure” and claimed it would “create millions of good-paying jobs and position America to compete with the world and win the 21st century.”

The measure will provide money to repair roads and bridges, replace the lead pipes that still provide water to as many as 10 million households and 400,000 schools and daycares, modernize our electric grid, replace gas-powered buses with electric ones, and cap wells leaking methane that have been abandoned by their owners in the private sector to be cleaned up by the government. It will invest in railroads, airports, and other public transportation; protect coastlines and forests from extreme weather events; and deliver high-speed internet to rural communities.

“This deal is the largest long-term investment in our infrastructure in nearly a century,” Biden wrote. “It is a signal to ourselves, and to the world, that American democracy can work and deliver for the people.”

Biden is making a big pitch for this infrastructure project in part because we need it, of course, and because it is popular, but also because it signals a return to the sort of government both Democrats and Republicans embraced between 1945 and 1980. In that period after World War II, most Americans believed that the government had a role to play in regulating business, providing a basic social safety net, investing in infrastructure, and promoting civil rights. This shared understanding was known as the “liberal consensus.”

With the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1980, the Republican Party rejected that vision of the government, arguing that, as Reagan said, “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” But while Reagan limited that statement with the words “in this present crisis,” Republican leaders since the 1980s have worked to destroy the liberal consensus and take us back to the world of the 1920s, a world in which business leaders also ran the government.

For the very reason that Biden is determined to put through this massive investment in infrastructure, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) would like to kill it. Until recently, he has presided over the Senate with the declared plan to kill Democratic bills. He opposes the liberal consensus, wanting to get rid of taxes and stop the government from intervening in the economy. But today’s Republican lawmakers are in an awkward place: by large margins, Americans like the idea of investing in infrastructure.

So the Republicans have engaged in a careful dance over this new measure. Biden wants to demonstrate to the country both that democracy can deliver for its people and that the two parties in Congress do not have to be adversarial. He wanted bipartisan support for this infrastructure plan.

A group of Democrats and Republicans negotiated the measure that is now being prepared to move forward. Last week, five Republican negotiators backed the outline for the measure. They, of course, would like to be able to tell their constituents that they voted for what is a very popular measure, rather than try to claim credit for it after voting no, as they did with the American Rescue Plan.

Negotiators were always clear that the Democrats would plan to pass a much larger bill under what is known as a “budget reconciliation” bill in addition to the infrastructure plan. Financial measures under reconciliation cannot be killed by filibuster in the Senate, meaning that if the Democrats can stand together, they can pass whatever they wish financially under reconciliation. Democrats planned to put into a second bill the infrastructure measures Republicans disliked: funding to combat climate change, for example, and to promote clean energy, and to invest in human infrastructure: childcare and paid leave, free pre-kindergarten and community college, and tax cuts for working families with children.

Crucially, that bigger measure, known as the American Families Plan, will also start to dismantle the 2017 Republican tax cuts, which cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. Biden wants to return the corporate tax rate to 28%, still lower than it was before 2017, but higher than it is now.

To keep more progressive Democrats on board with the bipartisan infrastructure bill, Democrats need to move it forward in tandem with the larger, more comprehensive American Families Plan. This has been clear from the start. After announcing the bipartisan deal, Biden reiterated that he would not sign one without the other.

And yet, although he himself acknowledged the Democratic tandem plan on June 15, McConnell pretended outrage over the linkage of the two bills. McConnell and some of his colleagues complained to reporters that Biden was threatening to veto the bipartisan bill unless Congress passed the American Families Plan too.

It appears McConnell had hoped that the bipartisan plan would peel centrist Democrats off from the larger American Families Plan, thus stopping the Democrats’ resurrection of the larger idea of the liberal consensus and keeping corporate taxes low. Killing that larger plan might well keep progressive Democrats from voting for the bipartisan bill, too, thus destroying both of Biden’s key measures. If he can drive a wedge through the Democrats, he can make sure that none of their legislation passes.

Over the weekend, Biden issued a statement saying that he was not threatening to veto a bill he had just worked for weeks to put together, but was supporting the bipartisan bill while also intending to pass the American Families Plan.

McConnell then issued a statement essentially claiming victory and demanding control over the Democrats’ handling of the measures, saying “The President has appropriately delinked a potential bipartisan infrastructure bill from the massive, unrelated tax-and-spend plans that Democrats want to pursue on a partisan basis.” He went on to demand that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) agree to send the smaller, bipartisan bill forward without linking it to “trillions of dollars for unrelated tax hikes, wasteful spending, and Green New Deal socialism.”

McConnell is trying to turn the tide against these measures by calling the process unfair, which might give Republicans an excuse to vote no even on a bill as popular as the bipartisan bill is. Complaining about process is, of course, how he prevented the Senate from convicting former president Trump of inciting the January 6 insurrection, and how he stopped the establishment of a bipartisan, independent committee to investigate that insurrection.

But McConnell no longer controls Congress. House Speaker Pelosi says she will not schedule the bipartisan bill until the American Families Plan passes.

Pelosi also announced today that the House is preparing legislation to establish a select committee to investigate the January 6 attack on the Capitol. She had to do so, she noted, because “Senate Republicans did Mitch McConnell a ‘personal favor’ rather than their patriotic duty and voted against the bipartisan commission negotiated by Democrats and Republicans. But Democrats are determined to find the truth.”

The draft of the bill provides for the committee to have 13 members. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), himself likely to be called as a witness before the committee, will be able to “consult” with the Speaker on five of the members, but the final makeup of the committee will be up to the Speaker. This language echoes that of the select committee that investigated the Benghazi attack, and should prevent McCarthy from sabotaging the committee with far-right lawmakers eager to disrupt the proceedings rather than learn what happened. Instead, we can expect to see on the committee Republicans who voted to establish the independent, bipartisan commission that McConnell and Republican senators killed.

Biden’s op-ed made it clear that he intends to rebuild the country: “I have always believed that there is nothing our nation can’t do when we decide to do it together,” he wrote. “Last week, we began to write a new chapter in that story.”

—-

Notes:

https://news.yahoo.com/biden-americans-can-be-proud-of-the-infrastructure-deal-214533346.html

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/reconciliation-republicans-mcconnell-biden-infrastructure-bipartisan

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/06/26/statement-by-president-joe-biden-on-the-bipartisan-infrastructure-framework/

https://www.axios.com/mcconnell-approach-infrastructure-biden-democrats-440f11de-2661-4f7c-951c-d3b304374325.html

Sahil Kapur @sahilkapurThe Jan. 6 select committee will have 13 members. Kevin McCarthy gets "consultation" on five of them but Nancy Pelosi has the last word. From the text: 666 Retweets3,137 Likes

June 28th 2021

https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-resolution/567/text

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#infrastructure #Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From an American #Biden Administration #goverment #effective government #political #corrupt GOP #criminal GOP

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cilliansaccent · 4 years

Text

Class of Temptation - CHAPTER TWO

Leave a like, reblog or comment below to show your support and love! Enjoy…

PLEASE READ:

No mention of Cillian’s true family or relatives. All names are made up.

This is a TEACHER x STUDENT fanfiction, it’s going to be kinky and very taboo!

I will write whenever the mood grabs me, so I apologise if there are long breaks between chapters :)

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Background: Tessa is a twenty-three-year-old model from a broken-up family, living in London with her best friend and starting a course on Drama and Theatre. Though, when she gets closer to the super hot Mr Murphy who is her much older teacher, there is a battle of lust and love between them. They’ll have to figure out what to do with their tight relationship as other issues begin to rise and nip at their heels…

Word Count: 2,196

!!Warnings!!: None.

Chapter Name: Mr Murphy

Brief Chapter Outline: Tessa attends Orientation week at her selected University and explores the campus and the courses and clubs it offers. She then goes to her info session for her Drama course and finds herself meeting a very handsome man...

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A few days had passed since her birthday and today was Orientation week at the selected Uni Tessa had picked. She had picked out a casual outfit, black shorts and a champagne silk blouse with flared short sleeves. She added low cut converse shoes and pulled her hair up in a high pony-tail.

She threw on her small backpack that had her keys, wallet, phone and a notepad in case she needed to take some notes down. Esther would meet with her by the afternoon at the uni.

Tessa headed off, she had already posted a pic of herself on Instagram and smiled at the comments. She occasionally got some hate but she just ignored them.

As she sat on the train, she began to contemplate. Her thoughts wandered to the card she received from her father and the conversation she had with Mila about it. Her father had been right, Mila and he had been in contact for almost three years now and seemed to be on good terms.

Aria, on the other hand, had not taken the news so well when Mila had told her a few months back. Yet, Tess did not really care. The only thing she didn't like was that Mila gave their shit father her address to her apartment.

Tessa had vowed that day she left she would not ever keep in contact with him or let him know her whereabouts. But so much for that. She hoped she would not see another letter again if she did she would be thoroughly mad.

She made sure she told Mila to never give anything to their father which resulted in a heated argument and Mila hung up on her.

Tessa sighed as she got off the train and headed up to the street above. She gave herself a moment and admired the bustling crowd of tourists and workers. Many would say London was too hectic and crazy but Tessa loved the fast-paced atmosphere of it. And the photos always looked so good when she took them.

Sydney had been where she was birthed. She only remembered a bit of it, living along a coastline in a pretty small home. But the rest it was a blur of screaming and yelling when it came to her father and her birth mother.

The university came into view and she headed inside as she was handed pamphlets and a bag. There was a tour guide but she wanted to do this on her own, find her own way around. There was a lot of people, many younger girls and boys with their families. It made her sad that she had to do this without some parent beside her, no smiling father or a proud mother.

Tessa trudged on, checking out the many other courses the uni offered and talked to the people. More hand-outs she took before she found where she could check out the clubs they offered. She made sure to sign up for the art club, a chilled afternoon once a week where a group gathered and just drew and talked.

She then went to the orchestra club and introduced herself to the large group. They seemed super keen that she would be joining them and managed to get their social handles. She laughed when they were shocked to see she was an elite model and they were gushing, especially the girls.

After that, Tessa went to listen in on some other courses that spiked her interest and took notes down. Then off she went to her drama talk.

People were walking out of the lecture room as she came in, it seemed to be finished.

"Oh, did I miss it?" She frowned as she spotted a man bent down and retrieving something from his bag.

The man turned as he straightened himself. He was dressed in skinny black jeans, a green shirt with a low cut V neck and a casual suit jacket in which he was just taking off.

"You did. But no worries, there will be another in fifteen minutes. Care to hang around." He said in his Irish accent, a sweet smile graced that sharp cut face.

Tessa was mesmerised by how clear his blue eyes were, "Oh, uh, okay. Sorry." She laughed nervously as she awkwardly sat down.

"You don't need to sit that far, come on. Come upfront." He waved her over, taking a sip of his water bottle.

Tessa hesitated but got up as she made her way over to the front.

"I'm Cillian Murphy," He said, holding his hand out to her.

"U-Uh... I'm Tessa." She took his hand. It was strong and firm once she sat down, his flashy watch curled around a veined wrist.

"Nice to meet you, Tessa. So you've picked Drama and Theatre, hm?" He took a seat in front of her. He had a thick head of hair which was parted at the side and seemed to curl over his forehead. She also noticed the freckles that dusted his buttoned nose and pale cheeks.

But most importantly she was shocked to actually meet the famous man, "Yeah. I have. I want to go, um, into a different pathway." She nodded.

"Oh? Have you studied before?" He sat back, arms loosely folded over his chest. His gentle smile never fading.

"No. Never." She shook her head.

"You work then? You seem very well dressed." He mused.

"I'm a model. I work for various fashion brands." She felt her nerves kick in, she wasn't the type to just accept compliments from people she didn't know. It made her feel weird.

Cillian seemed to see the discomfort in her and sighed, "Sorry. I don't mean to come across as overbearing or too straightforward. But a model, hey? That's alright." He said in a more gentler tone.

"Mhm. I love it, it's fun. But I want more so drama has been something I've always wanted to do. So I finally took that chance." Tessa replied not really meeting his gaze.

"Good, good. Well, I'll be teaching the class, I got good experience so you'll be learning from the best." He winked at her as he stood, "I gotta go freshen myself up. Rest here and we'll get the info session started soon." He said before he left her alone in the room.

Tessa eased back in the chair as her shoulders finally relaxed. That was super intense but it might just be her racing nerves. It was busy today and a lot going on.

Especially with a man, she would not ever dream of meeting. She had seen him in a couple of films and he was exceptionally great. She would hope to be just as good as he but first thing first was that she had to overcome her fear of... well, acting in front of people.

Modelling was kind of different. All she had to do was strut down the catwalk in her outfit, pose and walk off. She wasn't in the spotlight for a long time, only briefly for photos. Or when it came to photoshoots she was surrounded by people she knew and wasn't afraid of showing her body off or being up against a man or a woman.

Tessa would not let her fear of strangers overwhelm her. She had to deal with this before, a little more different but she would do this. She had to. The only way to make a better life for herself.

People began to filter in and it was soon pretty full. Cillian had returned and clapped his hands together, "Well, it looks like a full house so I can start." He said and got right into it.

He took them through the structure of the course, what to expect, what materials were needed. There was a project to be done by the end of the first year, to work as a whole class and create a play and perform it.

This would be interesting, she thought, writing down her notes. Three years worth. It was very daunting.

Though she really enjoyed Cillian's passion, he spoke from the heart and seemed like a really cool man. She looked forward to the class if he was going to be like this.

"I do hope to see some you guys in class, thank you for coming. Catch ya later." He smiled and people stood up and filed out.

"So you thinking of enrolling?" Cillian brought his attention back to Tessa who had a page full of notes.

"I already am. Just wanted to come in and listen to make sure I picked the course I want to do." She looked up and met those gorgeous eyes. He had put on his brown and black spotted glasses. He really did look like the drama type of teacher.

"Oh yeah? You don't got any questions?" He asked.

"Uhm... You mentioned a big project to be done by the end of the first year. What is that like?" She asked it was the only thing that worried her.

"Well, it's a task the board have made to bring out teamwork in a group. Usually, when you are working on a piece, you are working with many other people. So we want to see how well you interact with others off stage and on stage as well." He explained.

"Oh, okay. I see. And I'm guessing we will get notified of the exam as well?" She asked.

"Yeah. Of course," He nodded, "Closer to the end of each term you will be notified."

"Sorry for the silly questions. I-I just want to know." She said, holding her back close as if it may protect her.

"No question is silly. Ask as many as you want." He gave her a reassuring smile. "Any more?"

"None, thank you." She let out a soft sigh.

"Alright. Well, I'll see you when the semester starts. Nice meeting you, Miss Tessa." He held out his hand and she took it and shook.

"Nice meeting you too, Mr Murphy." She blushed a little.

"Just Cillian, please." He said with a soft laugh.

"Okay, Cillian. See you now." She said and turned to head out of the room.

She spent the rest of her morning attending other information sessions of other classes and took a small tour with a group around campus.

Esther called her up to tell Tessa she was here so on she went to the main gates to find her best friend all dolled up.

"Hey!" Esther smiled and they embraced.

"Hi, how was the shoot?" Tessa asked her.

"Really good. I got to keep some of the lingerie that was used." She giggled. "Wearing it right now." She wiggled her eyebrows at her.

"Oh," Tessa gave her a hip bump, "Lucky you."

"Let's go eat! You gotta talk to me about today." Esther said as they headed to a Thai restaurant.

Once they sat, checked the menu and ordered, Esther had her full attention on Tessa. "So, how was it?"

"It was good. The campus is so nice! So green, there's like a giant park next to it. I went to some info sessions on other classes to see what they were like. But, oh my god." Tessa said in an excited tone, "You would not believe who is my drama teacher."

Esther raised her brow, "Who?" She was confused.

"You know that hot actor, that one played in Batman as the evil guy scarecrow? Inception? And that new movie, Anna?" Tessa said.

Esther's eyes widened, "No fucking way." She said.

"Yes fucking way! It's him, Cillian Murphy." Tessa said with equal excitement.

"Holy fuck! Oh my god. Oh. My. God." Esther was shaking with such enthusiasm. "That is gonna be so awesome. Does he look like how he looks in the movie?" Esther leaned forward.

"Oh fuck he does. He wears glasses too. Unbelievable. At first, I didn't really like, put it together but when he spoke I knew instantly who he was. He was so kind to, but I was still so nervous." Tessa smiled a little.

"So he'll be teaching the class. What's the class like?" Esther continued.

"Three years and at the end of the first year we gotta have a play ready to showcase." Tessa shuddered. "That's really intense."

"Oh, it sounds like it. But you're gonna ace it! I know you will." Esther reached over and took her hands.

"Yeah?" Tessa looked up and met her pretty eyes.

"Yeah. I believe in you." Esther kissed her hands and pulled back as their food came. "I've always believed in you from the moment we met. I know you can do this."

Tessa blushed, "Thank you, Esther. Means a lot." She said before they ate and chatted about Esther's shoot. After they ate they headed back to central London where the agency was and continued on with some other shoots they had to do for the rest of the afternoon that went well into the evening.

Tessa was glad to be back home and spend the night cuddled up with Esther watching a TV Show. The two girls fell asleep like that wrapped in a light blanket.

#cillian murphy #teacher x student #peaky blinders #thomas shelby #fanfiction

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hasty-touch · 5 years

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Here’s what I spent all night doing!!!!!!! A map of Coerthas and Dravania, specifically with an eye to reconciling the world maps and zone maps (and 1.0 with 2.0+) in a way that emphasizes information important to me as a roleplayer, like overland routes and rivers.

Was it worth it? ... Probably not. I mean, I did want to draw my own map for Greening Coerthas purposes but I should have just drawn a messy blobmap instead of trying to do this.

Long long rambling commentary below cut:

Rather than have a continuous overworld, FFXIV splits its world up into many separate maps which players load in and out of at transitions. One of the advantages this design choice gives the map design team is that the zone maps they create for us players to run around in do not need to perfectly represent the way the geography of the world “really” is -- zone maps don’t have to fit together perfectly, don’t have to be to scale, don’t need to cover all the “flyover country” in-between points of interest, and don’t need to match up perfectly to world map art, either.

Some disadvantages of this design choice are... well... the exact same things.

My conclusion, based on my experiences playing and especially working on this map, is that the in-game zones we visit are not meant to be accurate representations of Hydaelyn, like... at all. Instead, I believe that the zones are impressionistic abstractions that represent how the Warrior of Light experiences a region. Distances are compressed, points of interest to the WoL are exaggerated, and everything that isn’t of interest -- people, places, details -- is stripped away.

I remember way back when in Heavensward someone (unfortunately I can’t remember who) pointed out that the exteriors of buildings in Foundation and the Pillars don’t correspond to the interior layouts -- window placements differ, for example. Another example that gave me a particular headache making this map is that the Coerthas River, in CCH, flows from a mountain. If you run behind this mountain, you’ll find it to be a lone peak with no way for the Coerthas River in CWH to connect to it. The river teleported.

It’s true I am complaining about this -- not only does it make reconciling the zone maps with the world maps a miserable exercise, but it’s not really to my taste. I far prefer MMO worlds where you can walk or fly over the whole world, with every place you visit embedded precisely within the world geography, every cranny explorable, each region flowing naturally into the next.

However -- I don’t think that FFXIV’s method is a bad design choice. I actually think it’s the most correct choice, for game design purposes. One is, after all, never going to be able to really represent the whole of a full-size, functional world in a game -- even games that let you wander over the whole planet must abstract to some degree, use shorthand and symbols to communicate things about the world it can’t fully represent, and prioritize what the players will seek out and interact with. So by committing 100% at the start to conveying impressions about the world, rather than having to worry about accurate representation or neat jigsawing, the FFXIV devs can focus immediately and wholly upon shaping the player’s experience and perception of the world. Carefully calibrating travel times. Placing quest and hunt mobs. Engineering vistas. No time is wasted on anything that isn’t part of the product they’re designing and selling: your experience playing the game.

Though... lately, more and more, I’ve been feeling like this is something that I don’t really like about FFXIV. It delivers an incredibly polished, carefully controlled player experience, and the devs put out an immense effort to perfect and deliver it exactly as they intend. They make, for the most part, all the right game design decisions, and FFXIV is exactly what it should be. So much so that I sometimes feel it’s... “overdesigned”, though I’m not quite sure that’s the right word. They focus so much on making the right decisions that I feel we miss out on the weirdnesses, the serendipities, the surprises of a game and world where things aren’t always optimally designed. Sometimes, I think it’s a fair trade (we can’t build our own specs, which I think is the right call, when serious players will all use the same spec anyway while novice players will fall into traps). Sometimes, I think the focus on controlling player experience leads to big mistakes (like, I suspect a lot of problems with Eureka may have come from designing it entirely around “how can we make it take exactly the amount of time we want for a player to grind this stage of the relic”). Sometimes I don’t necessarily think it leads to wrong decisions, but I mourn what could have been if they’d been a little less neat, a little more eccentric. Building a fully walkable world is not optimal game design, but I sure do long for it.

It is not possible to reconcile the zone maps with the world map. However, I am not the first person to give it a good try anyway -- and this definitely not the best job of it that has been done! I studied Linaly Hakuyoko's and this Korean-language one (sadly I couldn't find the original creator) while working on mine, as well as the basic Eorzea/Aldenard map and the region maps that were, IIRC, used as backgrounds for in-game maps in 3.x.

The region maps were clearly drawn on top of the Eorzea map, as the coastlines match pretty much perfectly. I decided to trace my map’s coastline from these maps, but some big problems with reconciling them to the in-game zone maps became immediately apparent.

Here are the region maps with the Eorzean transcribed in English, plus rivers traced from the Eorzea map laid on top:

The biggest problem, for my Coerthas-focused map, was the placement of the western highlands and the Dravanian forelands. Those three rivers that drain into the Strait of Merlthor -- the Whilom has got to be one of those, right? But it’s CWH, not the Dravanian Forelands, that is placed just north of them. These maps also don’t feature, or really have room for, the Swiftrun and Coerthas Rivers. There are also issues like the enormous north/south gap between “Foundation” and the “Pillars”, an artifact of this image being a background for a clickable zone map where those are two separate maps. In “reality”, they’d be pretty much directly stacked.

It was very important to me to include the rivers, and I wanted to connect the Coerthas in CWH to the Coerthas in CCH (something my map senpais didn’t do). I was also interested in figuring out what route we might be taking if we’re bypassing Griffin Crossing.

Here is my Attempt #1 (same as above, just a wider view with fewer settlements showing):

Here’s what I did:

Put CCH in the central bowl suggested by the mountains/contour lines in the Coerthas region map. This might be making the zone map too big (maybe it represents a much smaller part of the world, like in the Korean map above) but this choice put several landmarks in intuitive locations (Griffin Crossing is directly on a tributary of the White Maiden, etc.)

Connected the Coerthas in CWH to the Coerthas CCH and then to the White Maiden at the Yafaem Saltmoor.

Changed those world map rivers in Dravania because they didn’t make sense. I have the Whilom bifurcate, then join again, because both branches of the river are called “The Whilom River” in-game.

Adjusted the Thaliak River to better fit the in-game representation but tried to only make minimal changes.

Problems/questions/self-torture for future nights:

Orientations and distances could match 1.0 and 2.0 game maps better...

I’m not sure how/if CCL’s lakes attach to rivers. Same with Clearwater.

I basically just guessed locations for slapping down settlements in the Shroud. I’d need to go study the rivers a great deal more before being able to confidently place them. (That Korean map I linked above has some great ideas but some of it seems a little strange.)

Unlike the Coerthas region map, the Dravania region map doesn’t make intuitive sense to me. I think if I could confidently place Sohm Al everything else would fall into place, but I mostly just guessed here.

If you happen to have any criticism or suggestions, I’d be very happy to hear them! You are also welcome to use this map for your own purposes. A link would be nice for credit but also (and much more importantly) in case I make an updated, more accurate one. The Shroud section in the corner’s reaaaaally basic right now.

#ffxiv #coerthas #dravania #eorzea #hashtag Why am I so obsessed?#complaining #rp resources

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templedragon · 4 years

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Supergirl 5x05 Dangerous Liaisons

There’s too much going on to do anything justice. The cast is brilliant, and they are being given emotionally weighty issues to present. But they are just not getting the screen time to play it out in the way it deserves. It’s being stretched further than the CGI budget.

Season four gave us new romances between Nia and Brainy, and Alex and Kelly to explore. The season four finale gave us the following teasers for season five: -Lena knows Kara is Supergirl -Lex was brought back to life by The (anti?) Monitor -The (anti?) Monitor brought J’onn’s estranged brother out of the Phantom Zone for revenge -Eve was working for Leviathan

When season five started, they added further elements:

-Introducing William Dey as an antagonistic journalist -Introducing Andrea Rojas as an antagonistic CEO of CatCo -James quitting CatCo and deciding his future -Obsidian North being everywhere as a new technology -Lena planning to ruin Kara’s life by outing her as Supergirl, until -Kara finally stopped lying to her best friend about having two relationships with her -Lena planning to pull a Myriad by altering everyone’s mind to stop them lying -Alien of the week

In the four episodes since the premiere: -Kelly has developed a super power and had a breakdown -J’onn seems perfectly okay with Green Martian culture excluding mentally disabled people from society, when it’s canon that he can extend psychic shields to protect others in the Psi episode (surely this would have been easier when there more Green Martians on Mars?) -Kelly continues to be fast tracked as a main character -Nia and Brainy have had romantic issues due to Brainy’s neurodivergence -Lena and Kara’s interactions are framed as romantic, when it’s currently abusive -William has found out his friend kept being a meta human secret from him for two years -Andrea Rojas’ family are the Mafia, and Leviathan knows Andrea. -Lena’s building her own version of the DEO by turning Eve into a meta human with Hope and detaining Malefic by harnessing his power of incept

This is a minefield of story elements. I hope show runners know that something is only a surprise once. Audiences rewatch shows knowing everything that happens. If there is only plot, then there is no reason to watch as it’s comparable to reading an instruction manual. Audiences need an emotional follow through to initially experience and then relive along with the characters.

As it is, a lot of characters are behaving OOC to support this many story elements, and a lot of story elements in this episode are also dubious. Why can’t Nia dream the future of Andrea Rojas’ alien and meta human connections? Everything that William is doing, can be done by an existing cast member, and would thin things down a bit (this isn’t a stab at Staz Nair, who is a lovely Indian-Russian actor). Why is Director Danvers letting a civilian anywhere near the DEO? It’s meant to be a secret organisation, and Alex has been militant in keeping Kara’s identity secret since being a teenager. How does Alex justify bringing in someone who knows Kara as a journalist and now as Supergirl, which is potentially disastrous for someone who Kara’s only known for a month. Why is Alex okay with using a Truthseeker, when it caused her to alter her memories since being a teenager? Why would Kara lie to Nia, when she knows she’s good for keeping secrets? How can a Daxamite Scorpion be on Earth – did it fall off a ship during the invasion, and why didn’t it die from lead poisoning? How is the treatment for too much solar radiation even more time under a yellow sun lamp? Kara should have cancerous cells like Overgirl in the season three crossover event. How come the tidal wave only affected National City, when there’s a lot of coastline between Antarctica and there? Why was Kara so accepting of Malefic being sent back to the Phantom Zone, when she knows how torturous it is? Kara could have asked Lena to build a better containment facility at the DEO.

But the answer is… characters serving the plot the showrunners are making, rather than the characters being true to themselves. Among all this, Alex still doesn’t have a story arc of her own, beyond being Kelly’s love interest. How is her mind coping for having two sets of memories? How’s her adoption application? How does she balance being Director of the DEO with the personal requests of her sister?

Something has to change. Part of me wonders if this is not Earth-38. Three times this season, the audience has been led to believe a false reality is true. The first was the season opener, with Lena and Kara having the fake identity reveal. The second was 5x04, with the opening being a fake Kelly to try and capture Malefic. In this episode, William fakes a confrontation with Andrea over losing his best friend. Part of me would definitely take “it was just a dream/it’s not Earth-38” at this point and take off my collective dream lenses.

#supergirl #episode review #season five #5x05 Dangerous Liaisons #kara danvers #alex danvers #kelly olsen #j'onn j'onzz #malefic #lena luthor #eve teschmacher #hope the ai #andrea rojas #obsidian north #nia nal #dreamer #querl dox #brainy 5

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sustraiii · 5 years

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TEAM ZRCN ARC 2 - CHAPTER 7

Wisteria & co make their arrival on Shizukana. Plans are formed and plots are revealed.

WISTERIA

It was almost midnight when they finally approached the island of Shizukana. The boat she had hired, had safely arrived the day before but had remained anchored a few miles off the shore until Farron radioed to give the okay.

When Farron did finally get in touch in the afternoon, Wisteria had opted to wait until evening to leave for the island, deeming it less conspicuous that way. The captain ushered them out into the skiff a little after nine, leaving the larger boat in charge of his first mate. The captain swore the skiff would get them there within twenty minutes, but it took much longer than that, the little vessel chugging along at a slow pace.

As advised, the captain avoided the dock linking to the village, and the overrun docks that once served the now-abandoned mines. Instead, he sailed further up the western coastline, until the little jetty Farron had marked out once before came into view. There was a figure waiting for them, but she couldn’t make out who it was until they drew near, having to physically stop herself from rolling her eyes when she recognised the woman.

Once the skiff came to a halt by the jetty, Wisteria stepped off first. Ulysses handed her the metal briefcase from the lab, and she stepped forward to greet the other woman whilst her companions helped themselves off the skiff.

“Lovely to see you again, Candy,” Wisteria greeted. Green eyes did a quick glance over the woman’s body, noting she had gained a new outfit since they had last seen each other. She had swapped her plain shirt and trousers, for a red combat dress with a white undershirt and maroon trim. “Been on a shopping trip recently?”

“You’re late,” Candy said with a sharp, accusatory tone.

Wisteria shrugged. “It can’t be helped. The bad storms kept us from getting too close, else we would have been here sooner.”

“Well, you should have given some thought to issues regarding the weather beforehand.”

Wisteria puffed out her cheeks and rested her free hand on her hip. “Damn Candy, my semblance can’t control the weather.”

Candy sniffed irritably. For a moment it seemed as though she was going to say something until the sputtering of the skiff’s motor starting up again. They watched in silence as it pulled away before Candy turned back to the three of them, who are specifically trained behind Wisteria to where Nieve and Ulysses stood.

“These are the people you got to help you?”

Wisteria nodded.

“Can you trust them?”

“More than I trust you,” Wisteria said, with a small laugh. As expected Candy didn’t see the humour. “Anyways -- Nieve, Ulysses, this is Candy Cornell.”

Nieve and Ulysses stepped forward to offer out their hands, but Candy declined the gesture, merely glancing at their hands before looking back at Wisteria and making a sudden grab for the case.

It caught Wisteria off guard, but she was quicker than Candy and able to pull her hand back in time to avoid having the case snatched away. Candy pulled back with an angered expression on her face, something which only seemed to worsen when Wisteria waggled a finger in front of her face.

“Tsk, tsk, where are your manners?” Wisteria goaded. “First of all, we don’t snatch. And second of all, that was very impolite of you to ignore my friends.”

“They’re not my friends, though are they?” Candy fired back. “It’s just like the quote goes - the friend of my friend is my enemy.”

“Actually, it goes the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Nieve corrected, at around the same time as Wisteria began to laugh at the notion of Candy seeing her as some sort of friend.

“STOP PLAYING GAMES!” Candy yelled, cutting off the laughter. When her rage had dissipated slightly, she continued. “You might think this is all fun and games Wisteria, but if you took things seriously for once we wouldn’t be in the predicament we find ourselves in now.”

“Oh, I take this job very seriously,” Wisteria responded. Well, maybe not working for Farron at least. The Rossi’s on the other hand. “And what predicament do we find ourselves in exactly? The only issue I have is that you have been so incredibly rude to my friends so far, and accuse me of things I haven’t even done.”

Candy was silent for a moment, and her gaze shifted away. Wisteria could almost see the steam rising from her ears as she hurried to think of a good answer. “You must have done something wrong during your heist or said something you should have. I spotted some of those children wandering around the island.”

“Children?” Wisteria repeated as if she was supposed to know what that meant. It was only after some more thought, and Candy’s almost expectant look on her face, that she put two and two together. “You mean that little Atlesian team?”

“Yes!” Candy responded with a shout, pleased that Wisteria had figured it out.

“Well, it can’t have been our fault,” Wisteria was quick to say. “We never mentioned that team during the heist, and we remained in hiding as per request, until Nightlock informed us the case had been dropped. If they followed any breadcrumbs to this island, it would have come from your side.”

“Impossible.” Candy turned her head away in annoyance. “Farron and I left the day after our last meeting, so it couldn’t possibly have been our fault.”

“Well, then it-”

But before Wisteria could finish, Candy silenced her with a wave of the hand. “Regardless of whose fault it was, it matters not. Farron has, uh, given us a new mission.”

Wisteria frowned. “This is the first I’ve heard of this.”

“It was a last-minute development,” Candy responded. “Had you arrived sooner, you could have been involved in the planning. Farron has given us permission to test that little prototype to deal with the little brats.”

“So you know what it does?”

“Of course!” Candy said, looking offended at the suggestion of otherwise. Wisteria waited for further explanation, but it was clear Candy was in no mood to further elaborate. “Are the three of you with me?”

“Based on your earlier comment, I fear we have no choice in the matter,” Wisteria quipped. She turned her head to look at her companions for confirmation, before shrugging her shoulders. “I guess we’re in then.”

“Excellent,” Candy said, as a wicked grin formed on her lips. She proceeded to hold her hand out like an expectant child. “Now, may I please hold the case?”

There was a sense of reluctance, as Wisteria passed over the case to the red-headed woman. It was what was expected of her to play her part in this mission. She knew that whilst the Rossi’s had not ordered her to infiltrate Farron’s group to retrieve his supplies, but once they had heard of a rare military-grade prototype being passed around, they had instructed Wisteria to do her best to ensure it eventually made its way to them. With the prototype in Candy’s hands now, she would have to keep a close eye on where it was kept and a close eye on how Candy might use it.

With the case safely in her grasp, Candy stalked on ahead, a smug smile on her face as she turned.

Once she was a reasonable distance away, Ulysses spoke up. “That last part was a lie,” He informed his companions. Whilst Nieve seemed surprised, Wisteria was not. Something in the way Candy had given them a vague explanation to their mission had made it seem as though she was making it up on the spot, or aspects of it at least.

“She’s playing a dangerous game,” Nieve observed quietly. “Would this Farron be impressed to know she’s gone rogue like this?”

“Hard to say,” Wisteria admitted with a shrug. “Farron is still something of an unknown entity to me. He’s shrewd and calculated to a degree, but a risk-taker as well, as shown by the people he surrounds himself with. I’m not clear on what his exact relationship to Candy is, but I presumed there was always something there. Enough for him to tolerate her presence after so long.”

“Will this deviation affect your mission at all?” Ulysses asked.

“If anything it’ll help!” Wisteria answered with a laugh. She folded her arms watching the red-haired woman in front, who seemed unaware of the three of them not matching her pace and talking amongst themselves. “The Rossi’s put me here to infiltrate their group and tear it apart from the inside, but if I’ve learnt anything from my months with them, they’re quite capable of doing that on their own.”

#team zrcn fic #wisteria bloome #candy cornel #nieve #ulysses crest

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lord-dusk · 5 years

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Jurassic Emblem-Chapter 10

Scales are quite tricky to draw. Anyhow, there’s the second boss of the game!

Nifl was a cold, desolate land of snow,bones,ice,and blood. Frozen blood. It wasn’t quite the Kirby-esque happy place you’d thought it would be, after the Nifl-Muspell incident where Askran forces killed off warped versions of video-game protagonists and The elder Nifl princess Guunthra being roasted alive like some yummy Barbie-Cute pork. And the situation got particularly better when the sun-dragon Helios was frozen solid, condemning the whole area into everlasting night.

At least the stars and moon looked very charming and exquisite, white stellar bodies illuminating the aqua-blue sky.

Blue and Lucina were marching through the snow, huddling each other for thermal radiation. Blue, having grown up on a tropical island for much of her life, had borrowed Lucina’s scarf and cape for extra warmth(don’t get into that frappucino debate on feathers please). Lucina, having grown up in a desert country with enough rainfall to sustain a 15m-tall scythe-wielding flesh golem, found it rather uncomfortable trekking through the snow. Ryukami the mosasaurus had stayed behind at the ice-floes to catch up on some Nisioisin novels.

The raptors were marching onwards to the north of Nifl, sometimes passing by some shrubs and frost-covered rocks. Just when Lucina thought things were getting rather monotonous, she saw something rustle out of the bushes. Blue took notice as well and saw what appeared to be a penguin-like bird with white spots on its face waddling in a panicked manner before a fox-squirrel thing pounced on it and tore apart its head from its socket, crimson blood and pieces of esophagus and vocal cord spilling out unto the snow and dying it red. Blue and Lucina were eyeing the fox-squirrel as it dug heavy mitten-like foreclaws into the bird’s torso and stringy pink intestines splooged out. Lucina decided to look away and went on her way. Blue paid no attention to the carnage after that as well.

“That was a Repenomamus devouring a Great Auk,” Blue explained. “The world where I from, InGen didn’t simply revived dinosaurs, they brought back Paleozoic and Cenozoic fauna as well. Although if I were you, I wouldn’t dare pet a reppy.”

“Why? Are they dangerous?” Lucina asked. Blue can easily tell right off the bat that humans like Lucina had a profound desire to prod and hold small,furry mammals.

“Oh yes. Reppies are one mammal you do NOT want to pet; despite looking like a Pomeranian with mole-claws, they WILL try to eviscerate you; for a mammal from the Mesozoic they are quite big enough to eat small dinosaurs.”

“Hmm? I assumed mammals evolved after the demise of the giant lizards.”

“Actually, they co-existed with the dinosaurs, though they were bit characters in a world dominated by reptiles bursting with presence and charisma. Repenomamus was the biggest furry during its time, but most of its kin were barely any bigger than an Amiibo figure.”

“And that penguin-looking bird?”

“Uh-huh. That great auk was NOT a penguin-it’s actually more closely related to puffins than to the famous diving birds south of the Equator. Although, it was the the only auk that converted its flight power to swimming power completely, and those damn humans wiped its existence off the face of the Earth.”

“You know quite a lot about animals before the dawn of man, don’t you?” Lucina commented.

“I’m a creature from before man myself, though I wouldn’t be too surprised if InGen resurrected species routed by humanity, like the dodo and the gastric mouth-brooding frog.” Blue replied.

“Come to think of it, isn’t it harder to clone a mammal than say, a reptile or a fish?”

“Yes, Henry Wu of InGen has cloned mammals occasionally, but found it quite tedious because mammalian red cells do not have nuclei, where the DNA are located. You would need to find white cells, which are much less common than their red counterparts in a ratio of 2 to 12.”

“Reptiles and birds, on the other hand, have nuclei within their red blood cells, and Henry Wu is a genius when it comes to manipulating DNA.” Blue explained, frowning.

“Who is this Henry Wu that you speak of ?”

“Why, as a human being, Dr.Henry Wu is a tacky SOB who creates red-eyed, mangled-toothed fatherfuckers and is considered a most dangerous man with the most dangerous technology in the sad history of humanity. He attempted to use my blood to create a line of Indoraptors to sell off for military purposes.”

Seems Wu sounds a LOT like that sperm-slurper Validar, Lucina grimly thought.

The two of them chatted like this for the entirely of their walk until they reached Nifl Castle.

*********

Blue and Lucina had arrived at the castle of Nifl, but they were no guards to greet them. Well they were guards present-but they were frozen solid, and clusters of repenomamuses were busily gnawing away at the frozen body cavities.

I guess a species changes its behavior accordingly to the environment, Blue though as she and her partner pushed the gates open. They went inside the interior and up the stairs.

“Something tells me the weather outside isn’t the reason those soldiers were icicles,” Lucina said, walking behind Blue.”Would it be a bad idea to go into the kitchen wing and grab some potions for the upcoming boss fight?”

The charcoal velociraptor sniffed the solid,icy air. It stinged her nose. “I don’t see why not,” she answered. “though if you see some ANY creature, reppy or not, attacking you, don’t hesitate to knock their heads off.”

Blue waited at the second floor while Lucina brisky walked to the the kitchen downstairs. A few minutes later, she was back.

“Are you ready for certain? During the boss-fight there will be no pee-pee breaks, and no daddy in white shining armor with a shotgun and a motorbike crashing through the windows to save either of us. Understood?” Blue interviewed.

“No need for any of that,” Lucina replied. “Let’s get this over with. I feel as though my body is becoming a gelato cone.”

“Good. If my nose knows, she is just around the corner. Follow me.” the raptors headed to the corridor on the right and came across a door that read “Hrid’s Room: Out for Lunch”. They entered.

“Ugh. That was the fifth time someone has stepped in without my consent,” an icy voice hissed. “Do any of you thin-telligent organisms register the concept of knocking?”

A woman was lounging on an oblong bed spotted with various books. But not a regular woman. Her lower half was that of a boa’s, turquoise-green with purple stripes, and covered with icicles.Her hair-piece were icicles as well, and her Victorian-style corset colored electric blue and black made the entire “cool” effect perfect,considering her expressions suggested otherwise.

“What do you bipeds want?” The snake woman demanded. “Did you interrupt my inspirational reading just so you can become like those popsicles outside?”

“We just want to talk,” Lucina answered.

The snake snorted. “Don’t be honest with me, be honest with you. What you really came here for is my bloody limp body that you can use to nail onto this country’s gates like a crooked Christmas decoration. Is that it, O Exalted Princess?

“Why did you freeze the sun-god? Do you recognize the biblical effects the entire world will face?” Blue questioned, her face contorting in defense for her friend.

“Let me tell you this,” the Victorian boa began. “I am the future best-selling novelist Basilice, and I sincerely have no desire to kill you. But my mistress Sha’Rad Yuwi denied my request and forced to to sacrifice my writing skills for combative means. My writing may be on hold, but my mind is certainly not. Exalted Princess, have you ever actually considered the misery of your foes that killed them because you desired to make “everyone happy”?”

“.....You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs,” Lucina replied.

“ ‘I want everyone to be happy,’ ‘let’s end all suffering in the world,’ those are lines that make me want to vomit out the Niflites I ate yesterday. Those are the shallow,one-dimensional philosophies of idiotic eukaryotes who do not face reality.” Basilice sputtered out. “The light is full of lies, lies! People willingly bask in the glory of light so they never again have to experience the truth of the darkness below! Light is harmful, harmful! And not just the fact that overdosing on UV light promotes cancer on light skin. Do any of you bipeds know anything at all about plants other than the vascular system in high-school?”

“When plants grow, they break down soil to suit their roots for sufficient nutrient intake,” Blue raised her hand in reply.

“Precisely! Around 400 million years ago, during the Devonian period, mosses and ferns were starting to grow onto rocks near the coastlines, and inevitably, these early pioneers of the new world crumbled the rock into fine soil which washed out into the sea over thousand of years, and do you know what happened? Vertebrates started choking! Fishes here and there had no idea how to cope with this influx of mud particles from the land, their gills clogged with minerals. This, combined with volcanic eruptions, consumed all the available oxygen in the water and there were massive, massive, casualties everywhere! Because fishes and run-off from terrestrial photosynthesis do not go well together! This catastrophe makes your petty carnage across Jurassic Park and Fire Emblem look like a squabble between toddlers in comparison. And you little humans use the opportunity to view more serious issues as a excuse to lounge in your chairs eating chicken nuggets.”

“So I killed him! I killed that sick son of a bitch Helios because he’s a major liar, and I’m going to teach everyone that people deserve bad endings, everyone!” Basilice took out her Dragonstone. “And if you girls are truly good character down to the nRNA sequence, you might be spared and see everyone in the world smothered in the darkness that is free of any lies! No more pain, no more sadness!”

Blue and Lucina prepared their weapons. “Let’s fight!”

#jurassic emblem #fire emblem heroes #jurassic world #blucina #blue(jurassic world)#lucina #basilice #fire emblem #fanfiction #nifl #and you thought plants were the good guys during AP biology in high school

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51kas81 · 5 years

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As well as acting, Somerset’s Anthony Head has a passion for animals which is why he is a patron of the county’s Secret World Wildlife Rescue centre.

“I don’t think we can do too much for our wildlife, especially here in Somerset and Secret World is quite amazing,” he says. “Their whole ethos of rescue, rehabilitate and release could not be better. These are genuine people doing something real for our wildlife. That is their prime interest and I am very happy and proud to be a part of that as a patron. They deserve all the support we can give them.”

A little while ago Anthony and his partner Sarah Fisher, who is also a patron of Secret World, were announced as ambassadors for Battersea Dogs & Cats Home and he could not have been more delighted.

“It’s an honour to be named as an official Ambassador for Battersea,” he says. “I’ve taken pride in working with the charity for many years and Sarah and I have had many Battersea dogs come through our doors. Rescuing an animal in need brings you so much joy.

As well as supporting many animal and other charities they also are great champions of Somerset.

“Somerset simply has to be one of the most beautiful counties in England. It has the most invigorating country air and such wonderful places to walk and admire – and not just for humans. Dogs love it too – there are so many great places to explore and so many pleasant aromas to sniff. Dogs read smells like we read the newspapers and there is a lot of great things going on in Somerset.”

Anthony’s rise to fame began – as he is constantly reminded – when he appeared alongside Sharon Maughan in a series of Gold Blend coffee adverts. There was instant fame but since then he has become one of our busiest actors and in demand on both sides of the Atlantic.

“I think I was destined to become an actor near enough all my life,” he says. “My mother was an actress and actually appeared as Madame Maigret in the original TV series which starred Rupert Davies. The older brother Murray went into acting too. My father was a documentary film director. I must have inherited something because I loved getting into costume from a very early age and wanted to be in every school drama that was being produced.

“Having parents in the industry though was not a door opener, in fact they both basically told me that it would be a good idea to have a second career going as acting was not the most stable of occupations.”

It would be easy to say that the rest is history and an ongoing history at that. Anthony became a big star in America and around the world when he had a major role in the Buffy The Vampire Slayer TV series.

His list of credits is long and very varied both on stage and on screen. He even appeared as Captain Hook for a children’s party in Buckingham Palace.

Away from the bright lights and cameras though Anthony Head is a very down-to-earth kind of guy who likes nothing better than to be at home at Tilley Farm in Farnborough near Bath. It is his haven although it was used for filming some episodes of Buffy.

“The whole family shares a love of animals,” Anthony reveals. “Sarah is a well-known TTouch instructor and behaviour counsellor. She has worked with animals for over 17 years and teaches staff workshops for many of the UK’s top animal shelters including Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, the Mayhew Animal Home, Blue Cross, Wood Green Animal Shelter and Dogs Trust working with their long stay dogs and other animals with behavioural issues. Sarah also fosters challenging puppies for Battersea Dogs and Cats Home and assesses dogs for court cases.

“So we are a close family with the same passions for animals and especially dogs. While I was filming Buffy I lived in Los Angeles for five years, while Sarah and the girls – Daisy was four and Emily was six at the time – stayed in England. I’d try to go home to them every three or four weeks. It was great to be home and I used to take over from Sarah, take the girls to school and do as much as I could before I had to go back. While I was away I missed my family terribly and I owe an enormous amount to Sarah who encouraged me to go for it and said she would hold the fort at home. “We have rescue dogs as well as ponies and other animals. They are a big part of the family. I do my share of mucking out and all that sort of stuff and I love it. Just being out in the Somerset air makes you come alive again even at the end of a long day’s filming.

“There are many great towns and restaurants in the county as well as such a varied terrain and coastline – wonderful.”

Anthony does have strong views on people buying animals as pets.

“It’s great to have animals around, they are fun and loyal and they don’t know you as anything more than part of the family. It doesn’t matter to them if you are on television or head up a major company. They do have specific needs though. I have seen people looking at puppies in a shop and feeling motivated to buy one. I know they are hard to resist but many of those puppies will grow up to find themselves at best in an animal shelter. Basically if you don’t think you can do your best for them and give them a nice life, don’t take them on in the first place.

“Dogs are quite unique and have lived, worked and played alongside humans since we all began. They have so much to offer and they want to give. Some have not had a very fair deal in life, so taking in a rescue dog and giving it a new lease of life and happiness is one of the greatest things anyone can do. The rewards are beyond description. In a sense we owe it to all animals to take care of them and when you do and your dog looks you in the eye and gives you that amazing smile, it makes it all worthwhile.

#anthony stewart head #anthony head #interview

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ronan-macteer · 5 years

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⤷ have you heard? ( RONAN MACTEER ) has arrived in novigrad. the stories say ( he ) is also known as ( knight of the dawn ). he is very clearly ( thirty-five ) years old and a ( witcher ). little birds may whisper that ronan is ( - mendacious, enigmatic, wrathful, artful, silver-tongued and stubborn ) but their own would describe them as ( + gallant, charismatic, masterful, dauntless, genuine and loyal ) [ fc; richard madden ]

Hey there my dears - I’m Eden and I am super excited be here and bring to a dash near you the okayest witcher . Below you’ll find a vague-ish intro for my smol son because this one required more of an actual bio than Tea did ( adrastea incase you need to know ). Should you like to plot or fancy a connection with my love here hmu!

tw mentions of death

Name: Ronan Albertus Martin MacTeer ( long I know but his parents really hoped a long name would inspire him to be more

Nickname: Ronan ( preferred ), MacTeer ( also preferred ), Roan, Roanie Ronan of Velen and other various nicknames and things one can shout at a witcher.

Title: Knight of the Dawn

Age: 35yrs. old. He does actually thoroughly look his age save for the grey stripe that appeared in his hair when he was just a boy.

Born: Gors Velen, Velen, Northern Coast of Temeria

Species: Witcher ( formerly human? its common knowledge most witchers were human males if not all of them )

Gender: Male

Height: 5ft 10in

Physique: Muscular. ( everything about a witcher is enhanced and modified to create a more perfect fighting machine against the monsters that ever constantly threaten this world since the Conjunction of Spheres. Needless to say Ronan is no exception to that rule that everything about him is more than any other man. Still Ronan doesn't make it a point to laze around but because of his training he is always honing his skills, sharpening them for until there cease to be dangerous creatures there is still a need for him to be ready at all times to face them. Monsters are the only ones truly capable of killing other monsters - that was the reason for creating witchers in the first place. Too, Ronan is a gorgeous hunk of a man and you aren't simply born so stupidly sculpted and handsome )

Hair: Ginger. Well ginger to a point there is one single solitary wisp of grey in the very front. He does quite fancy that little wisp of grey and is prone to playing with it in idle moments or when he's about to cheat in Gwent ( bonus fact: that isn't often ronan is just that damn good of a player and almost never loses a game. )

Family: There was one once that existed. He had two brothers and three little sisters - being the oldest himself it should've fallen upon him to take care of them and become the patriarch of the family. Since the witcher that saved his father claimed the right of the law of surprise he hasn't heard of them since. He knows better than to look for them as well knowing that times were hard when he left and they wouldn't have survived very long. Its a sore point but he considers his fellow witchers brothers.

Occupation: Witcher.

About ( this one is a bio mhmm of sorts )

There was family once. Ronan remembers the smell of his mother's hair and brothers and sisters to play with and a father who would teach him there was more out there in this world. He remembers happiness when he was a little nothing of a boy barely able to hold a practice sword or say alghoul without butchering the pronunciation of it all. After all these years he still remembers them. Often in his journals he'll write about them and there was a point he would secretly write letters home but they were never met with any sort of response. Ronan isn't entirely sure if they're still alive or if they can even read or write. One thing is certain the last time a contract took him to Gors Valen to his birthplace they weren't there and not a soul that lives there now remembers the fisherman, his wife or the score of children they had. Even still if they are there why would they accept that their brother is a witcher?

Young Ronan MacTeer was only five when the witcher named Velles claimed him and took him to train at the School of the Griffin. He fought that day - kicked and screamed and violently refused to go. Velles still had teeth marks in his skin until the day he died from where the young child bit him. A promise was a promise and Old MacTeer had promised his eldest to the witcher for having saved his life and he would go. His mother wailed and the youngest of his sisters ran after the horse until her feet were unable to carry her. It was the price it was the pledge and it would be honored. Despite his initial resistance and there was a great deal on his part, Velles did become an adoptive father to him. The two came to care for one another very deeply. It still hurts and always will that he essentially has no one else now but he's gained another family all his own of brothers in arms he wouldn't trade any one of them for the world. They are all each other has.

While there were initial bumps this was the beginning of the Knight of the Dawn. He would earn his name soon after he completed his trials and he went through them all. They took a boy and took him apart. After the choice which Velles convinced him of it was excruciating. Witchers in the School of the Griffin hardly thought he would survive the trial of the grasses but Ronan did. When he came through Ronan, just barely a young man, insisted they put him through additional trials. Velles told him it was unnecessary that completing this one was enough and he was now a witcher of the griffin school but Ronan despite the pain it would bring insisted. Noble, gallant, dauntless and incredible stubborn he was already ten times the man most other witcher boys were at sixteen willing to suffer so for the cause he'd been taught to believe in. Yes it made him like all other boys submitted to the witcher trials a foul creation - a freak in their own way but he really and truthfully knew no other life. It was the sunrise on the next day after his final trial where the boy truly became a man. High up in the mountains, higher than any one else including perhaps the monsters they hunted cat eyes open and took in a deep breath. Ronan greeted the dawn as he did every other day only this day was the beginning of the rest of his real life. A monster yes by normal human being standards but who would protect them but a witcher - specifically the Knight of the Dawn as Velles coined him.

Years passed, contracts and contacts came and went and the more harrowing each job became but he greeted each monster with a cunning smile and a silver sword. Those were the days to be wild and alive. Sure enough the Knight of the Dawn earned his name for being noble and a most masterful fighter to his enemies they surely knew him to be a trickster of sorts - never told the whole truth, came for blood, could talk his way out of any situation and had a terrible way of gaining an upper hand but in all that he was still good. Cheated at cards and drank but her was more than most men and had a mind about him to think of more than just himself. Never once did he claim the right of surprise and when they couldn't pay he wouldn't force them too. Then came a day he questioned things. He wondered of his former family. Perhaps it started when Velles died that he wondered if there was more to what they did - more to life. He kept this curiosity quiet, the studying he truly did of the monsters they hunted expanding knowledge in the hope to understand. They were once people were they not as was he? Who in this age wasn't some beast hidden there in the dark? It's always been a thought to gnaw away at him in the lonely days. His wonder of those things went no further because he knew there weren't many of his kind left and that wonder led down a dangerous path no witcher could walk without losing their head. He was faithful to his brothers and he would have their back, even Urbis', to the end. Lonely it was but they were the shred of what family each other had and it was entirely possible they would be the very last of their kind. The life of a witcher was never promised to be kind - their training and the things they've had to do have all but ensured they know their place in the world.

Ronan despite his training, despite the trials that took a boy and tore him apart and made him the witcher he is and even despite his artful ways of dancing around the truth he wondered of love. He wondered and still questions as he fights for coin to rid the world of monsters if he is not more a monster than they are and if there would be a person who would share this cold and bloody world with him? Perhaps it is a fools dream of a life beyond witching? What is sad is he has loved, deeper than some would think a witcher capable of loving; an all consuming love with a woman who loved him just as much and understood that what he was and never feared him for she knew his hands would never harm her if only protect her. He wakes in the night as if he is missing part of himself and reached for the ground beside him to find nothing and it is a haunting loneliness no amount of silver-tonged ability, daring fights, drunken brawls or loose women has helped. He hides it well but it is a gaping hole and it is painful but the knight of the dawn has no other option then the press on because there is no other life than this one. Ronan misses the love of his life not even knowing it is she he's missing not even knowing the empty name he wishes he could call is Orianna... Orianna.

Here he is Novigrad, less of his kind than there was before having accepted another contract but the whispers of the Wild Hunt concern him. Other things have been amiss as well but if the Wild Hunt comes perhaps with it comes his end as well? His arrival here in Novigrad and the arrival of other witchers makes him suspicious that there is more afoot here than the place initially lets on. With that and the thoughts that plague his mind what a time it is to be alive in regards to the Knight of the Dawn for the future is unknown and he is unsure of what lies ahead...

Trivia

Moral Alignment: Neautral

Zodiac: Capricorn

Temperament: Choleric

Sin: Wrath

Norse God/Goddess: Tyr

Witcher School: School of the Griffin - duh

Favorite foods: Meat, seafood, hot biscuits, strawberries and ale. He does like food and has quite honestly a more refined palate.

Hogwarts House: Gryffindor

Theme Song: Oblivion by M83 feat Susanne Sundfør

WANTED PLOTS:

Oh boy all the things -. the list is endless. HONESTLY LETS PLOT

#witcherintro #really it was a thousand times longer and more heart breaking so this is a pg version #tw mentions of death

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aurora-daily · 6 years

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Mother Earth’s Warrior

Interview: Aurora for The Line of Best Fit by Cheri Amour (September 28th, 2018)

Norway’s greatest pop export, AURORA speaks to Cheri Amour about her not-so-difficult second album and why it opens up a forest of thought for our future preservation.

There have long been popular culture characters in our midst hell-bent on saving the planet. Healing the world and making it a better place, for you and me and the entire human race. But there’s something different about AURORA Aksnes, better known as million-streamed Norwegian singer/songwriter, AURORA. Her latest release, Infections of A Different Kind, puts Mother Earth at its heart.

It feels fitting then to be sat in one of London’s luscious parks together, AURORA decked out in green amongst the evergreen sipping on her coconut water. She is slight but by no means shy and constantly alert, throwing out relatable anecdotes that seem to be skipping through her mind as she scans her surroundings. Her eyes are shining bright, often looking outwards rather than directly at me. Instead, she is constantly seeking out the sky, the clouds, darting at the path of a pigeon, beaming at a small child opposite us on another table. At one point, she becomes distracted by my stationary choices (“I have the same pen but in green”) and is immediately back in the bustling streets of gay Paris where she made the purchase, with her underlying care and compassion for all things, living or otherwise. “I should’ve brought mine and they’ve could’ve spoken”.

It’s been over two years since the singer sprang onto our stereos like a forest-spirit from the Bergen mountains with her debut EP, Running With Wolves. But whilst her musical mission might be led by a bold vision for a brighter future, her present still looks pretty rosy with debut full-length, All My Demons Greeting Me As A Friend racking up a massive 200 million streams globally. It’s an almost magical might for an artist who only celebrated her 22nd birthday this year. But on speaking with AURORA, her emotional intelligence is undeniable. “I know the world is not a fairy tale and we’re just doing our best…” she happily admits, an astute admission for someone so renowned for her enchanting pop gems.

For the Bergen-based artist though, her strength clearly comes from the collective power of change rather than the sole-creator. She often refers more holistically to an issue than nitpicking specifics. Indeed, it’s this rallying sense of collective change that has gifted AURORA such a solid fan base of “warriors and weirdos” from the depths of South America to the smaller towns and cities of Australia. “It’s so important to fight for the things you care about”, she continues. “They have proven they can do that. They share my message. They stand up for me. If one person disagrees with what I do, they go to war”.

It reminds me of another story of a similarly impassioned figure wanting to make collective change in their world. Often admired as the crowning work of Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki and his Studio Ghibli, Princess Mononoke powerfully paints the struggle between the gods of a forest and the humans who consume its resources. And, it seems unbeknownst to Ghibli at the time, over 20 years on from its original release, that same spirit hasn’t been lost in Infections of A Different Kind.

Her relationship with nature is woven throughout, a sort of Hansel and Gretel style breadcrumb trail through her mind’s eye of the world around us. Much like Ghibli’s tale which finds the main protagonist locked in a struggle for the future of the unspoiled forest and an elaborate moral universe, the sophomore record is rooted in Mother Earth. “We are killing incredible beauty without even knowing that we’ve already killed so much”, she reflects, her fingers playing with a small burgundy, woven scarf. It looks homemade, thin and narrow, entwined around her small hands. “We’ve killed entire species of animals. We’ve killed possibilities of making medicine. We’ve killed people”, she pauses, clearly upset by the thoughts. “It makes me sad because I know the planet will live. She will outlive us all and we will die because we’re just tiny ants on her big skin”.

But despite her worry, life and death feel like a natural cycle for AURORA, as you might expect from someone so clued up on the climate. She speaks confidently about nature’s balance, preferring the pragmatic output of an organism rather than anything overly fussy which could also be true of the sounds she makes. “I don’t really like flowers that much. They’re too pretty for their own good. People pick them and they get to die inside a vase”. If she were a flower, AURORA would be a dried white rose, perfectly encapsulated within a moment of time; pure, classic and radiating humility. Meanwhile, lavender for its medicinal properties and affection to bees gets a glowing write up. “That’s my favourite thing about Mother Earth actually”, she explains. “All the knowledge and all that she provides us; the fruit, the medicine. That’s why we need the rainforest but we tear it down”.

Only recently have we seen the devastating effects of illegal logging in the Papua New Guinea forests which provide a home for many of its unique species. Most timbers from New Guinea and its offshore islands are processed in China before being sold around the world, largely for use in furniture and flooring. Likewise, in the Amazon around 17% of the forest has been lost in the last 50 years, mostly due to forest conversion for cattle ranching. Sadly it’s the global brand giants causing most of the destruction with Greenpeace releasing a recent report that identified major palm olive producers such as Unilever, Nestlé, Colgate-Palmolive, and Mondelez, have destroyed an area of rainforest almost twice the size of Singapore in less than three years. The problem is, much like the Native American saying, what will happen after the last tree has fallen and the rivers have been poisoned?

Live favourite, "The Seed" encapsulates this idea. Her vocal is moving, selflessly offering herself up to restore what humanity has destroyed: “Suffocate me / So my tears can be rain / I will water the ground where I stand / So the flowers can grow back again”. "The Seed" acts like the nucleus of change for AURORA. It’s the birth of something. It’s thought or an act or a movement. “It’s the beginning of everything”, she explains, enthused. “The way the seed lies underground with no sun, nothing, darkness but it knows where to go and then it breaks through the stone, the mountain, asphalt, and earth. All these things they came from down there”, she insists, pointing at a nearby flower bed at which point her gaze is caught by a fluttering pigeon on the roof. After a few seconds, she apologises: “The pigeons are so distracting”.

Conversation turns to her own beginnings, painting a picture of her home back in Norway which sounds like something straight out of a Lord of The Rings novel. A fjord carved out by glaciers in the ice ages with a little island in the middle of it that she would often take a small kayak out to and sleep overnight on in the summer when the sun rarely sets. “On one of them lives quite an angry goat so don’t go there. He’s like a proper…”, she gesticulates the animal’s horns with her hands by her ears. “He’s intense. All the other ones are fine”, she laughs. The open water feels like it is a bit of a theme to her early years, spending much of her childhood on sailboats of some varieties, not surprising for a country that has the kind of tight relationship with water that Brits have with tea. Whether it's coastline, fjord, lake or river, water is everywhere in Norway and Norwegians make the most of it. Her father sailed the seas for four years in a row before she was born, she tells me proudly.

The other towering backdrop to her youth were those sturdy mountains and an ambitious walking regime. The latter almost certainly a contributing factor to her ingenuity and appreciation of the rambling flora and fauna so prevalent in her songwriting today. “We’d go for mountain hikes at least four times a week”, she states, matter of factly. “You bring some chocolate with bread and cheese to eat at the top. It’s kind of what you do together with your Mum’s friend and her kid, you know?” Perhaps not the same as growing up in the flatlands of Norfolk, I admit. “Well, it’s very normal in Norway, especially Bergen because you have the mountains everywhere”, she continues. There’s a mountain in every city at least. In every village. And in my village, we only have eight neighbours, there’s only us living there. And I look at the water and I have the forest behind me. She openly sighs and takes a moment, transporting herself back to the shimmering open waters, stood with lungs full of the fresh mountain air.

Surrounded by such a magical setting, it’s not surprising that AURORA tries to create a kingdom of her own for listeners. The first hint at the new record, former single “Queendom” is dedicated to “everything that’s alive”. Insistent that “Queendom” should be a place “with only love”, the song is also a celebration of our differences with an open innocence that tries to find the best in all of us. Again, Ghibli’s own ethical ethos rings true here, with Princess Mononoke heralded as for its ability to make heroes of outsiders and blurring the stereotypes that usually define such characters. It’s the same for AURORA. She is an artist breaking down huge barriers around inclusivity which shine through “Queendom”’s electro-pulse and call-to-arms. “It’s very much about giving hope, like being given the tools to become a warrior, a fighter to deal with the now. Not an escape but a way to really stay in the present, and make a change”.

Directed by Paris-based, Polish-Australian Director King Burza, the single’s video finds Aurora bathed in natural light exploring the cavernous surrounds of an old country home, the dappled light falling on her through the beaten window frames. She leaps through the high-ceiling hallways in flowing white cotton, much like the lyrics suggest, as our lamb. The pulsing chorus beat kicks in with a procession of women dancers weaving behind her arms like the Shiva herself, the fierce warrior Goddess. With Scandinavia often heralded for its gender parity, it’s not surprising that a huge part of “Queendom”’s rallying cry is being channeled into some sort of feminist anthem but as AURORA herself says: “it’s much more than that. I want it to be a song for people in need”.

“I began writing for Infections of A Different Kind the day after my first album was released...it’s good when it’s fresh when you’re still like a predator. You can still smell the blood from the prey."

With its timely post-#metoo-era release, it’s not surprising that there’s a strong focus on the strength of women in here though as well as flipping assumed gender norms and empowering an army, as she sings: “The women will be my soldiers / With the weight of life on their shoulders”. It’s an element of Nordic folklore that really spoke to her warrior instincts. “I like that it was often the women that hunted. When the men went out on a journey to kill and steal, the women stayed and were the boss which is kind of cool”. Similarly, she sees herself played back to her in scrappy forest-dwelling nymphs, the Huldra. “They had messy hair like I had when I was a child”, she jokes.

Propelled by our comparisons, talk turns into a bit of an education in Norwegian children’s tales as she boasts that many of them centre around a troll. Whether that’s a troll turning to stone in the sun before it eats the children or the story of a young boy from the village who challenges the troll to a porridge-eating contest. Tactfully tying his knapsack to his belly, the boy scoops more porridge into the bag than he eats himself and then, once full, slashes it open encouraging the troll to do the same so they can power through the porridge. Fooled by the boy, the troll cuts his stomach and dies leaving all of the gold and silver in the cave for the boy to take home to pay off his family debts. “Then you have the troll mother who has put her eleven troll children to bed. That’s the first song I sang when I was two years old in my Mum’s blue kitchen”, she recalls. A newborn with pink cheeks begins to whimper to its Mum on the table next to us now which lures the singer’s attention away for a fleeting moment, her mouth fixed in a wide-open smile. “Sorry, babies and pigeons. Very distracting”, she reasons.

After the brief introduction to Norwegian folklore, it feels apt to ask around the production of the new record which took place in a fairytale studio-cum-chateau somewhere in the South of France. Positioned in a vineyard surrounded by animals and a pond, the castle sounds like the right kind of pastoral setting for such a life-affirming record. AURORA details an almost Beauty And The Beast-like existence there, holed up in the huge house’s halls and libraries for just over a month. Chef Marie cooked a three-course meal, three times a day whilst the dog Paula and cat, Ginger amble through the corridors.

It becomes clear quite quickly that AURORA hasn’t faced the difficult second album syndrome. “I began writing for it the day after my first album was released because then the first album had been done already for four months”, she beams. “That’s why I always begin right after I release right after my previous thing. I begin on the next”. A natural hunter, she adds: “It’s good when it’s fresh when you’re still like a predator. You can still smell the blood from the prey. And you’re kind of just running after it and you know where to go, that’s how I felt”.

It was a fairly natural process then? “I found it way easier than the first because I really knew what I wanted. I’ve always known since I was an embryo what I want and now I have the tools to make it happen. I know how to produce, and how to play more instruments. I played the drums and the rhythms. The multi-instrumentalist played drums on all of the songs on Infections of A Different Kind, actually, it’s kind of a new passion for her. “I love it. It’s very energetic and you get quite tired afterward which I love. I love the feeling of exhausting myself”, she grins.

"I have my own dream language which half of the population understands...a fourth...an eleventh so I also had to learn things myself because I am the only one who can know."

Adding to her workload, AURORA took up a lot of the production duties on the record too which makes a powerful statement in a world for far too many women artists are corralled into working with male producers. She’s not afraid to tackle this in her own terms, often struggling to articulate what she wanted using the technical language, the singer offers up her own alternative parallels: “Make it sound like water or bellyache”. “I realised I don’t have the technical language. I have my own dream language which half of the population understands...a fourth...an eleventh so I also had to learn things myself because I am the only one who can know”. She’s adamant that crafting her music, much like her new love of drums, is one of her biggest pleasures. The ability to realise her imagined worlds into reality gives her a certain sense of belonging which, in the future, might remain a constant more so than the live show. “If there’s one thing I’ll do less of, you know in forty years, it’s touring. But not studio, I’ll always be there”, she adds resolutely.

But despite her preference, she knows the power of sharing her songs with her legion of fans and she confesses many of the new numbers have already made it into the live set. “I think at one point it was maybe a bit too many. I like all my songs better live just because of the energy so it’s always nice to know that the fans will get to experience that first”. And that’s exactly what AURORA has tried to do with the release schedule of the record, teasing one more single out last week ahead of today’s full-length. The stark opener of “Churchyard” finds AURORA’s sincere vocal layered over one another and doused in reverb as a solemn strings section soothes in with a morbid twang as she questions the fine balance between life and love. You can almost see the arms flailing theatrics of similarly environmental leaning, Kate Bush against the beat.

Indeed, AURORA isn’t the first artist looking to heal the world with their humanitarian ideals. Pop’s biggest ally, Cher donated more than 180,000 bottles of water to Flint, Michigan, in the middle of the city's clean-water crisis. Grammy Award-winning, Rihanna was named Harvard Humanitarian of the Year back in 2017 for her philanthropic efforts after funding the build of a state-of-the-art centre for oncology and nuclear medicine to diagnose and treat breast cancer in her home nation of Barbados. Infections of A Different Kind stands united with Mother Earth almost as a vocal shining a floodlight on the dire situation we’ve left her in.

At this point, playing with the tousled strands of her hair, AURORA is whisked off for another meeting and disappears into the trees of Holland Park, much like the Huldra into the Norwegian forest. Just from spending an hour with her, it’s clear how much the Norwegian songwriter cherishes real connections with the people she meets and is keen to create a shared space where we can all co-exist together; new technologies alongside sustainable ecosystems. Without national treasure, David Attenborough preaching about the plastics in our oceans, it’s sometimes easy for us to cut out the stark realities of climate change. But high up in those Norwegian mountains, with her ear to the wind, AURORA hears it all and is ready to lead.

Forget Princess Mononoke, AURORA is our modern day pop royalty.

Infections of A Different Kind is out now on Decca Records.

#aurora #aurora aksnes #interviews #ioadk

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