#the line where it starts to be a fanfiction strikes once again
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DeepSeaEnergyHeadcanon during Dragons Rising that Lloyd spent some of his time on a sidequest during his time alone, to try and find Benthomaar, because maybe they didn't necessarily last see each other in decent terms, maybe there were things that needed to be said, or chances that hadn't been taken, or plans that never happened. All he needed the most was to find him, just because. He wants to know if he's safe, or not, whatever he finds, he just needs the consolation that he still exists - just like the rest of the Ninja, whatever that happens or whatever revalation is there, happens, but that's not his priority to stress out over just yet.
and sure, he still keeps it up after four years, he was starting to doubt that it'll ever happen by the third, yet persists nonetheless. But then he meets Arin and Sora- and he finds his siblings, and suddenly that chance doesn't seem so far off anymore. If they come across his scrolls, pictures from books torn or pages ripped, the scrawls he'd messily done on the board, rushed and scribbled as if he had come to a conclusion but never found the answer, it brought up nothing but questions. "I'll tell you, eventually, just remind me, okay?" He'd answer, they all know that's not likely.
and then it happens. How it happened, where it happened, when it happened, he didn't spare a moment to consider. He just knew nobody else that had that hair, curled and swept like the waves, nobody else that had eyes as the striking blue he had, that looked like they swallowed the oceans whole, nobody else had a skin painted like that- a blue on no other, he remembered when he'd joke that the whites on him were like stars, during an evening they had spent gazing at the skies, the hand that pointed towards the distant constellations, he remembers, because nobody else was his Benthomaar.
He could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; he would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. He would know him in death, at the end of the world. There wasn't even a moment to spare, there were no words needed to be said. He simply said his name, and then they just, were.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Lloyd tells, what was he apologizing for? Taking so long for convincing fate to reunite them? Never risking it all, when it was what he had to do? Becoming so weak, against what he feared, just when he was convinced he was past the burdens he'd come across? They were apart for so long, he wasn't sure if they were the same as they once had been.
"Oh, Lloyd," Benthomaar's voice had roughened, not as gentle as he was then, yet the calm voice that lulled him to rest when he was exhausted was familiar as ever, he had longed to hear him again. "There is nothing to forgive."
the hand that held him was enough to assure him.
all that he had lost once, what he longed for, what he waited for, ceased altogether, he was sure for a moment, they had all the time in the world. He defied destinies before, he'll break more, he'd eat the world raw, if that's what it takes for him to keep the tides close, for Benthomaar to be by his side, always. He smiled, and his face was like the sun.
#SEE WHAT I DID THERE#SEE#starts coughing because it's 1am and i am as sickly as a victorian child that caught the plague#ninjago#lloyd garmadon#deepseaenergyshipping#ninjago lloyd#benthomaar#ninjago benthomaar#deepseaenergy#bloyd#the line where it starts to be a fanfiction strikes once again#ninjago fanfiction#ninjago dragons rising#i am so funny guys i swear
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General Ranger Headcanons
Ranger Teams are protective of their youngest members and their Reds. Sometimes, this does coincide, but for the most part, the youngest and the Red are separate people
Red Rangers generally have zero self-preservation instincts, either because of trauma or daredevil personalities
Blue Rangers can be the 'tech wiz', but generally, they're just extremely intelligent
Rangers all have a pretty solid relationship with gender and pronouns. Mostly because they see and fight aliens literally every day and have decided they have Bigger Things to worry about
Reds, Yellows, and Blues are usually always there on the Ranger teams, so it's common for them to be close
Rangers have a list that they pass down to the younger teams. This list details little things like how to help give each other strength to what pain medications can help the aches and pains go away fastest, because yes the suits take most of the blows, but that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt later
Some Rangers have PTSD, some have anxiety, some have depression. There are, in fact, numbers of former-Ranger therapists that the Rangers all know by heart
Teams don't really drift apart, they stick together because who else is gonna understand what it's like to witness the people you hang around daily almost die every other week?
Rangers drift toward other Rangers. It's due to the Morphin' Grid power they've been imbued with and the Morphin' Grid's pull to itself
There's a point in every Ranger's fight that shift-sleeping becomes the norm amongst teams. It's to stop nightmares, but also because of the paranoia that strikes when you're in fight or flight mode too long
Rangers from space or space-adjacent stick together
Rangers in general stick together, always. Where one Ranger is, another is typically not far behind. Some teams go so far as to get houses together, others just in the same neighborhood or town. Never far from each other, and never away for too long
The Power will never, can never abandon its chosen people. Once it makes its choices, it will not deviate. It doesn't stop looking out for its chosen ones either. Once you've bonded to the Morphin' Grid, you're stuck for life, regardless of being active or not
In Universe, people write fanfiction about the Rangers. Yes, they read it, sometimes they even like it. (Megaforce and down in particular find it hilarious)
The scone the Rangers find out about their Super Sentai counterpart shows, it's on. Some find them hilarious, some find them uncomfortable, but it's all in good fun for all of them
A list of common triggers is passed around to the Ranger teams, including but not limited to: loud noises, bugs, fog, robotic voices/static
Some of the Rangers (especially those who've been fighting for years) get therapy animals
Rangers have problems connecting to people who aren't Rangers or don't know about Rangers. Similar to military or police or doctors, Rangers are never truly off unless they're inactive and even then, it's a roll of the dice as to if they'll be pulled back in. Most of them have been doing this since they were teens, so they never truly got a chance. Preston Tien, Ninja Steel Blue, once described the experience as "playing with a half-deck whilst the other decks are rigged against you" and most of the other Rangers agreed
Every Ranger knows the pain of Nightmares, which is a big part of the reason shift-sleeping became so common amongst teams. Sleeping disorders are also common, which is not easy for the Rangers to deal with. When you're trained from a young age to be fighters and saviors of the planet, you don't walk away without trauma
Rangers who've gone Evil (or started Evil) and come back to the side of Good have each other's direct lines, Tommy Oliver, Karone, Trent Fernandez-Mercer, etc, all of them share a similar fear of suddenly turning evil again
Rangers do not like Zordon for his express need to put teenagers into a war that isn't even their's
#power rangers#power rangers in space#power rangers lost galaxy#power rangers lightspeed rescue#power rangers time force#power rangers wild force#power rangers ninja storm#power rangers dino thunder#power rangers spd#power rangers mystic force#power rangers operation overdrive#power rangers jungle fury#power rangers rpm#power rangers samurai#power rangers megaforce#power rangers dino charge#power rangers ninja steel#power rangers beast morphers#power rangers dino fury#power rangers 2017#headcanons#thoughts and headcanons#thoughts and rambles#trauma
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Hello! Can I request a Luck x Black bull Reader fanfiction where the reader is head over heels for him, but he's not really interested in romance. She often gives him cheesy pick up lines, and tries to flirt with him only to be met with a neutral reaction. But slowly, Luck begins to see how much she cares for him, whenever they go on missions and whenever she protects him. And he slowly starts to fall for her. Thank you so much for taking requests!! 🖤🖤
LUCK x reader
She fell first, he fell harder
. she tries her ultimate best to gain his attention, protecting him and using her ‘best’ pickup lines on him!
“dhdhd” is speech and ‘fhrhd’ is thinking!
no warnings.
“Y/N come on you know how Luck is!” Vanessa took pity on you, this was the a hundredth time Luck turned down your fruitless attempt at trying to flirt with him, “He’s just not interested at romance at all.”
“He will once I use this line!”
Vanessa could only shake her head at how stubborn you were being, it’s been over a year of your attempts.
You got up in a hurry once you heard the door to the base open; you knew it was him.
“LUUCKKK!!”
Even Gauche was rubbing his temple, knowing the outcome of what you were going to do.
Luck smiled when you came crashing down the stairs.
“Hey Y/N!”
“Luck, do you like raisins?”
Vanessa groaned, knowing what was going to be said.
“Hmm, I guess I do!”
You smirked looking back at the few members watching this play out, ‘I got this guys!!’
“Then.. how do you feel about a date!”
“I guess they’re quite nice too” Luck simply smiled and walked up the stairs in a rush, trying his best to conceal his reddening face.
… everyone looked at you in pity.
“I think it’s time you let that man go Y/N” Noelle pat your back and gave you a sad smile.
“NO” You stormed up following him to try another one of your stupid pickup lines, but we all know how that would turn out.
—
Yami knew what he was doing placing you and Luck on your fifth mission together. You were both sent to clean up after the mess he made and round boars up.
“This’ll be fun Y/N trust me!”
You sigh and keep your arms crossed, you’re running low on these pickup lines.
“Yayyy!!” You try to make the best out of this.
It’s been a few minutes since starting to round these boars up and you had the brightest idea to try again.
“Hey, hey Luck, did you just come out the oven?” You strike the boar with your magic and sit atop it.
Luck just giggles and after hitting the last boar, sits next to you.
“Because you’re hot” You looked at him hopefully.
“That one was a funny one!!” He didn’t want to acknowledge it, but his heart skipped a beat.
…
That was your last straw. It’s been coming up to a year and a half of your efforts in vain, it didn’t look like it was getting any closer to dreams coming true. Hopping off the boar, you sat down against the tree fed up.
“Yep. I’m sure you can handle the few that are left, goodluck Luck.”
He looked at you confused, but didn’t say anything in argument.
Luck went off and it had been a few minutes since he had been rounding the rest of the boars up.
But something was off.
You sensed someone with an overwhelming amount of mana nearby and that didn’t make sense considering the mission was supposedly near by a village in the forsaken realm.
You got up and went on a search for Luck.
“LUCCK”
“hey Y/N!” he just got done with the last boar.
“Did you also sense that mana?”
“Yeah, you too?”
“That’s not normal, we should go check it out”
“Never thought you’d ask!” Luck exclaimed.
Both you and Luck scouted the area, coming towards the source of mana. But you wanted to use this opportunity of silence -
“Hey Luck, have you ever had a crush?”
He giggled at that question, but he didn’t seem to happy, “Crush?! I’ve never felt that kind of thing before, I don’t think i’m even capable of feeling butterflies when I like someone”
He was lying. Of course he was. He feels it when he’s with you, although he would never admit it.
He’s been liking you since he’s realised your constant efforts of trying to protect him, since your constant attempts trying to go out with him.
He was planning on never telling you.
You paused in your place, watching him go onwards. Maybe Vanessa was right in thinking he wasn’t interested in romance, or maybe he just didn’t like you.
Not knowing how to feel, you slowed down letting Luck go first. It was getting closer to the open area near the village.
But at that moment, a strike of fireball magic was flashing towards Luck’s head.
It was instinct really, instinct for you to throw Luck out the way and for you to absorb the impact of it.
You’d die before letting Luck get hurt. Even though he might’ve not done the same.
“Y/N?!” His eyes flew open in shock and he rushed to your side. He heard a cackle coming out the bushes.
“What a shame, I wasn’t even striking for her!” The man in the cloak cackled.
Luck went silent.
‘why would she do that?’ he held onto you tight.
He got up, lightning sparking out of control in his hand.
“Yeah? well I’ll be striking for you.”
—
“Gosh this is bad!” Vanessa held her head in disappointment, staring down at your injured body covered in ointment.
Luck simply sat by you, head down next to your head.
“How’d you let this happen?”
“She threw herself in front of the fireball, for me.”
“She never gives up” she shook her head, “you damaged that man beyond full recovery too”
“He deserves it”
“Well then, make sure to also get some rest, you didn’t exactly get out unscathed either” Vanessa looked at him solemnly before shutting the door.
“… why would you do that, Y/N??”
“Because I like you, a lot”
Luck’s head shot up to look at your painful state just barely opening your eyes.
You groan, getting up and holding your head.
Luck stared at you, ‘Am I deserving of your love?’ he could only think.
“I don’t understand”
“What’s there to understand? I think you have a beautiful heart Luck, ever since I met you you’ve only given me a reason to look forward to my day, you make me happier.”
His eyes watered
“I would do anything for you” you pet his head.
Then and there, he realised how valuable he was to you and frankly how much you meant to him.
“Don’t ever do that again” he hugged you, not tight enough to hurt you but firm, “I’ll do my upmost best protecting you now”
“Can’t make any promises,” you snickered and hugged him tightly.
“I got him good! You should’ve seen his face when I kicked his ass, now he knows not to lay a fucking hand on you again - if he’s even capable enough to recover”
you were silenced.
“I thought I hated romance and love, maybe I was wrong about it” Luck gave his usual laugh and tucked you back to rest.
you were at a loss for words, mouth gaping like a fish.
“no more talking, you gotta recover so we can spar when you’re as good as new!” he grinned widely.
—
“No Noelle, I KNOW it’ll work this time!” You were determined that this attempt was going to be the finale, because it was going to work.
“I’ll have the tissues ready!” she really had no hope for you.
Vanessa giggled and hit you hard in the back.
“come on! I believe you got it this time!”
“The blind leading the blind…” Gauche mumbled.
Luck sped into the house after finishing his spar
“Hey hey Y/N!!”
He sped up and held your hand to his shirt.
“Can you feel my shirt?”
You were puzzled, raising your brow to Magna who followed behind him looking like he was preparing himself for the worst.
“Yeah?”
“You know what material it is?”
“cotton..?”
“Nah. Boyfriend material.”
..
you exploded red. Vanessa was cackling and Noelle and Magna could only shake their heads in disappointment. Finral was nodding in approval.
“And that! is how you pull girls!” Finral slapped Luck on his back.
Maybe your efforts weren’t in vain, Luck did realise his feelings for you.
“Hey Y/N? How about we spar?”
You were still lost for words yet again, but you smiled.
“Yeah, of course Luck”
#anime x reader#black clover x reader#luck x reader#luck x y/n#black clover#fanfic#oneshot#black clover oneshot#luck x yn oneshot#magna x reader#asta x reader#yami x reader#yami x yn#x reader#yn
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part 1 of how rubicon got written is here. this is part 2, aka the essay about etc.
the thing about the storyboarding/drafting process that there is no way to describe is how totally obsessed i was for the duration. afterwards i tweeted something like, this is the closest i've ever experienced to demonic possession. i would get up, write all day—like, all day—and go to bed. turn off the lights. then i would just lie wide awake in the dark with lines and scenes and dialogue scrolling through my head until i gave in and opened my notes app. i could not turn it off even if i wanted to. and i didn't want to, i was riding that streak as far as it would take me. because i couldn't look down, right? i could sense what i was attempting to do and anything other than total tunnel vision full speed ahead eyes on the prize would mean i had to acknowledge it.
(context of what made this possible: i was unemployed at the time.)
for the first ~50k or so i was afraid that at any minute i could falter. when i got to the nationals meltdown, that was when i knew i could do it. like, no matter what happened after that, i had the willpower and the chops and i knew where i was going. even if the streak died.
but it didn't. i wrote 100k in a little under 4 weeks. i've never experienced anything like that in my creative life.
—then obviously i had to get a new job and come back down to earth and it took 21 months to get from there to posting the epilogue. still. i will probably be chasing that high for the rest of my life. that was the part that like… made the rest of it possible. no matter how difficult or frustrating it was. that generated the roadmap.
i've talked about this before in comments but i had insanely strong opinions about what was "right" and what wasn't. sylvain's narrative voice was a huge part of that. it's inextricable from the content; it shaped the story; it is the story. for the first couple months it also made me an unhinged stylistic tyrant. if there was one single unnecessary word that struck me as inorganic, as existing solely to make the sentence more digestible or to convey information beyond the fourth wall, it had to go. i could not rest until it did.
once again: this is not generally the relationship i have with writing. lol. it's the demonic possession talking. this is why you have a ton of sentence fragments and stylistic tics and a refusal to let one single shred of information into the text that did not strike me as something sylvain would plausibly think or acknowledge he was thinking. and like, yeah. probably it didn't always make for the smoothest reading experience or the most satisfying narrative development. i'm dead certain there are people who picked this fic up and the bumps drove them out of their mind until they threw in the towel. i just didn't care.
part of that was a reaction to my own old style—you know, the discomfort of shedding old skin. i'd look at those early scene attempts and see all the habits and crutches i'd been trying to move away from over the last two years and double down on The Voice. but part of it… i would get early feedback that wasn't at all wrong, like "what if [clarifying narration]," "what if [more interaction]," and i'd just think, but that's not true. in exactly those words! which is crazy.
(this is why it was fortunate this was fanfiction i was writing for free, i didn't have to compromise my bonkers experience any more than i wanted to.)
to be clear this feeling didn't last two years. i was eventually able to edit like a normal person. it did last probably longer than ideal. and the point when i was no longer running on unleaded creative adrenaline was when i started to really struggle with the middle of the story. i had to make choices as a writer, instead of relying on the purity of my divine vision or whatever, and i second-guessed myself a lot. it was much easier to feel that absolute bone-deep certainty of Right and Wrong, True and False. and the thought of fucking up when i'd gotten so far was unbearable—like, being so close to making the thing in my head reality and then dropping the ball and breaking the suspension of disbelief.
distance also made it possible to perceive what i was doing and be like, jesus mer what the fuck are you doing. why are you devoting so much of your time to a hobby, why are you investing so much of your life in something you will never be able to truly share, why are you living in a hole with no one else in it. why are you putting yourself through the wringer to get it down "right." why does it matter if it's as good as it can be. why do you care. why is this worth it.
i assume this was pretty obvious before this post, but if not it must be now. this story isn't really about figure skating. for me it's about writing; who knows what it's about for you. i didn't sit down and think, great, felix will be a metaphor. that's just how it happens.
the experience of writing a novel for the first time: i'm saying this with my whole chest because at one point i wouldn't have, aloud. but what's the point in calling it anything else? i know exactly how much i invested in this. i'm the only one who can know. that's sort of the point.
here's a giant collage of the inside of my head. i made it for myself and i take it very seriously. not exactly groundbreaking to say this is the ultimate exercise in solipsism. when you're doing that—what greater gift is there than to have someone else meet you in exactly the same place. any writer would kill for the kind of responses this story has gotten, and i don't mean praise. i mean the close reads, the free response essays, the total and complete validation that this thing inside your head that only you can see is real, actually. when i say thank you, it's not for liking it or praising it—it's for taking it seriously. i loved this thing. i still love this thing. thank you for taking it seriously.
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Touka/Yoriko
Okay this isn't fanfiction (yet) but just little thoughts on their day to day lives :)
Even once Yoriko officially knows Touka is a ghoul and they're dating, Touka still goes to restaurants (not Anteiku Café) and will feed Yoriko food and buy her as much food as she wants
Touka makes Yoriko coffee every morning before they leave for work
TOUKA AND YORIKO SWAPPING CLOTHES AND SKIRTS
Yoriko incorporating cute rabbit patches or rabbit designs into her outfits
TOUKA AND YORIKO GETTING THEIR NAILS DONE TOGETHER (also them teaching Kaneki and Hide how to paint their nails)
This one especially hits hard but at home, Touka eventually becomes comfortable enough to eat in front of Yoriko and so they start having dinner together :( (this is like. WAY in the future.)
At their wedding (yes they get married because I say so) they wear opposite colour schemes. Touka's dress is black with silver linings and a purple lace while Yoriko has a more traditional white wedding dress
When they first start dating, Yoriko not-so-secretly loops pinkies with Touka or will 'trip' so Touka will hold her hand or hold onto her. Touka knows what's happening but decides to embrace it anyways and only calls Yoriko out on it once they're married
Since Touka can't eat human food, most of their dates consist of them staying in watching movies and falling asleep on the couch together. Yoriko LOVES running her hand through Touka's hair and uses it to reassure her whenever Touka might become anxious about Yoriko leaving or PTSD strikes
Touka trains Yoriko for battle in case anything similar happens to them like what happened to Nishiki and Kimi (although Tsukiyama would be hunted for sport if he ever tried anything like that again)
Okay I know by anime law none of the characters dye their hair BUT Yoriko dyeing Touka's hair and rebleaching it (in the same breath, Touka buying Yoriko cute headbands, head scarfs, hair pins, etc. and doing her hair before work)
Touka and Yoriko having lazy days where they just lay in bed reading to each other :(
Anyways I'm insane and I love them more than life itself! If anyone and I mean ANYONE says I made Touka 'too feminine' or 'she wouldn't wear a dress blah blah blah,' I will ignore your incorrect opinion and bite your ankles. Idk why the some people make Touka so masculine all of the time like she's a strong fem lead but she's also a girly girl who likes pink and rabbits like? Be fr
#tokyo ghoul#yoriko kuroiwa#touka kirishima#touka kirishima solos#touka is a lesbian idc argue with a wall#tokyo ghoul headcanon#touka kirishima headcanons
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Scrivener 3 to AO3 – updated export format (with download link) P1
EDIT 17.01.2023
There is now a second part to this post for more complex formatting such as centered text, bold text, strike-through, block quotes etc.
You can find Part 2 here. Note that you still need to either import my format or follow the steps in this post.
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I hope you find this guide and the provided export format to download useful! To enable me to make more such resources, and make them available for everyone, please consider supporting me via KoFi! I love sharing my stuff freely and don't want to paywall anything, but I also have to eat – every contribution helps and is greatly appreciated!
Hello, as probably everyone knows I adore Scrivener (my beloved) and use it for everything, including writing fanfiction. It has recently come to my attention that the approach I normally use to copy my text to AO3 (i.e. Copy as HTML and paste directly) does not work for Windows users (how rude), so here's an alternative.
The format presented here is based on this post – I just made some tweaks! So if you want to set up your own from scratch, follow those instructions there and then come back for the additional part. (Yes, I know, annoying, sorry – but why reinvent the wheel?)
NOTE: The instructions in that post will cause any em-dashes to be transformed into -- instead. If you want them to stay as they are in your Scrivener editor, do not check the option Convert "smart" punctuation to "dumb" punctuation.
ANYWAY – Why do we need another format if there is one? Well, while the described export format there is great, it doesn't take line-spacing into account. Which is what this here is for.
There are several parts to this post:
Tutorial / instructions on how to create the format from scratch (starting where the other post left off – do those steps first)
Tutorial / instructions on how to set up the section layouts so that it actually does The Thing™
A google drive link where you can download the format I made, because who has time to set up from scratch
Shall we? Let's go.
Setup from scratch, continuation
Okay so once you've done all the steps in this post, don't close the Format Settings (or save it and then right-click -> Edit Format it to reopen the settings). Instead, go to Styles. This is probably empty at this point. Click the + in the top right corner to create a new paragraph style.
I called mine "Regular Text" – it really doesn't matter, you can call it Frank if you feel like it. What does matter is the Paragraph prefix/suffix, because that's where we'll put the HTML code that handles line-spacing. Specifically, you'll want to put for the prefix and for the suffix. (I'd also unselect the two check-boxes at the bottom, you don't need a specific font or fontsize.) It should look something like this:
Now go back to Section Layouts and select Text Section. Click into the text box at the bottom; on the left in the Format bar you see the current style (probably No Style, as that is the default). Select the Style we just created (in my case "Regular Text") instead.
You can now save the format (again). We're not done though!
Assign Section Layouts
When you select your format, there's a good chance it'll have a yellow warning that you should assign section layouts – and even if it doesn't, better to double check.
Click Assign Section Layouts at the bottom. If there was a yellow warning, all section types are currently assigned to As-is, which means no Styles will be applied when you export – we don't want that. Find the section type that your text is in and select Text Section as the layout (probably Scene or Section – do both to be safe). If you want and have the patience you can do it for all section types, but for most of them (like Chapter Headings etc.) it doesn't really matter as long as the section types that your actual fic sits in are properly assigned. (If you're unsure, check the section types in the main compile menu.)
Once all the relevant section types are assigned to the Text Section layout, you can click OK and you're good to go. This should export your fic with basic HTML code including and around each paragraph for line-spacing and italics.
Now, while it isn't difficult, setting up a format from scratch does take a minute.
Import an existing format
Go open your compile menu. At the bottom left there should be three little dots; click there and select Import Formats.
Select your file and import it. When you do that, you'll get a pop-up message asking you whether you want it to be a Project Format or import it to "My Formats" – choose My Formats. That way it will be available in all your Scrivener files on that device, not just this specific project.
"But V, where is the bloody format now?"
Right, yes. Here's a link to download my finished format that you can then import as just explained.
❗️IMPORTANT: After importing the format, you still have to assign the section layouts!!!
If you don't, it will not apply the Style that generates the and around each paragraph. If you skipped everything above (very relatable), please scroll back up to the part titled Assign Section Layouts and follow these steps after you've imported the thing.
If you have questions (about this, or just Scrivener in general), feel free to ask! (Also if you're on any of my Discords, there's a full-fledged ADHD friendly tutorial in most of them – poke me there and I'll link it for you. Have fun.)
And that's it! I hope this helps someone save a bit of effort.
–––
Edit (2022/07/20): I've made more Scrivener tutorials!
A continuously updated Masterlist with all my Scrivener 3 tutorials can be found here.
Part 2 | Tutorial Masterlist | KoFi
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Fanfic writer ask game, sorry that this is a long list:
🥺 Is there a certain type of moment or common interaction between your characters that never fails to put you in your feels?
🤡 What's a line, scene, or exchange you've written that made you laugh?
🛒 What are some common things you incorporate in your fics? Themes, feels, scenes, imagery, etc.
🙋♀️ Do any irl people know you write fanfic?
🌞 Do you have a preferred time of day to write?
💌 How do you feel about comments and feedback?
💖 What made you start writing?
✅ What's something that appears in your fics over and over and over again, even if you don't mean to?
🧐 Do you spend much time researching for your stories?
🤲 Would you please share a snippet of a wip?
Any parent-child dynamic, especially of the found family variety, makes me go weak at the knees. Something about the unconditional love of parents, man. It just gets to me. So like any of Shrub and Xornoth's interactions in the Wolf Mother.
The chapter after the full moon detailing the aftermath, where Shrub learns that Xornoth jumped off the balcony and gradually grows more and more horrified as she realizes that once this kid actually becomes more comfortable being himself she is going to have her hands full? Had me dying.
I'm sure you'll notice hurt comfort is my BRAND. A lot of my works have themes of healing, dealing with complex emotions and trauma, and reconciliation, and put a heavy emphasis on deep interpersonal connections between the characters.
A good deal of my family does, actually. They've known about my writing ever since I've started. I've never let them, you know, read any of it, but like yeah they are aware of it. And as for friends, a fair number of my friends are also consumers and producers of fanfiction, so yeah they all know.
Not really? Whenever the motivation strikes. Which just so happens to be... right before I tell myself I'll go to bed.
Love love LOVE!! I adore hearing what you guys think of my stories, all of your ideas and suggestions and predictions, it's so so so wonderful to see that so many people read my stuff and like it, it's so surreal.
I had a really vivid image for a story in my head and was frustrated that I didn't have the art skills to draw it out. So I turned to using my words as an alternative. I've been doing this for about 5 years now.
Characters fearing being hurt in some capacity, only to be treated with kindness. This usually takes the form of a child character who is used to cruelty being adopted into a loving family, but also fairly frequently shows up as an antagonist I'm attempting to redeem expecting some sort of harsh punishment for their actions and instead being faced with, if not forgiveness, then at the very least a willingness to hear them out and a demonstration of the heroes' goodness.
Depends. Sometimes I'll completely wing it, like me not doing any research for my pirate au and just going by vibes alone, but for some specific things as well as topics I want to be able to give an accurate and respectful depiction of (such as disabilities, different cultures, religions, etc.) I'll go a little more in depth with my efforts.
Snippet beneath the cut:
Having wings was… different.
Xornoth wasn’t quite sure how he felt about them yet. Growing another pair of limbs overnight wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience, to say the least. He could only remember vague flashes, a searing pain in his back that wouldn’t abate no matter what he did. He remembered a hand in his hair and concerned voices surrounding him. But other than that… nothing.
He’d faded in and out of reality the entire time, horrific flashbacks so lifelike Xornoth almost could have sworn they were real plaguing his every moment. But the one thing he knew for sure was that his mom had been there the whole time.
- The first couple of paragraphs from chapter fifteen of the Wolf Mother
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hey do that tag game and tag zom mom
Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you’ve written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love ♥️
sent: december 16th 2022. once again, i am the queen of finding old posts. and you all said i should tag things so i can find them later, ha.
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'NEVERMORE' we all knew would come out on top. this is THE brainworm. the piece de resistance. the swansong except i'm not quitting or dying when it's done. hopefully. i haven't told anyone but i'm very aware this could blow out to 200 or 300k if i finish it, and it's. i just love it. unfettered creativity etc. Nevermore is based on the stray kids cinematic universe, the music videos and performances that all connect to tell a story, but even if you don't know stray kids, i think you can read it - it's about a group of boys (a band? a group of musicians?) stumbling into another world that is made of music and controlled by a strict government, and their journey back home to their own time and place, and the things that are left in their wake. it's huge and it's long and it's the first time i've reached 70k and still felt like i have a hand on all the plot lines without leaving plot holes in my wake.
'The Gone And The Gathered' is a zombies fic set in an au where zombietown is treated as an internment camp by Seabrook, also based on ghettos/concentration camps from WW2. Zombies are used to run the power plant and supply electricity and water to Seabrook and have never left the town; werewolves are known wild entities, and some have been captured as they are Useful in maintenance in the power plant. The story follows teenaged Wanda and Zoey through a series of discoveries about their world and the ripple effect this has on Zombietown and the world beyond the walls that they have never seen - and it's about staying quiet and accepting your lot in life, or daring to strike out and create a better future for yourself and your people, even if it might mean sacrificing yourself.
'Turn Your Back On Mother Nature' is a MCU Eternals fic, focused on Druig and Makkari. It contains five canon compliant scenes that, given my own director's cut, I would have added to the movie - not meant to change anything, but just meant to complement the plot and the character's own individual storylines and give more depth and meaning. I feel like I really excel at working within the boundaries given by a certain media and it's one of the main things that keeps me coming back to the challenge of writing fanfiction, and I'm so proud of the job that I did on this - it's well written, my character work really stands out, and I thought the scenes really worked to capture each idea I was trying to express. mwah good job roo.
'To Go Beyond Your Borders' is my pokemon comfort fic. It follows Angie, the champion of Sinnoh but also a disgraced public figure, and a journey of self-discovery as she runs away to Galar to compete in the Gym Challenge there. I started writing this in my depression/anxiety era, and in a lot of roundabout ways a lot of the themes/Angie's struggles are based on challenges I've faced in the last few years, so this fic is. Really cool, and something I keep coming back to as I really like the story I built for it. If more mature pokemon journeys is something you're interested in, this is the fic for you - and the composition of it, with social media interlaced with traditional storytelling, is so fun, I love doing it and coming up with the different bits and where they'll make the most impact. This is just so fun to work on and more people should read it so I make it more of a priority cause seeing this finished one day is going to make me so happy.
'if only we knew (the things we know)' and it's sequel, 'and the chasm grows', two of my long zombies stand-alones, are the fics i always think of first when asked what writing I'm most proud of. The themes are big - death, and knowing that you're going to die soon (cancer related themes, though this isn't about cancer), and facing down the idea of genocide of your entire race. They're very dark, as they have to be, and they're very hopeless, and whenever the odd reader comes along they tell me that they cried, and yet I think I managed to find a little bit of warmth in each, the strings of community and family and comfort that hold on until the very end. I specifically recommend the final scene of chasms, which i wrote in a blinding flash of inspiration and will never be able to recreate - it sticks with me even now, and while I can't remember certain other scenes from these fics, I will never forget that ending, and the way it made me as the writer feel when i finished and looked back on it.
#disney zombies#zombies 2#mcu#eternals#mcu eternals#druig#makkari#drukkari#pokemon#pokemon swsh#pokemon oc#pokemon trainer#pokemon fic#zombies wyatt#wyatt lykensen#fic recs#roo writes
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for the fanfic writer ask - 6, 21, 28, 33, 44! :)
Yay, @daryfromthefuture gave me some more Fanfic Writer Asks! I have something to do before making a bill calendar today! Thank you!! 😁
6. If you had to delete one of your stories and never speak of it again, which would it be and why?
Mm, I'll stick to my AO3 account for this (because there are numerous at FFNet lol). I'm so proud of everything I've written because it was a necessary stepping stone to where I am today, but if there's one I'd delete off AO3 right now, it'd probably be Survival is Insufficient. The idea was really off-the-cuff and unplanned, and I think I could do better by reworking it into something different or larger in scale.
21. Tell me about another writer(s) who you admire? What is it about them that you admire?
Construction-wise, I really like Dan Brown (of the Robert Langdon series). I know he's divisive, but I love his utilization of short chapters to keep things fast-paced, and he's good at ending a chapter on a cliffhanger that makes me have to read the next chapter. I love that I don't find myself wondering, "when will this chapter end??" because of those two things.
Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio are two screenwriters that I adore. I love their storytelling, and I didn't even realize they were responsible for some of my favorite films until ten years ago — Aladdin, Pirates of the Caribbean, National Treasure. I listened to their writers' commentary on the first Pirates movie right when I was getting serious about writing as a teenager, and their word became gospel (or, at least, guidelines 😉).
And if Vince Gilligan and Taika Waititi could just SHARE some of their secrets with me, that'd be great.
28. What is something you wished you’d known before you started posting fanfiction?
It is thankless. It is SO thankless. I still struggle to remember that sometimes. Not everyone who reads is going to comment or kudos or bookmark, even if they're your biggest fan. You'll never know, and you just have to do it for yourself. Maybe you DO write something that takes your fandom by storm, and that's awesome! Stay humble. Let your work speak for itself. Don't say you suck at summaries, don't beg for reviews, don't say you won't update until you get X number of reviews… let your work be what compels readers to comment, kudos, and bookmark, not your panhandling and need for big stats. It doesn't work that way. If you're not enjoying it, you're doing it wrong.
33. What’s the biggest compliment you’ve gotten?
When you write for a well-loved, small, protected fandom like Back to the Future and introduce an OC, you're rocking the boat. And I knew I was, but I wanted to try it and see how successfully I could pull it off. To my surprise, the ultimate compliment has been given to me by many: my OC blended seamlessly into canon, stood on her own, and actually added to the story. "I forgot she wasn't in the films" was probably the biggest compliment I've ever received. That was the "I did it, and I've got to keep living up to the expectations" moment.
44. What is the last line you wrote?
The last line I wrote would have been in my notebook last night while making notes for Once Upon a Time in the East. And it was: "You should have stayed dead."
Thanks so much for indulging me! I had lots of fun answering these, so feel free to drop more numbers in my inbox if the mood strikes! 😎
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Andrea, love! I want to know more. :)
1, 2, 6, 23, 34, 56, 69 & 77.
Hiii my dear friend thank you for asking :)
Do you daydream a lot before you write,or go for it as soon as the ideas strike?
I daydream a lot! Sometimes i write complete scenes in my head which is kind of dumb to not at least make notes because sometimes it's all gone and forgotten again lol
2. Where do you get your fic ideas?
Usually they come out of nowhere. Like when i am doing the dishes or cleaning or something. But i feel like it's my brain processing things i read or watched and then it makes up stories. :)
6. What's the last line you wrote?
It's the last line of chapter two of Something for Someone. I am gonna start with chapter three today! The line :
"I'm here Buck. I'm here."
23. Is writing the beginning,middle,or end of the story easiest?Hardest?
The hardest for me is the middle because i feel like i struggle with the storytelling and character developement. I don't know if storytelling is the right word i just want to make it all make sense and i always hope that the characters reactions etc are real and relatable. The easiest is the beginning - once i started lol.
34. How much of your personal life/experience do you include in your fics?
I would say not much. I would rather say i write sometimes what i wish would happen in my life. Not the awful things of course but i kind of tend to write characters and stories that are braver than me. If that makes sense at all.
56.Are there any fics that you would change or rewrite if given the chance?
Sometimes i wanna change everything again lol. I feel like my writing is not emotional enough. I love to cry over things i read. Maybe i just can't cry over stuff i write and others can. I don't know :)
69.What are your favourite fics at the moment?
Ahhhh i wanted that question haha!!
I read so many amazing fics lately! My number one at the moment is Baghdad Waltz by Dreadnought ( i mentioned it like a million times already).
I love:
Come Loose your dogs upon me by powerfulowl(StuckyFlangst)
Ruined me for any other by Becassine
Sterile needles for Adrenaline Junkies by lordeofstucky
A Company Man by mambo
The Tipping Point by unicornpoe (ahhh!!!)
The Motions series by Nonymos
I could go on and on... i just mention a few fav WIP's and then i'm done lol:
I was alone,I took a ride by unremarkable
In the nude by lordeofstucky
The very thought of you by Nospheratt
When Law is Lawless by Kellyscams
and of course i cannot wait for the next chapter of
you turn the jaded into new <3
77. Why do you enjoy writing fanfiction?
I love to spend time with my beloved characters and write what i would have loved to see in a movie/show. I love different universes like Modern etc. and to be honest our fandom is so much more talented as any Marvel writer lol.
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Writer Tag Game
@ceph-the-ghost-writer tagged me for this game (thank you!)
I am an absolute mess when it comes to writing but I will try my best to hopefully make sense and explain in as little words as possible.
I’ll go ahead and leave this as an open tag since tumblr is giving me pains. If you do this game, please tag me so I can read it!
One thread that runs through all these questions is that it depends on the WIP
Do you write in order?
Eh, more or less? Not always. Sometimes I have the itching to write a random scene in particular, especially if the inspiration strikes, and I will scramble to write it down. This is especially true if it's a newer idea. But once I turn an idea or a thought into a story I want to write I will try and buckle down and start from the beginning.
From there, I usually do my best to write in order. Sometimes I skip some scenes while doing so due to writer’s block or not knowing what will happen and wanting to get to the next point before I lose my flow. But these are usually smaller and more transitional sub-plot scenes.
Do you start with something in particular?
And here’s a knot in the thread; it depends. It matters on the inspiration and idea. A lot of my story ideas I get from my dreams as I am a very vivid dreamer. Inspiration can come from anywhere, after all.
I’ll talk a little about my current WIPs (and some hiatus WIPs) as examples.
Waking into Divinity was a dream I had about a person (it was foggy who they were) had a demon pop out of nowhere and tell them that they were destined to be his soulmate. The person, of course, didn’t believe the demon and the demon had to prove himself.
The idea changed a little bit from that dream, but the basis is still there. Rylie is an average millennial who meets a demon, Casrath, who says he is their soulmate. Romantic comedy and angst ensue.
Sometimes I like to look at media I hate to get ideas. Sounds counterproductive, I know, but a lot of books I hate, I hate them due to how promising the premise is, and I want to do better.
For example, Soft Touches, Godless Hands is my own version of an angel sent from Heaven to Earth to try and fight back the growing darkness that has been plaguing the world. I stole the premise from that god-awful book series Halo.
My version is completely different, but the basic premise is the same.
Sometimes my fanfiction can grow way out of proportion to the point where it becomes original. I’m not talking just AUs either. The Tales of Ozoarth was originally fanfiction, and I changed it to original fiction after I wrote out all the canon characters in favor of my OCs at one point in the story. Even the locations changed due to this as all the OCs went back to where they originally came from. It had transitioned from being fanfic to being something... not fanfic so I continued on that line of thought.
14 years later? It's a different beast and story altogether.
How fully formed does your writing come out the first try?
Another thread; it depends. It also matters if it’s a good writing day or a bad writing day.
I’m gonna go ahead and link my pilot for Osiris’ Trials here (link will take you to AO3, it is an 18+ story)
This pilot is the first draft. I did minor edits, such as grammar and line editing. But not much else. There are still some rough parts in the story but overall, I doubt much will change when I decide to continue writing this story. I really like what I wrote for the pilot.
However, sometimes I know I’ll need to go back with heavier editing. Tal’rith (link will take you to AO3, it is also 18+) is a lot more rough I think. There are several missing scenes and scenes that will need to be shortened as its a little too long for what it needs to be I think. However the base idea is there. Again, this story only went through grammar and line editing.
My writing style tends to fluctuate a little, so some WIPs are easier for me to write than others and will need less work.
How many drafts do you go through?
Well... it depends. As many as it takes for me to be happy with the story and writing. Usually my drafts need to be edited for the actual content, not the writing, as I change the story and plot. That takes a lot of time.
And it is something I haven’t successfully been able to manage as I can barely finish first drafts....
Shorter stories, snippets, and one shots usually only get one round of editing. Mainly grammer/line editing. Sometimes I add in scenes or take them away too, however.
Tell me about your process?
I think if you’ve gotten this far you know it depends.
My process for longer stories... does not work for me all that much and I am still trying to figure out how to write longer novels.
I’ve been working on my D&D novella, though, and its going pretty well, so I’ll use it as an example.
After I get my basic idea/premise (see above, lol) I flesh it out the idea with world building, more characters, etc. After I feel I have a story I can tell with the idea, I start thinking of the different situations and conflicts that can arise in the world.
For Rane and Korzan’s Fantastical Adventures (name pending), it’s set in 5e, so the world building is mainly done for me. Rane is my original character and Korzan is my partner’s. Korzan is also from a different edition of D&D, so first we thought of a way he gets misplaced.
Magical accident. Easy. Both Rane and Korzan have ties to the Abyss, and the Abyss works in weird ways.
Rane is a monster hunter in this version of herself. Korzan is misplaced and wants to go back to his world. Rane wants to run away from her past and keep busy and keep her nose clean.
Lots of wants. But their wants don’t align with what they actually need. I enjoy interpersonal character conflict, so I try and give all my characters a want vs a need.
Rane and Korzan both know quite a bit about abyssal magic and the abyss. I put a pin in that.
From here I think of an external conflict that can bring out the internal conflict as well as give the characters a conflict between themselves.
We went with zombies. Rane and Korzan gets attacked by zombies
Alright, so here is where we get out first conflict. Rane is lawful good and a go-getter. She wants to find the source of the zombies. Korzan does not as it is not his problem.
Rane wins the first conflict and they find the town getting attacked.
Okay, now we have a mystery. Time for the next conflict for the characters; the way they want to figure out this mystery.
From this point, I usually skip the middle of the story and get to the end. I like to figure out where I want to go before filling in the middle.
So my partner and I both wrote the ending of the story, and from there we work backwards. After we work backwards, we go through the story again chronologically so we know all the pieces fit together and make sense, especially the conflict-resolution, both external and internal.
This is a shorter/smaller story that will be novella length at most (as long as I don’t overwrite it....) but so far this newer-ish process is working for me, and I may end up fleshing it out and using it in the future for my longer projects. We shall see!
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Hey just asking tips on how making a good fan fiction or just a story in general Im what really on your opinion makes a good yugioh plot and whole story just curious of your prospective
Honestly the best advice I can tell you is 1) write a lot and 2) read a lot.
Fanfiction is really no different than writing anything else, except that you already have a cast of characters and a setting to work with however you'd like. So a lot of the rules for good fic writing are the same as the ones for good writing in general.
If you want to write good stories, you have to read a lot of good stories, and learn from them. Just like actors should watch plays, and programmers should play games, to figure out what works for them and what doesn't, you should read as much as you can, as widely as you can. Read fanfiction, read published books, read news articles and blog posts, read short stories, read long series, listen to podcasts, play D&D, roleplay, read classics, read graphic novels, read romance novels, play video games and pay attention to their stories. Any time you spend familiarizing yourself with storytelling is time well spent towards becoming a writer.
More than just reading, though, you should also take at least a few minutes to analyze what you read. I know to a lot of people that's gonna sound awful, like English class or something, but it doesn't have to be. Again, I'm not telling you to annotate everything you read. What I am saying is that if something in a story really strikes you, just stop for a minute. Think about it, try to think about why you like it. Did you like the vivid imagery of the line? Was it a really good metaphor? Did it do something really good to establish a character or a plot twist? You don't have to write a paper about it, but take a second just to think about it. Maybe keep a notebook where you write down your favorite quotes from the stories you read. In this way, things like overanalyzing fiction that we do all the time here on Tumblr is actually really helpful, because it's helping you dig into characters, into plot ideas and concepts, and learn from them.
And then the final step is really...I mean, you can't really get out of this one. You have to write a lot. You have to just start writing.
I read someone say once that your first million words is just practice. So if it helps you to think about it that way, please do. You don't have to write something earth shatteringly good your first try. If you're too scared of writing poorly, you'll never write at all. So write. Write bad stuff until the good stuff comes out. Write terrible poetry, write clunky dialogue, write too-long descriptions. You don't have to share any of it, but I do recommend that you keep it, so that you can keep track of what kind of a writer you've been.
Write things that are fun for you, even if you think they might be cliche, or silly. Write self-insert fanfic, write Mary Sues, write all sorts of things. Find a book about writing at the library and do some writing exercises. Write a journal. If something is too boring for you to write right now, then just skip it. Yes you can, even if you're a linear person (I am too, but forcing myself to skip scenes that aren't working and go back to them was the greatest thing I ever did for myself as a writer). Share only what you want to share.
If writing is something you want to do as a hobby, then you don't have to go any further than this. You can have a rich, fulfilling writing life just by doing those two things: reading and writing.
If you're really serious about writing, though, you might want to take a step forward and get some constructive critique. This can be in the form of a professional writing class or workshop, a close group of friends who proofread each other's work, or a family member you give your story to so they can look it over. Taking critique can be extremely hard, and that's okay. I fully admit that I left some workshops with my teachers in college and went out to the college green to cry. So if you want critique, look for: someone you trust to be honest with you, but not cruel, who is willing to meet you where you are and understand what you're trying to do with the story, and what will help you make it the best it can be, not what they think it should be. Then when you get critique, take a deep breath, examine it, and really think about if it makes sense for your work or not. Sometimes it doesn't, and that's okay. You can discard it. Sometimes it does make sense, and it feels bad to cut something you liked, but it makes the story better. That's okay too.
But honestly, critique is a whole other ball game, so maybe I'll save that for another post. I've already rambled on for quite a bit.
Really, in the end, the tl;dr is that writing a fanfiction is the same as anything else. It's about putting in the work, and finding what makes you happy to create. I can't tell you what plot to come up with, or what's going to resonate with you. I can suggest checking out some books on writing and outlining from a variety of sources (Save the Cat is a favorite of mine, but there's some very valid criticism of it as a system, so it's not for everyone's writing style). But I can't write the story that's all yours. You have stories in you and if you want to bring them to life, you can do it! I send you all the support and vibes in the world.
That was really long! I hope something of it was useful to you. If you have any other questions, I can always do my best to answer them. But in the end, it's up to you! Like all creative pursuits, writing is going to be very personal to you. There is no one right way to do it. So go out and just start doing it. You're ready now, even if you don't think you are.
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1, 13 and 20 for the fanfiction writing asks.
HI!!!!!! Thanks for the ask!!!!!!!
1. Do you daydream a lot before you write, or go for it as soon as the ideas strike? I daydream sooooo much. It might be a problem tbh. Good thing I'm gonna be going into therapy soon! If I could just remember the number....BUT ANYWAY! I usually daydream about stuff I'd like to write before writing it down. For example, recently I have been watching How To Train Your Dragon again and again because it's one of my favorite movies. I put it in my top 5. So I've been daydreaming a lot about one of my OCs having a dragon and what kind of adventures they could go on. Sometimes, after a very long daydream, I write the idea down and add on to it later as more ideas come. That's my usual routine. Though, I have written down ideas as soon as they pop into my head, but those are usually rushed and not very detailed. Sometimes it's only one line, like, "Nolan (an OC of mine) but with a sword", and that's it. My writing method is not "one way is the right way", but if yours or anyone else's is, then that's great! Everyone writes differently, I wouldn't expect everyone to be the same as me. :)
13. Do you listen to music while you write? If yes, what have you been listening to recently? I do! If I'm being honest, I always listen to music. I need it to get through my day. A lot of times when I write, I go on YouTube and select a mix playlist I have saved and listen to that as I write. (For those who don't know, if you select a song and put on a mix with that song being the first, YouTube automatically makes a playlist full of songs you like/have listened to recently/are similar to the first song in the playlist! It's really great and once I zone into my work, I don't really care about what's playing anyway.) Recently, I have been putting on my mix of World's Smallest Violin by AJR. That song is such a vibe and every song that follows is amazing.
20. Do you prefer writing AUs or canon fics? OOF this is a hard choice. I love both, but if I have to decide...AUs. They're just so much fun! Taking characters you know and love and putting them in other situations and other worlds and seeing where it would take them it just, ugh. Chef's kiss. Amazing. I recently started working on a Teen Wolf x Sleeping Beauty AU, which happens to be my second Teen Wolf that has Sleeping Beauty in it as pointed out by my lovely partner aka the love of my life @peachesandcows, and like......I just really taking characters I know and love, my own or not, and changing the story to something I want them in. It's fun.
Thanks for the asks! Send me an ask from the same list!
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For the fanfic ask game: J (for MPD), K, M, and R :)
J: Write or describe an alternative ending to Missing and Presumed Dead
I actually originally meant to end it shortly after Luke gets rescued. He's recovering, he's happy with his dad, Leia is tentatively willing to work with Vader to overthrow the Empire as long as the Rebels get a seat at the table in the formation of the aftermath, and Vader decides he cares more about his kids than the Empire, so he's willing to do whatever necessary to make them happy and healthy. But then I realized I'd set up the breadcrumbs to continue that plotline (with a LOT more messiness) that still fit the "Luke pretending to be dead" thing. Originally the Alliance would have known Luke was alive, too, much earlier than they did. I think my current ending is much better, though it meant more hard work.
K: What’s the angstiest idea you’ve ever come up with?
Ok. So this wasn't technically fanfiction. This was a roleplay I did with a friend for years. In it, my main character has like a family with a bunch of young kids. He ends up sacrificing himself to save one of them, but then when his family strikes a bargain to bring him back, he ends up bring brought back as a baby. This was great for my main characters dad, because he never got to raise his son (long story), so he got a chance to raise him, but his wife and kids were forced to watch their dad grow up. Part of the deal was also that they couldn't tell their dad that he was their dad until he was an adult, and by the time their dad was an adult, (this family became immortal at a certain age, kinda like a fey, it's again, a long story) he got his prior memories back, and had to deal with trauma of being there, but not being able to BE there, of putting his wife in a situation where she was forced to fend for herself and their kids, and oh, all of his now adult kids have trauma and some of them really don't trust forming a relationship with him again, and they're also adults and he struggles with coming to terms with matching who they are in his brain with who they are now. He basically had to refind himself while also bridging his new self with his old self and that ended up being far more complicated and traumatic than I thought when I started that plot line. Otherwise, Fracture is up there for sure. That fic is dark as hell, but I thought I'd give an idea I know you haven't read and will never read :P
M: Got any premises on the back burner that you’d care to share?
I've shared some before, but...hm. Now that DVGTT is wrapping up, I'm thinking about new crack stories to do. There's Luke becoming an actual drug dealer to be like his dad, only for his dad to find out and do Canadian-worthy PSA ads to try to get his son to stop meanwhile Luke is like "wow these ads are getting so specific lol (sells more drugs)". There's a podcasting AU, or like. Space twitch streaming AU, maybe. Idk, we'll see what happens! (I'm also super open to suggestions, I'm pretty chill when it comes to crack fics).
R: Are there any writers (fanfic or otherwise) you consider an influence?
You and @azalea-scroggs inspired me to do Dad Vader fanfic. @kittandchips, @silvereddaye, @maedre13 and queenslx99 were massive influences, as well once I started writing. As for non-fanfic authors... so, when I was a kid, I loved Meg Cabot. I loved her sass. I was influenced to write by Final Fantasy 10, but Meg Cabot was the first author I tried to be like. Then, later, Cinda Williams Chima, and I also really loved Rick Riordan even though I was above his age group by the time I read the Percy Jackson series, but I loved how he made mythology so accessible to a younger audience and as a writer, that fascinated me (unfortunately his website is full of QA's geared towards kids, and not really writing-craft related, but I'd still love to pick his brain about that). I also love the way Sarah J Maas writes, and I identify heavily with her writing process, but lately I've struggled to read her stuff for various reasons. Also, Natsuko Ishikawa is probably my current influence, and you'd only know who she is if you played FF14 and got to the Shadowbringers and Endwalker expansions. Trust me, she's brilliant.
Thanks for the ask, my friend!
Send me an a fanfic ASK!
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ODDITY (1/??)
☾Don't tell me the sky is the limit when there are footprints on the moon.☽
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
The Autobots and deceptions had been at war for what felt like an eternity, and the deceptions were tired of losing. A stroke of genius compels Megatron to send his most loyal to search the planet for worthy humans to aid them in crushing the Autobot forces once and for all. Enter a small group of online friends who could never have anticipated that their compelling personalities and strong bonds would set them up as prime targets for an alien warlord.
Chapter 1...Where Hearts Roam
Hell yeah! I'm publishing my bad transformers Prime fanfiction on Tumblr! you can also find this disaster on Wattpad, Quotev & Royal Road.
Patience with how your heart wanders,
you will find your way
-Butterflies rising
☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾
The Nevada desert stretched on for an eternity, and Camille Everest was once again grateful that she had taken up LanternLady's offer. The SUV she had been given was a bit different from her motorbike, but at least she could keep out of the scorching heat. Though she still kept an eye on the road behind her, past the black bike in the trailer and out into the open road, half expecting to see police lights barreling down, hot on her tail.
It wasn't that she didn't trust her anonymous online benefactor, but when you've never actually heard the woman's voice without a modulator, let alone seen her face, and then have a top of the range SUV waiting for you in Las Vegas after one mention of a trip to see your grandmother, and not to mention the thousand dollars added to your bank account to fund said trip, things get suspicious.
"Your not still worried about the cops, right?". Oh yeah, there was a detail she had forgotten about. She was on the phone with LanternLady. "I told you, the cars one of mine. There's nothing illegal about it"
It wasn't that she didn't appreciate the car, but something wasn't right, and Camille's intuition was never wrong. "And the thousand?"
"I'm sorry, I wasn't aware that making sure my friend was well equipped was a crime. Maybe il just take it all back, leave you in the desert all alone, just you, your motorbike, and half a dozen bags-"
"Ok! Ok! I'm sorry", Camille couldn't contain her laughter, and neither could Lantern. "Thank you for the car, my mysterious benefactor". It was a common jab, nothing ill held in it, customary for a joke shared among friends, even friends made online.
"Oh shut up, Mangoo, it's the least I could do." Mangoo, her online alias. She had been using it for long enough that her real name started to sound odd. "Besides, I wasn't going to let you drive your motorbike an hour away with six bags tied on." Camille had to admit, the idea, as bad as it was, had crossed her mind once or twice during the flight to Vegas. Honestly, she had lost count in-between the screaming baby and arguing parents.
And then another terrible thought crossed her mind. "Hey Lantern?"
"Yes"
"No one's ever seen your face." Camille moved her blond hair behind her ear, adjusting her sunglasses. "Have they?"
LanternLady went silent, a quietness that seemed to stretch on for eternity. Long enough that Camille wondered if she would ever reply. Until, after a century of silence, the line crackled as Lantern cleared her voice. "No. And if it's all the same to you, Mangoo, I would like to keep it that way"
"Right. Sorry", Camille stammered as she turned back to the road stretching endlessly out around her, the Nevada plateaus like watchtowers, guarding a kingdom of small towns and derelict hopes. The dessert was endless, and for a moment, Camille lost herself in her fear. If she swerved suddenly, striking that rock, would she die on impact? Would someone come looking for her? Who would think to check up on her grandmother, her last true family? Would her neighbour think to continue looking after her cat?
The little tabby monster had to be left in Washington, and while Duck was relatively good with long rides, he had never liked planes. When Camille had rescued him from a local shelter, they had speculated that since the airport had called them about a cat, his owners had forgotten him and no one was sure if he had even been sedated.
"Mangoo?"
"Sorry. I was thinking"
"I could tell"
A sudden beep shocked the two women out of their hazy state, a beep that signified another guest had joined the call.
"Hey Tim-Tam"
"Lantern. Mangoo. How are my two favourite ladies doing?", LanternLady sighed at Tim-Tam-Jesus' playful flirting. It wasn't that he meant anything by it (she hoped), it was just his default setting. For as long as Camille had known him, which admittedly wasn't long, his default setting always seemed to be on Flirt. And he didn't just flirt with her and Lantern.
God, the mum of the group had gotten so used to Tim-Tams antics that the two men had a running joke about it. And whenever they got into it, it was a show nobody wanted to miss.
BaseDropWhat had quickly gotten over her flushed state and embarrassment whenever she joined the call, and Tim-Tam had decided to make it a personal challenge to fluster her.
And 1000Mistaks...no one was 100% sure that she could be embarrassed. Another personal challenge that Tim-Tam-Jesus had taken with gusto.
As for LanternLady? Well, she was left a mess every time, if her quick muting had anything to say about it.
"Fastest Mute in the west. Anyway. Hello Mangoo my dear, how's the drive going?"
Camille had to laugh at the remark as she scared the horizon for the little town of Jasper. "Good. Good. Though I should be able to see the town by now. But maybe it's just because I'm in a car this time, it's slower than my bike"
"My car is not slow!"
"Oh Lantern, my love. Your back"
"You...You shut it!"
"Oh?"
"No more flirting for you!"
"But my dear, I do love flirting with you-"
"No! No more!"
"Come on Tim-Tam, give Lantern a break for a second"
"Thank you Mangoo-"
"You can fluster her after she's calmed down"
"Deal"
"Who's side are you on!"
"That is yet to be seen-OOP!"
"You right Mangoo?"
"Yeah, I'm fine, I just hit a pothole. Sorry Lantern"
"Well guess what? I'm going to make you pay for that"
"Hey Mangoo, you sound really muffled"
"Yeah, give me a second". Camille reached across the dash for her phone, which had fallen precariously on the passenger seat, threatening to drop to the floor.
"Lantern, there's no need to be petty"
"That was an expensive car, that you very much!"
Camille groaned as she righted herself, taking one last glance at the road around her. The phone had fallen down under the seat, and as she reached down, searching for the device, she failed to notice the drone charging towards her.
"I'm joking, by the way. I won't make you pay for the damages"
"You better be-"
An almighty scream cut Tim-Tam-Jesus' reply short as Camille was thrown forward, her head hitting the dash with a dull thud. The desert outside the car had darkened exponentially as Camille cried out in pain.
"MANGOO!"
"MANGOO!"
Her phone spluttered, grasping on to life and letting her friends hear her choking coughs and sickening wheezes before it gave out.
And Camille was left all alone, watching through black spots as the car's roof was torn apart under frighteningly long fingers. And like it was destroying tissue paper, the great, faceless metal beast peered down at her broken body, nimble spears curling around her waist as her vision faded to black.
☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾
#transformers#transformers prime#tfp#my writing#fanfic writing#Future G/T i guess?#Online alias's#is that a tag?#soundwave
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Beyond the Moon Gardens - Extracts (1)
For lack of anything else to post today, I’m releasing some extracts from one of my non-public fanfictions – Beyond the Moon Gardens – as my participation in the @raayllum valentine’s event.
Information on and context of the story itself is below the cut. The 10k of snippets are also below the cut.
(General overview of the content of the snippets: established rayllum, fluff, domesticity, horn care, silliness, cuddling.)
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Story information:
‘Beyond the Moon Gardens’ is a successor to ‘In the Moon Gardens’. The former was written in a month in late 2020, and has been worked on sporadically since. The latter was written in approximately three weeks between December 2019 and January 2020. Both are currently incomplete. I do not intend to publish either to the public in full, but may well post further extracts in time.
‘In the Moon Gardens’ is a story about Callum and Rayla getting married; however, the circumstances are deeply unpleasant and the experience is traumatic. ‘Beyond the Moon Gardens’ is considerably longer, and is focused on trauma recovery, hurt/comfort, relationship development, and fluff. The story is structured around a plotline involving rescue and disaster relief efforts in a Sunfire elf city called Lux Marea.
All snippets presented below take place on day 7 of the story’s timeline. They have been carefully curated for fluffiness for the purposes of Valentine’s day, and do not contain any of the hurt/comfort or post-traumatic scenes prevalent in the story at large. Some extracts have been edited to slot together and minimise empty space.
I may potentially post further snippets throughout the week if people are interested.
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The extracts:
(Snippet 1: domesticity, fluff, city descriptions. Context: Callum and Rayla are staying in fancy diplomatic quarters in the city, where they arrived somewhat earlier in the day.)
Rayla turned away from her reflection and went for the door.
She glanced around, and found Callum in his own robe sat at the sofa in front of the window. Surprisingly, he wasn’t drawing. He was just staring out across the city, looking pensive.
“Not drawing?” She asked, and he startled, looking up at her in surprise.
He blinked. “Oh. I didn’t hear you.” He said sheepishly as she approached.
She snorted, and moved around the sofa’s edge to plant herself down beside him. “So I noticed.”
Callum smiled at her, looking for all the world like the best thing that had happened to him today was her sitting down next to him, eyes settling on her like he’d be perfectly happy to do nothing but look at her forever. She withstood that expression for only a single second before she had to lean in and kiss him. He made a pleased sound, reaching out to rest a hand on her back, fingers stroking reflexively over the thick wool of the robe. “You smell nice.” He said happily, turning his face sideways to tuck his nose behind her ear. He was undoubtedly getting a face full of wet hair that way, but he didn’t seem to mind. “Fruity, sort of.”
“They’ve got a lot of soaps in there.” She said, and her voice came out more soft than amused. Stars, but she loved him. “It’s nice. There’s all these soaps, and towels, and I think bath oils too.”
“You think?” He inquired, curious, still with his face in her neck. He pressed a kiss to her damp skin.
“Didn’t check them out properly or anything, but there was a drawer full of some fancy stuff. Bottles and the like. Looked like it might be bath oils.”
With a final kiss to the edge of her jaw, he pulled back to resume staring at her contentedly. “We’ll have to have a look later.” He said, and paused to give her an appreciative once-over. “That dressing gown looks nice on you.”
She rolled her eyes. “You say that about literally everything I wear.”
“That’s because you look good in everything.” He claimed staunchly, and honestly, he wasn’t looking half-bad in his dressing-gown either. The colour was familiar on him, but the casual comfortableness of it was weirdly pleasing to look at. Made him look cosy and cuddlable.
Rayla shook her head, then leaned in to kiss briefly along his jaw. It prickled a little. “You might want to see if they’ve got razors in there.” She said dryly. “You’re starting to prickle.”
He blinked, startled, and raised a hand to his jaw, feeling along it. Mercifully, he grew facial hair extremely slowly, making it less of an issue on the move, but it did still grow. He’d last made an attempt at shaving some two weeks ago, and that had sufficed up to now. “Elves don’t grow beards, though.” He said, after a moment. “I’d probably better just stick with mine.”
Once or twice, they’d made an attempt at shaving his bristles with Rayla’s swords, which had been kind of nerve-wracking, and plenty memorable. For lack of proper razors to be found in Xadia, they’d eventually ended up getting him a small knife that he claimed was alike enough to a ‘straight razor’ to work, though it periodically needed to be sharpened to an absurd degree. It was all very strange to her, even after a good half year of living with him. “Maybe.” She agreed at last, and gave him a sniff. Fresh from bathing, his state of uncleanliness was far more obvious to her nose than it had been before. “You should be getting washed up first though. You’ll make your dressing gown stink.”
He snickered. “Bet I reek to you now that you’re clean.”
“Just a tad.” She prodded him in the side until he started moving. “Off with you. Wash up.”
Evading her hands, he leaned in and planted a final kiss on her forehead before leaving, disappearing into the bathroom while she shook her head at him. She heard the water start up quite soon after, and eventually ended up staring out of the window like he had.
The city was still bright, both with sunlight and with the ongoing glory of the temple’s radiance. Settling into a sort of quiet lassitude, she watched it with eyes half-lidded, following the patterns of steaming light as though the smoke from a fire.
It was a striking city. Unlike Lux Aurea, which was so much gold it hurt to look at, Lux Marea was a thing of contrasts. The buildings were all built from the same dark stone as the bathroom had been done in, a grey that cast deep black shadows behind the gaze of the sun. And yet – every building was lined with gold. Accents on the corners, or moulding between the bricks, or running in thick channels up the walls…it gleamed, rich and distinct against the stone. Some of the largest, richest buildings had elaborate golden murals on their sides, luridly metallic and shining in the sun. All of that gold was glowing with magic now.
Rayla wasn’t much for aesthetics. But even she could appreciate the beauty in that view. She watched it for a while longer, lulled a little by the twisting patterns of glowing haze rising from the buildings, then stood and went to find something to do.
-
(Snippet 2: Calum and Rayla investigate the supplies their fancy bathroom is stocked with, discover bath bombs and are confused, Rayla points out various horn-care items, and Callum makes her very flustered by offering to use said items)
After that, they went through and classified each of the mysterious drawer goodies a little faster. They found more varieties of lotion, some weird nearly liquid soaps, and a pot of some mysterious mini chalky spheres whose purpose neither of them managed to guess until Callum’s hair dripped on one and it sizzled. “Is it supposed to go in water?” Rayla wondered, befuddled.
“No idea. Try it.” He suggested, and they took the rinsing pot, filled it with water, and dropped the thing in. It fizzed and foamed magnificently, releasing pleasant odours and bits of dried flower as it dissolved, and both of them stared at it with fascinated consternation.
“Is that for baths?” She asked him, befuddled. “What’s the point?”
“…Fun, maybe?” He offered, reaching out to swirl a finger in the foam. “It looked pretty cool, after all. Maybe you’re supposed to throw them in the bath for the fun of it?”
“Fun foam and nice smells?” With a huff, she put that pot aside as something to maybe experiment with if she felt like it. “Well, maybe.” She snorted, and in the last unexplored corner, found something highly important. “Oh thank god.” She said, in that way she’d absolutely picked up from Callum, and he looked over with interest.
“What did you find?”
She brandished it triumphantly. “Toothbrushes.”
“Oh thank god.” He echoed instantly, peering over. “My teeth feel disgusting.”
“You’re not the only one.” She withdrew both toothbrushes from the drawer and set them aside. “Well, at least we know what everything in there is now. Mystery solved.” She went to close it, but was stopped with a hand on her wrist.
“Wait, but what about those?” he asked, indicating the small collection of things she’d already set to one side of the drawer with the horn-scrub.
“Oh.” She’d forgotten he wouldn’t know those on sight. “Right. Well, this thing here-“ She plucked up a narrow, vaguely curved implement with a soft-smooth coating. “-is a horn buffer. For making horns smoother once you’ve already scrubbed all the rough bits out with a proper scrub.” She planted it in his hands, since he seemed fascinated by it, and withdrew a sort of soft spongey thing with a texture like felt. “Horn polisher. Same thing, kind of.” He took that as well, and she pulled out a pot of thick paste that turned out to be exactly what she thought it was when she uncapped it. This one had obviously attempted to smell as pleasant as possible, but it still had a very strong and distinctive edge to it. She wrinkled her nose. “Horn polish.” She said, closing it up again. “To be applied and used with the polisher. And lastly-“ She picked up one of the remaining bottles, “horn oil.”
He looked weirdly interested. “What’s the oil for?” He asked, leaning in. “I mean, I guess the rest of it’s to make your horns smooth and shiny, right? So what about this?”
“It’s kind of fancy and unnecessary, and expensive, so not everyone uses it, but usually you put it on after scrubbing or polishing.” She explained, withdrawing the bottles one at a time. “They smell nice, which is good after the polish, and letting it sink into the horns is supposed to make them healthier and glossier-looking. You can technically put it on multiple times a day if you’re really into your horn presentation, but pretty much no one bothers.”
“Because it’s expensive?” Callum guessed, and she made a so-so noise.
“Well, there’s that.” She said dryly. “But it’s just kind of a lot of hassle, you know? If you’re already washing and doing your hair and keeping your horns not-gross, it’s just extra fuss you don’t really need.” She shook her head. “It’s less effort than full on polishing, I suppose, but I’ve never been bothered about polishing my horns except on special occasions anyway. It’s a lot of work.”
“Huh.” He said, in a sort of weird tone of voice. Rayla turned to him, and found his expression similarly strange. Thoughtful, interested, and a little bit furtive.
She eyed him suspiciously, picked up an armful of the supplies they’d set aside, and stood up with them. “What’s that look for?” She asked archly, setting things onto the broad side of the bath. He followed her lead, picking up the rest of it and standing, looking a little shifty.
“What’s what look for?” he asked innocently, putting it all out in neat rows.
“I know that face.” She told him, unimpressed. “I’ve told you so many times I know that face. That’s your dumb idea face. So out with it.”
For a moment, Callum looked sheepish. Then he cleared his throat, and looked at her, and she reflexively fell silent. “I…was wondering if you’d let me do your horns.” He said at last, and she made a strangled noise in the back of her throat.
“What?”
-
(Snippet 3: tail end of the horn-care discussion, domesticity, Rayla bemused by the concept of room service, Callum pestering Rayla for details on how horn care works, and discussion of one of Rayla’s newer hobbies)
“That’ll be nice, then.” He said, sounding very at peace with the idea. “I can wash and comb out your hair, maybe. Give you some hornrubs.”
Her cheeks heated. “Callum.” She complained. “That’s so sappy.”
He pressed his face close alongside hers, and she could feel his smile against her cheek. “Treat you real good.” He said, very contentedly. “I’m gonna spoil you rotten.”
Rayla managed a strangled, deeply embarrassed sound in the back of her throat. A little indignant, she protested “You can’t just say things like that.”
“I can, and I did.” Callum grinned against her skin, and leaned in further to kiss her near the corner of her lips. “Love you.” He lifted a hand from around her waist, fingers settling at her jaw with a gentle suggestion of movement. Feeling near to bursting with mortification and adoration, she grumbled wordlessly but followed his hand, allowing him to lead her face around so he could kiss her on the mouth.
“You,” she muttered, into his lips, “need to get dressed.”
He paused, then huffed a surprised breath over her skin. “That’s right, I’m still just wearing a towel.” He remembered, ruefully. “At least I’m drier now.”
“It’s been ages, of course you’re drier.” Rayla shook her head at him, then nudged at his arms until he let her go, extricating herself from his embrace. She had difficulty looking him in the eye when she turned, after all of that. “…Get dressed.” She repeated, softer, and shoved the dressing gown he’d hung nearby into his arms. She leaned in, kissed him once on the lips, and then turned away to leave the bathroom.
She settled on the sofa, ensconcing herself beneath the soft blanket she’d found, and stared out at the city while her heart recovered. Sometimes, she loved Callum enough that it was a little hard to cope with, like she was afraid that the emotion in her would rupture if it built too far. He was used to her retreating a little at times like that, just long enough to breathe and feel slightly less overwhelmed.
He took long enough in the bathroom that, eventually, she guessed that he was shaving. That disappointed her, a little. She liked to watch him when he shaved. It was always so strange to her, something quintessentially human; a bizarre banal grooming ritual that reminded her again and again that he wasn’t an elf, he really was a whole different kind of being to her, and his humanity was made of so many little things. He never failed to chuckle at her for how she watched him shaving, but had grown very used to her keeping him company for it.
She sighed, and looked out on the city under the sun, and regained her emotional footing. By the time he emerged, clad once again in the dark red dressing gown, she had her equilibrium back and looked up gladly at his return.
“Where’d this blanket come from?” He asked, bemused, coming over to join her. She held one end up so he could sit down under it with her.
“One of the drawers. There’s a bunch of stuff in here.” She informed, and once he was seated she didn’t waste any time in reaching out to run her fingers along his still-damp jaw. It was so smooth. She murmured, pleased, cupping his face between both hands.
He coloured a little, looking across at her with soft eyes. “You’re so weird.” He told her, sounding utterly besotted, and she leaned in to kiss him lightly along that jawline.
“Love you.” Rayla said contentedly, and drew back just enough to nestle firmly against his side. He wove an arm around her back and turned his head to kiss her at the brow.
“Love you too.”
After a good bit of cuddling and watching the city together, Callum admitted to wanting a drink and Rayla to not knowing whether their waterskins were still filled. They were, as it happened, but-
“You know, if you wanted fresher water, or moonberry juice, we could just ask for it.” He pointed out. “All we’d have to do is open the door and ring a bell and someone would come up, and we’d ask for a drink, and they’d have it up for us just like that.”
She shook her head, utterly exasperated at the idea. “That’s so weird.” She said, and then actually considered it. “…Let’s do it.”
He laughed, and obligingly got up and went to the receiving room to fetch the bell. He mostly-closed the intervening door for her sake, so that when a servant responded to the ring she didn’t feel particularly on edge about it. They couldn’t see her. It was fine.
After a short conversation with the servant, they were off, and Callum shut the outer door before returning. “Five minutes.” He said, and true to his words, there was a knock at the door not too much later. He went to answer it and brought back an actual platter, balancing an entire jug of moonberry juice, an entire jug of water, and two glasses.
“Did you ask for a whole jug?” She asked, disbelievingly, as he set it down on the low table ahead of the sofa. “Or the water?”
“Nope. Actually, they passed along their apologies for not leaving a jug of water in here in the first place. Apparently that’s their usual thing to do, but since they were hurrying for us it got forgot.” He poured her a glass of juice, and then some for himself, and sat back.
She snorted. “What a terrible standard of service.” She said, mockingly. “I mean really, forgetting to leave us wee little glasses and chilled water, what is this place coming to?”
He snickered at an inopportune moment, very nearly making a mess with the glass he’d been in the process of drinking from. “Don’t say that around Vervain, I think she’d actually explode.”
“Right there on the spot.” Rayla agreed. “It’d make a terrible mess.”
They traded a few light-hearted quips on the subject of the accommodations while they had a drink, then they set it all aside for later. Callum, who was clearly angling for it, managed to get her onto the topic of how exactly a proper horn care-and-polish was supposed to go, and she spent pretty much the entirety of that torn between being increasingly embarrassed and increasingly amused. He was so interested, like she was sharing arcane magical knowledge instead of stupid basic grooming tips.
“I mean, I’ve seen you using your horn-scrub on the road sometimes, to file away rough or flaky bits, right?” He was saying, while she leaned over to lay against his chest. He reflexively put an arm around her even while gesturing with the other one. “You kind of go…with the sort of curvy lines in your horns? Like one at a time?”
“They’re called ridges, Callum.” She informed him, incredibly amused. “And yes. You need to file along them all one by one, and be careful to keep the shape too. If you do it badly you’ll flatten out the tops of the ridges and it looks really stupid.”
He stared down at her horns with fascination, and lowered his gesturing hand to trace the shape of – she presumed – one of her horn-ridges in detail. She made a flustered sort of murmur at him, but he seemed too busy to notice. “Right, so, hm.” He almost seemed to be speaking to himself. “Yeah, if you just file it from the top it’d all flatten out. So you have to sort of work around each one? Following the curve?”
“That’s why Moonshadow horn-scrubs are so much more complicated.” She informed him. “We need the wee fiddly parts to get between all the ridges and file it right without losing the shapes. Takes forever. Our horns are more of a pain than almost any other kind of elf’s.” She grinned up at him. “Unlucky for you.”
“Are you kidding?” He asked, incredulously. “This is great. Means I get so much longer to spend on you. You never let me spoil you enough.”
She processed that, and groaned, burrowing her face into the wool gown over his chest. “You’ll change your tune soon enough.” She muttered, but wasn’t entirely convinced. Callum really was an incredible sap when it came to doing things for her. “It takes so stupidly long.”
“I’m counting on it.” He declared happily, and she huffed.
“You’re ridiculous.” She informed him, and after nearly ten more minutes of him trying to wrangle intricately detailed horn-polishing knowledge out of her, just rolled her eyes and said with exasperation “It’s like polishing armour, Callum. Or boots. You just buff it up, then go at it with polish on the polisher for ages. There’s not much of a trick to it.” She paused, but did add “Gets kind of messy though. The filing stage puts horn dust and bits everywhere, and once you start polishing you get like…murky polish liquid all over your hands. Better put a towel down.”
Eventually, after enough sitting around that the cuddling alone wasn’t engrossing enough anymore, Callum did go and get his sketchbook and immediately sat down to begin producing what Rayla was certain would be the first of many, many drawings of the city. He drew it as seen from above first, and Rayla settled in to watch with half-lidded eyes.
She’d grown very used to spending time watching Callum draw. In large part, this was because he tended to spend a lot of his free time doing it, and she was often around when that happened. It was quite satisfying, to sit there and observe as the shapes on the page took form. But even so…
There was only so much of watching him draw that she could do before she started getting bored. Throughout their journeying, it had rarely got to that point. What with the time constraints of camp-craft and travelling, there’d been little enough spare time that Rayla hadn’t felt compelled to find anything else to do. Now, though, she found with surprise that her fingers were itching for her knives.
“Huh.” She said to herself, with interest, and Callum turned his head to peer at her.
“Hm?”
“My knives.” She said, and then realised this wasn’t especially helpful. “My carving knives. Just realised I’m hankering for them a bit. That’s never really happened before.”
“Oh.” He thought, then looked pleased. “Looks like you’re starting to make a habit of it after all. That’s really nice.”
“Less nice when I don’t actually have the knives.” She snorted, and considered her empty hands.
Rayla, on the whole, tended towards active ways of passing the time. She liked to train, and she liked to exercise, and if Callum was free she always liked to go flying with him. But inevitably, after half a year spent together, there had been plenty of afternoons and evenings in their off-time when she was too tired to go out for training, or Callum was spending time drawing and she wanted to be around him, and she ended up with nothing to do.
He’d been the one to gently pester her into taking up some sort of hobby. At first she’d just grumpily sharpened her weapons over and over again, but with enough work he’d got her to try other things. He’d suggested either knitting or whittling, on the basis that both involved the use of stabby implements, and she was a fan of those. Knitting she hadn’t taken to. But whittling…
At first, she’d just done it because he’d prodded her into it, and she didn’t hate it, and there was nothing better to do, so she might as well. But now, considering her empty hands with consternation, Rayla realised for the first time that she actually kind of wanted to be doing it. When had that happened?
He leaned over and pressed a kiss to her cheek. “Pick up some things in the city tomorrow, maybe.” He suggested, and turned back to his drawing.
“Bit of a waste, when I’ve got a plenty good enough set of knives at home.”
“You don’t need to get a full set. But it could be nice to have a couple of the main ones around, for travelling with.” He shrugged. “You can practice on any random bits of wood, right? So it’s mainly the knives you need.”
She snorted. She’d learned enough to know that the type of wood one chose was, in fact, very important. But…yeah, for messing around like she did, random wood was usually fine. If splintery. “Maybe.” She said in the end, already thinking of the knife she used most. “It’s not a bad idea. Clothes and supplies are the priority, though. So maybe if there’s anything left after that.”
“We’ll need cold-weather gear, if we’re going through the Shiverthorns in winter.” He remarked, and huddled into the blanket like the mere thought was making him cold. “Thick cloaks and stuff.”
“Which are expensive.” She reminded. “And also heavy. It’ll slow you down.”
He shrugged. “I figure that’s okay. We won’t be in a huge hurry to get back, after all.”
-
(Snippet 4: Callum and Rayla discuss dinner options, watch the sunset, and investigate the light fixtures. Context: in this story, I worldbuild Sunfire elves as some weird blend of French and Roman.)
He hummed by way of agreement, and pulled her tighter in to his side. “For now, let’s try not to worry about that.” He said, determinedly. “Today our job is to relax and rest up, and that’s it.”
Rayla sighed, and shifted around to lay part-way across his front, face half into the red wool at his chest. “I can probably do that.”
They cuddled for what actually didn’t end up being that long, because there was a knock at the door. It echoed sharply through the polished wood, even with the intervening door closed. Rayla, who’d heard no footsteps of any kind due to the ostensible soundproofing, stiffened immediately.
Callum blinked, then carefully extricated himself from her. “I’ll go get it.” He said, and she didn’t object. She didn’t relish the thought of being seen by strangers when she was in her bathrobe. That was private.
He unlocked and opened the receiving room door, closed it behind him, and then unlocked and opened the outer door. There was actually a decent degree of sound loss between there and Rayla’s current spot, so she couldn’t hear what was being said beyond stray words. After a while, Callum said something in a distinctly goodbye-ish sort of voice and the encounter ended. He considerately locked both doors for her on his way in.
Over his arm, he was holding a neat stack of clothing and armour. “Already?” She asked, startled, and watched as he set it all down on the bed.
“Already.” He agreed, seemingly pleased. “I guess their drying spells really are useful. Look, they’ve cleaned your armour. And our boots.”
Rayla lifted herself from beneath the blanket to go over and look. All of their things looked fresh and new, bereft of the dull beige hues imbued by travel and sleeping in dust and dirt. It half looked like they’d re-dyed some of it, honestly, to get the clean colours back. She lifted Callum’s scarf from the pile, sniffed it, and hummed at it.
“Laundry smell?” He asked, amused, and she shrugged.
“Unsurprisingly.” She considered putting it on him, but in the end decided she was enjoying the look of him in the bathrobe, all cosy and comfy-looking. “What else were you talking about?”
“Hm?”
“With the servant.”
“Oh.” He paused to collect his thoughts. “Dinner stuff. He wanted to tell me the options they’ve got, so we can order ahead of time.”
Rayla made a thoughtful noise, and drew him by the wrist back over to the sofa again. “And?”
“You want me to list it all off?” She nodded, and obligingly he went off listing the various items on the menu, many of which were evidently examples of bizarre Sunfire ideas about cooking. Snails, really? Frog legs? Her nose wrinkled at that one, and Callum’s lips quirked. “They serve glow toad too.” He admitted ruefully. “I mean, I guess I heard they were delicious, but it’s one thing to hear it and another thing to have it on the menu, you know?”
She made a face. “Ez would never forgive us.”
“Bait would never forgive us.” He agreed, snickering.
“And besides – ew.” Rayla shook her head, and waved her hand. “What else?”
He went through all of the selections, drinks and desserts included, and then finished up by saying “He left a sort of booklet thing behind with it all written down, if you want to look over it.”
She stared at him with exasperation. “Callum. You really just stood there and said it all when you could have just handed me the bloody menu?”
“Well, you did ask.” He said, like this was reasonable, and she sighed fondly at him.
“You dumb prince.” She told him, affectionate, and leaned in to kiss him on the cheek before going to look for the menu.
By this point, it was around four in the afternoon, and the sun seemed to be making a very definite bid for descent. She retrieved the Booklet of Food Options and retreated to the sofa with it, where Callum had already planted himself to watch the city. There was a hint of yellow-green in the bright clear sky, and the angle of light from the sinking sun was casting some particularly dramatic shadows. The temple was still gleaming with light off to the side, and the golden circuitry through the city still exhaling. She stared at it for a moment, certain that tonight’s sunset really was going to be spectacular, and then opened the menu to start looking.
It had been long enough since lunch that the sight of so many food options was plenty enough to make her start considering the idea of an early dinner. In an hour or two, maybe. Some of it was too weird or too exotic to consider, but there was a lot that wasn’t.
She passed the booklet over when she was done making selections, but Callum seemed too occupied with the burgeoning sunset to want to look at it. She snorted, leaned in to kiss him on the cheek, and then leaned comfortably into his side to watch the city.
The sun fell over a period of around half an hour, sinking lower and lower, until the sky filled with such intense yellows and deep reds that it seemed almost to have caught fire. The grey slate of the city turned bloody red in the light, every golden trace lit up and shining in the growing dark. The few wispy clouds left in the sky were shining too, until the sun began to pass beneath the lip of the sea on the horizon, and the blue-green edges of the dusk glittered with stars.
“That,” He said, very softly, when dusk was ebbing into twilight, “was a really incredible view.”
Rayla had little artistry in her heart, but she’d appreciated that sunset. She knew that by contrast it must have touched Callum deeply. She looked at him, taking in his expression, finding it every bit as amazed and awed and happy as she could have hoped for. Her heart fluttered, happy for that he was happy, and in the warmth of that contentment she reached over to cup his cheek with her hand.
He looked at her, leaning into the hand, and offered her a small and very soft smile. Her thumb smoothed over his cheek as he lifted his hand to settle atop hers. Wordless, she leaned in to kiss him, warm and brief, and lingered there close by his face for a long while after their lips parted. He sighed very quietly, entirely happy and entirely at ease. It was peaceful in a way she’d dearly missed.
Feeling utterly suffused with warmth, Rayla nestled in beside him, fingers hooking lightly in the soft red wool of his robe. His arm came around her, and both of them sighed, and both of them settled, and it was quiet.
Neither of them felt the inclination to move or speak for quite a while. The sky was dark and full of stars by the time she shifted, and the city’s golden circuitry shining boldly through the shadow. The Moon, ascendant in the sky, was very nearly full.
“Might not be so bad after all, staying here a while.” She said, finally, and pressed her lips to his neck. “Comfy, nice bathroom, nice views…and the food options look kind of incredible, honestly.”
He chuckled, soft and fond. “Bit of a weird honeymoon.” He murmured into her hair. “But I’ll take it.”
She huffed. “Honeymoon.” She repeated, shaking her head.
Well. She supposed if they’d had to go through that whole forced marriage ordeal, they did at least deserve to get a nice holiday out of it. Even if most of that holiday was going to be spent working, the not-working parts of the day looked to be a lot fancier and more luxurious than they were back home.
“Yeah, I guess so.” Was her conclusion, in the end. “Did you decide what you’ll be eating?”
“Pretty much.” He kissed her brow. “You ready to order? It’s still kind of early.”
“Eh. It’ll do.” She shrugged, and listed off her selections. He kissed her again, then gently untangled himself from her limbs to go off and summon a servant.
The room had gone darker while the sun set, and the soft yellow glow of the fireless light fixtures along the walls had grown more prominent. Now a little curious, Rayla took the opportunity to investigate one, and on closer inspection found it to be some sort of…weird bioluminescent plant. Or maybe animal? It had long rigid tube-like structures that had plainly been cultivated into ornamental shapes, that looked almost like some sort of stone, though it had obviously been painted or dyed the usual deep red. It exuded a number of softly glowing yellow-orange tendrils from the openings at the end of the tubes, short and blunt but weirdly pretty.
She reached out cautiously to touch one, and at once the tendrils retracted inside the tube, the light dimming. Startled, she drew back to watch it, but the tendrils didn’t start to tentatively reappear again for another minute, during which she heard the light murmurs of Callum conversing with whatever servant he’d summoned.
When Moonshadow elves wanted light after dark, they just used enchantments, or glowstone, like normal people. Fancy Sunfire elves, however, apparently favoured plants. Or animals. She honestly wasn’t sure which this one was. Some sort of land-coral?
“I ordered the food.” Callum said, when he returned. “They said it’ll be about half an hour. And they’ll bring it all up at the same time so we don’t get disturbed twice.”
“Perfect.” She pronounced, with satisfaction, and then dragged him over to meet the light fixtures. Predictably, he spent a good ten fascinated minutes investigating the weird glowing polyps, and then a while longer sketching one out, and was half-way through that when the food arrived.
-
(Snippet 5: after dinner, Callum and Rayla engage in some silliness, then cuddle. Domesticity.)
“I’m so full I’m not going to move for a week.” Rayla announced, after staggering her way back through to their sofa, followed by an amused Callum. “It’s going to take at least that long to digest all of that.”
“That might make it tricky to get supplies.” He said, pretend-thoughtful. “But I’m sure we can work something out.”
She snorted, patted him on the shoulder, and then promptly pulled him into her side when he started looking at her in the imminent-cuddles sort of way. He hummed contentedly, turning his face into her shoulder, breath warming the wool over her collarbone.
“This bathrobe is so comfy.” He said happily, words muffled by wool. “It’s so nice.”
Having had very similar sentiments about his bathrobe earlier, she quite agreed. “Shame they didn’t include wool pyjamas, really.”
He didn’t offer any response for that, just snuggled, putting an arm around her waist. It was almost a little uncomfortable, really, what with how full she was, but she didn’t protest. She just held him close, smoothed her free hand over his hair, and looked out over the city. In the dark, watching the vaporous light rise felt very much like watching fire. It was very entrancing.
Some time later, Callum started to show signs of beginning to fall asleep on her. She looked down at him, snorted, and then nudged him until he stirred. “If you fall asleep now you’ll be up too late.” She informed him as he made plaintive noises at her. “I’m not having you exhausted and useless for your magic channelling nonsense tomorrow.”
“But you’re too comfy.” He complained, and she smirked.
“That sounds like an invitation to be less comfy.”
He opened an eye to peer at her suspiciously. “What do you mean, ‘that sounds’ – hrk!” His words cut off as, unceremoniously, she swept him up with an arm under his back and another under his knees, on her feet with a quick shift of her weight and his. She grinned down at him, finding him instantly and distinctly awake. “….Honestly this is still pretty comfy.” He said, weakly, when he’d spent enough time staring wide-eyed at her to recover his words.
Rayla pretended at thoughtfulness. “That sounds like a challenge.” She said, and he looked alarmed.
“It wasn’t! It wasn’t!” He protested, to no avail; she stepped around the sofa, judged her angle, and tossed Callum at the bed.
He wasn’t particularly aerodynamic, but her aim had been good enough anyway; he sailed neatly between the posts at the corners and impacted decadent Sunfire quilting with a muffled oof. She was laughing at him outright when he turned, staring at her with a sort of red-faced stupefaction that told her exactly what he thought of the whole experience. “Your face right now,” she managed, doubling over to snicker in his direction. Hilarious.
“You know, there’s a saying,” he began, a little dazed. “About trusting someone as far as you could throw them.” He pushed himself up on his elbows. “You could probably trust someone a lot, is what I’m getting at.”
“…I actually do sort of know how far I could throw you, now that I think about it.” Rayla said, thinking back. “It comes up in assassin training sometimes. Throwing teammates at walls and the like, to give them a leg up. I lobbed someone about your size around six, seven metres once.” She paused, and added “Lengthways, I mean. Throwing someone upwards is a lot harder.”
This did not make him any less wide-eyed. “That’s like, over twenty feet,” he marvelled, looking at her with plain admiration. “You’re amazing.”
She huffed, reflexively bashful at the praise, and shook her head. “Amazing at throwing people, at least.” She said dryly, and went over to stare down at him from the foot of the bed. “How’s the bed?”
“…Very nice, actually.” He said, after a pause for consideration. “You’re pretty bad at making things less comfy.”
“You’re definitely awake now though.” She pointed out smugly. “So my work here is done.”
He snorted, sitting up fully to beckon to her. Obligingly, she bent forwards to meet him with a brief kiss. “Hard not to wake up when someone throws you half-way across the room.”
She rolled her eyes. “It was not that far.” She said, and after a moment made the executive decision to fall forwards onto the bed, face impacting the plush duvet and sinking in. Her feet hung from the edge, and Callum giggled.
“Hehehe toes.” He said, and reached out to poke one. He found her four-toed feet amusingly charming every time he was reminded of them, which would have been funnier, except her feet were pretty ticklish and she twitched every time he prodded like this.
“I will kick you.” She warned, and he subsided with another snicker. Instead of messing with her any further, he shuffled over and started playing with her hair. “Mm. Better.” With a sigh, she closed her eyes and tipped her head forwards, face smooshing deeper into the bed. His fingers carded through her hair, nails trailing lightly at her scalp.
“You didn’t brush it.” He noted, carefully working out a couple of tangles, and she shrugged.
“Couldn’t be bothered. ‘Sides, it only tangles again when we cuddle, anyway.”
He hummed, and went through it again more purposefully, parting it carefully around her horns as he looked for and eliminated a few knots. He brushed around her hornbeds and she shivered. Apparently noticing the reaction, he did it again, more deliberately, chuckling at the way she murmured and pushed her head into his hand. “You look like a shadowpaw when you do that.” He said, affectionately, scritching gently around her horns. “Headbutting people’s hands when they pet you.”
“Anyone else and I’d be cutting off their hands, trust me.” She mumbled at him, already a little indistinct and fuzzy around the edges of her thoughts. Hornbed-scritches did that. “…Suppose the shadowpaw’d do that too. Except they’d bite the hand off instead, if they didn’t like you.”
“What I’m hearing is that if you were an animal you’d probably be a shadowpaw.” He sounded very fond.
“Mm. Guess so.” What would he be? Something doggish, probably. Friendly and playful and loyal, and then all teeth and fierceness when threatened. That sounded about right…
She drifted, a little. It was hard not to, when collapsed onto a comfy surface with one’s hornbeds being rubbed. He stopped after a while though, evidently noticing her drowsiness, and stroked a hand over her head between the horns as he chuckled. “Now who’s falling asleep?” He teased, and she made a half-hearted rude noise at him.
“’s your fault.” She muttered at him, indistinct around the duvet in her face.
“Uhuh.” He sounded amused, and stroked the back of her head again.
-
(Snippet 6: very detailed depiction of horn care, which in-setting is considered intimate)
She was suddenly very glad he’d interrogated her so persistently on the procedure earlier, because she wasn’t at all certain she’d have been able to tell him anything more sophisticated than ‘um’ when he was literally about to do her horns for her.
“You’re so cute.” He told her affectionately, obviously very aware of her current emotional state, and then finally set soapy hands onto her horns.
“Oh my god.” She muttered, cheeks flaming, feeling the weight of his hands, the subtle pull at the rest of her skull. She had never been quite so aware of her horns as when he started soaping them up and washing them, and it didn’t take long at all for the warmth of his skin to soak far enough through the keratin so that she could feel it in the living horn. A little while later, he applied the coarse-bristled-brush-side of the horn-scrub to her left horn, and she made a tiny embarrassed sound at the ceiling. “You should scrub them harder than that.” She managed after a moment, since he really was being too gentle about it. “Horns are tough, you know.”
He hummed with interest, and obliged, scrubbing hard enough that it pulled at her head a little. The towel-pillow had been a very good idea of his, really. “How much horn care do you normally do?” He asked, curious, getting the washcloth to rinse her horn before scrubbing again. “I’ve seen you file them, but…”
“…Usually just this. A good scrub to make sure they’re clean, and then filing down the rough bits.” Rayla offered a mortified noise. “But it’s been weeks and I’ve not even done that. They’re probably so dirty…”
“Shush, they’re fine.” He huffed at her, and kept on at her left horn until he was satisfied with it, moving over to the other one. Rayla regarded the ceiling with a persistently red face the whole while, cheeks feeling nearly as warm as the half of her body that was still in bathwater. “I wonder if your face is going to be this red the whole time.” He remarked, when he’d apparently finished with the washing.
“Probably.” She muttered, self-consciously, and felt her gut squirm when she felt the first experimental scrape of the fine filing parts on her horn.
Callum laughed softly, and started setting to work with the file. “If you say so.”
For all that he’d never done this before, the muted sensory feedback Rayla gleaned from her inner-horns and her ears suggested that he seemed to be doing fine with it. He readjusted the file enough that she could be relatively sure he was respecting the curve of the ridges, and worked slowly along the shape of each one, from the hornbed to the pointed tip, over and over again.
As she’d told him, it was a long process. It took a long time. Long enough that, contrary to her words, her embarrassment did start to burn out a bit, the red of her cheeks easing until she only felt a little flushed, a little flustered.
“I see why you thought the cloak would be a good idea.” Callum said ruefully, a while in. She could only imagine how much horn-dust and flaky bits of keratin must be littering it. “This does get kind of messy.”
“Told you.”
“For now this is just making your horns go sort of…pale, and scratched-looking.” He commented, working the file around one of the ridges on the underside. “I guess it goes dark again once you start buffing it?”
She made a small despairing noise, but agreed “Yeah, basically. Honestly all you really need to do is wipe it over with a wet cloth and it’ll stop looking like that. But…”
“But I’m not stopping there.” He said, with evident satisfaction, and a little more heat rose in her cheeks.
He was slow and meticulous about the filing, but got through it a lot more quickly than she could have if she’d done it herself. It was hard to work on your own horns – the angle was bad, you couldn’t see what you were doing, and adjusting to get the undersides was a huge pain in the arms. By contrast, doing it for someone else was just…a lot easier.
Finally, he set the scrub down and went for the washcloth again, soaping up and rubbing her horns clear of dust, poring over them for any spots he’d missed. When he was finally satisfied, he said “and now I buff them?”
“Mmhm.” She confirmed, bringing her hands up to hide her face for a moment. So, at her confirmation, he started on that part next. He evidently hadn’t expected how vigorous the buffing and polishing stages of horns were, because she kept telling him to press the buffer harder, and he kept making worried noises about it, and she had to keep assuring him that no that’s how it’s supposed to be, and eventually she start started laughing helplessly at him.
“I feel like I’m going to hurt your neck,” he complained at her, when the strength of the requisite motions pulled at her head. “Or like, hurt your hornbeds, or something.”
“I’ll be fine, Callum.” She assured him, still laughing, mirth and embarrassment squirming in her chest. “This is just how it goes, you know.”
“At least I brought you a pillow.” He sighed, and obligingly kept on. A fair while later, when he was done with the buffing and had washed her horns again, he leaned back a bit to admire his work. “That really is looking a lot smoother and shinier.”
“And you’ve not even done the polishing yet.” Rayla felt very weird then, laying back, eyes fixed on the ceiling. She’d been through embarrassment, and then amusement, and now…now, there was something else. She felt almost calm. Almost settled, like she’d finally started to grow used to this. Like the novelty of his hands on her horns had worn through.
Now, she felt kind of comfortable. At ease, in a way. Her mind was drifting in the way it did when Ethari or Runaan had helped her with her horns before, like this was just a normal thing. A normal thing that took ages, and that one had to daydream through to pass the time.
“I’m actually really looking forward to seeing what they look like when I’m done.” He was saying, as he put the buffing things down and went to get the bottle of polish and the polishing tool. “I’ve never seen your horns all done up before.”
“Maybe now you’ll finally understand what I mean when I say my horns have gone gross.” She pondered, and he laughed. “Finally you’ll know what well-kept horns are supposed to look like.”
“I have seen other Moonshadow elves’ horns, you know.” He informed her, obviously amused, and she heard the cap of the polish opening. A moment later, she smelled it, because there was really no mistaking that smell. “Yours still look nice no matter how long it’s been since you scrubbed them.”
Rayla made a disagreeable noise at him, and he snickered back, and then finally set about the polishing.
She’d told him, earlier, that horn-polish was pretty potent stuff, and that’s why you applied it to a sort of spongy cloth attached to a handle, rather than scrubbing with it by hand. At full strength, it actually melted the outer surface of the horn – just a little, just enough to meld it all down into a smooth, gleaming, perfect surface. Diluted polish was fine if you did it regularly, but with how long it had been for her…she’d told him to keep it undiluted. And it stank.
Her nose wrinkled, even with all the pleasant soap smells competing, and held her neck lax as Callum worked on her horns vigorously enough to pull her head back with every other movement. That was just how it went, so she wasn’t bothered. The towel was enough padding that it didn’t hurt, so she just laid there and let him work.
“Think I might actually nearly be done.” He pronounced at last, sounding genuinely a little out of breath. She’d told him it was hard work, and evidently he’d found that out for himself. He sounded very pleased, though. Like he’d done a good job and knew it, and was plenty proud about it. “Just got to wash all this polish muck off, right? Soap your horns up again.”
“That is the last stage.” She agreed, trying to glance up at him, but all she could really see was the top of his head. “Aside from oiling, I suppose.”
-
(Snippet 7: aftermath of horn care, domesticity)
It was then, by the sink, that Rayla finally removed the towel from her head, and Callum made a loud noise of pure joy at her. She stared at him, alarmed, and then noticed where he was actually looking. Oh.
“Shiny!” He exclaimed, gleeful, and reached out to stroke her horns. “Oh my god.”
“Callum!” She complained, but she was already laughing, because honestly she should have predicted this reaction. He practically groped at her horns, bright-faced and beaming, and she flushed all the while she stood still and let him. “Are you going to let me see them any time soon?” She asked him, dry. “Or are you just going to stand there groping them?” He subsided at that with a very high-pitched giggle.
“Hehehe,” he offered, and then “yes, go look! You need to tell me how well I did.” He took her by the shoulders and turned her to the mirror, his face lingering by her shoulder in her reflection with the enormous grin still very much in residence there. He was such a dork, honestly.
Finally, Rayla tipped her head forwards and inspected her horns. They were…shiny. Very shiny. Every ridge had been filed and buffed and polished to a gleam, and when she turned her head, the light glimmered off of them like they’d been waxed. Her eyebrows went up, and she lifted her own hand to feel along one. It was smooth. Entirely dry, but as she ran her finger along one ridge, it felt so smooth. Their dark colour was actually glossy. “…Wow.” She said, a little admiringly, and tilted her head to watch the light move. “That is shiny.”
He looked absolutely delighted by that response, as if he’d needed her go-ahead to be certain that, yes, that was definitely impressively shiny. She smiled, helpless to stop it, and turned her head to kiss him on the cheek; her reflection mirrored her.
“You did a great job, Callum.” She told him fondly, her cheeks pink at having seen exactly how great a job he’d done. Stars, but the second anyone saw her they’d know exactly who was responsible for those horns. “My horns haven’t been this shiny in years.”
Callum looked at her like she’d hung the Moon, like this praise was enough to render him utterly overjoyed. He tugged her around enough to kiss her, deep and excited and full of energy, so much so that she made a muffled noise of surprise into his lips. It caught her off-guard, and she was feeling a little breathless and a little dazed when he drew away a few moments later. “You have to let me do this again.” He told her, beaming. “I’m going to keep your horns this shiny, just you wait.”
Her cheeks flamed, and she ducked her head, suddenly flustered. “You can’t just say things like that.” She complained at him, and of course he looked utterly unrepentant. He leaned in and kissed her, then moved and kissed her on one cheek, and then on the other cheek, and his hands were already up and stroking along the wide bases of her horns again.
“Smooth,” he commented, gleefully, fingers warm around her horns. His face was very, very close to hers. “They’re so nice.”
The heat in her face decidedly didn’t abate. “Oh my god, Callum.” She mumbled, shaking her head, and he just kissed her again. Feeling increasingly dazed, she said into his lips “you know, it’s a lot faster if you’re doing it regularly. You can skip the filing and just buff and polish instead.”
He considered this excellent news, if the way he kissed her was any indication.
Finally, she summoned the force of will to reach up and peel his hands from her horns, stepping away. It was not easy, because – because when he looked like that, so elated and alive and full of delight, when he kissed her so enthusiastically, it was hard to think of pretty much anything. She looked across at him, incredibly flustered, and couldn’t see anything except how beautiful he was. “You, calm down.” She ordered him, gruffly, and led him by the shoulder to the basin. “We came in here to brush our teeth, you numpty. Not fondle Rayla’s horns.”
“But Rayla’s horns are really really pretty.” Callum pointed out cheerfully, and she made an involuntary noise half-way between embarrassment and pleasure.
“Be that as it may, Rayla and her horns want you to brush your teeth now so we can go to bed.” She said, and she shuffled over to the basin to make good on her words.
-
(Snippet 8: Callum and Rayla go to bed finally. Cuddling, fluff.)
It proved as magnificently soft and comfy as she might have expected, when she peeled back the covers and climbed in. Callum meanwhile was perusing the canopy with consideration.
“Curtains or no curtains?” He asked her, and she considered it.
“Curtains.” She decided, and watched with satisfaction as he reached out and unhooked the bed’s attendant drapery. She reached to the one closest to her, and he got the rest; it all fell into place, a rich dark red that blocked out the light from the room around them and cast their bed into soothing shadow. Something settled in her then, that hadn’t quite been at ease in the unfamiliar surroundings, or the openness of the room. She sighed, and burrowed down under the duvet, laying her head back on the pillows.
He joined her, lifting the covers and slipping in, closing his eyes for a second in obvious profound enjoyment. “This is so much better than hard cold floor.” He murmured happily, and she smiled, tugging him to her with a hand at his shoulder. He went gladly, and within moments they were pressed close, legs tangling, the warmth of his skin comforting against her own.
“Been a long few weeks.” She sighed, resting her forehead against his, and he lifted a hand to stroke her cheek.
“Kind of an understatement.” He murmured back. “I’m glad we’ve got a chance to rest now.” A pause. “Sort of, anyway. Aside from the work.”
She understood his meaning, though. There was something strangely safe about the idea of the time they’d spend here, whether it would be a week or longer than that. This wasn’t home, where there’d be people to explain things to, or where they’d have to adapt their old life to fit around what had happened. This was a new place – unfamiliar, but easier to cope with for that unfamiliarity, in its own way.
Here, she thought, they’d be able to find their footing a little. Settle a little more into their new normal, before the vagaries of travel and normal life needed intrude again.
“Me too.” She agreed, at last, and reached a hand across to press lightly around the back of his neck. He made a soft, pleased sound, then shuffled to give her better access, face smooshed into the pillow. She kissed him on the cheek, and he peered at her with one green eye, a smile fluttering on his lips.
“…Thanks for letting me do your horns.” He mumbled back, eventually. “I liked it.”
Her heart fluttered. “I’ll repay you sometime.” She promised, and moved her hand to smooth down along his upper back, enjoying the warmth of his skin. “Tomorrow, maybe. Give you a nice backrub or something.”
“Sounds great.” He shifted closer, tucking his face against her shoulder with a sigh. She kissed him at the top of his forehead, stroking him gently from the nape of his neck to his shoulders and back. He made quiet contented noises at her, drowsier and drowsier, and steadily began to drift off.
She lingered there, holding him, trailing fingertips over his neck as he settled into sleep. It really had been a long day for him, for all that they’d spent the latter half of it indoors and resting. Now, finally, he’d be able to sleep properly, in a bed comfortable enough to ease the ache of his overworn muscles. Now, finally, without the city’s doom hanging over them, they could rest a little.
Rayla smiled into his hair, nestled against him, and closed her eyes. She wasn’t aware of falling asleep, but it took her anyway; almost between one moment and the next, she was gone.
#rayllum#rayllumvalentines#moon gardens#these snippets will probably not get posted to ao3#i'd like to reiterate that I have no intention of posting the entire story either#but i hope you can enjoy these extracts regardless#i adore this fic tbh#it's a delight to write#which is probably how i managed to write 120k of it in one month#still proud of that#one heck of a personal record really
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